Confessions of a bastard cop

[TheVat]

This is an eye opening essay. I think it could be fairly mindset-altering for some readers, if they are open to this sort of perspective.

https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confession ... 14d17bc759

[Serpent]

I can't clap for it on the page, because I don't join social media, but I'm clapping like crazy on my own.
Wow! That is one mighty hell of a confession. Best thing I've read all week.

[TheVat]

[Serpent]

I read that article and it felt authentic, given previous acquaintance with police officers.
So I posted the link on another forum. The only two responses were both in the vein of "I can't take that seriously. It sounds like propaganda."
Everyone is going to judge fresh information according to what they already believe.
It makes meaningful dialogue very difficult.

[TheVat]

Yes, one has to be open to the possibility that a different pov may be outside one's comfort zone. The article, which seemed authentic to me, does challenge that popular idea that most cops are going to keep being decent, no matter what indoctrination they receive. Nobody likes to face the possibility that good people, who have joined up with good intentions, can have all that subverted by the power of the blue fraternity. And by omerta-like codes of silence.

[Serpent]

Surely, anyone with any insight into fraternal cultures - military, sports team, fire brigade, boarding school - could see how this works. It's not a question of decency, but of loyalty: choosing up sides. When you militarize the police, you turn them into an army of occupation. Every civilian outside to the chain of command is potentially an insurgent.
This military culture is not primarily directed at ethnic minorities. In any army, men of different backgrounds can bond as readily and solidly as on a football team.
But the militarized police force does nothing in the recruiting process to filter out racism, sexism or other kinds of bigotry against selected members of the community in which they operate, and does encourage the hiring of latent bullies; does turn them into overt bullies in the process of arming them, training them to perform violent actions, giving them license to exercise these skills with little or no restrictrion and dressing them in uniform; does foster a sense of beleaguerment within the ranks.
They are also left in no doubt as to who supplies the ammunition and whose security and property it is their most sacred duty to safeguard. This automatically makes poor people the enemy, turns poor neighbourhoods into the battlefield where they're expected to make war on crime. And dark-skinned people are the most readily identifiable members of the disadvantaged classes that produce criminals.
Now, superimpose administrations frightened of civil unrest, the predictable consequences of economic disparity and underemployment, and a politicized (campaign support-dependent) and heavily privatized (prisons for profit) justice system that also knows which side it's on...