Yeah, I concur. Hell, I am a selective hater anymore. Some of the things I see law enforcement officers do still amazes me. The fearless self sacrifice of some brothers in blue and red make without a second thought, will never cease to impress me.
Then there is the flip side to that coin. The assholes with a giant chip on their shoulder that is seemingly filled with some serious stupidity and just mean spirit. They also never cease to amaze me. I can look at s shooting, good or bad, and j can put myself in that shituation and think through it, but i just cant put myself in some of these situations where the cop is just being an abusive asshole.
Yeah, i get emotional on some calls; and i see other officers doing the same, but that is when the brotherhood part takes over. I don’t mean “cover each other’s asses” but if I see an officer losing his temper, I step in and calm shit down. I have always been pretty cool and calm when dealing with difficult situations where people are being assholes.
Likewise, I have had other officers step in and handle things when I have an issue. Anytime I think of an example of this, I remember other officers protecting me from going to a dead baby call where a woman had a miscarriage on the street. My oldest son was just born, and we have had a few miscarriages, and the other officers knew I would have a lot of trouble with that, as it was, just knowing what had happened ducked with me quite a bit.
Just today, I attended a “handling the media” training session with a very experienced journalist who has been training Leo’s for 20 years after being a tv anchor in Chicago for 25 years. He discussed examples of good handling by officers during a critical incident, and examples of a piss poor job dealing with the press and inquires for info. Obviously, there were plenty of times that i was so pissed off snd dismayed by the actions of the officers. An example of the right way to handle a critical incident was the newtown massacre where the public information officer provided the press with updated info while making them understand that they were not to bother the families, which they respected because how well he handled the press. They also provided every family with their personal state patrol to get anything they needed-from groceries to picking up family members at the airport, and it was an example of a very good job during s very difficult situation. Then there was the Laquan McDonald shooting in Chicago, where they waited over 400 days to handle the situation, other than declaring that the obviously bad shoot was “justified” and doing everything possible to try and drag it out and cover it up. Also the Ferguson incident where the P.D. waited 20 hours before speaking to the press while Twitter and other social media ran rampant with false information making the situation into a powder keg.
Ok, done ranting.