You mean a few that are worse than the regular rotten bunch, right, deputy?
In an otherwise rather mundane article about routine police corruption, witness this unintentionally ironic exchange.
Jeffery Schultz: You mentioned specifically “implicating a black person.” Does your agency target based on race?
Deputy Sheriff: I wouldn’t say target based on race but is is, you know, um, it is much easier to do this on a black person because they have no credibility anyways. The charges stick better to blacks than to a rich white guy that can afford a lawyer. That is one school of thought. Then you still have the deputies who like doing it to the rich white guys because they say it removes the smug look from their faces. They get their kicks from the power like its a game. Most cops though, they, um… do it to get bad guys off the streets. The last group of deputies do it for personal gain.
Jeffery Schultz: Personal gain? Like what?
Deputy Sheriff: Sometimes a deputy will use the threat of planting, you know, dope on a person to get some cash or something from the perp. Uh, like a few hundred bucks can make the problem go away. It’s pretty rare but it happens. Usually it’s the deputies that live large and need supplemental income. They tend to keep it really quiet because that’s like, you know, really bad stuff. We even had a guy put the suspect in the back of his green and white [patrol car]to drive him to an ATM machine. We were all like ‘what the hell is he doing?’ And another time a deputy arrested a guy for possession after he said he found the baggie on the guy’s floor board. Then he, um, he didn’t charge the guy in exchange for oral sex from the guy’s wife. I thought that was, you know, really wrong. Taking things just too far. Way to far. But I kept my mouth shut because, you know, you cross that line even a little and you don’t have the right to complain about those crossing it a bit more.
Jeffery Schultz: This is terrible stuff they are doing. Just terrible.
Deputy Sheriff: Yes, um it can get pretty bad. Most of our deputies wouldn’t ever think of doing that or going that far but a few, you know, there are a few bad apples in every bunch.
I love it. Also, I’m sure someone will be by to reassure me that most police officers are fine, upstanding, lantern-jawed heroes who are just as appalled by all this as I would be, if I didn’t consider it perfectly normal for the profession. Power corrupts, and sometimes petty power corrupts most absolutely.
I can’t replicate the phrase exactly, but someone once said (or wrote) that the reason politics is such a blood sport in government agencies is that the stakes are so small.
I suspect that also applies to the people.
How many “good cops” do you think there actually are in the Habersham pig sty? Or Framingham? Or Lake County, FL? Or Detroit? Or Las Vegas MPD? Or Albuquerque? Or Pima County? Or Fullerton? That barrel is rotten to its very core. I thank God every time he sends another of them to burn in hell where they belong.
I do grant that there are SOME good cops in this country. I would put MOST of the Oath Keepers who went to Ferguson and posted on the rooftops among that group. And MOST of them who went to the Bundy ranch as well. Why only most, and not all? Because I have no doubt that some significant percentage of those who went were merely at those places to infiltrate, incite, and indict – and report back to their Masters. Which happens to be a favorite tactic of “Law Enforcement” across the nation today. As shown by the Hutaree militia. And those Four Grandpas in a Waffle House.
The stench is overwhelming. And it smells like pig.
Nosmo, the quote you’re thinking of was about academic politics. Alas, the stakes in government tend to be much higher.
Unfortunately, even most of the supposed “good ones” truly believe that they have some sort of superior “authority” to make sure everyone else “obeys the law.” Because “law,” don’t you know. And even more unfortunately, most of the intended victims believe that there is a superior authority as well.
I’m no less afraid of a “good cop” than I am of a bad one. They all worship their “authority” and the power of the “law,” just in different ways, perhaps. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be cops to start with.
I am still waiting for the good cop uprising that will set things straight in all of these barrels with a few bad apples. I figure it will happen just after the moderate muslims rise up and set Islam straight.
The full proverb is ‘one bad apple spoils the barrel.’ The admission that “a few” bad apples are tolerated is sufficient proof that there isn’t a decent one to be found, anywhere.
The problem is inherent in the job. You could staff a police department with angels and in a couple of months it would be corrupt.
There is protection, and there is… something else. Protection is what happens when A protects B, in a standing relationship; B then returns the favor using some other means. There is always give and take.
That’s not what cops do. We expect cops to care about us, but why? Would you care about some guy, probably a jerk, you just met on the street? There is no relationship, there is no give and take. The cop naturally does not care for us any more than we care for some starving kid in Rwanda. It’s just not in us to care about people outside our immediate circle, and it is physically impossible anyway.
“Serve and protect” is patent nonsense, and always was.
Don’t expect cops to care for us (except small town cops who actually do know everybody and there is then some form of give and take – within that town anyway). We are just insects in their eyes. Act accordingly. If you can get through a contact with a cop, wonderful. But if it goes south then you might as well go to war, and take the bastard with you to Hell.