Well I’m a rookie cop. Have’nt been on the streets for a long time, but I’ve been through enoughto have a basic understanding of how things work out here. One of the other posters was right, when an officer is in front of the COPS camera, he starts acting alot differently than he would normally. Officers tend to show alot more bravado and tend to make alot more mistakes when on TV. It’s hard to spot unless you’re actually trained in the law though. So in that regard, I don’t think COPS really hurts officers that much. In fact, I think the fact that police officers come off as brutal helps our job.
Listen, I think it’s rather unfortunate that people would watch a TV show and deem police officers untrustworthy simply because of what they saw on TV. The most difficult thing in dealing with victims of crime is that alot of them don’t trust the police. We’ve got alot we can offer them, but we can only show them the door, they gotta walk through it themselves. Cops are’nt out there to babysit the citizens.
Sure policemen (and women of course) can be brutal. We live in a brutal world; but when you hear a strange noise in the middle of the night and you’re in fear of your family’s life, you don’t call 911 hoping that a troop of Boy Scouts arrive, you want the police. You want these guys to extricate that crackhead who was out of crack money and decided to shatter the sanctity of your home (believe me, it happens). You want us to pile drive the psycho who is in the middle of kidnapping your daughter at gunpoint because he decided she would look good in his collection. The world is brutal and sometimes we have to stay brutal right along with it. We try our best to go out there every night and make it safe for you to come out during the days.
Listen folks, I’m not talking about harcore civil rights violations here. I’m talking about using enough force out there to make the arrest and not get the citizens or the officer hurt. If anyone out there tells you a Cop’s job is to go out there and get hurt, then you’ve been sorely misinformed. Our job is to protect you while, at the same time, making it home after every shift to see our families.
Being brutal and intimidating is just one of the tools we use to get that drug dealer in jail without having him try anything funny. Believe me folks, as a fresh rookie, I can tell you first hand that those crimnals out there can smell fear and they will take advantage of it. Now if we can look like we’re undestructible, if we can put alittle intimidation into those offenders, then they’ll be less likely to try to fight us or even shoot us. Those criminals have the upperhand in so many ways: they chose the time, location, and weapons they bring to their fights. We almost have to show up at their convenience. Just think of the time when Superman had to fight that guy who ran on solar power and would put citizens in jeopardy in order to put Superman at a disadvantage. If we can start to level the playing field just alittle, then we’re gonna take it.
Sure, some cops are assholes, but every profession has assholes. Neitzche was right, when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you (or something like that). Sometimes the job just gets to you. Imagine everyday you go to work you’re surrounded by people who don’t trust you no matter how much you help them, you see pain and injustice everywhere you look and you never know if you’re gonna see your wife when you come home. Half the people we catch wind up back on the streets before we even complete the report. Eventually, it’s gonna get to you. Some people say we’re trained to do this, but cops are only human. No amount of training will make you infallible. Especially, the first time you see a child, dead and violated, laying on the ground, and the criminal is laughing his way through court because some lawyer found a loophole in the system, and the guy is only spending 1/4 of the time he should in jail. It’s happened people.
All I’m saying is, just try to understand where we’re coming from before anyone starts drawing any comparisons between the local police and Nazi stormtroopers. %99.9 of the officers out there really want to help and are’nt on any type of power trip, in fact, being a police officer is more a heavy burden than a free pass to do anything.