The average cop

 isn't a storm trooper or a jackbooted thug. He's a working stiff like the rest of us. He probably went into the business because he felt he could make a difference. That's a damned good reason to enter a line of work.

Right now the police are being vilified and to a great extent it is a bunch of crap. Granted there are a number of people that entered that line of work for the wrong reasons but that can be said for any line of work.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Most policemen thrive on being peace officers. It's where they seem to do the best to serve the public. There are not a whole lot of cops that like being revenue generators (aka ticket writers). Very few of them like being blind law enforcers, either.

An example of what I am talking about here is one state's DUI law. As we know, DUI laws are supposedly designed to keep drunk drivers off of public roads to insure public safety. A couple of states have enacted legislation that goes well beyond that.

In more than one state if you leave a watering hole and decide you're bad too much to drink and decide to catch some sleep in the back seat of your car you can get arrested for a DUI.

Of course, a blind enforcer of a cop will cart you off in a heartbeat as will a revenue generator of a cop. Generally speaking neither of these two really want to, they feel compelled to by higher-ups.

A true peace officer will generally look at the guy and be grateful he had enough common sense to do the right thing and will overlook this kind of thing. No harm, no foul. It's actually a win/win for the citizen and the officer. The citizen isn't being carted off for something stupid and the officer isn't handed a load of paperwork. The only person that loses is the politician that doesn't get to see the revenue come in for fines following an arrest but politicians don't count for nothing, anyway.

Truth is, good cops, trash guys and decent plumbers do more for society than any politician that ever lived. 

The average cop just wants to raise a couple of kids and have a beer after work. He's no different than the rest of us. He wants to come home at the end of his shift.

People tend to get the kind of police department they ask for. If they demand city hall enforce every little law on the books they wind up with blind enforcers. If they let the politicians run things they will wind up with  police force full of revenue generators. If they make it clear to the politicians they want a  common sense department they will generally wind up with a pretty good department.

Getting back to the beginning of this post, we have to look at the goings-on in several areas regarding the use of force.  

Right now there are a few high profile cases out there involving police killings of citizens. In Ferguson and New York both of the killings involved people that physically fought with the police.

The Gospel According to Piccolo says that when you start a physical altercation with someone else-police or not- you automatically get your name put on the list of candidates for a Darwin Award. 

Nobody wanted Eric Garner or Michael Brown to die, especially the officers that killed them. Truth is that neither Mike Brown or Eric Garner deserved to die, either. They simply decided to take a course of action where they put their lives in jeopardy and lost.

In short, Brown and Garner brought it on themselves.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY