I figured last week’s headline (Black Skin Gives Better Protection than White: Study — AFP) would raise a few eyebrows. Well, not the headline, really, but my lead-in “slug” for it: “Except From the Police”.
I did get one fairly outraged letter:
I personally am offended by your comment on this headline. I am a police officer and work in an all-black neighborhood, but myself and my partners do not find it necessary to beat people or profile to do our jobs effectively. If you took the time to truly get to know some police officers and understand the job, I think you would find your ‘funny’ comment itself to be a great misrepresentation of the truth. You have let yourself become a victim of media influence. (However, I feel that you will actually read my opinion and take it seriously, unlike any so-called mainstream media would do.) I thought you were more intelligent than to make a comment like that without thinking that perhaps you were generalizing the characteristics of a whole group of people based on a few bad ones. –Greg, Tennessee
Take the Time to Get to Know Some Cops?!
I asked Greg if it would it surprise him to learn that I am a former peace officer myself. He was.
I started as a police cadet in Menlo Park, Calif., and got out of the biz some years later, after a stint as a deputy sheriff in Humboldt County, Calif., where I did search and rescue work. The photo (right) is from my neglected personal site: that’s me, in uniform at the left, holding the camera.
It’s absolutely true that most cops are terrific, hard-working men and women who are trying to make their cities better places. True is, in its essence, biting news, and thus social, commentary. I knew I’d hear from a lot of my Black readers that my comment is right on — and I have; it’s the way many of them truly feel, and a lot of the time those feelings are based on real-life experience, not paranoia.
It’s because I’ve been a cop, with the understanding that comes with that experience, that I am in a unique position as, now, a social commentator to demand better of the profession I served in.
I’ve said many, many times that while True is entertainment, part of its mission is to make people think and talk about the issues raised. We all belong to groups that have done something worthy of being laughed at — which is a damn sight better than crying!
If we can learn to laugh at ourselves when those things are illuminated, we get closer to “getting along” with others (as one Black man who tussled with the police once urged).
But Greg did tell me something I didn’t know: last week was Police Memorial Week, dedicated to the memory of officers killed in the line of duty. Thus I do have one regret with the headline: its timing.
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I’m fairly Establishment and a taxpayer. In other words, I pay for, and expect, police protection. And as a voter, I have my voice in City Council in how I like to see a police department operated. For the most part, I think cops are normal people doing a dirty job for less than stellar pay. Even when I get caught screwing up, like a speeding violation, I can’t complain. It IS what I pay them for.
Of course, you do run into a few badge-heavy swaggering Barny Fifes who think they’re the Lone Ranger intent on saving the world from itself. They’re a small minority and eventually they do end up getting what’s coming to them.
But I was curious, so I looked it up on the USDOJ site. There are 653,500 police officers in the U.S. If only 1% of them are abusing their authority, and they exercise that abuse with 10 citizens a day, that amounts to well over 16 million people each year. Enough to populate 2 or 3 small states.
@Mike from Dallas
Actually, that’s too low.
At 1% and 1 case of abuse each day it’s 2.38 million per year.
Or 23.8 million per year if it was 10 cases per day.
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The way I would figure it: 1% of 653,500 is 6,535. Average work year is 5 days x 50 weeks = 250 days — fewer when they work four 10-hour shifts/week. But let’s stay with the higher number. 6,535 x 250 = 1,633,750. But, sadly, long-time reader Mike won’t see this: he died a couple of years ago. -rc
Thanks for your thought provoking commentary.
Did you intend to create the additional enigma of the photo (which “includes you”) which you “took yourself”?
Initially the apparent impossibility made me chuckle but after thinking it over I was able to resolve the anomaly (hopefully correctly).
However, it further enabled me to reflect on taking the time to digest information instead of jumping to incorrect conclusions and assumptions — which, I’m sure you’ll agree, form the basis of many of the rants you receive.
Keep up the good work.
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Not much mystery here, even for the 1980s: remote control! 🙂 -rc
Looking back 24 years from Jan 2025 I’d say Greg in Tennessee would be hugely wrong, even if he may have been right back then. I know anecdotal evidence is not evidence, but when the incidents pile up like they have been over the last quarter century — now that video evidence is so much more ubiquitous than it was then — you have to sit up and take notice. And not only are there many, many officious (I’m being kind here) officers but the statistics are quite clear: a black (or brown) skin unarguably affords a great deal less protection from the police than does a white one.
As a white male, I have never feared for my life during a routine traffic stop. I’m also old enough to remember when law enforcement vehicles were readily identifiable so you knew they were around when needed. When you look at police vehicles around the world with their easily recognizable color scheme as compared with those in the United States now vs. how they were even a decade or so ago, it’s easy to see why more and more people here see law enforcement as something to put us all in a less than comfortable position. The once-familiar black & white vehicles with the gumball machine lights are now black with barely discernable markings and a light bar that barely registers. Urban camouflage.
My father was a cop back in the 20th century. His career spanned four decades.
Long after his retirement, when he was dying from cancer (and loneliness — mom had preceded him), I asked him if there was anything from his years on the force that he thought should be remembered. I was expecting a “dumb criminal” story, like the ones your readers know so well. He had plenty of those.
Instead, he thought for few moments, then said “You know, when I first started, we lived in what was called a Sunset Town….” Then he paused for long time before finishing up. “I guess I’m proudest of the orders I didn’t follow.”
True, your lead-in doesn’t apply to all cops, but it certainly does apply to a few. That few needs to be constantly called out and opposed, so people like my father don’t have to disobey orders just so they can do the right thing.
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Hear hear. -rc