Inside the Tiny, Uncluttered Mind of a Cop

I’m not surprised by the reminder that reading comprehension isn’t among the skills tested through POST certification. Law enforcement is an occupation that selects for people who tend to communicate through non-verbal means, after all.

Nowhere in my essay did I suggest that people donate to police charities in the hope of receiving “special privileges”; my point is that the people who administer those funds are protected by the legal fiction called “qualified immunity,” which gives them an unearned sense of privilege and makes them untrustworthy. This is abundantly demonstrated by the pervasive pilferage from FOP coffers. The recent case in Idaho is merely one of hundreds that have happened nation-wide. You would be wise to call for a forensic audit of your own union kitty; alas, your note suggests that you are a stranger in the house of wisdom.

Mark and Sara Furniss aren’t liable to criticism for seeking to discharge their debts through bankruptcy. If you had paid attention to the details — or had them explained to you by someone who can understand them — you would have noticed that they tried to use bankruptcy to consummate their embezzlement by listing their victims at the FOP as “creditors” and then heading north to Alaska to escape apprehension. This is attempted bankruptcy fraud.

Were I to credit official claims regarding the abilities of law enforcement officers, I would express disappointed surprise at your inability to recognize the elements of that offense. Since I’ve studied law enforcement for more than a quarter-century, your performance is precisely what I expected.

Why aren’t you incandescent with rage over crimes committed by police, againstpolice — and the public at large — when they steal from funds supposedly dedicated to providing for wounded officers, and the families of officers who have died on-duty? I am mortally disgusted by such behavior, and that reaction ripens into rage when I see how “blue privilege” continues to protectsuch offenders, who are routinely given lenient sentences and sometimes allowed to keep their subsidized pensions. It’s odd that this is apparent to a purported miscreant like myself, while being ignored by an upstanding paragon of civic righteousness such as yourself.

You are doubtless aware….

No, strike that; going on the evidence [above] I would be unwise to entertain a generous estimate of your awareness.

A long line of judicial precedents documents that police officers have no enforceable duty to protect any individual citizen from criminal violence. This is even true when one is literally being hacked to death just a few feet away while apprehending an armed psychopath who had eluded the police. Take a second and Google “Joe Lozito” for the details of that case. Lozito subdued a knife-wielding serial killer while a member of your bold fraternity of badge-wearing badasses cowered behind a subway door just a few feet away. While Lozito was recuperating in the hospital, the cowardly officer was being feted as a “hero” — and the city dismissed Lozito’s legal claim by invoking the well-settled doctrine that the police have no particularized duty to protect the public.

Slogans about the selfless service of law enforcement don’t find traction among people who have studied the issue to any depth.

Since police and rapists are the only violent predators who expect their victims to submit without resistance, it is appropriate that the coda of your puerile note obliquely expresses the hope that my wife will become the victim of serial rape. I am constrained to point out, however, that the word “acceptation” is not a synonym for the word you must have intended to use, which is “exception.”

Have a nice Christmas, if possible.

Will Grigg