Police

This post-911 world has taken us back to a time before the lessons learned during the Viet Nam War era. Now, for example, every soldier is a hero in the media. The Viet Nam War era taught us, however, that front line soldiers are actually socioeconomic pawns. In fact, in an all volunteer army, soldiers are most often the desperately poor who sign away their freedom and ethics for a college education or a meager living as a career soldier.

Another lesson of the Viet Nam War era informed us that police also work for politicians and business interests over the interests of the common citizen. When average citizens protested against racism during the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s and against war in the late Viet Nam War era and against homophobia in the Gay Liberation struggle of that time, they were brutalized, sprayed with fire hoses and shot by police and/or national guardsmen, called in to back up police. There was absolutely no stated ambivalence on the part of police in their roles at that time. They freely backed injustice and violence over peace and reconciliation.

Today, the general attitude of police in many communities and especially on the state level here in Massachusetts is often entitled, rude and callous. It rivals the notorious behavior of Boston transit employees. This is a reversion to the old days, when police operated like other mafias with secrets kept and injustices performed with impunity. To the average citizen, this confirms popular, perhaps unfounded, suspicions of corruption and low intelligence in police work.

Several members of my family were police officers from the 1940s to the 1990s. Half a century. My own father, a policeman for nearly 40 years, while prone to Right Wing politics himself, was skeptical about the general quality of his fellow policemen. He often observed that the system did not reward the peaceful and the just. It rewarded the aggressive, corrupt and political (manipulative).

As I walk around Boston, I see idle police in police cars. When they see that I am noticing them, they usually shoot me a dirty look. I see police cars idling in front of convenience stores and donut shops, where no apparent criminal activity is afoot. I see people running red lights as I am in a cross walk. I see cars parked illegally on sidewalks and in public park areas. I see mouthy gangs of young people causing public disturbances with skateboards, as they overtly harass pedestrians and drivers.

When I do drive, I have trouble finding a handicap parking space when helping a friend who has a medallion, because cars without handicap medallions from out of state are often parked in handicap spaces. My own neighborhood has permit parking due to limited spaces for residents on the street, and no police enforcement ever occurs, unless the tow companies want to make money on street cleaning days. I see state police tapping away at computers in their air conditioned cars, luxury by any standard, as traffic violators blithely run lights and ignore pedestrians. I also see state troopers standing around construction sites, while no visible work is being done and traffic is being bottled up for no apparent reason.

I see all these things daily, weekly. I also see the outcry in the media when a state trooper falls victim to a work-related injury. Yet, I seldom hear anything about cases of police corruption other than an initial blip. These cases are seldom highlighted or followed up in the press. Who is policing the police? Apparently nobody is.

I also hear the excuse that police budgets have been cut, that there are not enough police. Well, if there are not enough police, why do I see local police and state police taking so many extra details at construction sites? These details take their energy and availability away from the actual work of policing. I may add that police at construction sites do no policing. As an avid pedestrian, I have risked life and limb in construction areas where I have been forced to walk in a busy street without the least care or concern of a policeman staring at me from yards away. In fact, in some instances, I have been yelled at by a detail policeman for practicing my right of way as a pedestrian.

If police want public will for better funding, I suggest they simply start doing a better job. Clean up gang crime. Crack down on drug-dealing taggers and hoodlums in the streets. Enforce traffic and parking laws. Make life safe for pedestrians on city streets. If police present themselves in public as hard-working, engaged citizens in an official capacity, rather than paramilitaries in the employment of politicians and business, they would gain greater respect and participation in law and order from their fellow citizens and taxpayers.