My first experience with the police was in elementary school.
Our class was asked to make drawings for a Ventura County Sherriff’s Department school outreach of some sort. All I really remember is that I won the prize for my poster drawing. There was something about my drawing – police attack helicopters, cops in SWAT gear repelling down buildings, a shootout against a crew of AK-47 wielding bad guys – that appealed to them. The cops liked it, and I liked them. I always did and I still do.
It planted a seed that almost turned into a career in law
enforcement. I may have moved to Alaska to become the world’s next great
wildlife photographer, but I ended up graduating with a degree in justice
because I wanted to be federal agent. More specifically, I wanted to be an ATF
agent. But that was a long time ago, back when I was convinced federal agents
were the good guys.
Are they? Were they ever?
Honestly, I’m wrestling with this question lately. The hard reality is that I’m leaning toward no; they’re not the good guys, and maybe never were.
I used to respect the FBI, the ATF, the DEA, and the rest of the alphabet soup of federal law enforcement agencies, and I wanted to be one of them. They took down drug dealers, thwarted terrorists, rescued kidnapping victims, busted Communist spies, tracked down Uni-bombers, rescued hostages, busted sex traffickers.
Right? Isn’t that what they used to do? Do they still do that?
Why is it then that every day I hear a new story about reprehensible federal agents using their unlimited power to infringe on basic American liberties? Worse, they’ve got a long history of covering up the sexual assault of little girls, destroying a simple man’s heroic legacy, condoning treason, ignoring terrorism, going to war with ranchers, and locking up citizens on trumped-up charges.
These are supposed to be the good guys?
Scully and Mulder wouldn’t do that. Feds like Clint Van Zandt and John Douglass were my heroes in those college days; maybe they were the good ones, but maybe not. Maybe the FBI has always been a weapon in the hands of D.C. swamp creatures, from J. Edgar Hoover to Christopher Wray and everyone between.
I’ve read books that claimed as much. One of my college professors even wrote one. It was a book about the FBI’s assault on the civil rights movement and I thought it was mostly bunk at the time. Now I’m thinking of giving it another look.
I hate this.
I hate wondering if that comment or post I wrote a while back is suddenly going to draw a few unmarked vehicles into my driveway for a little chat about wrongthink.
I hate having to tell my kids that the authorities can’t be trusted to do the legal thing, much less the moral one.
I hate what the creatures running federal law enforcement agencies (and more than a few states) have become: accomplices to a political machine running roughshod over the rights of ordinary citizens. But if the officers in the cars continue to obey, that’s on them. They can stop this madness in its tracks by refusing to go along with it. Some have, but we’re not hearing their message, and we need to.
Every law enforcement officer needs to take a sober look at that badge and decide what it represents. It wasn’t issued so that cops could wrestle non-violent individuals to the ground because of what isn’t worn over their mouths. It wasn’t issued to empower an agent to peruse social media in the hopes of mining a few tweets that question authority. They didn’t get that badge to toss desperate patients out of hospitals in middle of the night for refusing unnecessary tests.
It wasn’t issued to protect pedophiles.
Law enforcement is a hard job, maybe one of the hardest. All my life I’ve seen cops treated as heroes by some in the community and derided as monsters by others – sometimes appropriately, both ways. I’ve had jerk cops in my face take an inconsequential event and blow it up into a firestorm because someone upset their fragile egos. I’ve also had a cop let me use his phone to make a few calls while my hands were shaking.
I once laughed with a cop who’d had the good fortune to answer a noisy neighbor disturbance only to discover the party was for an NHL player who’d brought home the Stanley Cup for a night. The smile on the officer’s face was glowing in the picture he showed us, one of him holding Lord Stanley’s cup with a bevy of glassy eyed partygoers around him.
We had an incident early in 2020 where a state trooper very literally saved one of our children’s lives. It was traumatic. Weeks later we asked the trooper involved if he’d be willing to visit with our son to try to mitigate the traumatic associations. He agreed, and the meeting was healing, so much so that our son has looked fondly at police cars ever since, and speaks of one day joining their ranks.
So, I guess I’m not ready to throw in the towel on the door kickers just yet. I still love cops.
I choose to believe that those who swore to uphold justice outnumber those working against it – that there are still enough of them around willing to stand up to the jackwagons who’ve hijacked their mission and perverted their service and reputations. Those of us fighting for liberty need to know the cops are on our side, just like they needed to know we supported them during the riots.
I just wish more of them would emerge from the shadows of obscurity, and not leave us wondering whether the person behind the badge is one of the good guys or one of the bad.
This is part of an ongoing series titled, The Bad Guys.
The Bad Guys: Part 1 History.
The Bad Guys: Part 2 Abortion…and Cobra Kai.
The Bad Guys: Part IV, The GOP
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Photo credit: FBI recruiting event in Jacksonville, Florida. “These images are for your use in publicizing the FBI and may be used without cost or permission.” *grin* Isn’t that delicious?