We have all heard different takes on what is the best thing about being a cop. There's the noble calling in which you risk life and limb to protect and serve society. There's the occasional excitement. There's the joy of not being tied down to a desk all day long. When you report for your shift, you never know what is in store for you. There's the thrill of driving your patrol car at 100 mph with the emergency lights and siren on. There's the satisfaction of catching a crook. And then, there are the short skirted cleavage showing groupies who are crazy about a man in uniform. Whoopee!!!
But, what is the worst thing about being a cop? The answer to that question depends on who you talk to. Criminal justice researchers say that police work consists of 95 percent utter boredom and five percent sheer terror. That is correct. And, that creates problems for some officers. To overcome the boredom, they will create their own excitement. How do they do that? Sometimes, by riling up a violator during an otherwise uneventful confrontation. The excitement comes from the inevitable knock down and drag out. Others create some escitement by driving like there's no tomorrow. Boredom also leads to carelessness, thereby placing an officers's life in greater jeopardy.
I recently heard a police officer say, "The worst thing about this job is having to listen to people lie all day long." He had a good point. Whether you are talking to a traffic violator or to someone suspected of committing a crime, you usually get nothing but a load of crap. Officers finding a stolen stereo set during the execution of a search warrant, will ask the crook, "What about that stereo?" He'll usually reply, "What stereo?" When they jerk him over to the stereo and say, "This stereo," he'll usually respond, "Oh, that stereo." The same with dope. "Where did you get this shit (heroin)?" "What shit?" "This shit, asshole!" "Oh, that shit." Even crime victims, and not just crooks, often lie to investigating officers.
Dr. Mike Roberts, a highly respected police psychologist, once asked all of the recruits, on their frirst day in the San Francisco police academy, what they thought of people in general. Their response for the most part was, "There are good people and there are assholes." He returned a year after they graduated from the academy and asked the same question. This time the answer was, "There are cops and there are assholes." When he returned three years later with that quesstion, those still on the force replied that even "some of the cops are assholes."
The cynicism - cops and assholes - which pervades the police service is one of the worst things about being a cop. It creates problems in the officer's relationship with familly members. It creates problems in his relationship with the community. This cynicism is nurtured by hostility between the police and members of the community. That hostility is a consequence of the police's duty to regulate human behavior when no one likes to have their behavior regulated.
How does a good cop deal with the assholes in the police service? Unfortunately, not very well. Will an officer turn in his partner if he used excessive force during an arrest? Not likely. Will an honest cop turn in a crooked cop? Maybe, maybe not. The problem is the unwritten law in the police service that you do not rat out a fellow officer. That is partly due to the cynicism of "everyone out there is against us, so we have to stick together." Of course, in our society a rat is a rat, whether one is a police officer or not.
Cynicism is also a great destructor of idealism. I've known a number of white police officers who joined the force to do their part in fighting racism against blacks. After a while, they get sick and tired of the hostility they meet when dealing with members of the black community, a hostility based on years of mistreatment by the police. It isn't long before many of them join their fellow officers in using the "n" word and in making disparaging remarks about minorities. The same with the idealists who want to help make ours a better society. They soon give up on that - it becomes us against the assholes.
There is little doubt that cynicism has a debilitating effect. Many officers undergo regressive personality changes during their progression through the police service. Some acquire an authoritarian Napoleonic complex.
Many develop a "people are no fucking good" attitude. Some develop a borderline paranoid ideation. Cynicism probably plays a significant role in the high rate of alcoholism and divorce among cops. Notwithstanding the cynicism, most of those who become cops will find police work to be an important, challenging, and satisfying occupation.
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