resurrectionsong

July 18, 2004

Violence in Law Enforcement, Pt. 1 (Peter)

I'm a fourth generation law enforcement officer, now retired. The roots of my branch of the family are a hardscrabble ranch in the Southwest. God did not see fit to plant oil under our spread so family tradition was the oldest son inherited the place; the other boys pinned on badges. Since my family has always run long on boys and short on cash, there have been a lot of us since my great grandfather first took a Town Marshall's job in the 1880s. The last family reunion had LEOs from five states, eighteen departments, plus the Border Patrol and one Uncle that went bad. He joined the Feebs in J. Edgar Hoover's day.

Chances are, if you've been pulled over in the Southwest it was one of my brothers, cousins or somebody who knew one of us. I've been around men, and now women with badges and guns my whole life. I'm the first of my family that could afford to send the kids to college; the improved pay and access to scholarships got my kids into another line of work. Thank you, Lord.

Part One

Ever watched in horror the video of several bluesuits beating an unarmed man? How do such things happen? Why do such things happen? Could it happen to you?

The thing to remember is that such beatings are rare. They don't happen often, although they happen more frequently than they used to. I entered law enforcement near the end of an era. Things have changed a lot, they are still changing and nobody really knows where these changes will lead. To begin to understand violence in policing the reader must learn to ignore that sticker on the side of the car. To Protect and Serve is not the goal. The goal is to go home at the end of the shift. LEOs divide humanity into three classifications. The terminology varies region to region, where I'm from it was civilians, assholes and LEOs. You are the civilians. The assholes are the criminals and of course the LEOs are us. Some places it's humans, critters and cops.

The average civilian's only contact with us is when they bust a stop sign or get their house broken into.

When I joined up it was very rare to have an asshole fight with an LEO. There were a lot of reasons for that, not least of which was the beating they got if they did. Fights were rare and they usually involved a good ol' boy, a Saturday night and a bar room. A couple of whacks with the stick and a night in the drunk tank solved the problem. Half the time the good ol' boy would be apologizing for making me hit him by the time he was half sober, the other half they'd be apologizing in court.

Two things happened to change that, drugs and gangs. The various kinds of cocaine, meth and, of course, PCP makes people really prone to fight and hard to stop. Gangbangers make a point to fight, even when they don't have to. Standard operating procedure is to hit the guy until he stops all resistance and then a couple more whacks to make sure that he understands he's stopped resisting. To an officer EVERY fight is a life-threatening situation. Last I looked at the stats, one-third of all officers killed were killed with their own guns after losing a fight. So the rule became simple. Fight with me and I'm going to win, no matter what I had to do. Then I was going to hurt you so badly you'd never even think about raising your hand to the law again. Your grandchildren would be born bleeding and distant cousins would cry at the mention of my name. If, during the fight, you grab for my gun I'm not putting you in jail until you get out of the ICU. If I let an asshole get away with fighting me, he's just going to fight some other officer someday. Maybe that one won't win.

You see the videos of Rodney King, one asshole stoked up on PCP fighting a half dozen officers and getting his clock cleaned. You don't see the videos of one officer fighting three assholes and trying to stay alive until the cavalry arrives.

The beatings are ugly, either way they go. To me the ugliest thing would have been to lose. In losing a fight I would likely lose my life, that's bad enough. Worse would be having that asshole loose, wanted for a capital crime with nothing to lose and having my gun. Fight with a bunch of us, get a beating, next time it might be one of us and a bunch of them.

Civilians need to understand this. A civilian isn't going to get a beating. Neither is an asshole unless he chooses one.

What bothers me is that the assholes are learning that if they start a fight with the officer(s) and get beaten pretty good, they might get a lighter sentence or get off entirely. Sometimes they can even get the officers fired or locked up. So they fight more often. More officers get hurt, fired or locked up.

I'm retired. In my last few years more LEOs were leaving law enforcement after less than a career than at any point in memory. I'm curious as to just who is going to stand between the civilians and the assholes if this keeps up.

In over twenty years I never smacked anyone for making snide remarks about donuts. Nobody got a beating for doing ten miles over the speed limit. My wife was mostly the one to have to spank the kids, I could hardly stand to do it. Given the choice I would have spent my whole career without ever using my stick or my gun. I was pretty lucky; the closest I ever came to having to shoot another person was one of those 'suicide by police' deals. The guy had a knife, I was behind the county cruiser. He was advancing and I drew down to hit him in the hip. He saw that I was aiming low, thought I was gonna shoot him in the gonads. He wanted to die, not sing soprano and gave up just before I pulled the trigger. Two weeks in the mental hospital and an antidepressant regimen and now he's fine. I still see him once in a while. He's still okay but no matter how many times I've told him I was aiming for a hip he still thinks I was about to blow his balls off.

Times have changed. Once upon a time a kid would be acting the fool and get pulled into an alley and get his butt warmed, a lot of times it straightened them out. Now a kid acts the fool and gets a criminal record.

Once upon a time a real fight was rare enough that an LEO might go a whole career with only a couple. My first ten years on the job I might go a whole year without ever pulling my gun from the holster on duty. I cleaned it once after a pointed remark from my LT. during an inspection, forgot to reload it after that and went until the next inspection with an empty gun. Fortunately I looked at it before the inspection. I dunno that I could have stood the nickname I'd have gotten. The last five years on the job I had my gun out of the holster a couple times a month.

Something is wrong. Something has changed. If there's any interest in this installment, we can explore what has changed and why. Why are officers having to fight more? Why are officers having to use their guns more? Does anybody care?

Posted by Peter at July 18, 2004 08:41 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Thanks for the up close and personal account.

If we lived in a perfect world we wouldn't need police. Trying to make a perfect world by hanging the cop instead of the asshole only makes the world more dangerous. When I was in the Navy, every sailor did Shore Patrol at least once in his life. On my night we spent more time learning about how to deal with a guy on PCP than anything else.

I'm not advocating beatings. In the real world, a cop has got to protect himself the best way he can. Most people don't understand that violent confrontations that are fueled by drugs/alcohol or gangs are life-or-death events. I will pull for the cop everytime. A guy in uniform who is alive makes the community stronger. The assholes just stink up the place. Someone who is high cannot be reasoned with. The only thing they will respond to is pain.

There have been abuses by LEOs, and those abuses need to be addressed. But, protecting one's life is not abuse.

Posted by: Remy Logan at July 18, 2004 09:58 PM

Peter, you should considering writing a book.

I couldn't read it enough times and three was how many I got in before I just had to tell you that you can really tell a story.

Now this may sound so trite and classically conservative to ask, but do you think the break down of the family and parents getting more liberal in their parenting (i.e. "it's more important to be free thinking, than to have general respect for authority") has affected the choice in gangs and drugs?

I very much believe in an equal contribution of nature and nurture in developing young minds. I have seen some terrific people come out of difficult childhoods, and then I have seen some kids choose to go against some pretty darn good parenting.

Just a thought and wow! keep writing, and where we can read it, too, please :)

Posted by: Rae at July 18, 2004 11:29 PM

Peter, I'm curious if you ever needed to draw on someone who turned out to be a civilian, and how they reacted. I and a friend of mine were looking for someone who'd thrown a bottle at his house, and this was right after my friend had been involved in a brawl that had attracted enough police interest that the helicopter was circling the neighborhood.

That being the case, on the one hand we didn't want to be wandering around without some way of defending ourselves (a baseball bat and a metal stick, respectively), but on the other hand when the cop saw us walking back toward my friend's house with these implements in our hands, well...

We dropped 'em as ordered, got patted down, and our blunt instruments got put in the trunk of the car, but we weren't cuffed or anything and we got the items back before the squadron of cop cars left. And the cop who'd had his gun pointed at us minutes before made sure we knew how to use our clubs effectively if we needed to: "Go for the knees."

Posted by: McGehee at July 19, 2004 08:50 AM

What does it say about me that when I saw "LEO" I thought: "Low Earth Orbit"?

But seriously, the thing that makes me angriest in the LEOs defense is that it is far, far easier to decide the guy didn't need beating when you are watching a videotape of the situation after the fact in the safety of your home, office, or courtroom. Maybe they can criticize or attempt to improve the split-second decision-making of an officer, but not without being there themselves.

...on the other hand, there are corrupt and abusive police officers, so I don't merely want to say, "Hey, it was an LEO doing it, so it must be okay." I'd like to draw a balance in there...but if a mistake has to be made, I'd rather make it to the benefit of the LEO. After all, he's attempting to do the job we hired him to do, whereas the other person was either a criminal or doing an excellent imitation of one.

Posted by: nathan at July 19, 2004 09:45 AM

I'm in the process of outlining, in my head, the various reasons for the increased violence in society in general and police in particular. (In my opinion, of course) That's why this was called Part One. Assuming I can put these thoughts into a coherent entry, then I'll be using more of Zombyboy's bandwidth.
I would submit to you that the improved psychological testing has weeded out the lion's share of those who want to go into the law enforcement business for reasons such as sadism or hunger for power. At the same time, the increased financial transparency in society has made police corruption much more easily uncovered.
There was a time in America that being elected County Sheriff in well over half the states would make a man wealthy for life. That time is over. There will probably always be some corruption, there is just too much money in illegal gambling, drugs and prostitution to entirely eliminate it. I don't know that it was inate honesty or the difficulty of spending funny money that kept me straight. God knows it was tempting when I was all by myself and there was somewhere north of a hundred thousand dollars in drug money in the trunk of a car...I got as far as how could I explain that new Corvette with four kids and vouchered the cash. How could I explain a big bunch of money to my wife? So, honesty or fear of consequences? Both, probably. I believe that there is a level of temptation that no one can resist, that level varies with the individual. Fear of consequences does raise that level.

Posted by: Peter at July 19, 2004 12:51 PM