MikeK
Gold Member
Something which becomes readily apparent from studying a progression of COPS episodes is the manner which most (not all) patrolmen relate to and deal with even the most minor offenders. From the initial moment of encounter, through the searching and interrogation process, the behavior of some (too many) cops is unnecessarily aggressive, often brutal, and almost always unduly contemptuous.A friend of mine did a COPS segment for Fort Myers, Florida, Mike. You get to see some of the shit they deal with watching that show but what you don't really get a sense of is what it's like to police a dangerous area day after day dealing with people who have no moral compass. One of the Fort Myers police was killed a few years back by someone who just walked up to him on the street and shot him in the head while he was trying to calm down a domestic dispute. Totally unprovoked. Things like that make cops on the beat jumpy. If someone wants to know why police seem to overreact at times ask yourself what your state of mind would be if you were the person sitting alone in a police cruiser in a bad neighborhood not knowing if YOU are going to be the next police officer that someone tries to assassinate?
While most of these minor offenders may be described (in your terms) as having no moral compass, therefore not deserving of the type of respectful treatment a comparatively "upright" citizen might receive, the fact remains they are imbued with a resentful anger which is manifest in the occasional assassination or attempted assassination, such as recently occurred in Philadelphia. I am sure it's occurred to you, as it has to me, that the victims of these attacks, who apparently are chosen at random, quite possibly might be what I think of as Type-A cops, i.e., the type who does not treat arrest subjects with unnecessarily aggressive contempt, who do the job according to the rules, and therefore are victimized because of the typical conduct of the Type-B cops who have managed to implant homicidal loathing in the minds of budding psychopaths and potential assassins.
My thoughts on this subject date back to 1971 when New York City Patrolmen Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini were gunned down in Harlem, and in 1972 when New York City Patrolmen Rocco Laurie and Gregory Foster were similarly back-shot and killed in the East Village. I'm recalling that my good friend Pete Hamill mentioned in his New York Daily News column that he'd been told by a Harlem resident that Waverly Jones and Rocco Laurie were ". . .two nice cops who didn't deserve to be 'offed' that way." Those memories often occur to me while watching some Type-B cops doing their unnecessarily aggressive and contemptuous thing in a COPS segment.
I'm sure the Type-B cops who routinely act out their personal hang-ups and/or macho fantasies on subjects they blithely regard as low-lifes, scum-bags, ghetto-rats, etc., ever give thought to the notion held by some that whatever goes around comes around. I don't know if Philadelphia Patrolman Jesse Hartnett is a Type A or a Type-B cop. But whichever, he is lucky to be alive and I'm sure he is giving some thought to the notion of karma and whose bill he almost just paid -- if not his own.