This morning as I was watching the morning talking heads a question came up that I found interesting. The question is why don’t black cops expose their dirty compatriots?
Talk about a loaded question. Having spent some time in the law enforcement community I feel comfortable offering some comments.
Police work is 90 percent boredom accompanied by 10 percent adrenaline overload. Black police officers are consistently walking a tightrope between their community experience and the imaginary thin blue line. Police work is the boys club on steroids. Cops perhaps more than any other profession fall into the trap of having their whole lives revolve around the confederation of the badge. In many ways its like joining a secret decoder ring society where the world is devided into the law enforcement community and the thems.
When a black cop sees something he or she must make a decision about what’s more important. The job or doing what’s right. It’s easy to think you know what you would do until you’re confronted with the reality.
Being labeled a rat 🐀 means you have to be prepared to leave the job or risk not getting backup when you need it. It takes a special kind of courage to be prepared to buck a system that closes ranks almost always. I wish I could tell you how we fix this. What I know is that nobody wants to be the next Frank Serpico. Most black cops become very adept at looking the other way and convincing themselves that if they don’t participate they’re not part of the problem.
We can’t ask black officers to be sacrificial sheep. We can however start to build substantive Police reform that removes the ability of the bad actors to hide in plain sight.
THINK!!
EYES WIDE 👀OPEN!!!