Not All Cops Are Bastards. Here's Why.

No one group of people is entirely evil. Except Nazis.

Photo by Luis Villasmil

In the interests of full transparency, I’ve always had a sticky relationship with authority.

Most of that stickiness is justified. I never set out to become a non-conformist; I was born that way. Most nerds like me have no sense of hierarchy or what’s popular or even appropriate, which is why we so often get it wrong. But it also makes us a walking target for those whose job it is to keep a sharp eye on social and legal infractions.

My high school Vice Principal, for instance, regularly sent me home for not wearing a bra. The rules were all female students had to wear a bra, and I regularly broke those rules. You can’t blame the guy. I was passionately committed to the idea that it was none of his business what I wore against my body. I also wasn’t wholly opposed to the idea of going home. When you’re young, you have a hard time seeing things from anybody’s perspective but your own. You’re hormonal and angry anyway, so why not spearhead a pointless rebellion?

Lately, I’ve been examining my own assumptions about authority, particularly law enforcement. I have an immediate family member who’s a cop. Sadly, this has forced me to reassess my kneejerk, visceral hatred of cops and to adopt a more nuanced view of the profession. It’s a lot of work. I didn’t want to do it. My prejudices are warm comfort in a complicated world. Also, I had a ton of support for my poor opinion of law enforcement from others of my political persuasion.

But there were two occasions when the police came to my rescue. Policing is a thankless job, so in fairness, I decided to share what happened.

On average, 6-7.5 million people are stalked in the United States per year, nearly one in six women and one in seventeen men. Half are stalked before the age of twenty-five, which makes sense if you think about it. The young are least able to defend themselves. I was too young to defend myself. As reluctant as I am to characterize myself as a victim, that’s what I was.

Photo by Judeus Samson

It started out as a normal, even pedestrian, relationship. He was older, a med student who worked in a guitar store. I’d been introduced to him by a previous boyfriend. When that relationship ended, the med student, who I will call Jason, was quick to offer his emotional support. We went out a few times, but I felt an inexplicable sense of dread whenever I was around him. I woke up one morning to discover he’d been staring at me while I slept, an eerily detached sort of gaze that sent chills up my spine. I quickly ended the relationship.

That’s when the 2AM calls started. Breathing heavily, he’d ask, “Are you still my girl?” I’d slam down the phone with my heart pounding out of my chest. In the time before cell phones and Caller ID, it was impossible to know who was on the other end of the line. But of course it was Jason. The timbre of his voice was unmistakable. I had a hard time sleeping.

At the University of Maryland, I started seeing him staring up at the windows of my classrooms. He’d lurk outside of lecture halls and the Quad. A dozen times, he waited by my car in the parking lot. Shaking, I’d get a ride from a friend and end up sleeping on her couch for a month, too frightened to go home. It affected my grade average. It greatly affected my peace of mind. At the insistence of my sociology professor, I went to campus police to report the stalking, but was told that if no real harm had been done, it would be impossible to prove Jason was, in fact, committing a crime.

Every time I trudged to class, I felt him watching.

After a while, you don’t need the stalker in order to feel paranoid. Even the walls have eyes. The hypervigilance of your own mind turns your life into a nightmarish Bosch painting. Right at the time when a young woman is most feeling her agency and savoring her freedom and independence, stalking can erase those gains overnight.

Jason called my brother in New York and said he’d received a tip that someone so not him was going to sabotage my car, stage a breakdown, and then attack me when I was forced to pull over. My brother, who had no idea who Jason was, appropriately freaked out. Now, I was frightened and angry, which is better than just frightened. I decided to return to my apartment, stockpile weapons, and wait for Jason to make his move.

The police caught Jason breaking into my car that night. His object was my laundry, which was in the trunk. Our apartment security guard saw him stuffing bras and panties into his jacket, called the cops, and the cops arrived. When Jason tried to fight them off, they wrestled him to the ground and hog-tied him. I hope it hurt.

Studying in my apartment, I had no idea what was going on until the policeman came to my door. I’m one of those people who can usually keep it together when the pressure’s on. Once the pressure’s off, I fall apart. Now that I knew I was safe, I collapsed in the doorway. The policeman helped me to the couch, brought me a glass of water, and spent twenty minutes calming me down. His manner was completely professional. Not once did I suspect his motives or catch him gazing at me in that speculative, predatory way so many men did.

Photo by Sara KurfeB

Because of his kindness, I survived that experience. Moreover, I learned not to question my own instincts. When someone creeped me out, I gave myself permission to leave. No one ever stalked me again.

The second time a cop did me a mitzvah was less dramatic, but no less impactful. Five years after the stalking incident, I was driving my cute little two-seater convertible on Memorial Drive in Houston. Memorial is a four-lane road divided by a double-yellow line. I had the top down, wind in my hair, and then BAM, someone crossed that double-yellow line and smashed into me. My airbag instantly deployed, filling the air with acrid, toxic-smelling smoke. My left wrist was broken, hand dangling at an unnatural angle. I couldn’t move.

The kid who crashed into me was driving a land-yacht of a car, thank goodness. He’d had his license for all of fifteen minutes. His maiden voyage, and he’d already totaled my car. Strange, the things your brain gloms onto when you’re in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. His last name was Ick. The policeman riding along kept acidly referring to him as “Mr. Ick.”

Mr. Ick made the mistake of bemoaning his own fate. “Gee, now my mom is never going to let me drive the car,” he whined. “I’m totally screwed.”

And that cop let him have it.

The tirade was spectacular, in hindsight. Had the badge been on my chest, I would have done the same. That cop tore into Ick like a Cat 5 hurricane. “Do you have any f***g idea what you’ve done?” he shouted. “You damn near killed this woman! And I’m going to make it my personal mission to ensure you never get behind the wheel of a car again!”

With a broken wrist and busted ribs, I was in too much pain to yell at the kid. But the kid needed to be yelled at. Apparently, he’d dropped his ice cream in the footwell of the car and then reached down to get it. Boom goes the dynamite.

That policeman was a hero that day. My hero. He made sure I was taken care of, and he made sure Ick was fully cognizant of the damage he’d done. A car is a weapon pointed in one direction. I sincerely hope Ick got the message.

We need law enforcement. In my opinion, we need better paid, better educated law enforcement. We also need a massive reform of the criminal justice system and the elimination of private bail bondsmen.

No one calls the police when they’re having a good day. For that reason alone, we should reward exemplary police work. I have never forgotten the compassion shown to me by decent cops, just as I have never forgotten the cruelty shown to me by bad ones. Our job as a society is to ensure that police departments are attracting top recruits by offering attractive salaries, and then educating them in an appropriate manner, with special emphasis on valuing Black lives.

As my Grandma used to say, “Making someone your enemy sure doesn’t make him your friend.”

Do you have any good cop/bad cops stories? If so, I’d love to hear them. Please comment below.

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