Reply #24: I'll never forget when my eyes were first opened to Philly Cops (and cops in general) [View All]

[tom_paine]

I remember working in a restaurant in Philly in which the two local patrol cops would stop in most days for coffee and/or lunch. They seemed like OK guys, regular guys, anyway. They often used to eat at the back table where the waitresses and busboys used to eat and shoot the breeze, rather than with the customers, so we often used to chat with them.

One day, it's just me and the two cops sitting at the back table one afternoon. I was eating lunch with my head down on this day, so we weren't chatting sports or whatever, as we often did. They were chatting between themselves and I sat to one side, keeping to myself and eating quietly.

I am not purposefully listening in on them, but I am sitting less than ten feet from them, so bits of their conversation are breaking through my thoughts.

Then I heard it, and my blood chilled.

Cop #1: Hey, last night there was a rape victim on Xxxxxxxx St.

Cop #2: Yeah?

Cop #1: Yeah. You wanna go up and take a look at her?

I don't know what was said after that because my mind was blown away and I was processing what I just heard. Did they really just say that? Protect and serve, my ass!

I was only 16 at the time, so I just sat there and kept eating lunch, saying nothing. But inside I was sick. Maybe today, almost 30 years later, I would have registered my disgust, although in the age of Bushler, pointing out cops' bad behavior is likely to get one tasered, no mater how grotseque said cops are behaving.

I know, I know, it was only two individual cops, but since then I have seen cops perjure (well, it would be perjury if us Imperial Amerikan Peasants did it) themselves under oath on the stand, among other things, that make me think these individual cops were not so unique.

Let me say unequivocally, I think at least half the cops are mostly decent people trying to do the right thing, but half is far too few.