[lbo-talk] Cop work (was Message from Louis Proyect)

jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net
Fri Feb 11 22:21:33 PST 2005



> >From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> >
> >joanna bujes wrote:
> > >
> > > Have him go for state park ranger instead. Safer job.
> > >
> > > Joanna
> > >
> >
> >Police work appears dangerous only because of the many traffic injuries
> >and fatalities. Take away traffic deaths and police work is quite safe.
>
> I'm no fan of the police, but I recall a remark Studs Turkel made in, I
> believe, Working about police doing chores that most people wouldn't want to
> do for any amount of money. This was made in connection with a cop
> recollecting his experience cutting down the corpse of some guy who had
> hanged himself in his attic. The body had been there awhile, and the cop
> said he had to keep twisting to keep out of the way of maggots falling on
> his newly cleaned pants.
>
> There is much to be said for a deskjob.
>
> Carl

When a friend of mine, Tony, killed himself with a shotgun blast paramedics hauled him away, not the police. When I was a paramedic myself I hauled away many bodies the cops barely touched. The worst was yet to come in the case of Tony's suicide. This was a messy way to go and the cops do not clean up after the body is removed either. Tony's mother was told by the Dept. of Health she had "X" number of days to clean it up or be cited. There is a service for this in many places but there wasn't one available where Tony lived. Since he was a friend I cleaned it up with the help of his brother. Having worked as a paramedic I was pretty well prepared for the job but not 100%. Watching a young man pick up and discard bits of his little brothers skull and brains sucks. One of my grandparents was a cop for a bit when he was younger but then he went to work for the DA's office investigating cops instead. He told me it is not an exaggeration to say in 80% of the cases where cops enter the home of a deceased person they steal. I could write a 400 page book chronicling the cases of cops stealing from homes that he told me about. My grandfather always rushed to the scene of a murder when it first came across the radio since he was practically guaranteed to find cops with their pockets full. Suggest EMT as a career for your son and see what he says. Never a shortage of work in that field and it can be tremendously satisfying to save lives. Certainly the pay and benefits aren't quite as good as a cop but better to be part of the solution than part of the problem. If your son thinks he is going to be a "good" cop to help make up for all the bad one I wish him all the luck in the world. My grandfather though he was going to do that but quickly realized that cops set up other cops to guarantee their silence. There is no way to avoid that if you do the job for more than 2 or 3 years. It is the way the system works and it is too well institutionalized for one person to break free of it. This isn't to say all cops are criminals, most are in my opinion, but that all of them get put into a situation where they do something compromising to insure silence. Then they have to turn a blind eye to the horrible stuff they see other cops doing or risk their job and occasionally their life.

John Thornton



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