I have always had a special place in my heart for policemen. You'll notice I did not say cops. My father was a police officer and he always told me that the word cop, cops or copper was disrespectful. As was the fuzz, John Law, the man, the pigs etc. My Dad was big on respect. My elders, the law, our neighbors, women, teachers and society in general. My father came from a different era of law enforcement. Before Miranda,
Tazers, television and the general decay of morality. When he joined the police force in Cincinnati prohibition had only been repealed a couple of years before. He walked a beat in some of the worst neighborhoods in Cincinnati. That's right he "walked a beat". He knew the merchants, the people, the hoodlums, the hookers, the innocent and the guilty.
This was way before the advent of computers. Dad had a set of index cards with black and white pictures (Dad was on the force for almost 20 years before they had color photographs) with descriptions and lists of what they had been arrested for. He kept copious notes all in his neat tidy handwriting. When he filled out arrest reports he sat at a huge ancient Underwood manual typewriter. He had learned to type on a teletype machine, so he had the habit of hitting the keys harder than he had to, he practically drove keys all the through the paper and the carbons (this was before xerox). He had thick powerful hands, but he could still type faster than a lot secretaries I've met.
A few times I went to work with Dad . By that time Dad had been promoted to detective. Detective headquarters was in the City Hall building in downtown Cincinnati. If you have never seen it, it looks like a middle ages fortress, complete with 6 foot thick red sandstone walls and 2 inch thick 20 foot high steel doors. Headquarters was in a part of the building that dated back to the Civil war. Barney Miller's crew would have been comfortable there. The floor was covered with brown speckled linoleum and the walls were painted with a non-descript institutional beige and green paint. The air hung heavy with the smell of disinfectant(they scrubbed out the holding cells with Lysol everyday). No matter how well the janitors cleaned, it always looked worn and dingy.
When Dad was on the job he was a different person, he was calm, confident and in control. You got the sense that he would treat you fairly, but that he wouldn't take any crap off of you either. He exuded that unmistakable aura that said he was in control. He had that air of quiet authority that told you that it was best for all parties involved to cooperate and be on their best behavior. He was on the job for 29 1/2 years and was only injured once. I frankly don't know if he ever had to fire his service revolver in anger, if he did he never talked about it. He kept the really nasty stuff at work and never brought it home. Home was home and work was work, and did his best to make us feel safe and far away from all that nastiness.
So why am I bringing my dear old, much missed parental unit? Recently there has has been stories going around on a few of the blogs I regularly read about an Austin Texas rookie police officer that was fired for being too "moral". On at least two occasions Officer Ramon Perez used only the minimal force required to subdue or apprehend. Officer Perez started his law enforcement career late in life(41). I think he probably used a little of his life experience and his instincts as a father to accomplish what other less patient, younger(read more aggressive) officers could only accomplish with some sort of violence. I think if I had my "
Wayback Machine" up and running that Officer Perez and my Dad would have quite a bit in common. I think what we need is a few more "moral" police officers. We need Police officers that know how to diffuse a situation instead of reaching for that shiny new
Tazer on their belt. Anyway I think that's what Dad would say.
