I used to work for a small municipality here in Ohio. Personally I found that most firefighters were all right. Most of them had egoes that exceeded their talents, but that’s not really evil.
The cops, however…I don’t know if assholes are just naturally drawn to law enforcement or if being in law enforcement turned nice guys into assholes. But of all the cops that I knew, there were only 2 or 3 who didn’t carry an enormous chip on their shoulder.
My friend theorizes that it’s the way they are treated. Because most firefighters are paramedics, we are relieved and happy when they arrive on the scene. But since most of us interact with police officers only when we are getting pulled over for a traffic violation, we have a negative association with them that is then reflected back by the cop.
Actually I was speaking of the case of former Glendale (CA) fire captain John Orr who was convicted on four counts of murder and 20 cases of arson.
The four people died in a fire Orr set at a hardware store in South Pasadena. Orr later then wrote an unpublished book about a fire investigator who got sexual thrills from setting fires. In the manuscript, he described a fire almost exactly like the one that happened in South Pasadena.
Orr was also convicted of some Federal arson crimes. (I never knew there were any.)
After he serves his sentence in the Federal pen, he goes off to the CA state pen for life without parole.