How 11 Cops See America

How 11 Cops See America — Crime, Guns, Race, and Bad Cops

New York Times “America in Focus” staff members, January 3, 2023

[From the editors: “One of the goals of our Times Opinion focus groups is to bring together subsets of Americans and explore assumptions that others might have — digging deeper into them, challenging them, in some cases stamping out stereotypes. In our latest group, with 11 police officers and other members of law enforcement from around the country, one assumption we had at the start was that some or all of them would see crime as the most important issue in the country. In fact, none of them did”].

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[My Notes: As many of you know, I spent nearly one-half of my life as a police officer, detective, trainer, and leader. I retired over 20 years ago and became an Episcopal priest and served in parish ministry. I still do today, but I never quit thinking and writing about police and their improvement. Of course things have changed. I began policing with little training, no personal radio, body armor or computer and I carried a six-shooter. But after reading this interview with this diverse group of eleven police officers, I have to say they said nothing with which I could strongly disagree. Whether you support police or not, this interview is important for you read. If you claim to be an informed person, you need to read this! The following are some key quotes that I picked out. Check them out and then read the full interview which has been of great encouragement to me. And may all of us have a most blessed, happy, and safe New Year.]

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“I can’t fix America, but I can contribute to the fixing of America. I think, as a law enforcement officer, we’re doing that now. It’s just harder than it was 10 years ago.”

“The real issue is the lack of respect and parenting and these insane ideologies and teachings that we’re bringing into these schools. If you don’t change it, you’ll never change crime. We got out of Philly a couple of years ago. My children are in the public schools in the suburbs, which are great. I’m fully behind them being exposed to everything and culture and respect.”

“In the inner cities in New York, people feel — I can’t speak for them, I’m just relaying what I’ve been told — there aren’t enough opportunities. There aren’t not enough programs. There aren’t enough resources. After being incarcerated and released, there’s literally nowhere to go, nowhere to turn. So the natural instinct is to turn to what they know.”

“While kids are in school, teach them about what happens after school. How is it that you’re supposed to dress when you go to work? How do you speak? How do you conduct yourself? I think that if there were some of these opportunities, perhaps people would gain the knowledge that they don’t gain at home. I wish they were taught so much more about life, about relationships.”

“So I think that if you had more funding and more incentives to bring young officers on and got them out there and left them in the neighborhoods and showed them how to be there, that’s the way you get to the criminals. That’s the way you get respect. That’s how you keep violent crime down.” 

“I have yet, in my law enforcement career, been asked by a superior officer, a sergeant or above, ‘Hey, Mike, we’re going to get $50,000. What is it you, as a patrol officer, what do you think we should spend it on?’ We have no say.”

“There’s no amount of money that can be thrown at an officer that’s a substitute for integrity and morals.” 

“We got a surplus of money down here… and before I knew it, we’re getting Dodge Chargers. We’re getting Dodge Challengers. We’re getting these tricked-out Tahoe trucks. We’re getting all this, and the only people who are benefiting are top brass.”

“They’re not allocating the funds properly. I don’t know where that extra money goes, as far as New York City is concerned. I mean, I can’t even get a vest that fits me properly. It doesn’t trickle down to us.”

“I might be off on my stats, but I think we’re at around our 600th mass shooting in the United States for the year. So I know there are some people who love their guns. But I honestly do not understand why people need AR-15s. I don’t see the purpose. I can’t go to a supermarket. I have to be careful going into a nightclub, sending my child to school.” 

“I think all of us are going to protect the Constitution and understand the Second Amendment right to bear arms. But what the two ladies just said (above), I have to agree. I don’t want to take anyone’s freedom away, because we’re all Americans. But when I’m going to these active shootings and these suspects have better weaponry than I have, it becomes very much a problem.”

“You’ve got to be a babysitter. You’ve got to be a social worker. You’ve got to be a problem solver. You’ve got to be a psychiatrist. You’ve got to be a shoulder to cry on. You can’t just be a cop. You can’t just do your job. Again, it’s not 1960. You’ve got to be all-faceted… Ninety percent of my day is problem solving with BS non-police-related issues.”

“But you know what? I might be a bit older than everybody else here, but it’s been that way for a while. I would say the mental health issue has exploded. But other than that, I mean, you think domestic violence started last year? It’s been going on since the ’50s, ’40s. So that hasn’t changed. But I mean, I think that’s one of the good things about being a police officer, actually, having all those different hats, helping people in different ways, impacting lives positively.” 

“I think defund [the police] was just a political ploy that was used in the height of what we had going on.”

“To me, the people I spoke to, they didn’t really think of it [Defund the Police] in terms of getting social workers there, that type of thing… But again, people don’t see it like that, because they’re not there for every single situation that we go through. They only see the videos on YouTube and everything else, where an officer reacts to someone who’s having a mental crisis. And unfortunately, the person gets shot… And people want everything to be nice and sweet and whatever else. But sometimes, life gets messy.”

“I was a school resource officer for 16 years. And I did it for elementary, middle and high school. And just to interact with those kids on a daily basis, to try to change what their mind-set of policing was, to now. And now that I see them out and about — some of them graduated, and some of them come say to me, “I appreciate everything you did for me, because if you hadn’t said something to me on that day, I probably would have did this.” So just to see them become better human beings, better citizens. And now they have their own children that they have to do the same thing for. I see a little bit of what I taught them, because of all my experiences I try to give to them… So that makes me feel good inside, that I had some type of impact with them at a stage where they didn’t know which way they was going.”

“I think if you got into the areas where you would expect to have racism and talk to the people that actually live there, you would get a very different answer than what you’re getting from some people who are very far removed and just think that they know. Even with the defund-the-police movement — if you go into those neighborhoods, they want the police there. They don’t want less police; they want more police. But at the same time, we definitely have racism within the police department. How could we not? It’s in every culture, every occupation. I think it’s about separating from those cops… The only thing we can do is go out there and make sure every single encounter that we have with the public is the best that they could have and that I handle a job the way I would want it handled from my loved one, myself.” 

“I try my best not to be what they consider to be the stereotypical officer, the hard-ass, the robot, no emotions. I can laugh and joke with you. Just showing them that we’re actually human beings and that I go through the same things that you go through. Just because I have a gun and a badge as my profession, that doesn’t mean that I’m any less of a human than you are.”

“I think the young children need to see people that look like them. There’s absolutely racism within the police force and just in general here in this country. But young people need to see people that look like them.” 

“I’m out here trying to do the best I can just like anybody else. I’m trying to make a living just like anyone else is. I’m trying to do my best. And I’m a human, and I have feelings and emotions like anyone else. So don’t treat me like I’m a robot. Don’t automatically assume that I’m the bad guy when you’ve never met me before. Give me a chance to show you who I am.”

“I think, for me, what’s going on in this country the last couple of years is a perfect storm of a lot of nonsense. If I had to say one thing, instead of trying to call me and my co-workers out, call us in. Call us into your small groups. Call us into your city council meetings. Call us into the meetings that really matter, where the transparency takes place. That’s where I want to be.”

“We’re here to help. Definitely people will have bad experiences with that 1 percent. But we are here to help, and we do want to return home to our family.”

“We aren’t the enemy. We are humans. We put our pants on like everybody else does every day. And unfortunately, if we make a mistake, it could be a life-or-death situation. And we don’t take those mistakes lightly, and we try to do the best that we can to keep everyone safe and make sure that we get home to our families and that everyone else gets home to their families, too.”

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Read the full article HERE and more about who these officers are and what they think. [Not much different than I would answer after my three decades in policing and now having been retired for more than two decades!]