TURN ON, TUNE IN, COP OUT
Here is why I don`t like them, don`t trust them and generally afraid of them, even when leading an honest crime-free life.
Before getting into some amateurish, yet serious psycho-sociological debate here is how I got my phobia of spiders and police.
I, my dad and my older brother were taking a walk through a Tivoli park in a small town, where we were on a summer vacation. The park was closed for some reason and my dad told me to watch out for the cops or the security guards. It was probably a joke, but as a 6 year old I took it upon myself as a serious mission to be on a look out. I don`t think I understood it then, but we were trespassing after all.
I`ve climbed up on a motionless carousel and was walking around it on a small ledge, with my face a couple of centimeters from the center column. After a few steps, being quite tense, as I was trying to hold the balance and having the lookout job in the back of my mind… I took one more careful side step, when I was faced with two seemingly giant spiders on my eye level, millimeters from my nose.
-”They are coming!!!” – I screamed in horror, having lost any ability to think for a second. Police coming to bust us, as an expected terror, got somehow mixed with seeing the 6 legged bastards. A sheer horror and panic- like you may experience if you are feeling tense in a silent room, when hearing a loud bang.
Since then I am afraid of spiders and cops. I have an arachnophobia, but my relations to authority may actually have developed more gradually.
I remember as a kid, seeing my uncle paying the traffic police to get out of any kinds of trouble. “Implied” drunken driving, speeding, picking up a whore, having US dollars in his pocket and generally driving a 2000/ Soviet monthly salaries-worth BMW etc.
I was still a child, when I watched the cops beating a crap out of a teenage petty thief. As a teenager I got a few slaps and kicks on my ass. Still all that is nothing traumatic and definitely not nearly enough to develop my present attitude.
My parents may not have installed a respect for the authority, but neither have they taught me to hate the cops. However what they did was to encourage me to read books by their own example. I think that laid the grounds to the ever-questioning mind. Depending on the books, of course.
My first hands on experience was during the Gothenburg`s G8`s riots, where I saw the pure, unchained hatred towards the peaceful demonstrators. I saw the police working together with the neo-Nazis to pour as much violence and physical abuse on the”flower-power” activists as was possible to get away with. And more… Read ”Bring me a Riot” chapter for the details, including the police shooting to kill at us, who had nothing with the property destruction to do (as if that would make it all right!).
I will stop my personal recollections here, because it is not my multiple arrests and even the jail time, which formed my relation to the cops. Actually I was treated mostly very fairly and decently, when actually breaking the law. My grudge is not personal.
In the early 70-es New York 3 quarters of the NYPD were convicted in participating in the heroine trade. Similar numbers showed up in the LAPD`s cocaine trade in the 80-es. When the official numbers are 3 out four policemen convicted- it implies that basically 100% were either involved in one way or were in it with their silent approval and/or on the pay role. History teaches us nothing- a simple fact of life. Besides- what one is supposed to do? To completely distrust the very people, who are paid to protect one from the chaos and mayhem? Of course not: one chooses to believe that those cases and those countries or states and those times are fluxes, complete exceptions from the rule. And the rule is that cops are good and honest.
Recent hidden camera recording shocked the innocent Sweden a few month ago. It showed a couple of policemen talking to each other, using harshly racist expressions, such as: “fucking niggers this, stinking Turks that”.
-How awful! - The Swedes thought. Strangely not once have I heard even a surface analysis of the matter.
So here it is: The two policemen were talking to each other amongst the group of their colleagues in a 12-man riot car. A simple fact, that means, that this kind of racism is a norm amongst the local “serve and protect” boys. Otherwise they would never have dared to speak in that manner. Ask any Turkish or a black kid from a ghetto and they will tell you that police are extremely racist. Not because the cops all look like the Arian brotherhood, but because the ghetto folks with darker skin KNOW it and have experienced it on their own brownish skin.
In the case of the heroine trade scandal in New York it took one insanely honest policeman. I stress the word”insanely”, as he not only refused multimillion dollar bribes (which would be Honest enough), but went alone against the world with his life at stake. By some miracle he survived almost 10 years, being hunted by both the narcotics mafia and the police force. He knew that he was fighting the war that cannot be won: the amount of drugs kept on growing, while the number of crooked cops… Well- what do you think? Do you think that it`s something special with the New York`s humidity, that made them turn rotten?
Here is what I think:
As the religious people are in no way more moral than the non-believers, so are the police are no angels, because of their job- on the contrary!
While they are just as human as some of us: violent, dishonest, greedy, addictive, power-tripping, abusive, racist etc. They are different in a few points:
a). They have a gun (having a gun changes ones psyche- try simply shooting a few rounds) Really: try! Now imagine this m.-fucker refusing to stop, while reaching into his pocket… Even by the book-you shoot.
b). Their work is to look at the populous as the potential criminals (issues of distrust to say the least)- prejudice is a part of the job. It is this instincts, to see a “fuckin nigger” as a dealer or the “tattooed shit” as a gang member or a “red skirt bitch” as a whore that makes one a “good” cop.
c). The power trip- they Are the law. Any sort of disobedience is a crime in it self and even can get you killed. A policeman knows, that he (she?) has a right to kill a person for as little as not putting up his/her hands behind his/her head within under 5 seconds. Doctors, especially sergeants, are said to get the “god`s complex”. Basically a type of superiority psychosis. Times 10-and you have a cop.
d). Getting away with murder – believe it or not it has happened and will happen regularly. Yes- even in Sweden.
e). They are the brotherhood with the “us” against “them” mentality, very similar to the organized crime. These are not my words, but of the several psychologist, saying that the criminals and the police have a very similar mentality.
f). Daily temptation – you are offered bribes, combined with the general disillusionment when it comes to crime fighting (you fight them, jail them, bust them- but they are just getting stronger in numbers)
g). Just that- the great disillusionment: what`s the point? Maybe that is why the police work has become so cynical, according to statistics: only 30% of the crimes are ever solved, despite the fact that the”good face” statistics are kept up by busting marijuana smoking teenagers, prostitutes and wasted petty thieves.
Instead of the guys, who smuggle in tons of dope, sell foreign girls per kilo or rob the banks as if for the candies. In other words- 3% is a more trustworthy number, when it comes to solving the actual crimes.
What do you think? I hope at least you get my point. I don`t hate cops as I don`t hate the criminals- for me they are generally one and the same and I still meet them and judge them from person to person. Still- at least the criminals are often more honest. I had a Robin Hood complex once-stripping, rebuilding and re-selling the stolen office computers cheaply, while many of the heavy duty criminals turn to god, without ”changing their ways”. Still- at least I didn`t get paid to ”serve and protect”.
Swedish police force is one of the most expensive in the world and it constantly craves more resources. G.W.Bush got his billions of dollars using the terrorism hysteria.
Police in Sweden (probably everywhere else also) uses the multimedia as the “false flag operations” pole. Open the world`s biggest news paper: “Metro”. Majority of it consists of the simple idea, repeated daily, page after page: “people are evil”. Pedophiles, rapists, murderers, thieves, cone-artists. We are self left to come to the conclusion: we need more police! Pedophile and the internet has become imprinted in the common psyche, while the truth is, that the word “church” or “priest” should hang closer together, than the www and this exceptional pervertion. If you were to trust the numbers.
It was almost a Freudian slip, when a Swedish professor of criminology admitted, that actually the number of heavy crimes has not risen significantly (not more that would be expected with a 20% population increase) in decades. People kill and rape each other about as often as they did in the 50-es.
(I wrote a piece on the statistic as being the most manipulative pseudo-science ever- if you want to dig through the archives. 
All in all- this is why I don`t trust the police and the yellow press.
The very few times I`ve been a victim of a crime, was as the life`s great truths proclaimes: “you live by the gun- you die by the gun” or for you , more metaphysically inclined: “what goes around, comes around”. Even the times I was completely innocent- the thought of asking the police for help has never crossed my mind.
My only brother was murdered… Well- I will shut up now: to honor his memory, by not making it a case in point. Except for those of you, who would say:
“huh- where would you go if your dearest and nearest was murdered?” -Certainly not to the police.
-“There are good cops!” – I`ve heard and I agree. There are good killers also. But as I`ve mentioned- the first ones are getting paid to be good, while the others choose to get paid to be “bad”.
As with anything in this blog- I am not trying to make an anarchist out of you, I just hope that you may give it a thought.
