Officer Alex dares to talk about the elephant in the squad room
If you’re reading this local weekly alternative fish wrapper then you probably also have access to other forms of information such as television, newspapers, and the emperor of all things factual, “The Facebooks”. And if you can get your law-abiding mitts on those, then you know it’s been a banner time for law enforcement in the tri-state area these last several months.
There is great speculation as to the causation of this rash of self-arrests and banishments by local police departments, but the number one question most people have can be narrowed down to three letters: “WTF”.
It’s taboo for me to speak of these things, but I’ve never understood the meaning of that word and in fact mostly find it just funny to say aloud so I feel perfectly welcome in discussing this topic in the name of humility, transparency, and it just being an easy target in general. Allow me to reflect.
Years back I remember discussing this topic with another (extremely) veteran officer in the parking lot of an extra job in the dead of night at one of the most dangerous places in Chattanooga: The Favorite Market at 1265 E. 3rd St. In between watching the indigenous people of East Chattanooga purchase $2 and $3 dollars’ worth of gasoline at a time for reasons I still cannot fathom (given the 10-mile range this would have provided at the time), the topic of a cop who was fired for having been caught shoplifting a figurine from a fantasy role playing oriented business came up (true story).
“I don’t get it man,” this grizzled blue bear began to opine. “Booze and ass? I get it. I can see getting in trouble for those. Hell, you did years back,” (also true), “but at least I can respect that. But a ‘figurine’? What the hell, man? That’s weird. That’s just weird.”
The conversation went on but that’s the gist of it. Cops getting into trouble over booze? Disappointing but not necessarily shocking to the cognoscenti. Breaking pretty much the first rule you’re taught post-academy graduation by giving in to the novelty of…well, pretty much anything involving the fairer sex whilst in uniform? Again, disappointing but not shocking to the cognoscenti. But rape? Theft? Getting caught doing Rodney King in a 55MPH zone in the age of digital cameras being in everyone’s hip pockets and the front of e’ry cops chest? WTF indeed.
The problem now is twofold in my firsthand opinion: One, cops are now expected to do more than they ever have with more perfection than ever, and two: They are still hiring actual human beings which unfortunately, much like the last GE ‘fridge I bought, come with flaws you can’t always detect.
It’s not a cop out to say that (see what I did there?), it’s just basic logic. We’ve gone from being the men and women hired to work wrecks, answer burglar alarms, write reports for your insurance companies for the crimes that have already happened and to chase the bad guys from the ones we’ve stopped in progress, to being the people expected to do those things while also teaching your kids how to read while changing a man’s car tire for him while offering job applications in lieu of arrest citations and factoring in your gender identity and choice as to whether you feel like being arrested or not despite the crime we’ve observed you committing.
We’re hiring either people potentially damaged from participating in the last 16 years of the Global War on Wherever or people who have been taught that “feeling” like doing something overrides “being required to do” something, while the veteran officers are ignored and frustrated by administrators who are now afraid to take a crap in the wrong toilet bowl for fear of upsetting some official or demographic for their choice in porcelain.
This is a fixable problem. These guys are being fired and prosecuted left and right, but at some point we should do what all good cops are supposed to do and address the causation of the problem rather than just constantly respond to it. Criticism is easy, but how about some suggestions? (No, seriously.) Let’s continue this in the Feb. 28th Edition.
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.