RE:Wearing a Vest.
Sir, I think that I noted that I live far away from the evil clutches of the dismal Mr. Daley and the equally infamous Mr. Blagojevich. I didn’t make up any facts. Police shootings in general are an interest of mine, because for a period which is probably longer than you’ve been breathing, young man, I’ve watched law enforcement deteriorate across the country. It’s rapidly ceasing to be accountable to the people who pay the taxes and it’s increasingly militarised, polarised and it gets progressively more inward looking as time goes on.
Let me be blunt here, Sir. It’s impossible to police a population that you hold in contempt, and your’s is showing. Furthermore, I really wonder just how effective you are. You yourself said that your primary goal is to get home alive at night. It reminds me of that paradigm shift during the Vietnam War, when people started saying, “We have a war to fight”, rather than , “we have a war to win.” It looks to me like your three goals are, (1) to get home alive, (2) to collect a paycheck, and (3) to enjoy the perquisites of being a member of a defacto petty nobility.
I also find it just fascinating to note that when it comes to matters of little things like the technical question of whether a rifle is an appropriate tool for an officer of a patrol division, you don’t seem to have much to say. And since the merits of that are what we’re discussing, I think that the exchange is degenerating into my answering your rage at my questioning my self appointed betters. Your reaction says that in your mind I’m guilty of the moral equivalent of treason for questioning you, and the judgement of your superiors, and that my tone in doing so amounts to L’ese Majest. It would be humorous if you weren’t a commissioned police officer.
There are two points that you might want to consider. First off, are you there to do something or to be somebody? Your answer strongly appears to indicate the latter.
Secondly, you might want to remember Joseph Waumbaugh’s warning that while police work isn’t the most physically dangerous job in the world, (check a set of insurance company actuarial tables sometime) it is the most morally dangerous one. And whenever I get into a debate with somebody who responds as you do, first with a dismissive claim that I’m watching too much television, (frankly I haven’t had a reason to turn it on since Firefly got cancelled, )
and then those constant inferrences that none of us have any right to question or criticise you because we allegedly haven’t got a clue, I’m sadly convinced that Mr. Waumbaugh is right. And Waumbaugh, is a veteran from the Los Angeles Police Department.
And you’re not the only one who’s attitude convinces me that I’m right. A little story here is in order.
Once upon a time, my ex-wife got me to go to a presentation put on by a detective who was trying to sell a multilevel marketing insurance scheme. Because
my brother in law, (a good guy who as it turned out made an excellent Robbery/Homicide dick) was on the list for Detective.
Anyway, at this presentation, he kept referring to us all as “little people” and then correcting himself and changing it to “real people”. I wasn’t at all clear as to what he meant, but I was fairly certain that “little people” as a term of art, was a pejorative and most likely a strong one.
So, I called an old friend on the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office, and asked. After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
What my friend told me was that if I eliminated the racial specific, the term “little people” was a pejorative which meant roughly what the infamous “N-Word” does.
It’s nice to have such as succinct indicator of what the police actually think about the citizenry they serve. And again, I reiterate that you can’t effectively police a population that you hold in contempt.
It’s something you might want to consider before you get your panties in a wad over the fact that one of the peasants dares to question the acts and perquisites of our self appointed petty nobility.
Finally as to the tiny matter of whether you wear basketweave or not, (and you can always tell when somebody is losing because they start harping on peripheral issues) it’s common in most departments across the country for a very good reason. Unlike smooth leather it hides scratches, scuffs and scrapes that might otherwise made it unpresentable, by presenting a largely diffuse surface rather than a specular one.
A bit of history. At one time, policemen carried handcuffs and spare ammo in a leather lined pocket on one side of their coats and a small .32 revolver on the right. In their hands, they carried an ironwood billy club and in a breast pocket, a notebook, pencil and a whistle. And that’s what cops walked a beat with.
Then in the 1880′s or so, departments looking to save some money started buying military surplus revolvers to equip their police with, as well as larger civilian ones. Carrying those in a leather lined pocket didn’t work, so they had to go to a Sam Browne belt, frequently with a shoulder strap that had been originally intended to counterbalance the weight of a sword in military usage. Then over a period of time, they found that the leather got scuffed, scraped, ect and that replacement of belts that couldn’t be salvaged got expensive. That’s when the basketweave came in. (Consider the Francis Bannerman Catalog of that era sometime. It was the Galls of it’s day.)
And personally, I prefer the modern nylon stuff, but not everybody gets to carry it. It’s lighter, more resistant to scuffs and scratches and best of all, you don’t have a big brass buckle that contributes to some nasty cases of “cop rash.” (Really nasty dermatological condition where sweat and the metal combine to irritate the skin into something really nasty and hard to get over. If you see cops standing around with their hands in the front of their pants trying to hold their belt buckles away from their bodies, odds are good that they’ve got it. And it’s miserable.)
So much for that small detail.
I avidly await your next broadside, Sir.
