As I was growing up, my father used to tell me that the number of honest politicians in Denver wouldn’t fill the back seat of his car. He was fond of big-ass vehicles, so I figured that he was probably talking somewhere in the area of four or five people. And, I figured he was probably right.
At the completion of my own twenty-three career with the City of Denver, I can confirm that the concepts of honesty and integrity are lost to most politicians. Politics does not well accommodate the honest man or woman who is passionate about maintaining a conscience which, of course, leads to behavior and decisions based upon integrity rather than political expediency. Not that the two are always mutually exclusive … just maybe, oh, ninety-nine percent of the time.
My father spent twenty-six fucking nasty years on the Denver Police Department, ending his career with four-and-a-half years as Chief. No offense meant here with the fucking nasty comment, folks, but please understand that I know what I’m talking about: a cop’s family lives that cop’s life as intimately and intensely as the cop himself. Or, at least that was my experience. And, it wasn’t fun.
Give me a minute here with the cop thing.
I really need to tell you that there are good cops and there are bad cops. There are cops who give a damn and there are cops who don’t. Cops are as much a part of the bureaucratic imperative as the data entry clerk at the computer. (The bureaucratic imperative is something I'm writing about in depth.) But, of course, there is a difference. And, you might get a small hint of that difference if you take a look into the eyes of old cops who’ve been around a while. It is in the eyes of old cops where you might see a seriousness that is cold and hard and, perhaps, accusing.
If you look deeply into those old eyes you might also see anger, suspicion, hate, fear and, yes, regret.
And, if you look still deeper you may see the macabre images which that old cop holds, secret and secure, in the most inaccessible recesses of his or her mind. And, the images are of a life spent dealing with all the vileness and degradation human beings inflict upon one another; of victims who have been cut and sliced and who, lying deadly still in their own blood, can only silently swear that another human being was responsible; of children abused, black and blue, from the hard knocks of parents – PARENTS! – who could not deal with themselves much less their children, much less an unkind, complex world; of drunks and derelicts lying lice-infested in gutters with matted hair and urine-soaked clothes … vomit stained shirts and no shoes; of hookers and pimps plying their trade; of pre-pubescent boys and girls whose bodies were sold for the price of a meal; of automobiles wrecked beyond manufacturer recognition encasing four or five or six dead young bodies who only wanted to have a good time at 110 fucking miles an hour; of dopers and pushers and good outstanding pillars of the community high as kites after snorting or shooting or popping or drinking their particular ticket to nirvana; of the homeless and sick wandering the streets babbling to themselves and cursing the unseen demons that haunt their souls; of ten-thousand filthy, disgustingly sad, sad images which, in one way or another, the old cops not only dealt with but were expected to deal with over and over and over again and again by a society that, in spite of its humanity, delegates to one class of people – the cop – the job of handling its failures.
Yes, in the eyes of old cops there is a bitterness which, when the uniform is taken off for the last time, bespeaks of a society which simply doesn’t understand the price a cop (and his or her family) pays for serving it; which simply doesn’t understand why, in the eyes of old cops, there is little sympathy or compassion or love; which simply doesn’t understand that a cop’s humanity is wrenched from him or her almost immediately after putting the uniform on for the first time.
The cop who is able to protect, preserve their humanity in spite of the unkind world they are expected to confront and tame; calm and pacify day after day after day is a lucky cop, indeed.
Yeah, and I’m thinking there’s more than a few beefed-up, hard-as-nails, trigger-happy sonsabitches who never, ever should have been given the blue and the badge and the gun; I’m thinking there’s more than a few of these guys and gals puffing their chests up and gritting their teeth and saying, “No sir! No how! I don’t regret a goddamned thing about being a cop. I’m not bitter about nothin’! Not a fucking, goddamned thing…”
And, I rest my case. There are good cops and there are bad cops.
Police departments are an interesting bureaucracy. Most of the time, most politicians – honest or not -- take great pains to soapbox their commitment to the men and women in blue who through legislative fiat have been given the responsibility to handle society’s failures; to protect us all and our property from the threat out there, everywhere, around literally every fucking corner. Yes, and our cops are the enforcers of such a prolific, sometimes complex, sometimes absurdly incongruous mass of ordinances and statutes and policies and procedures that politicians who’ve empowered them to be our enforcers and protectors just get downright giddy when dealing with cop issues.
I’ve never known a Denver politician that didn’t have a really, really oddly intense fascination – negative or positive – with cops.
Go figure!
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