To be a police officer today who swears to enforce the obscene laws that are on the books is bad enough. (A statement of what is worse will follow.) It is the "free-will" equivalent of selling your soul. You violate rights, brutalize innocent people, create injustice where there was none...and, then, you hide behind "it's my job" or "I was only obeying orders" or "the law is the law." There is never so much as a hint or a whiff of personal responsibility that the police officer as an individual is *choosing* to violate, to brutalize, to be unjust. "It's my job" -- you hear it over and over.

But tell me...how does the obscenity of the policeman's actions get wiped clean by the fact that he receives money for being a thug? Doesn't payment make his wretched conduct worse, not better? If I brutalize people out of a compulsion, then I am a sick individual who can (perhaps) be helped. If I make the conscious and consistent choice over time to brutalize the innocent in order to draw a nice salary and safe pension....then I am piece of ethical filth that decent society should revile. I don't even have the patina of an excuse to avoid personal responsibility. And, yet, the world nods in compliance and even in respect at our Boys in Blue. Yes officer, they agree, it is your job to tase me into unconscionusness for a traffic offense. Yes officer, it is your job to break down my door in the middle of the night because a neightbor has reported a bag of marijuana. Yes,officer, you as an individual never, ever bear personal responsibility for your acts -- you know...the ones for which your victims pay through taxes for you to perform, the same acts that would be illegal and denounced as immoral if performed by an non-uniformed individual. And yes officer, those who question your exalted authority to beat, tase, and/or shoot anyone deserve a good long tasing themselves. Examples of acceptable excuses include, "I felt threatned", "they were resisting", "they were obstructive," or "they did not obey an order."

What draws this rant? A headline in the Des Moines Register: "Patrolman kills neighbor's dog, says he felt threatened." The article opens,



The dog he shot was a black lab and, as a friend commented, "Labradors are among the most human-friendly dogs on the whole damn planet." And, yet, like tasing the elderly, the police officer decided on deadly force as a solution to an everyday problem. I opened this post by stating "To be a police officer today who swears to enforce the obscene laws that are on the books is bad enough." What's worse? Police officers who demand immunity from the law in their everyday life, their everyday misconduct. Does anyone believe that a non-uniformed individual who pulled a gun and shot a neighbor's dog would be officially exonerated and not so much as slapped on the wrist by the system? Ah...but we are dealing with a cop, not with an average Joe who has to obey the laws. Cops are a class and a privileged elite unto themselves. If they feel threatened, then they can kill and it will be a de facto just shoot due to their feelings.

Gee...I felt threatened by a clerk in the grocery last night. What do you think would happen if I'd shot him? Or his dog?