Not Your Friends

Gallup released a poll last June indicating that 60 percent of whites and 48 percent of nonwhites expressed having confidence in the police. What explains the 12 percent gap? Maybe better, what about the 40 to 52 percent of us that have little or no faith in law enforcement?

Trust in the police has been declining even among whites.

Like almost everything else in America that touches on ethics, justice, and dare I say it—truth—has been on the downward slide. That’s just one of the characteristics of collapse.

Still, there are plenty of folks out there who view the police (like the military) as above reproach. The uniform and shield erects an impenetrable wall that makes them immune to criticism. The police, however, are far from being the bastions of goodness and morality that some like to see them as. This article demonstrates a different side of policing—and it isn’t about “protect and serve,” an outdated myth.

Not since the late 1960s and early 1970s have these kinds of questions increasingly been on the minds of Americans not cowered and co-opted by the mainstream media embracing a pacifist/reformist ideal about government and its protectors, like the police.

I used to work in an office with one of these “the police can do no wrong” type of tools. Come to think of it, she was a tool about just about everything else—business and politics, too—but when it came to the law enforcement fraternity, she’d rather rip your eyes out than tolerate anyone talking trash about the po-po. Her dad was a cop, so I guess that was part of the problem.

Does everything in America have to be about this kind of irrationality? I guess so.

The police are not your friends.

The police are not your friends.

Continue reading