Reply #11: Well, let's see... [View All]

I was nineteen and walking home from the closing shift at the Pizza Hut, making my way up the MAIN drag, which was well-lit, when a K-9 unit pulled up in front of me. The two cops got out and began questioning me. I told them the truth, which was that I'd just got off work and was walking home (it was about 3 AM--I think I'd stopped at Denny's along the way for a cup of coffee or two to kick up my energy level for the walk ahead).

I was dressed in an army field jacket and blue jeans, pretty much the same thing I wore all the time.

They told me that if they ever saw me out that late in those clothes again, they'd sick their dog on me.

Oh, I seriously don't like those two motherfuckers, even now. Power-tripping scum with badges and guns.

I've an acquaintance, acquired over the 'net, who despises cops. Period. In his view, they're the shock troops in the war declared against the American people that's the cause of our incredible incarceration rate. He doesn't consider them any different than Nazi stormtroopers and cheers when one is killed.

I don't trust them as a matter of course, but I don't hate them as a group. They're people, the same as the rest of them, and many took the job thinking they were doing a good thing. But over time, with day to day contact with some of the worst examples of humanity, they are bound to start regarding everyone unlike themselves to be somehow twisted. It's inevitable. We're ALL potential suspects, most notably because of the drug war.

I spent some time posting on a police message board, which was an education in itself. There were a lot of decent people there. But even decent people can be used in the service of--if not evil, at least "wrongness"-- if they're convinced of something that isn't necessarily true.

And the government has gone to a great deal of trouble over the past several decades to convince its domestic foot soldiers, as well as the general public, that there's no significant difference between cannabis and, say, cocaine or meth. And a lot of them believe it. Their training falls just short of indoctrination, and given the wrong set of circumstances in their early years on the job, they lose the ability to judge people fairly.

Or so it seems to me.