Cops! What's The Matter With Cops Today?

What is the matter with cops today? A lot is the matter.

Like the vast majority of military personnel, bureaucrats or any other workers, they all take the heat when one of them takes the lid off the jar of evil. But they get little attention when they are doing their jobs well.

Are we taking our national and local cops for granted, only paying attention when they truly break the mold for screwing up?

The recent occupation protests, scandals that have splashed across the pages of local newspapers, budget cuts, societal isolation, mental illness, inability to restrain their use of new and awful weaponry, and an increasingly aggressive and desperate criminal population are only the tip of the iceberg of trouble that today's law enforcement must overcome.

Politicians drive police into the poor and of color communities to bust thousands of people for smoking pot while the more well heeled and white young citizens roam freely, doing even worse drugs, driving drunk, mutilating small animals, and walking free to do it all again.

Internal corruption and malfeasance is impossible to weed out when the "thin blue line" is drawn in the sand. This is the hallmark of a profession in decline, because no profession is worthy of the title if the leadership does not aggressively identify and sanction members who violate their oaths and conditions of membership.

In reality, the average upstanding citizen appreciates and supports local law enforcement. Most of us are more than glad to have someone to call when we are threatened, need help or are under attack. Most of us resent austerity measures that favor the greedy and already overly wealthy while we are expected to slash our budgets for law enforcement and first responder positions.

We are glad to hear about it when large drug busts, criminal ring arrests and successful prosecutions keep our communities and streets safer.

We never turn down the opportunity to send our condolences and money when a first responder is killed in the act of doing their job. Most of us feel that a loss of one of them is a loss to all of us.

But there is still a separation that grows wider every day. It is a separation that feeds on isolated mentalities, growing hostility, a failing economy, social mistrust and outrage over well publicized cases of corruption, incompetence, and abuse of authority.

These are increasingly desperate times. The occupation protesters speak for the working cop as much as they speak for the student, the voter, the soldier and the average citizen.

Yet, on the scene, something establishes a combative and hostile environment. The peace is broken, and it is not difficult at all to get plenty of evidence that the real violence and rioting is done by the police. It is hard to reason why a snotty protester needs to be beaten.

What is it that triggers such events? Is it the politicians who order the actions, then wink at the cops who over step their authority? Is it the command and control that fails to restrain inappropriate and violent action? Is it the panicked or out of control individual who lights a match and throws it onto the equivalent of a gas soaked woodpile?

This article will take a look at some issues that are affecting our law enforcement communities. The writing cannot be from their perspective, since my "law enforcement" background had a more global reach, but perhaps some research can open our eyes to some of the challenges and handicaps that our law enforcement personnel and agencies face.

Perhaps it will help to look at the issue from different perspectives.

THE SCANDALS

An SF GATE article summarizes two major scandals that occurred in San Francisco, California.

In 2010, a San Francisco crime scene investigator named Debbie Madden decided to start sampling the cocaine that was in her lab for testing. Because of her apprehension, over 350 jail inmates had to be released by the District Attorney. This freed up county jail space for state jail inmates from California's overloaded prison system.

If we think about this, we can think about county jail staff and others who had to get ready to manage a different type of jail inmate.

In March of 2011, A San Francisco Public Defender named Jeff Adachi released the infamous "Police, Lies, and Videotape". This was a collection of recordings where SFPD officers from Mission Station were caught red handed conducting warrantless searches and giving falsified reports. Of course, the searches were done in low income residential hotel rooms. Since that incident, the County inmate population declined by about 300 more inmates.

KTVU.com reports that District Attorney George Gascon dropped 26 of the cases at the end of May. But the case "prompted the indefinite shutdown of plainclothes operations at the city's Southern Station, as well as the placement of eight officers on administrative duties pending an investigation."

THE HEROICS OF THE DAY TO DAY ACCOMPLISHMENTS

In 2011, the SFPD also did some fine work.

The SFPD apprehended the men who beat a man at the 49ers/Raiders game in August.

SF Weekly quoted San Francisco police officer Daniel Solorzano, who was among those who rushed to rescue a man from a burning car.

"When I arrived the vehicle was fully engulfed in flames," he said. "The victim had his seat belt on. I got out my knife and cut him out of his seat and helped pulled him out of the vehicle...I was just doing my job."

But good grief! There are far too many ugly articles about the SFPD. A wheelchair bound man was shot because he wielded a knife. Bystanders to a crime were shot. Homeless people were targeted for abusive actions.

Where were the rest of the good guys in 2011? I had to go to the police blotter for December 2011 to find just what the SFPD gets done in a week.

This is an interactive crime map of San Francisco. 115 crimes were reported between the 6th and 12th of December. The crimes included car break ins, fraud, drug activity, assault, burglary, larceny, disturbing the peace, vandalism and more.

But the search results for "san francisco police scandals in december 2011" yielded about 10 pages of news about lab DNA scandals, dropped charges in 26 cases of misconduct at the Mission substation, and the cocaine pilfering former crime lab technician, Debbi Madden, who made a plea in her case.

If I were a cop who did her job without doing coke, shooting helpless and innocent people, and abusing the homeless, I would be ticked off to the extreme to read the news about my department.

What is happening that the SFPD handles over a hundred incidents a week in just one sector of town, yet appears to be so riddled with enough evil to keep the news humming on a year round basis?

Is it a propensity for reporting only the exciting stories about "bad cops"? Is it a propensity for not wanting to find any "good cops"?

If an SFPD officer would send me some links to news reports about heroic actions, appreciative communities and good works, I will not hesitate to add them to this section.

"Us cops, we are different from everyone else. We see things and know things about the way the world really is that most people could never imagine. No one else can ever understand except another cop--no matter what--so it is best to just stick with our own kind. I never even bother trying to interact with civilians off the job; it will just end up badly anyway."

anonymous quote from "Police Isolation" , an article at Law Officer.com

The truth is that any professional can utter the same set of words. I can easily say that no one has a clue about being an Air Force Officer or soldier during my era of war. Doctors and medical professionals have a similar sense of isolation. Entertainers, judges, sewer workers and many more can say that only someone who is as immersed in their work as they are could fully understand what it is that they experience, realize or know.

But only the first responders and combat soldiers can truly make the above quoted claims. Those who have that italicized mindset are telling the truth about experiencing society and the world with distinct, repeated and uncleaned levels of exposure to all of the worst that the Earth, humans, microbes, flora and fauna can do.

Every other one of us sees and hears about a situation after it has been sanitized, filtered, interpreted, censored, and otherwise mind-handled.

The first responders have no such luck.

Everyone should read the article at Law Officer.com and get some understanding about the reasons for, and problems with police isolation.

Perhaps we need to view law enforcement as a heavily flawed and easily corrupted system that actually has no better system to replace it.

Just like our military veterans, our street soldiers of law enforcement deserve our support and thanks when they save our bacon. They mostly do this without us even knowing that they have done so.

Do we hug the spoiled, obnoxious pepper spraying fool from UC Davis? Do we send a thank you note for the giggling supervisor who barged up, sprayed wildly, then ran off in New York City?

Do we keep electing the politicians who turn the departments into their own fiefdoms of corruption, unfairness, racism and abuse?

No.

We fight to ensure that their careers are over. We put the word out that we do not want them on our streets or in our government offices.

We can offer our support to the families of fallen officers. We can volunteer at the local substation. We can demand that first responder jobs remain safe from "meat ax" budget cuts.

Since there is more desperation in our world, we can become smarter neighborhood observers, better drivers, more responsible citizens and helpful participants in the tiny part of the world that we spend most of our lives in.

If we protest, let's realize that not keeping it peaceful is inexcusable. Taunting and insulting the police, refusing to leave, then loudly whining or arguing when arrested is not the way to do it. Simply keep the focus on the point of the protest and watch out for troublemakers and for each other.

Finally, let's have a discussion that might help to achieve better understanding and to reduce some of that police isolation where it is not too late.