Policing

I AM NOT FOND of police officers. I respect what they do, and support what they do, but their invariably stern, stolid, stoic personalities I find somewhat off putting. Certain professions seem to attract certain personality types: the priggish, pedantic, nit picking high school English teacher. The friendly bar tender, the analytical, pugnacious attorney at law. Bless them all, for their varieety, service to humankind, and behavorial tendencies. On the iconic television show "Law and Order", officers Briscoe and Curtis, good guys, good detectives, struck me as being a couple of impudent thugs who can't wait to get the perp into the interrogation room and rough him up before the court appointed attorney arrives and shuts it down. When I was five years old, ny father, a lawyer and friend of the police, took me down to the local police station at my request. I wanted to meet a real cop. I expected a blue uniform. What I got was a suit and tie. I was shaking hans with a detective, was disappointed, and dad assured me that, uniform or not, I had indeed met an actual officer of the law. My disappointment lingered...in high school, I was staggering home from a party one night, drunk as a seventeen year old skunk like all my classmates,and wasstopped by an officer, who inquired into my health. When he smelled alcohol, he laughed,and told me to go straight home, which I did. That cop, I liked. In those days, when America was still on its post war drinking binge, we laughed at drunkenness, while driving, or afoot. Then came mad mothers, and the fun was over. When I was twenty three, with a fresh bachelor's degree and no plans, I decided to "audition" for a job s a police officer. At the end of the day of training and testing, an officer interviewed me and tried to talk me out of it, at which he succceeded. There's no money in it, you have a good education, and so forth. One look at my long hair and Rolling Stones T shirt and he knew I wasn't the cop type. On another occasion, when I broke up a fight between two mentally clallenged teenagers, the police arrived too late,took the credit, and admonished me I should have been able to handle the situation myself. Well, whatever. When the "Bobbies" in London strapped on guns for the first time a few decades ago, I knew that the British empire had crumbled. Policing came to teh land of freedom in the eighteen thirties, through sheer necessity. Previously, Philapelphians had been on their own in the city of brotherly quakerly love. My ost recent incident occurred a couple of years ago when a police officer parked his car in my driveway, and handed me a court order prohibiting me from ever again entering a local "Dollar Genaral" store. Suspicion of shoplifting, I reckon. Well, whatever the hell. Nowadays my only contact in my small town quiet consists of the one and only town cop driving past my house a couple of times a day. I don't think he smells any marijuana smoke although he could. Its just that he has nothing better to do, and gas to burn. Doing his rounds,like Marshall Dillon. With each passing day I despise "I.C.E." more, for the following reasons: They are Trump's Gestapo, they rough people up, they help deport good law abiding American citizens, and they really have little or nothing to do with "customs enforcement." May I.C.E. melt into the gutter, and drain into the sewer of the history of ignominy. But I'll give'em this" when yo really need one, they come inmighty handy. I consider them heroes, despite my misgivings. I never,when in the presence of a police officer, fail to thank the lady or gentleman for all that they do. Some of them say thank you, some don't. It is the ones who do not who ruin it all for me.