It could well be. I don’t watch many TV shows and there are so many police procedurals out there I get them mixed up – especially if I’ve only seen the show once or twice.
From what little I’ve seen, their cultural appears less law enforcement and more military than any police department I’ve had personal experience with. I’ve known police chiefs in cities ranging from 2,300 people up to about 210,000, and I have never seen officers saluting the chief or someone yelling TEN-HUT when he walks into the room, but that’s how the NYPD is often depicted. Is that accurate?
[/QUOTE]
Yes and no. My dealings with the NYPD have been minimal. I have a couple relatives on but they are distant cousins and the last funeral I saw them at was years ago. The impression I get is that they don’t have a lot of military discipline. A lot more than a civilian job, a lot less than the army. They call their commanding officers Lou and Cap but not by their first names. But chiefs are a whole other matter. In the NYPD a chief could command more personnel than an Army division commander. That position gets a different level of respect. My chief is just the guy who has an office next to mine.
As for things like drill and ceremony, I think we all learn it in the academy. It comes up now and then, usually at funerals.
Jargon is one thing, but what the hell is the deal with that cop/military voice? That’s the one where words come out like machine gun bullets, without any inflection but tons of volume? It’s the style of speaking that if written comes out like, “SIRWHATINEEDYOUTODORIGHTNOWISEXITTHEVEHICLEANDMOVETOTHESIDEWALKTOAWAITFURTHERINSTRUCTIONSRIGHTNOW…AREYOUEYEBALLINGMESIR?”
It’s not purism. It’s the fact that cops, being the only people who use the term this way, come off as elitist pricks by doing so. For the same reason you are told to use plain language, it would make sense not to use the term.
It’s like the use of male and female as nouns, which, in any other context, is considered sexist. It would be fine if it only affected how you spoke on your job, but it doesn’t. So, by talking that way, you are allowing sexists to go unnoticed in society, because we assume they might be cops.
It really isn’t relevant that you don’t understand why something bugs people. If anything, the fact that you don’t get it means you are too ignorant to choose to continue using it, since you cannot make an educated decision based on how much offense you are causing.
But I’ll try one more time to fight your ignorance on why some people find it offensive: Calling people civilian forms an idea of them being a separate population. In the military, it makes more sense, since you do actually live separately from civilians. You don’t as a cop. You are in fact an active participant in the civilian community. It seems stupid to think yourself above everyone else. (And, no, the fact that you’ve been in the armed forces does not change that. Unless you are currently active, you are a civilian. You are one of us. Even the military has a problem with thinking they are better than everyone else.)
Cops are having a harder and harder time with disrespect because people think they don’t understand the plight of the ordinary person, and having a separate term that leaks out into casual conversation does not help that matter. For the same reason you are told to use more common language, it would make sense to pay attention when someone tells you that your use of some terms bother them, whether you personally understand why it bothers them or not.