> 1. Cops are indoctrinated on the job, an indoctrination which, obviously,
> eschews "class analysis" of anything, glorifies their own role as defenders
> of (an amorphously defined) "society" from "the criminal element" and
> vindicates the use (and utter necessity) of violence. Although this
> indoctrination occurs among all races of cops, it is a white supremacist
> ideology, evidenced by the treatment of non-white suspects by non-white
> officers acting under the direction of white officers (witness Philadelphia).
>
There is another important dimension of cop-think that rests on bizarre masculine identifications, and hence on sexism. Female cops tend, as a result, to be better to deal with, though some adopt the same macho manner, rather like some black cops act like white cops. There are complex interrelationships among racism, sexism, and distorted class ressentiment, among them.
One issue, for example, that often came up back in the seventies, when I was a child-protective worker, was that the cops often didn't want to be involved in removals of children from dangerous situations, because it wasn't part of the glory rôle they liked to imagine themselves fulfilling.
Or other rôles. I recall vividly an occasion thirty years ago when a colleague and I at first unwittingly stumbled upon and then broke up a kiddy porn operation. At one point we received from one of the children involved a manila envelope containing what the wonderful father considered his most prized possessions, consisting of some 8X10's of his stepdaughter in a revealing pose, and, not least, of a pair of tickets to the famous fight, in Madison Square Garden, between Joe Frazier and Muhammed Ali. I didn't take the tickets. I was sitting right next to my co-worker, and he didn't. (and wouldn't have either). But somebody did. I innocently asked where they were and the sergeant looked at me deprecatingly and then suggested I help myself to whatever I wanted of the family's property. Of course, it would have been our word against theirs, and they were cops.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema