Sometimes it seems like we want our cops to be Mother Theresa: kindly, saintly, filled with understanding and compassion for the needy. At other times it seems like we want cops to be robots: precise, unvarying, imperturbable, able to analyze each situation with precision accuracy, never faltering or making a mistake. Sometimes, we seem to want cops to be social workers or psychoanalysts.
Of course, police are neither Mother Theresa nor are they robots or therapists. What they are is law enforcement officers. They are only human, with all the foibles that implies. But there is one thing I, personally, would like to see in cops, and that is a warrior mentality. I want my cops to relish a good fight, and to be good fighters. I want my cops to be unafraid when things get bad. I don’t want my cops to be like those failures in Uvalde, Texas—timid cowards who ran because they were afraid of getting hurt.
Not everyone qualifies, or should, to be a cop. I would like to think that police departments hire the most qualified men and women they can find: people not afraid of confrontation. But we all know police departments are scouring the bottom of the barrel looking to fill positions—after all, who wants to be a cop these days? I’m not saying OPD is hiring incompetents. But I’ve heard stories that the newest crop of recruits may not be everything we want in a police officer.
Officers ought to have a combative spirit because, lord knows, they’re going to find themselves in combat. You can train a man in combat skills, but you can’t give him the élan to approach policing with vigor and relish. It’s one thing for a cop to organize a Christmas party for underprivileged kids, but it’s quite another for him to rush into a violent situation where bad people have firearms.
Lots of people complain, here in Oakland, that cops allow crime to flourish even when they see it. They’ll drive right past a guy doing drugs in the open. They tend not to mess with sideshows. They don’t interfere with mass retail theft or downtown riots. It must be very confusing when the public hears about stuff like that. You can’t blame them for thinking, “Why are we paying these guys?”
There’s are two good reasons for why cops sometimes stand down. One is that, due to the shortage of qualified candidates, police may hire individuals who are not really cut out for policing. The second reason is because cops—being human—are afraid of getting fired, or sued by ambulance-chasing lawyers. Cops are so picked on, so scrutinized, so minutely examined and held to higher standards, that they tend to think, Why the hell should I bust that dude who’s doing drugs? He might pick a fight with me, and I might have to use force, and then the Police Commission and the ACLU and John Burris and my own Department are going to come down on me like a ton of bricks, and I won’t be able to fight back. So fuck it. Let the sunuvabitch shoot up. I don’t care.
Don’t blame them for that, readers. It’s been forced upon them by the prevalent attitude in society—the one that wants cops to be Mother Theresa and robots and therapists. No cop wants to do his job only to have it result in being put on administrative leave and hounded in a civil lawsuit. No cop needs that hassle. It’s been suggested that, in San Francisco, when Chesa Boudin was D.A., cops went “on strike” to protest his coddling of criminals. It was almost like they were saying, “All right, Mr. D.A., you want to prosecute us instead of bad guys? Fine. See how you like it when there’s a crime wave and you get the blame.”
I don’t know if that’s an accurate portrayal of S.F.P.D. But it is true that cops felt hobbled by Boudin, and it would have been natural for them to react like that. Again, why would they put their lives and careers on the line to bust someone, only to have Chesa Boudin refuse to press charges?
We all think there’s too much crime. We all want it to stop. I’m saying that it’s not going to stop until we unleash cops and let them do their job. If they have to get tough with some perps, fine. We don’t necessarily want The Riders to come back. But I also don’t want pussyfoot cops who have been sent through sensitivity training for 400 hours and yet lack the cojones to go after criminals and take them down. I want cops whom criminals are afraid of. I want, yes, tough guys. The enemy—career criminals—is tough. They know how to fight, they have weapons, they like their wanton lifestyle, they’re sociopaths, and they won’t go down easy. The only way to stop them is to have strong, bold hunters wearing the blue uniform and possessing a powerful, incorruptible sense of justice.
Steve Heimoff