I was a reserve officer for 20 years, 12 of them as the only one in a small town department with seven officers and for eight years in a department with 30 officers. We were all real police, even me when I was on duty. We helped people and crime victims, we got drunk drivers off the road, and fought some crime. Everyone but the reserves wore ballistic vests under (not over) their shirts like you see police do these days.
I was friends with lots of cops and had a reputation at the psychotherapist they went to with their problems or recommended to other cops I did marriage counselling with them.
I did other law enforcement things within the realm of my expertise as a therapist, and I published the number one police stress website, but enough about me.
What I can’t stand is that these ICE and customs agents wear police on their intimidating uniforms. I see them as fake police. Even though I was only a reserve officer I had the authority of a regular officer when I was riding along as the partner of a career officer. I find it difficult to imagine these migrant hunters go to work every day and then come home to their spouses and children.
Every story about these fake cops reminds me of the title of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.
How difficult is it for these people to get other jobs. Hell, they could work in a regular prison with real criminals if they wanted to wear a uniform and have authority over people.
It is a shame that the images of the father and daughter who died trying to cross the Rio Grand has given pause to some Republicans with the notable of Donald Trump’s cold and calulating response which, no surprise showed not even a lame attempt at empathy and blamed the Democrats and his usual go-to villain Barack Obama.
The Rio Grande, shown in my photoshop at the very spot where Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria died instead of being the entry to a place of freedom and safety might as well have been the gates to Auschwitz.
Words really failed me how this made me feel, so I made the photoshop above instead. There’s an empty spot where the father and daughter died. I suppose this could be symbolic of their no longer being alive on the earth, and to put it bluntly they have been replaced in the water by a place where an evil dictator put people to death.