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I Wanna Share With You A Story About The Police, And Why I Don’t Like Them

I grew up not liking cops. I grew up not trusting cops. I grew up not in a bad place per say where my friends, family or neighbors got abused or hurt by cops, but I’ve had enough bad experiences to where I formed the opinion that the ranks of many police forces are composed of bigots, homophobes, racist, short tempered rednecks looking to pick fights and all manner of other macho dickhead simpletons with something to prove and a willingness to take out their aggression on anyone and everyone. 

The story I’m gonna share with you today isn’t one about abuse of power or authority, but one of apathy and misconduct that could have potentially cost someone their life, and nearly did.

I moved to Georgia in 1998 to attend school at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) studying graphics design. That’s really kinda beside the point but lets you know how I got there in the first place. 

So I’m living in Savannah and its kind of a weird place. Nothing is open late other than bars and the tattoo shop where I worked (California Tattoo) and its a pretty damned boring place all told. The only times I remember ever even seeing cops in Savannah was once when I walked into a gas station wearing my motorcycle helmet to pay for gas and the cop inside told me to take it off cause its against the law to enter buildings wearing a helmet apparently, the time they were chasing some guy down my alley shortly before they caught him and beat his ass, and the other when I get rear ended in my friend Abe’s car, past that I cant think of a single time I ever saw a cop in that city, oh accept this one time when I saw a cop….

So I’m riding down the road on my motorcycle in the middle of summer, hot as fuck and as I always do, I’m scanning the road for potential problems like holes, debris and other such nonsense that could be detrimental to my motorcycling. 

As I’m heading into downtown on Fulton Street (I think that was the name) behind a box truck I notice a manhole cover in the middle of the street is missing! I nearly run right into the damn thing but I allowed myself enough space behind the truck that I had time to react once I saw it come into view. I was fucking horrified! 

Thankfully about a block down from where the manhole cover was missing I noticed a cop sitting on the side of the road so I pulled over to alert him to what was going on.  So I pull up next to the officer who is sitting there doing some paperwork from probably just having given someone a ticket or something and I excuse myself and interrupt him to let him know whats up.

“Excuse me, sir”

“Yeah”

“I just wanted to let you know that about a block back there is a manhole cover in the middle of the street that is missing”

“Yeah okay” 

And with this he looks away and continues filling in his paperwork and just brushes me off without even batting an eye really.

“Sir I don’t think you understand what I’m saying, I didn’t say there is a pothole, I said there is a manhole cover missing in the middle of the street that I almost ran into!”

“Yeah, okay”

“Aren’t you gonna call anyone?! I could have been killed or seriously injured had I not seen it and run into the thing” 

“Okay, thanks for your concern, I need to fill this out so I’m gonna ask you to leave now” 

Holy fucking shit! I was beside myself. This cop didn’t give two shits about the fact that I came within an inch of life or that someone else could get hurt as a result of someones fucking prank! 

The cop obviously didn’t give a shit and just kept doing whatever the fuck he was doing without any regard for something that could turn into a very serious problem. 

So I did what any concerned citizen would do, I drove back out into the road where the manhole cover was, parked my motorcycle in front of it, got off and called 911. 

When I spoke to the dispatcher she asked what the emergency was and I calmly explained to her what was happening and where I was and she said she would send a unit out immediately. She actually checked and said there was one in the area she would dispatch to the scene to which I replied…

“Don’t bother, I’ve already spoken to the officer and he couldn’t be less concerned about the problem. He completely blew me off when I tried to explain to him what was going on.” 

The dispatcher sounded a bit confused about what I had just said so I explained to her what happened with the officer and she said she would make a note of it and send someone out right away. 

This was just another in a long line of incidences that have soured me on the police at large. This sort of behavior is unacceptable, derelict and disgusting in no uncertain terms and it is largely the norm.

Police aren’t allowed bad days. Their jobs are of such a serious nature that they cant be dismissive, they cant be angry, they cant be anything less than beyond reproach when it comes to behaving in the most excellent fashion and protecting the citizenry of our country….and yet they behave largely like this. 

Maybe is we paid these men and women more it would help them to see their jobs as being more than just a means to survive by living in many cases paycheck to paycheck. Maybe if we had higher standards for entry into this field we wouldn’t see the egregious and despicable types of behavior that we see on the streets of Anaheim and other lower income cities across the country. Maybe if we took back control of our local government from politicians who are only trying to get sweetheart deals for their developer buddies and corporations that want to strip money out of local economies to give tax breaks to them, we would have a stronger more reliable system. 

So yeah, I don’t like cops.