You're More Likely To Get Shot By A Fat Cop If You Run

Dear Followers,

I find it ironic how citizens fear the police as an agent of law enforcement. The police department is an institution designed to foster a safer environment for citizens. Yet, when we spot an officer in blue patrolling, we do not feel safe. We are afraid. We are afraid that we will be misjudged as criminals. We are afraid that we will unnecessarily fined. The police department has fallen from an institution of respect in the public eye to one of mere bureaucratic annoyance.

How could the police department change so drastically from a symbol of safety and morality to the definition of inherent inefficiency? There are no doubt epistemological reasons for this metamorphosis which are undoubtedly linked to our national culture. From my point of view, the answer to this question is simple when taken from this view. What follows is by no chance historically accurate. I am merely interpreting history in a way which reconciles the phenomenon I seek to explain.

I will choose to begin my brief analysis at the turn of the century. Even after the Gilded Age, a period of repression for the bottom members of society by a combination of nativism and Social Darwinism, the police was seen as a stabilizing force among Middle Americans. The occurrence of the First World War empowered the institution of the police department as many Americans sought order following the disillusionment associated with the mass killing and powers of destruction experienced during war.

While inefficient, the police department continued to thrive through the era’s of Harding’s “normalcy” because of how people viewed the function of government in general. Simply because Americans had adopted a hands off approach to government which stemmed from the very first years of the Union, the complacency and inefficiency of the police department was not only accepted by expected by the public. However, with Roosevelt’s overhaul of the role of the federal government in the lives of citizens during the Great Depression, these expectations would take a turn for the worse.

Even during the days of the Great Depression, the inefficiency of the police department became more noticeable with a sharp uptick of crime associated with American desperation for economic survival. However, the years following the Second World War would serve as the fatal blow for the police department. Born in an age of American consumerism and prestige, young Americans soon adopted a culture which clashed with notions of old.

With the completed forms of these developments springing up in the 1960s under the banner of various college organizations like the Students For A Democratic Society forming what became known as the counterculture, the police began to symbolize repression like never before. However, a negative image of the police was not fostered by youth alone. Images of Officer Eugene “Bull” Connor spraying helpless African American protesters with fire hoses in Birmingham and of officers repressing female textile workers during the era helped as well.

The development of a society which sought change and the unfortunate development of the police department becoming the hammer for conservative thought eventually lead to the discrediting of the police department when the new ideas of tolerance and morality won out in the end. Since then, movies and television shows which have developed the image of rotund and inept cop who spends more time eating donuts and drinking coffee has simply reinforced this epistemological outlook. Does Chief Clancey Wiggum ring a bell to you?

Why waste my time on completing such an arbitrary analysis you may ask? Last Saturday, when I was coming back after another slew of standardized testing, I was pulled over by a police officer on Schmidt Lake Road. There is no doubt about it, I was speeding. Even if I was only going 5 miles over the speed limit, the simple fact is that I was breaking federal law. Indeed, my motivation for completing this analysis comes not from the reasoning for why I was pulled over but the feeling of being pulled over itself.

As the police officer walked back to his car to look up my criminal record with my driver’s license, I couldn’t help but wonder how ridiculous the punishment system for speeding was. Are we Americans such irresponsible drivers that we need police officers stationed every 5 miles to enforce even the smallest violations? In Plymouth that may be the case. My dad always explains how the cops are desperate and need to collect all of the criminal revenue they can find. I have never sought to verify the validity of this statement.

Either way, I cannot understand why officers choose to strictly enforce minor offenses at the cost of responding efficiently to major offenses. Perhaps by resolving minor offenses the police department is contributing most to the safety of citizens. I look forward to conducting an interview with a member of the police department in the near future to substantiate or refute my current thoughts. Hopefully the police department is as understanding of my inquisitive nature as the church.

Even The Police Have An Unlisted Number,

Noel