I like cops

I know, I know: I’m a member of the liberal media, and we hate cops, right? And we love the poor, discriminated-against criminals.

Sorry, pals. I like cops. I hope that no demented mass murderer or simple drunk will tear a single cop away from his or her family tonight at home.

I’ve been a news reporter and editor for more than 40 years, and — pardon me for saying this — I think I understand cops a little bit. Mostly because I dealt with police chiefs on a daily basis when I was a city editor on midsize daily newspapers — back when they existed.

I like cops despite my ancient, retired hippie credentials, because I know a little bit about what cops go through: what they suffer, day after night after day.

The job takes a cop into daily contact with the worst people the human race has to offer. Then I got it at second- or third-hand, and asked the police chief what he thought about it.

I’ll spare you the details. But cops are not spared the details. They see the brains on the wall. The dead baby. The worst human scum. A cop might have to deal with that every day.

So do some cops become insane, bigoted and violent? I can understand that. I’ve hated people too. But when you get too many haters together, things can get out of hand. Add in the guns …

Now, in a large police department — New York City, with 36,000 sworn officers; Chicago, with 13,000; Los Angeles, 11,000; or even in Oklahoma City, with 1,200; a member of a “police culture” (can’t we find other words for that?) may find, and bond with, other such people — outcasts.

I’m not excusing cops, or blaming them for what happens on the streets. But I think I do understand, a little bit, what they have to go through every day. I used to have to write it up, and edit it, while the cops were still traipsing around blood.

Do cops spoliate or plant evidence? Sure, sometimes. If necessary.

Do cops beat the shit out of some knucklehead with active warrants who’d led them on a 120-mph chase, endangering women, children, old people and babies, then crashed the stolen car, bailed out, ran into the woods, and punched the cop who caught him?

And if in the heat of the chase, as the cop brings him to ground, he kicks him in the balls — so what?

Of course cops lie. So do criminals. Thing is, you expect a criminal to lie. But you don’t want a cop to lie, or expect it … unless you’re a city editor, in which case you do expect a cop to lie, to cover for another cop.

Here are some of the lawsuits I’ve covered, against cops.

One day a guy walked around a mall parking lot smashing windshields with a hammer. A store owner called the police, and the guy went after a cop with the hammer. So the cop shot him and killed him.

So?

Another day a woman lit a truck on fire and pointed a Taser at a cop when he responded to the call. He shot and killed her. Her family sued, saying he’d killed her without cause.

Another guy shot up his neighborhood, apparently at random, reloaded, then set fire to his own house. He fled when cops responded. A cop shot him in the back.

Well? What would you do if you were a cop?

Was it illegal to shoot the guy in the back?

I don’t know, and in this case I don’t care. The dude was fleeing into another block, where a rational human being might suppose he might set another fire.

All of the lawsuits, of course, say that the cops shot the violent crazy people “without cause.”

Maybe so. Though I doubt it.