Former Police Cadets Say Academy Trained them to be Hostile to the Public

[raging moderate]

7. I once was a typist for a police station.

Earning my way through graduate school, I typed reports for the campus police. They were nothing like this crew in Austin. I remember so many differences. As my fellow typist said, after awhile, you forgot they were policemen. One of them did tend to get mad and yell at people; his fellow officers teased him gently about it, nicknamed him Trigger, and frequently cautioned him to rein it in. I know that because it was a small station, and we could see into the main section and overhear conversations in other rooms. One day, the police chief, flanked by two new recruits, was doing a background check on a guy who had applied to be a policeman. "Oh, oh," he remarked to them, "see, guys, this is why we do background checks. If this is the kind of guy who goes around hitting women, then we don't want him." Another time, late at night, they brought in a drunk driver, and he was obviously drunk, staggering and yelling and cursing at them. They studiously ignored what he was saying until he started to issue physical threats; then, one of them said mildly, "Now, now, maybe you want to just simmer down a little." The drunk guy kept fulminating, but they just put him in the holding cell and wrote their reports, chuckling a little.