Why I Don't Need To Call A Crackhead Instead Of A Cop: A False Dichotomy Dismantled

By Steve Zellner
Seeing Through The Fog
Jan. 27, 2015

A couple of weeks ago, cops and their supporters started circulating sarcastic little memes about “The next time you need help, call a crackhead.” They thought they were really clever and putting anyone who dared to question police for any reason in their place. Really that’s an irrational emotional response worthy of a 12 year old. Let me lay some real logic and reasoning on you.

That statement is a false dichotomy. It suggests that the two options it puts forward are the only two available to people. They aren’t. Rather than calling a crackhead or a cop or a neighborhood or community I could hire my own security guards. By doing this I could negotiate directly with them for for how much they get paid. They could be paid by me directly instead of living off my tax dollars. I could also screen them for myself instead of having it being done by someone else. Someone who may be stupid, corrupt, or have their own agenda. I would be deciding on whether they had the intelligence and moral fiber I was looking for to do the job right. They would be accountable directly to me. If I’m not happy with their performance I don’t have to settle for filing a complaint and having their brother officers investigating them and deciding they did nothing wrong. I can fire their asses on the spot. They can’t invoke special privileges like cops do.

I could hire two, one to protect my home and one to follow me everywhere I go. I get to decide what their duties are. I tell them what their job is instead of thousands of pages of laws, most of which are garbage. My home security guard won’t bring his friends to my home with automatic weapons to break down my door, shoot my dogs, throw a flash bang grenade in my baby’s crib, shoot my wife between the eyes, and kidnap me and throw me in a rape cage. All because I had the sheer AUDACITY to make a personal choice about what I put in my body. And I chose a plant that anyone on God’s green earth can grow on their windowsill or in their backyard. He wouldn’t do that. But even if he did, he wouldn’t have a large portion of the public cheering him and calling him a good cop and a hero instead of a psycho home invader. You do that to a murderer or a rapist when you have real evidence that they’re guilty, then you’re a hero or a good cop. If you do it over pot because you found residue on a sandwich bag or because you threatened an informant with massive jail time for a minor offense and he gave you bad info to get out of trouble, you’re a CRIMINAL. And the person who ordered the raid is a criminal. And the judge who signed the warrant (if you bothered to get one) is a criminal. And the politicians who passed the laws are criminals. And the people who support these laws and those who carry them out are partially responsible too. If he brought his dog to help him and for some reason I harmed a hair on that dog’s head I couldn’t be charged with a felony. By the way, and I’m not saying it’s a double standard mind you, if cops can charge us with the same level of offense for ruffling their dogs hair as if we did something to them, why can’t we treat them like they shot our mother between the eyes when they shoot our dogs between the eyes? Riddle me that…

I could take my other security guard with me on the way to work. He won’t pull me over and write on a piece of paper and claim I owe him money. He won’t pull me over and steal my property even though I haven’t been convicted of a crime and call it “Civil Asset Forfeiture.” He won’t try to trick me into giving up my right not to have my vehicle searched when he doesn’t have probable cause or a warrant so he can find some ticky tack violation he can use to generate revenue for the department. Or maybe find a dime bag and kidnap me and throw me in a rape cage. Or berate and harass me for knowing my rights and not being stupid enough to waive them. If I try to film him to hold him accountable for his actions or to protect the rights of myself and my fellow citizens he won’t threaten and or/arrest me.

There may be some satire in this but also some legit objections to the way police treat citizens. Cops and their supporters always complain that people don’t understand their point of view. And there’s truth to that. I’ve seen some of the things people say and do and there are legit concerns. But I’ve also seen how many cops and their supporters ridicule and browbeat anyone who questions their actions. You people don’t exactly go the extra mile to understand the perspective and concerns of the people you claim to serve. And you clearly hold the lives of you and your animals above the lives of citizens and their animals. We know that because you can kill us and our pets and claim you feared for your life and probably get away with it. If we shoot your dogs or pop a cap in you because you invaded our home for some bs law we go to jail in all but a few places. And in case you don’t know there’s a major problem with cops killing people’s dogs. Did you know there are literally thousands of Facebook pages made by people wanting to tell the world about how cops killed their dogs? If you really want to look at this issue, watch the 7 and 1/2 minute trailer for a documentary called Puppycide that's being made about it. One is that on this issue at least, a lot of police departments are doing what they should do, listening and responding to citizen concerns and making a serious effort to fix the problem. But these incidents are still happening. And contrary to what the police apologist tries to claim in the Puppycide trailer, they aren’t nearly all cases of irresponsible pet owners. Read about the story of Geist and ask yourself if that was irresponsible pet ownership that led to police officer gunning Geist down in his GATED PRIVACY FENCE. I won’t belabor that point though I could say a lot more about it.

As for all the laws that don’t involve serious crimes that you try to beg off of and say “I don’t make the laws but I get paid to enforce them all”, I have a theory. Maybe you really like them and enforce them because in your hearts you know that to deal with real crimes we don’t need nearly as many of you as there are now. Maybe those laws are really job security for a lot of you instead of something you do reluctantly. And since I’ve seen so many people asking “Why don’t you just blame the lawmakers and leave the cops alone”, let me explain it to you. What is a law? I saw a quote a couple of weeks ago that said “The law is an opinion with a gun.” I loved it and thought I fully understood it. I didn’t really until this came to me last night. A law is an opinion that politicians debate and vote on. If enough of them agree it is written down on a piece of paper and spoken out into thin air and proclaimed as the law of the land. And those two places are where it stays. Invisible. Impotent. Powerless. Unable to make anyone do anything or restrain them from doing anything. Until there’s a man with a uniform, a badge, and a GUN, who is willing to initiate violence against his fellow man to enforce it. The law is an opinion with a gun. And the cop effectively hands his gun over to an opinion and gives it the ability to act. That’s why we don't just blame the lawmaker.

I’ve already dealt with why I believe officers really enforce all the laws. Now I’m going to address some other issues I see come up. First is why I have a major problem with the “I’m just doing my job” or “I was only following orders” or “it’s the law and if you didn’t break it I wouldn’t have to hurt you.” I don’t know what’s rumbling around the heads of cops or their apologists when they say that, but here’s what it sounds like to people who think and reason instead of parroting the propaganda they’ve heard all their lives. Instead of saying F the police, why don’t you just obey the Jim Crow laws. He can breathe because he drank from the appropriate water fountain. We hear “I get paid to do what I’m told, not to think and reason. When I put on my uniform, pin on my badge, and strap on my GUN, and claim pretty much absolute authority over other people’s lives, to the point where I can give them orders and if they don’t obey I can KILL them, I turn off my moral compass and blindly follow the law or my orders.” In my opinion that is flatly immoral and makes you dangerous to everyone around you. And since a lot of cops(and soldiers) claim to be Christians, please explain to me where the Father, Son, Holy Spirit tell you it’s EVER okay to turn off the logic, reason and moral code they instilled you with and blindly follow the orders of fallible men?

That I was only following orders stuff has been used before. By the Nazis, Stalinists, Maoists, etc. Now when someone dares to bring this up they get shouted down with “You can’t compare our cops with those people. They haven’t done those kind of things.” And you’re right. They haven’t. Yet. What do I mean? They may not have committed that level of atrocities, but they have the exact same attitude. You know what? Those guys didn’t start out dragging Jews to the gas chambers. Or carrying out mass executions. Or throwing bodies in mass graves. No. They were just men with families to feed so when they were told to enforce small laws that took away people’s freedom, they did it. First it was just “Go harass these people and write up fines for minor offenses.” Then it was “Go arrest those people and kill them if they resist.” Then one day it was simply “Go kill them.” And the man with a family to feed, a family who never would have imagined what their relative would end up doing, who had obeyed the smaller orders, didn’t refuse to obey the order to kill. Extrapolate that forward to our cops. They haven’t done those things yet. But what if our government keeps sliding towards tyranny? The Republicans, who are the most likely to love, honor, and obey the police without question, are always calling Obama a tyrant and a dictator. And for good reason. What if he really takes the kid gloves off and grabs for absolute power. Or whatever scenario you want to imagine. History is soaked with the blood of hundreds of millions of people who were intentionally killed by their own government, a fact which a lot of those Republicans are fond of reminding us. This isn’t some crazy SyFy Channel movie script. It’s oft repeated historical precedent. Back to Officer Friendly, who when he was told to write citations or arrest people for minor non-violent violations and obeyed when he would have been risking only discipline or firing for refusing an order. What is Officer Friendly going to do when he’s ordered to kill someone, and now he knows if he says no he’ll be killed instantly? MAYBE he refuses and tries to kill his superior. But logic dictates that he will kill whoever he’s told to kill. So maybe the reason Officer Friendly hasn’t dragged any Jews to the gas chamber isn’t that he’s really a good and moral man and would never do that. Maybe the reason Officer Friendly hasn’t dragged any Jews off to the gas chambers yet is simply that no one has told him to yet. It’s not the current actions that are the problem. It’s the attitude. Because the attitude doesn’t follow the actions. The actions follow the attitude. That’s why “I’m just following orders is NOT okay. The Nazis tried that excuse and we REJECTED it and still punished them. Why do we give our cops (and soldiers) a pass? Is that what “American Exceptionalism” means?

You claim to be serving us but officer safety trumps our lives and sometimes our rights. Is that how you’re protecting our freedoms? By taking some of them away to protect yourselves? You say police lives matter. And they do. But contrary to the hero worship and propaganda everywhere, the life of a cop or a soldier is not one bit more important than the life of a citizen. Don’t tell us you represent us and try to claim your lives are more important than ours. And if you’re saying “We never said that”, you don’t have to. It’s perfectly obvious by the way you act. You’ll never see me saying one person’s life is worth more than another’s simply because of their race or occupation. ALL lives matter the same.
_
Visit Steve Zellners' website, Seeing Through The Fog.