“You beat Nicky with fists he comes back with a bat. You beat him with a knife he comes back with a gun. And if you beat him with a gun you better kill him because he'll be coming back and back until one of you is dead.” – from the film, Casino
One of the things the powers that be might not have taken into thorough consideration before they decided to paint cops as budget-busting welfare queens and union thugs is the nature of a career in law enforcement.
The working life of a cop is challenging on levels that people outside the profession could never understand.
To be sure there are victories. Abducted kids are located and reunited with their families. Violent criminals who terrorize communities are investigated, charged and prosecuted. Dangerous drugs on their way into neighborhoods are intercepted and destroyed.
And then there are the losses and defeats. Three-time losers on parole gun down fellow officers in cold blood. Babies choke to death after swallowing a bottle cap as responding officers race up 15 flight of stairs in an apartment building with a broken elevator.
Convicts released early from jail return to wreak havoc on communities because of budget cuts or cutting a deal with a prosecutor.
In short, “winning,” isn’t what a career in public safety is about.
But despite the seeming futility of the war on drugs, the complications involved in arresting someone like a mayor’s nephew and the revolving door of the criminal justice system, cops show up day after day to do the work. A lot of times it’s rewarding. More often it seems frustrating — like Sisyphus pushing the rock to the top of the hill only to watch it roll back to square one.
That’s what you call perseverance. That’s what you call commitment. These are qualities law enforcement officers possess in greater amounts than others.
And that’s why cops are built perfectly for the fight ahead.
The assault by wealthy corporate interests on the rights of American employees didn’t start last November and it won’t end for decades.
And for many people, seeing such powerful individuals and entities amassing against their interests is just too overwhelming. How can a mother of three making $40,000 annually compete with billionaires and all their thinktanks and propoganda?
Feeling outmatched and defeated, it’s not hard to understand why some would just give up the fight and hope for the best.
Cops are different. They hold grudges. They take being lied to seriously. And they definitely aren’t the folks you want to go into a long protracted battle with. It doesn’t matter if it’s a street fight or a war for the hearts and minds of America.
Maybe the Scott Walkers, John Kasichs, Nikki Haleys and Rick Snyders of the world don’t know any law enforcement professionals and simply don’t understand.
That might be why they figured that once the ball got rolling, cops would just hang their heads, tell their kids there’s no money for college and essentially just give up.
But police officers are fighters. They also know when they’re being lied to. And if Scott Walker and the Koch Brothers thought they could just screw us over and fly off into the sunset on private jets, they were sorely mistaken.
This battle isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. And like the Greek philosopher Persius said, “He conquers who endures.”
