The interesting question, to me, is whether the higher rate of beating their wives is mainly because of what kind of people they are, or mainly because they know they are so unlikely to face consequences for it.

I’m going to withdraw that defense for police unions now. Cops should worry about job security.

I think what is far more important is the personality type that seeks out becoming law enforcement.

Totally agree.

Also, another factor (from personal experience with an acquaitence), is that some become cops because everybody in their family is a cop and that’s really all they know and they have an easy “in”.

On the that website, I was threatened with murder, murder and rape of my family, home invasion, etc. by individuals all over this country who have supposedly sworn to “serve and protect” or at a minimum, uphold the laws of their state and US Constitution. Cops are scumbags.

The good news is that they’ll be more effective at convincingly infiltrating Mexican drug cartels if they go this route. Birds of a feather or something like that.

“Officer Lopez was extremely professional,” Ortiz wrote. “Many of us would have acted differently if a fellow cop pulled a gun on them. I would have thought she possibly was a Baker Act that stole an FHP car and a uniform,” he wrote, using a legal term for mentally unstable people who are considered dangerous.

And she would have been justified in emptying her entire magazine into Ortiz if he pulled that shit on her.

My guess for the high cop divorce rate is that it’s tied to the fact that cops treat their wives a lot like they treat everyone else: http://www.purpleberets.org/violence_police_families.html
http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp

For those who don’t feel like clicking, these articles show that cops are four times as likely as other men to beat their wives, and to beat them more severely, and said wives have more trouble getting any kind of official help.

I think what is far more important is the personality type that seeks out becoming law enforcement. No doubt there are a few that want to serve the community in a way, but I would wager the majority take the job because of pay or job security, with a third middle group taking it for the power they get to weild. In addition institutional filters during the hiring process tend weed out critical thinkers and those who question their supperiors or peers. Add to that a few months in cop culture and you get a group of individuals who are mostly corrupt, duplicitous, and thuggish.

They are not stupid in a general sense, and are often cunning enough to know exactly what they can and cannot get away with. I’ld wager the handful of idiots Radley tends to report on, who either don’t know or don’t care about getting caught are the minority. I keep in mind a quote from the gangster movie Layer Cake “Know and respect your enemy! It is only very stupid criminals who think the law is stupid.”

I had that happen with me. A good friend from high school and someone I even lived with briefly after college became a cop. When someone you like and trust starts putting people in a cage for doing the same things you and he used to do together, you lose respect for them. He told me a story once about busting a high school party and stuffing a kid for having a sack of weed. I asked him why he didn’t just flush it and scare the kid good instead of busting him. He had a rookie with him that day and it would have looked bad. I miss the friend I had. Fuck that cop guy he is now.

The cops here all hold bachelors degrees.

With all due respect, if we’re talking about a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, I’m not impressed.

So thanks for the momentary bright spot, but you should warn us not to read the article if we want the good feeling to last :-)

The (biggest) problem with police unions is that they’re made of police.