The extinction of the Peace Officer

If you've been around for more than 4 decades, you probably remember a very different "cop" from today's police officers. To understand some, let me emphasize this, SOME, not all of the problems, drilling into the metamorphosis of that era's police, you have to ask questions that will quickly take you away from the police themselves. Before I begin, this is not in defense of what police due today. In the same sense that explaining why a dog is vicious is not a defense of the dog's actions.

The police are not a company or business that developed and grew themselves commercially. They are formed and charged by our local governments. IMHO, the biggest change in the nature of the police officer happened (and continues to happen) due to the war on drugs. This is possibly the most costly of all wars that America has taken a battle position in. It has destroyed the lives of people, families, communities in America, and other parts of the world since the day it began.

Why? Because vices, while they may be destructive are human safety valves. Banning them does not remove them, it moves them. It also turns them into a profitable business. Very profitable depending on the demand. When you have something so profitable that our own government has partaken in it to raise money for black ops that congress wouldn't fund, then you've created a monster that you probably will never defeat.

When the illegal drug traders here started to become organized and powerful, is when they started to arm themselves and fight back. Police departments quickly became outgunned. They had to seek more powerful weapons and learn more battle tactics. When the drug traders began to commit horrendous crimes to create fear and control, the police had to become more intimidating aggressive.

As the book of laws grew fatter police officers had more to learn and try to understand their complexities and now in an environment where laws are changing faster than attorneys themselves can stay on top of them, the police have to stop the legal education at some point in order to just do their jobs.

As the image of the police officer has fallen from community white night to a necessary evil, and Hollywood had conditioned us to think it's ok to be disrespectful and combative, today's new police officers, as humans, face a lot of anger and hate they did not necessarily earn individually. It is transferred to them by putting on a uniform that presents them as some kind of dictators secret guard group to repress, scare, and abuse their citizens. Thus, when today's police officer faces a door, they don't know whether in the instant that door opens, if they'll be facing somebody's kid who spits in their face, the bloody face of a poor battered woman, a dog about to attack them or a bullet. How do you prepare for that?

This is the end result of an escalation that was started by, among other things, the war on drugs. The handling of which resulted in the destruction of citizens lives and families. The result of which bred generations of hate and broken families. The result of which has created and maintained a welfare culture. The result of which creates and maintains a group of people encompassed by crime and poverty. The result of which is a class of citizens that is constantly confronted with both crime and punishment which is met often with an unjustified amount of suspicion, force, and abuse.

If the peace officer is ever to return, the rule books need to be thinner in order to defund the businesses which provide these crimes as a service. When something is so profitable that it creates its own armies, and it's only this profitable because there are laws that made it this way. The simplest solution is to accept the optimal situation rather than the ideal situation and remove those laws and deal with causes of the problems rather than try to block the symptoms.