The Real Police Need Our Support
In Heart of Darkness, Conrad explores the “well-meaning do-gooder” and concludes that they often do more harm than good. And so it is often with civil rights proponents, politicians, and so-called experts pandering to the fears of the public and inadequacy of police forces across the nation.
Look, let’s try and be honest here. Police men and women are woefully paid for long hours, often dangerous work, and, lately, hardly given any respect for the task they undertake that no one with the ability or education to find more gainful employment would want. The police are not like the military, wanting to serve their country. These are men and women who, for 99% of them, want to protect and serve all the while they get paid a living wage and benefits. Yes, they have the right morals, mostly, but police work is not national service and all the respect that engenders. And they know it.
Squeezed into a corner apart from society, armed with heavy weapons for their own protection and not primarily for the protection of citizens, the emphasis switches from we stand together to we stand apart, alone, protecting ourselves while we do our job. And that breeds job accomplishment as expediently, and often as violently, as possible.
What used to be a strong bond to one’s community has been replaced with shifting boundaries, well-meaning civil rights laws forcing police to dis-involve themselves in local communities. How? Well, in the fifties the local policeman was well known to all us Manhattan kids on our block for years. He knew us too. If he suspected we were up to no good, he’d either turn out our pockets or shoo us on home, off the street. That policeman was not apart from society, he was part of that simpler society. He was neighborhood.
Nowadays, understaffed, under-budgeted, under-trained, and certainly disconnected to local communities as they cruise by in squad cars, the police have a tough job. But that’s it, a job. And what do the taxpayers’ representatives do about it? They “fund” support for the police by giving them hand-me-down armor, weapons, Humvees, tanks and all manner of military equipment. Yes, all that hardware goes on the books as “funding.” Hardly. It’s pandering to real fears the police have that they are under-equipped, under-manned and increasingly frightened.
Why are they frightened? Surely with heavy weaponry and almost a free hand at violent apprehension of suspects they have nothing to fear, do they? Well, yes they do. Time was when a cop went bad his blue line broke the very real code of silence and exposed his or her criminality. But today, because of feelings of pressure and being underpaid, under-respected and under-staffed, they have done what any other animals do: form a pack for self-protection.
It is the public that should be protecting them, not their fellow officers. And certainly we should not be throwing heavy armaments at them thinking it solves the problem. Heavy weaponry just reinforces their role apart from society – turns them into a pack. If I was a police commissioner and I was offered 25 Humvees as trickle down help from Congress, I would say thank you, put up a “2nd Hand Humvees For Sale” sign and plow the money back into pay, training and community outreach. And that’s the key here. We do not need a police force as an arm of government, we need an educated, smart, police force as part of the community, part of us – not apart from us.
