Every-single-day in at least one of my news feeds, comes a story of cops killing some poor innocent person—usually black. In just about every one of these cases, the police all sing the same old song: “I was in fear for my life.”
One of the most disturbing interviews I ever watched was the interview with Darren Wilson and George Stephanopoulos. He spent the entire interview telling George just how “scared” of Michael Brown he was, all the while, literally trying to demonize him (calling him a demon). In Cleveland, the police who shot Tamir Rice claimed that they were “in fear for their lives.” Also in Cleveland, Officer Michael Brelo claimed that “I've never been so afraid in my life” as he stood on the hood of a car, and fired 13 bullets into Timothy Russell and Malissa Willaims. Just today, I read right here on Daily Kos that police in Oakland Park Florida killed a computer engineer as he was walking home, and then tried to cover it up. The cop who shot him claimed, “I felt like my life was threatened.”
So this brings up a very important question: When did the police become such fraidy-cats? I’ve seen six-year-olds less frightened than they are. What do they do when they see a spider in their bathtub? Gun it down in cold blood and warm water? Do they scream and jump on their chairs when they see a mouse? What happens if you sneak up behind them and say, “BOO!” Do they just open fire on you? Do they ever shoot at their own shadows because they’re afraid they’re being followed? What happens when they go to the grocery store and find that they’re out of Roma tomatoes? Do they panic and shoot the clerk. Everything encounter frightens them so that they’re ready to shoot without provocation.
Now of course when I make those comments, someone always yells at me (IN ALL CAPS) that “these ‘brave’ men and women put their lives on the line for cowards like you…” And then they go on to call me a communist, socialist, liberal Nazi. But truth be told, maybe the cops are putting MY life on the line.
In the mid-two-thousands, there were statisticsthat Americans were eight times more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist. Since that time, this number has jumped significantly. According to 2015 numbers, it’s now fifty-five times. In other words, the closer I am to a cop, the higher the odds that I’m going to get shot.
According to Mintpress, over five thousand American civilians have been killed by our police force since 9-1-1. They also estimate that between five hundred and one-thousand people are killed annually, but the police force has done a bang-up job of making sure that there’s no paper trail, and so those numbers aren’t tracked.
The U.S. government says that 4,486 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq, and 2,345 in Afghanistan. On 9-1-1, over three-thousand people were killed in the attacks. If those are disturbing numbers (and they are) imagine how disturbing it is that our own police force is killing more of us.
As to dangerous jobs, police don’t even make the Forbes Top Ten list of America’s Most Dangerous Jobs.
So it would appear, that the closer I am to a cop, the more danger MY life is in, not the other way around. Since I live in New York City, my proximity to a cop is never more than a block, and the NYCPD is one of the most corrupt and troubled organizations in the country. Our police force actually decided to do a work stoppage because they were angry at their boss, our mayor.
Another comment that I get (also in all caps) is: “Who are you going to call when you’re life is being threatened?” usually peppered with expletives and personal insults.
Which brings up another problem. If you call the police for help, you’re likely to be the one shot. For example, Kevin Davis who called the cops after his girlfriend had been stabbed. Police showed up and shot him. Or Justin Way, whose girlfriend called the cops because her boyfriend had threatened to kill himself. So the police showed up and shot him. No, the last thing I want to do is call a cop when I need help. I’m probably better off dealing with the criminal myself.
And then of course there’s this little ‘bon mot’: “You couldn’t do their job.”
My response is pretty simple. “DUH!” Nobody knows more than me that I could never be a cop:
First of all, I’ve met a lot of people in a lot of situations, and I’m convinced that most people are way more trouble than they’re worth. I’m convinced that the fact that we have NOT been visited by aliens is proof that there’s intelligent life out there.
Second, when I get stuck on the freeway behind a guy going slow in the fast lane, I want to make it legal to shoot out his tires as I try to get around him.
Third, I don’t do well with conflict. I’ll do almost anything to avoid it, even telling you that your ass looks just fine in that outfit.
Nor am I a fighter. If it came to it, I could get beat up by a sixth-grader. I think I could take the fifth-grader though, since I can run faster scared than you can mad.
So no, I could not do their job, and I wouldn’t even try. But that’s my point. Many of the actual cops shouldn’t be police either, and rather than get rid of them, the force defends them. Yet it’s not just the police, it’s also the
police unions. To be clear, this isn’t an anti-union screed. Workers need bargaining power. They need to be able to come to the table collectively. But what do we do when the union leadership has lost their way and become part of the problem?
On Chris Hays, President of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association told guest host Ari Melber that the Tamir Rice shooting was justified and then went on to demand an apology from the Cleveland Browns football players for taking the side of the Rice family insinuating, ala mob-style, “It would be a shame if something happened at your game and we weren’t there to protect you.”
In New York City, Patrick Lynch, president of NYC’s largest police union led the police on a work stoppage, blamed the mayor when two police officers were killed in Brooklyn, saying, ironically that there was blood on his hands. Then at the funerals of the two slain officers, encouraged his officers to protest the Mayor, which they did by turning their backs to him in large numbers.
Jimmy Hoffa, himself a union leader, was instrumental in the growth and development of unions, helping to establish themselves. But he was no saint. Hoffa ran his union like a mobster, and was at one time part of the mob. These union presidents sound just like that, and they need to be dealt with as well. We need to weed out the enablers, and replace them with decent and honest men and women who will hold bad cops accountable: get rid of the bad ones, and promote the good ones.
Another challenge we have involves how police are hired in the first place. The department likes to insist that they’re not very smart… especially not smarter than us. That’s going to create a problem right out of the gate. People with lower IQs tend to turn to violence first since they don’t have many ‘life-skills’ at their disposal. They’re unable to use reason and to effectively communicate in a difficult situation, and more likely to escalate a situation rather than de-escalate it. But that’s what also make them more desirable. A smarter person is going to rationalize their actions and be less likely to blindly follow orders.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m tired of seeing cops kill people and I'm really tired of seeing them get away with it. And I’m tired of the unions defending them and threatening. I’m tired of the justice system just letting them go, and I’m tired of how they flaunt their authority. I don’t hate cops, but I do fear them. They’ve become reckless and dangerous, and regardless of what they do to me, or people I love, we will suffer while they will never be brought to justice for it.
In Seattle, where I lived previously, I once spent a ton of money on alcohol, flirting with a cop, only to have him ditch me for another guy… oh well (and not I’m not bitter). I was also engaged by a Seattle chief to talk about some of my frustrations with the Seattle PD. They were a couple of great talks, but he bailed on me. He kept promising that he was going to set me up to ride along with an officer in my area, and to meet other officers so that I could talk with them. That also never happened, and I wish that it would have.
It may be time that we rethink our police force, since clearly this one isn't working out.