I Have A Promising Future Behind Me
I retired from law enforcement four years ago. I slicked back my thinning hair. I punched two holes in my ears and I wear a lot of biker stuff including scarfs on my nearly bald head to keep the sun off. I ride a really gorgeous RoadKing with mini apes. I am rather large at 6'4" and 260, er maybe 270 and even at 50- I spend 5 days a week in the gym. I ain't the kind of guy who screams cop when you meet me nor do I ever tell anyone. Well, most of the time.
Every once in awhile, I run into some knucklehead who tells me he hates cops. That happened today. When that happens, sometimes I break my vows of silence. Today was one such day.
"Do you know who hates cops?" I asked the knucklehead. He replied, "who?" I told him, "Criminals and mostly shitty criminals. The good criminals are the ones that get away, they don't tend to fear us so much. The real shitty criminals, the dumb ones, we catch those. Those are the ones who hate cops." He said "fuck you" which loosely translated means- I won.
Once we got that out of the way, we began one of those back and forth sessions that involved him trying to rehab his big yap a little by playing nice with me. I am a veteran of such conversations and I reassured him I would not pound his face into the asphalt although I cannot rule out someone else doing that precise thing. Those days are behind me. However, I am still amazed at how many people think cops have some sort of big time power.
If you are one of the people in that camp, please allow me to explain. Police officers are at the bottom of the power totem pole. We are tools. We go out and enforce the law as best we can. Once in awhile we actually catch a bona fide criminal and not some poor sap fending off blows from his drunken wife. We have no immunities. Unlike lawyers and judges, we can be sued. Lawyers carved out a nice little piece of immunity for themselves over time, predicated on the false belief that memorizing a bunch of answers for a bar exam means that you cannot make mistakes and thus you receive immunity from civil law suits. Everyone watches the cops. The press, anyone with a cellphone camera, cops from your department, cops from other departments, citizens, advocacy groups, bosses, risk managers, insurers, bartenders. It's a wonder to me that cops get away with anything. Not to mention, law enforcement is one of the only professions that forces employees to take polygraph tests.
I'd love to see lawyers and judges take polygraph tests. Or drug tests. My secret fantasy. Sick, I know.
It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why cops tend to avoid social situations. It's really difficult to be a cop and find yourself exposed in social settings. It was damn hard in Moonbat Valley to go to a party without some nitwit hauling out a bong. At least when the cops partied, we didn't have to worry about that.
Anyway, I am trying to figure out what I am going to do for the next 25 years or so. I am not sure I can keep working with these knuckleheads. I have this re-occurring dream that I am near the entrance to the Chinese retailer greeting meth addicts as they come into the store. Something tells me I have a promising future behind me.
Every once in awhile, I run into some knucklehead who tells me he hates cops. That happened today. When that happens, sometimes I break my vows of silence. Today was one such day.
"Do you know who hates cops?" I asked the knucklehead. He replied, "who?" I told him, "Criminals and mostly shitty criminals. The good criminals are the ones that get away, they don't tend to fear us so much. The real shitty criminals, the dumb ones, we catch those. Those are the ones who hate cops." He said "fuck you" which loosely translated means- I won.
Once we got that out of the way, we began one of those back and forth sessions that involved him trying to rehab his big yap a little by playing nice with me. I am a veteran of such conversations and I reassured him I would not pound his face into the asphalt although I cannot rule out someone else doing that precise thing. Those days are behind me. However, I am still amazed at how many people think cops have some sort of big time power.
If you are one of the people in that camp, please allow me to explain. Police officers are at the bottom of the power totem pole. We are tools. We go out and enforce the law as best we can. Once in awhile we actually catch a bona fide criminal and not some poor sap fending off blows from his drunken wife. We have no immunities. Unlike lawyers and judges, we can be sued. Lawyers carved out a nice little piece of immunity for themselves over time, predicated on the false belief that memorizing a bunch of answers for a bar exam means that you cannot make mistakes and thus you receive immunity from civil law suits. Everyone watches the cops. The press, anyone with a cellphone camera, cops from your department, cops from other departments, citizens, advocacy groups, bosses, risk managers, insurers, bartenders. It's a wonder to me that cops get away with anything. Not to mention, law enforcement is one of the only professions that forces employees to take polygraph tests.
I'd love to see lawyers and judges take polygraph tests. Or drug tests. My secret fantasy. Sick, I know.
It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why cops tend to avoid social situations. It's really difficult to be a cop and find yourself exposed in social settings. It was damn hard in Moonbat Valley to go to a party without some nitwit hauling out a bong. At least when the cops partied, we didn't have to worry about that.
Anyway, I am trying to figure out what I am going to do for the next 25 years or so. I am not sure I can keep working with these knuckleheads. I have this re-occurring dream that I am near the entrance to the Chinese retailer greeting meth addicts as they come into the store. Something tells me I have a promising future behind me.
Comments
Just sayin'.