Police work from the inside

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, police, stories

"If I find myself getting to be such a hard ass, I'll have to find another line of work." Several of the policemen who tell their stories in Walk the Blue Line: They Walk the Line Between Life and Death, by James Patterson, Matt Eversmann, and Chris Mooney, expressed such a feeling.

Imagine that your work brings you daily into scenes of tragedy, sadness, mayhem and death. A man, about whom you know almost nothing, dying in front of you after your partner shot him…or maybe you shot him; he reminds you of a brother or a cousin who may be having his own problems, and you make a silent prayer that he doesn't stray this far. The child, battered almost to death, on whom you performed CPR while the ambulance was coming; you thank God she isn't your own little daughter or granddaughter. A gunfight broke out at a street party, and you're there just in time to begin binding up the wounded—it's a miracle nobody died this time—while the other partygoers have their phones out recording everything and posting it to Instagram; are all today's kids this callous? you think.

How long would it take for you to develop PTSD? Several of the officers record their own struggles with emotional shutdown, and how, in past years, to seek help was a career-killer. But times have changed, thank God. Many police departments (but not all, sadly) have instituted programs of counseling and emotional therapy to help members cope with just the overpowering emotional load they experience. One of the roughly 50 stories notes that three times as many police officers commit suicide as are killed by criminals. In smaller departments, the rate is 2-3 times as high as in larger departments. (By the way, murders of police in most years is about 40 nationwide. In 2020, 264 were killed. And the Leftist media called the riots "mostly peaceful"!)

One consequence of the recent, enormous social shift in (some people's) attitude toward police are reflected in many officers' stories in this book. More and more officers are leaving police work because of daily contact with extremely hateful people, whom they have been sent to help. One response has been more community policing, which emphasizes relationships between the policemen and policewomen and the people where they live and work. Larger numbers of police live in the communities they serve. They interact with those around them, both in and out of uniform.

Several officers also reported the positive consequences of treating everyone kindly, with respect. A prostitute turns her life around, gets a degree and a career. A drug dealer gets out of "the business" and visits the cop who talked with him kindly, to thank him. While there isn't much chance to treat a maniac kindly when he is rushing at you with a knife or is shooting at you, much more frequently people need to be questioned, and an officer's attitude makes all the difference in the outcome. One officer, a third-generation policeman, tries to live his father's instruction, to be "tough on crime but kind to people."

There does appear to be a sea change in the recent generation or two. One story is of the Columbine shooting, now 24 years in the past. It was new, it was unique (at the time!). One shocking thing I learned was the level of violence the shooters had prepared for, not just with guns and ammunition, but with dozens, perhaps more than 100, small bombs they were carrying! The shooters intended to be a 2-man terrorist army, a weapon of mass destruction all their own.

It's really funny, how many people, for at least a couple of years, have been shouting, "Defund the police!" But now when they get in trouble they shout, "Help me!!" I remember "Off the Pigs!" of almost 60 years ago giving way to demands for more police protection as the Hippies of "the 60's" got older, got married, and had children. But they didn't take it far enough; Columbine and the many mass shootings that followed show the tragedy of the "gun-free zone" doctrine. A gun-free zone is a target, a fat, juicy, undefended target.

In my early 20's I was pulled over for speeding. After the young officer filled out the ticket, he gave it to me, with tears in his eyes, and said, "Take care, would you?" I realized that he probably knew someone who had recently died in a car crash. It helped me a lot.

Our son's father-in-law is a retired policeman. He's one of the nicest guys I know. He's also the one you want on hand for Thanksgiving dinner: he knows five ways to cook a turkey, and can do them all at once.

Police are people, too.