"We're cops. People don't like us."

Cynthia McKinney.

Don't know what to say.

Fortunately, Avedon Carol does, and it sounds to me that she's exactly right.  It was the cop's job to know who Cynthia McKinney is, not McKinney's job to assume that the Capitol Hill Police officers assigned to guard the Capitol Building will never get it through their heads that a black woman can be a member of the United States House of Representatives.

As for Michele Malkin's using the incident as evidence that Democrats belong to the Party of Cop Haters, well, that's ridiculous in a hundred ways, not the least of which is that the modern American urban police force is pretty much a creation of Democrats.

Irish Catholic Democrats.

Who did it as a way to give themselves and their relatives jobs, but nevermind.

My great-grandfather was a cop.  He started his career walking a beat in Albany, NY and finished as a detective.  I still have his billy clubs, the one he swung when he was a mere flatfoot checking the shop doors along North Pearl Street at night and the one he wore with his dress blues on ceremonial occasions.  He saved a man's life once.  Jumped off a bridge to rescue the guy after he'd fallen into the river.  It was winter.  The family legend is that this is what killed my great-grandfather as he died of pneumonia soon after.

You can ask the police chief in my home town how he thinks Democrats feel about cops.  He'll tell you he owes his job and his career and his whole police force to a Democrat.  He'll tell you that a Democrat, my father, was largely responsible for turning our town's police department from one professional cop with three amateurs named Barney working under him to a good sized and thoroughly professional department of academy-trained career officers.

It's Democratic mayors for the most part in this country who see to it that city cops have the equipment and manpower they need, have good working conditions, good benefits, and good pensions.  Ask cops what the Bush Administration has done for the police since 9/11.

Same thing they've done for the firefighters.

One reason Democrats have a bad reputation when it comes to policing in this country is that Democrats don't like it and complain loudly whenever the ruling elites, who are mostly Republican businessmen, try to use the cops as their hired goons to keep the riff raff in line.

Cops themselves get frustrated with "Liberals" on the bench and at the defense table and in city hall and the state house and Congress who will gladly give the police everything they want (see above) except permission to do whatever the cops think they need to do to keep the scum off the street and the rest of us safe.

And cops, on the whole, don't have a very good record when it comes to dealing with citizens who happen to be African-American.  Since African-Americans are a key constituency of the Democratic Party and Democrats, generally, have a more passionate interest in the civil rights of all Americans, over the years there has been a lot of antagonism between Democrats and the police.

This antagonism is natural and healthy in a democracy, especially if we want this to stay a democracy.  But it has led to anger and resentment.

However, the real reason Democrats have an anti-cop reputation is that for the last 38 years Right Wing demogogues like Malkin have been shouting it from a script written for them by that great upholder of Law and Order, the unindicted co-conspirator, Richard M. Nixon.

At any rate, here at the Mannion Fruit and Vegetable stand, we love our neighborhood cops and there's always a polished apple waiting for them when they come along, which at least one does regularly, our old friend Chris the Cop.

Chris has two main complaints about this webpage, and neither one is that we don't like cops here.  The first is that there's too much gratuitous Bush bashing.  The second is that I don't tell enough Chris the Cop stories.

Well, all right, I've already Bush-bashed, but I can try to make up for it by telling a Chris the Cop story, one I was reminded of by Malkin's charge that Democrats hate cops.

See, I happen to think that it's American not to like cops, for the same reason we don't like dentists, high school principals, and middle management.  We don't like people whose job it is to tell us to sit down, be quiet, obey the rules, do what they say is good for us, and don't talk back.

Chris, who spent a good deal of his career undercover, eventually made sergeant.  He was a patrol sergeant, and his job went from facing down some truly awful and dangerous bad characters on a regular basis to smoothing out differences that arose between citizens and the cops who were trying to help them.

Sometimes these differences were the citizens' fault.  Sometimes it was one of Chris's cops who had caused the problem, through overzealousness, or by losing his cool, or by misinterpreting a situation, or by not following procedure, or just by being dumb.

On Saturday afternnoons in the fall when the Syracuse University Orangemen are playing a football game at home, the neighborhoods around the Carrier Dome get pretty congested with traffic.  Lots of people from out of town get lost trying to find the stadium, lots of people are driving around looking for free parking---it can be a mess.  So the cops are out in force, trying to direct the traffic.

One Saturday, Chris had a rookie cop assigned to a neighborhood close to the stadium.  The rookie was doing his best, but it wasn't good enough for one of the local citizens, who was out on his lawn, heckling the rookie.

The guy had had a few.  He was having a few more while he was out there on his lawn heckling the cop.  With every sip, he grew more inspired and more colorful in his choice of language.  The cop grew less and less appreciative.

Finally the cop had enough.

So Chris, who's out on patrol somewhere else, gets a call.  Officer needs assistance.  Chris drives over to assist.

He finds the rookie has the heckler cuffed and spread-eagled against his squad car, his face pressed down against the hood.

Chris is a very patient and methodical guy.  He does not jump to conclusions.  He calmly climbs out of his car, orders another officer who'd showed up to assist to watch the heckler, and takes the rookie aside to ask him why he busted the guy.

"He was interfering with a police officer in the line of duty, Sarge."

"Is that so," says Chris.  "And how was he doing that?"

"He was yelling at me, Sarge!"

"Yelling at you?"

"Yeah.  He was calling me all kinds of names."

"What kinds of names?"

"You know.  Bad names.  Insults."

"Uh huh," says Chris.

"So I warned him."

"And?"

"He kept it up."

"Yelling at you?"

"Yeah!"

"Calling you names?"

"That's right."

Chris nodded.  He turned and told the other cop to uncuff the guy and let him go with a warning.

The rookie couldn't believe it.

"But, Sarge---" he began to protest.

Chris decided to explain to him the facts of life.  He said, "Listen.  Let me let you in on a secret.  We're cops.  People don't like us."

Comments

[blue girl]

Avedon Carol's one point that Cynthia McKinney could have been instinctively reacting as a woman, instead of a black woman is a good one. There have been a few times that I should've punched a couple of guys right in the kisser, but chose the polite route instead. Lucky for me, it worked.

Just in case Chris the Cop is reading....do you guys hate when you have to direct traffic? I've always wondered about that. I promise I won't bash Bush for awhile* on Mannion's blog if you answer!

*Can't guarantee how long. But it will be a noticeable period of time.

[Adorable Girlfriend]

Is it a bad thing that I wish a cop would beat Malkin?

I think it would improve their status with the Democrats for sure.

[Cryptic Ned]

For a person who's been to a few demonstrations and marches, the sight of a cop is always slightly unnerving.

The exact feeling was hard for me to pin down, but being near a cop who is observing you is, in a way, like being near a suspicious-looking dog, or a schizophrenic person talking to the air. You start having the following thought:

"I am doing nothing wrong, but at any moment this person might get the wrong idea into his head and suddenly attack me, because it's in his nature to do so."

It doesn't make us feel more safe when the cop is in riot gear for no discernable reason (e.g. at a peace vigil), either.

[Chrys]

Chris, thanks to Lance, I've read and enjoyed your "cop stories". We could use more like you around here.

Awhile back, I was stopped by a local cop for doing 21 mph in a 20 mph school zone. Yep, he said I was going 1 mph over the speed limit! First time I've been stopped in 30 years of driving. After taking my license and registration from me, the officer returned to his patrol car and sat there for an hour and 10 minutes. When he finally decided to stroll back to my car, he handed me a speeding ticket and told me to watch myself because broads like me are menaces on the road. Jerk! Sadly, though, that cop's attitude is typical around here.

[Holdie Lewie]

The day I turned 23, in the summer of 1986, I moved to Baltimore, where I lived for a year before moving back to Texas. I got there on a Friday afternoon, and on Saturday, I grabbed the Sun, ignoring the front page and turning to the classifieds, and jumped in my car to look for an apartment. I had a map but absolutely no idea where I was, if you know what I mean.

I ended up driving past Memorial Stadium shortly before an Orioles game was about to start. The traffic was absolute madness. I was merely trying to cross from one side of the city to the other, and here I was, stuck in stadium traffic and feeling overwhelmed. Eventually I got to the front of a line of cars at an interesection, and I wanted to go straight instead of turning right, but a cop was standing in front of me, motioning me to go right. I rolled down the window. "But I want to go straight!" The cop blasted his whistle and motioned more emphatically for me to turn right. So I tried going straight -- in other words, I headed straight for the cop, who pounded the roof of the car as hard as he could and screamed something at me. I was scared and boiling with rage. I turned right. Screwed me up, but I eventually figured out how to get to where I was going.

Hours later, I got back to the hotel, still shaking my head at what an asshole that cop was. I looked at the front page of the paper. A cop had been killed the day before -- run over in front of Memorial Stadium.

[jonst]

Hey Lance, what was your take, if any, on the movie Q&A? I thought it was good movie. Covered some of the stuff your post touched on.

[Shakespeare's Sister]

As I recall, my granddad said the best thing about being a cop was other cops, and the worst thing about being a cop was other cops.

[harry near indy]

i recommend that you read asap, if you haven't before now, blue blood by edward conlin. it's the life and times of a harvard grad who ends up as a narcotics detective in the south bronx, and it's one of the best books i've read in the last five years.

it's one of the best because conlin has a great story and great prose.

[coturnix]

Growing up in Yugoslavia I knew tons of cops through the equestrian world. Most of them became cops because the mounted police had the best horses in the country. Of course, in March 1991 when we had the first big demonstrations against Milosevic, the mounted police was sent to beat up on demonstrators. Instead, demonstrators beat up the horses, pulled the riders off and beat them up, too. I saw a couple of friends in uniform on TV.

The very next day, I saw several of them. Their vet was telling me about all of the injuries the horses sustained (I was in vet school at the time so we were both buddies and professionally collegial). The guys were worried that the horses would be out of comission for too long and will not be back in shape for the Balkan Championships. At least two of them, including a Major who commanded the biggest unit defending the state TV building, quit the police force on that day. They told me, and the others around the stables, how conflicted they were the previous day between following orders and doing what they were trained and hired to do on one hand, and joining the demonstrators on the other hand. Many left the country as soon as they could. It was on that day that Milosevic realized he could not trust the state police any more, so he built a parallel police force out of refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, young, unsophisticated, and bloodthirsty. He equipped them with military grade weaponry, including airplanes, tanks and submarines. The new force had camouflage uniforms, the old cops had light blue, so it was easy to spot the difference. For the next few months I was still there, I avoided the camouflage and said "Good morning" to every cop in blue. I do not know what is the atmosphere there now, though, 15 years and many more demonstrations later.

More locally, I can see the regional differences, even microgeographical. Cops in Cary, NC, had a bad rep for a while and they are now the nicest cops in the area (although Cary still issues speed tickets if you go 5mph over the limit). Chapel Hill cops are mostly OK. Raleigh cops are mostly bastards. I have no idea what makes the difference.

[harry near indy]

coturnix, it's probably the culture of their peers in the department that makes the difference.

i used to be a reporter for newspapers in indiana. i used to deal with a lot of different cops for stories.

i found that the indiana state police troopers were the most professional -- that is, they weren't thugs in uniform.

most of the rest were like that.

for some other cops, though, i sensed that they gloried in having a uniform, a firearm, and the legal sanction to enforce authority.

they could've been just as happy beating up jews during the 1930s in germany or beating up blacks during the 1960s in dixie.