A general take on The Thin Blue Line
I have had varied experience with the police. From big city cops to small town marshals. Some individual cops are great and others are not so great. Just like all people. They have families and mortgages and braces for their daughter’s teeth to worry about. They are called to walk into some of the most unbelievable carnage imaginable. Babies that are put into the clothes dryer. Crackheads that take an axe to their grandmothers and cannot tell you why. I have been in on some of this myself. You don’t sleep well after one of those evenings. Their job can be dehumanizing and can dehumanize them. Some of my experiences with them have been great and some not so great, but all memorable.
Cops are sworn to uphold the law and sometimes they break the law they are sworn to uphold. They give orders and they take orders. And they will obey orders because to not do so means the end of everything they have worked for. Some of them drink a great deal. My impression is that women who are cops seem to have something to prove. Something about cojones. But I have seen one female cop stand down three strapping 20 something young men on the apron of a gas station. I knew better than to ask her what it was all about. She had no backup but you could hear the entire force on the way. I think she was scared; so would I have been. But it was one of the finest displays of sheer ‘balls’ I have ever seen. She was on one knee, yelling freeze, and covering the three of them with the biggest handgun I have ever seen. Except for the one that once was held about an inch from my left eye.
Which leads me to the old saw about the officer’s pistol being compensation for something lacking. I am in a position to comment on that but don’t think I will.
This post is to be continued. Stay with me.
The Shadow
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