I had no hatred of police until I worked with/around them for the better part of a decade. Used to go around to different places training them on a new methodology of data entry, and had them come to us after out department got the space. Trained hundreds of departments of all types of cops, trained hundreds of different facilities of COs. Not a single time, in the 1-3 day training periods, did I come away without hearing them brag about, or do, some awful shit. After the 50th or so department, where police fist bumped, and cajoled each other over violating people’s rights, I just couldn’t stand them anymore. They will sit around bouncing ways of violating people’s rights that will still provide them the protection of immunity. They trade pointers on the best ways to trump up charges against people they know aren’t breaking the law, but they don’t like. The moment the room was all male, or all the x minority was out of ear shot, the bigotry came out. At first I tried reporting it. Got told that since I am a white dude they didn’t think I was gonna care, and if I pushed this issue it was only going to be bad for me.
This stuff affects their personal lives too. It is very common for cops to slowly lose anyone out of their life that isn’t a cop, or directly related to one. They hang out in bars where they have driven off pretty much everyone but other cops, their social events tend to be nothing but other cops and their families. There are whole subdivisions of domestic violence professionals that deal only with the families of police. They isolate themselves with their behavior and then blame everyone else for hating cops. Meanwhile many of the people who stopped hanging around them will tell you it’s because they are paranoid, bigoted, and quick to anger, if not violence.
They also drastically over value the rarest dangers of their jobs. Spend enough time around police and you will hear about how many of them are ambushed and murdered. That is very rare, and most often the result of the cops doing something shady with their position. You very rarely hear them mention how driving all the time, and the recklessness of driving in emergency situations, is actually what kills them most often. While it was starting to gain some traction in the latter days of me working in the justice industry, they also rarely discussed how sitting all day, alone, in their car, caused a myriad of health issues, namely heart disease and other obesity/sedentary related illnesses. No, not worth talking about much if they can’t make themselves the victim.
I had no hatred of police until I worked with/around them for the better part of a decade. Used to go around to different places training them on a new methodology of data entry, and had them come to us after out department got the space. Trained hundreds of departments of all types of cops, trained hundreds of different facilities of COs. Not a single time, in the 1-3 day training periods, did I come away without hearing them brag about, or do, some awful shit. After the 50th or so department, where police fist bumped, and cajoled each other over violating people’s rights, I just couldn’t stand them anymore. They will sit around bouncing ways of violating people’s rights that will still provide them the protection of immunity. They trade pointers on the best ways to trump up charges against people they know aren’t breaking the law, but they don’t like. The moment the room was all male, or all the x minority was out of ear shot, the bigotry came out. At first I tried reporting it. Got told that since I am a white dude they didn’t think I was gonna care, and if I pushed this issue it was only going to be bad for me.
This stuff affects their personal lives too. It is very common for cops to slowly lose anyone out of their life that isn’t a cop, or directly related to one. They hang out in bars where they have driven off pretty much everyone but other cops, their social events tend to be nothing but other cops and their families. There are whole subdivisions of domestic violence professionals that deal only with the families of police. They isolate themselves with their behavior and then blame everyone else for hating cops. Meanwhile many of the people who stopped hanging around them will tell you it’s because they are paranoid, bigoted, and quick to anger, if not violence.
They also drastically over value the rarest dangers of their jobs. Spend enough time around police and you will hear about how many of them are ambushed and murdered. That is very rare, and most often the result of the cops doing something shady with their position. You very rarely hear them mention how driving all the time, and the recklessness of driving in emergency situations, is actually what kills them most often. While it was starting to gain some traction in the latter days of me working in the justice industry, they also rarely discussed how sitting all day, alone, in their car, caused a myriad of health issues, namely heart disease and other obesity/sedentary related illnesses. No, not worth talking about much if they can’t make themselves the victim.
Policing, in the US, has become a cult of sorts.