Most American cops I’ve met are hypocritical punks and bullies with only their badges and guns to command authority. Most have no substance and wouldn’t last ten minutes inside one of their own jails without police protection or isolation. Bullshit is eliminated quickly in those places where everyone is emotionally and psychologically on DEFCON ONE. American cops, in my opinion, are not respected by the people they police; they are feared. There is a big difference. I prefer to be in work that affords an opportunity to earn the public’s respect, not in a job where I’m working with a bunch of armed jits with microdick syndrome and feared by the very people they are supposed to protect. So, no. No policing for me.
The best and most efficient cops I’ve ever run into were in Scandinavia. They were polite, but there was no doubt about their integrity and certainly not their ability. They weren’t afraid to diffuse situations through discretion, instead of just going by the book as they do so often stateside like a bundh of hammerheads. They have the right attitude—to genuinely want to protect and serve their fellow citizens. I was very impressed by many of their methods which were often more passive than in the US and often got much better results.
For example, they are not afraid to wait out a lone gunman who barricades himself inside his house, than to burn down the house around him, shoot him to pieces and risk collateral damage as it happens many times a year in the US. It’s a lot safer for the neighborhood to just surround the place with a few cops—not half the local force—turn off the water and electricity, and he’ll come out on his own in a couple of days, or after he sobers up, or he’ll commit suicide. You don’t have to blow the fucking place up. Another example is the way they handled the situation at the New Orleans Convention Center during Katrina, or the recent Ferguson fiasco. It is stupid, dangerous to innocent bystanders and property, and expensive as hell.
Policing other people is not for me. If I wanted to protect and serve the public on the public dime, I would have become a fireman, or a paramedic, but never, ever a cop. I’m afraid I’d have to shoot one of my own for just being an asshole. Most American cops I’ve met see all non-cops as criminals who just haven’t been caught yet and the attitude bleeds through. It’s a bunker mentality, them against the world. It shows up in the extremely high suicide rate for that occupation. Too many are into a very dangerous power trip they can’t personally back up without the gun nd badge, and therefore it doesn’t surprise me in the least the amount of them that are shot every year in the line of duty in this, the most incarcerated society on earth.
I suppose I would be a soldier if we were ever at war on our own turf. That is the only situation I can imagine where there would draft 62 year-olds. I don’t think many of us would be given much choice a that point. I would get over my reluctance and be a reliable one, I think. I would do what I must do and do it to the best of my ability, but I would try very hard to get a position in some medical capacity, on the line or otherwise, where I would be most useful. But I don’t think I excel as a professional soldier. The life is too conforming, too restricted. And I really hate military base architecture. Not how I would want to live, at all.
