Law Enforcement - Modern Barbarian

The general public has many misconceptions about law enforcement that are not problems in them selves though they could lead to or exacerbate other problems.

Lack of training

I went through a year long 40hour a week academy. I can tell you that its not a problem of minimum hours of training its the content of the training. I would say that 50% or more of the time i spent in academy was spent on things that don’t matter, and they were stretched out much longer than necessary. While things that do matter and would make cops better were left to the way side. A topic that could be covered in an hour, required 8. This left us sitting on our hands or stuck in lectures that are unnecessarily long taking away time from training that should have had more time dedicated. Or training that is typically reserved for the department inservice trainings is left out of academy completely.

In the age of woke and pronouns this will only get worse. More time will be spent on DEI than on differentiating from medical incidents and driving under the influence. Trainings involving autism and other disabilities. More training time will be taken away from learning the law, and rights more so than it already is, though this might be by design……

I will say that my academy did cover law very well for the state i was in at the time, but I also know that it is not the case in all academies and that time is often taken away from learning the law for other topics. Law class ran almost the entire time of the academy and covered statue law and constitutional law and case law. Though case law only covered those that benefited the cops or threatened them not that benefited the public.

My academy spent a good amount of time on report writing but what that means is that were were trained the formatting and the “buzzwords” to use to cover our asses and the departments ass regardless if the report was 100% accurate to what happens by using those buzzwords. “Through my training and experience” Is a popular one. Time was however taken away from things such as negotiation/crisis intervention (talking down suicidal people).

Dark Humor

People need to understand this because it is not just law enforcement. Anyone that spends the majority of their time in stressful or tragic circumstances will develop a dark sense of humor in order to process it or they will not make it out alive. This applies to cops, soldiers, firefighters, social workers, and Drs. They may be there for the worst day of your life, but this is only the 3rd worst day of a life they have been in today. They may still have 12 more hours of worst days before starting it again tomorrow. You get to process and deal with this day, they have to shake it off move on and go back to work.

Misconceptions that could be problems

Racism

This is not systemic as most would have you believe. Not at the country level or most organizations. They think this because there is info going around that law enforcement started with slave catchers when in reality law enforcement traditions goes back to Europe before the US was even a thing. Racism however can be a problem on an individual level just like in any other profession or industry. The problem is when departments or other officers will cover for bad officers in order to try and avoid looking like Its a department problem, inadvertently creating the department problem they were trying to avoid.

Cops not policing their own areas – This is another popular one that people like to complain about. Cops living in one city and policing another. I get why this happens, and it happens in fire departments too. People don’t want to deal with seeing people they know, shot, killed, robbed, committing suicide, and so on.

There is however an argument to be made that by doing so they do not have any ties to the community and therefore have no incentive to do right by the community.

Thinking everyone is armed

This comes up constantly, and when said out loud it sounds fine. “Cops shouldn’t act like everyone is armed” but you have to when your in a job where you might have to go up against an armed felon even if that likely hood is low.

This is the real world people hurt other people, and in reality its not just cops that should think about other people being armed. Especially when people are getting assaulted for no reason on the streets. Everyone needs to think about it and prepare themselves because one day it might be you in that confrontation.

I would argue that the over reaction comes from people being afraid of weapons and not people holding them. These are the cops you see drawing down on someone who says they have a concealed weapons permit, or a hunter who has a rifle slung. They equate weapon and death instead of looking at the entire situation. This fear is also where you see cops so amped up that they give an order and then shoot the person for complying with the order. This is proven time and time again every time a citizen goes into a police training trying to prove this wrong and ends up “shooting” an unarmed person.

We have now come to the end of limits for my benefit of the doubt and understanding when it comes to law enforcement. Part 3 will start to cover actual misconduct in law enforcement as well as the misunderstanding by the public in the design of the system.

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My issues with law enforcement are not your typical defund the police activists problems with police, though some might overlap. If nothing else I hope this serves as a realty check for those looking at getting into the profession so that they know what they are signing up for.

Most commentators on law enforcement have had no interaction with or knowledge of police work. Whether they are on the “cops are good and there are only a few bad apples side.” – The people who believe the system works and trust it blindly because they have never had an interaction with it, or work inside it – or they are the people who are running training companies of one kind or another, K9, firearms, etc and they only deal with the “good cops” who by their definition are those that seek out training on their own time.

The same goes for those that blindly talk shit about cops as well. They either have had to many encounters with law enforcement or they sit on the side lines thinking that all violence is wrong and live in the world they think should be and not the one that is. They talk just as much shit about citizens defending themselves as they do about cops.

This is not what I am doing.

Some Background

I grew up in a law enforcement family. I wanted to be part of law enforcement through my entire childhood and young adult life. That was a dream that I in fact accomplished, and then regretted almost immediately. Though a regret that I did not really understand until a few years later as well as the blessing that was me having to leave that dream behind.

Shortly after I made it on to a department I had to resign due to some health issues. A resignation of a dream that I had for the better part of two decades. That resignation became a blessing over the next couple of years, because of events at both that specific department, which I learned was just some in a long list of prior events as well as events on the national level. The years following completely changed my point of view on law enforcement as a whole. Where they used to get the benefit of the doubt now was a complete lack of trust. I used to defend them in debates and now I only defend the individuals I know personally if they deserve it.

Intentions VS Results

I do not want this to be a complete bashing of law enforcement personnel as I do believe that at least some of them do get into the profession with good intentions of protecting their community and helping people. However they could do the same thing by getting a concealed carry permit and going about their every day lives. Looking back I got into it for those reasons, as well looking for some action fighting the bad guys.

I was also looking for a brotherhood. A brotherhood that i was depending on to rebuild my social and support network after moving thousands of miles for the job and ultimately a brotherhood that I did not find and that after talking to many in the profession I now know no longer exists.

Now as we know intentions don’t matter, results do and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. What you think your going to be doing and what you actually will be doing are not always the same thing especially in law enforcement and I like most people learned this the hard way. Only a small percentage actually get to chase the bad guys and handle the true threats to the community, the majority don’t. the majority do more of what looks like harassment than serving the community. This is not entirely their fault but the fault of the justice system as a whole but they are by definition the enforcers for that system.

Strong moral men and families make safe communities, regardless of law enforcement’s existence, and like the founding fathers understood, you also need to protect your community from the state, you cannot do that if you are the enforcer for it.

I don’t know if the profession was always this way or only recently but I know that what people have been saying about law enforcement for decades if it was not true the whole time is becoming true now. That being said I do understand why certain things happen in law enforcement that the general public does not understand, which I will cover in more depth.

I am going to harp on one last point here before we get started. It applies here but is not limited to this topic alone.

Follow Nothing and No One Blindly

If you don’t know them or the incident personally, don’t die on that hill. Doesn’t matter if its cops, celebrities, brands, influencers, or religious institutions. If you don’t have personal experience with it or them never jump in with them 100%

There is only five current or former law enforcement officers that I truly respect, and trust were good when they did the job. I know all but one of them personally and thats the point. One is my father who worked for two different departments and ran an academy. His career culminated in retirement from a gaming regulation agency in the western united states.

One is my step father who retired from two different departments, in two different states. over the course of his life and career he worked special investigations full time swat and air support devision as a pilot.

one is a fellow academy graduate from my class who at the time of this writing had taken over as deputy chief in a sheriffs department in the western united states.

One is my field training officer from the department i was at who i assume is still there or possibly retiring soon I would hope if he hasn’t already. This officer worked as a k9 officer while i was there and was the only officer i have ever seen argue with a person on the call over not infringing on someones rights.

Now the last one is the only one that I don’t know personally, but would not hesitate to meet him. Greg Anderson who chucked his career over doing the right thing during the Pandemic when he released a video calling on his fellow officers at his department and others across the country to make sure that they were doing the right thing, not infringing on the rights of the citizens when following orders. As you can imagine this was not welcomed by the politicians and his superiors and resulted in him loosing his job when he refused to take the video down.

What is Law Enforcement?

Its right there in the name, Law Enforcement. How ever their is a disconnect between what the public thinks that means and their job definition and what they actually do. People have one of two images of law enforcement in their heads, on the side that defends them, they see them as police officers or peace officers. There to protect them and solve their problems, but there is a reason their official title was changed to law enforcement officer.

Then there is the side that has either had run ins with them or that can be objective enough to see them clearly, that they are their to enforce the laws, what ever that law may be, or how right or wrong the law is. This disconnect is why you have the good cop and bad cop arguments, more so then because of dirty cops because that is actually exceedingly rare, at least in the prospective of corruption.

Law enforcement is historically a tool of tyrants, they respond to violence but only that which is unsanctioned by the state. They mainly bring violence upon those who do not comply or obey the regime in charge. They do some things that are good and some of their actions could be seen as good deeds, but a good does not undo a wrong.

I started this article with the intent for it to be one article but consisted of so much that it grew into a multipart series so stay tuned for more to come.