The Myth of the Hero Cop (and Prosecutor)

I learned during this last go-round with the justice system: the feds are a joke.

 

As much as they like to think they're the top echelon of law enforcement, fighting the most serious battles against crime in a crucial effort to keep society safe from law-breakers---and I do believe that's how they see themselves---the vast majority of what the FBI is doing these days is knocking off low-level drug users, guys for whom just having a gun is a crime, and credit-card thieves. *And* slamming them with double-digit sentences that even the worst state courts (like Virginia's) would balk at.

 

I’ve been in federal prison (if you’re reading my blog & you don’t know that by now, well…). So I’ve seen it. The breakdown of guys in the blocks I was on goes, roughly, like this:

·      40% Drug Conspiracies, of which:

o   85% were conspiracies of 5 or less kilograms (Meaning that, divided by the number of ppl in the conspiracy, and divided again by the amount of time these “conspiracies” covered, these guys were generally actually caught with a few grams, if any at all, of actual drugs. This is due to a phenomenon called ‘Ghost Dope,’ which I explain in one of my yet-to-be-published novels, and will prolly do a post on soon as well.)

·      30% Gun Cases, mostly 924(c) or simple possessions by a person w/ a previous felony

·      20% Credit Card Scammers,

·      And 10% everything else---bank robbery, foreigners, creepy sex cases, etc.

 

Not to say that there were no serious criminals on my units (medium-level security)---there were. But they were a small minority. Major drug traffickers, actual killers, mob guys, bank robbers (who weren’t just junkies who pulled a couple note jobs)---these guys were a tiny, tiny subset of the people the feds have been arresting over the last couple decades. The federal prison population has grown by an astonishing 750% since 1980! (See nicic.gov.) The tax dollars and manpower expended on prosecuting mostly crackheads, guys with Glocks in their trunks, and kids struck me as ridiculous and deplorable. (Plus, they use some amazingly dirty legal tricks to secure the convictions... You'll see, if you read some of my fiction, that I strive to expose some of the most egregious & blatant legal loopholes that have now become commonplace for prosecutors, and weave real-life facts about those abuses into my narratives.)

 

I blame, in part, 9/11. The terrorist attack eventually unleashed a torrent of federal dollars for law enforcement---but in reality, the actual number of terrorists on American soil is few. (At least, the foreign kind.) This left a vastly enlarged FBI with little to do but target drug cases and other low-level offenders.

 

And where the feds lead, the states follow.

 

So, feds & cops these days spend a large part of their time jailing people for, let’s face it, minor stuff. The efficacy of the ‘War on Drugs’ aside (which is zero), it’s hard to argue that society is appreciably safer with these folks behind bars. But, it’s inarguable that there is a societal cost to all these arrests and incarcerations.

 

Another thing about the growth of prisons & law enforcement---inevitably, more bad cops get hired, when you’re hiring more and more cops. And federal agents, and prosecutors… It’d take a lifetime to assemble all the accounts & anecdotal evidence of law enforcement malpractice that has mushroomed in the past twenty years---and it’s unnecessary. Your newspapers & inboxes are surely just as full as mine, each day, with the stories.

 

You already know.

 

But still, somehow, the myth of the hero cop remains. Citizens of this country hold cops, prosecutors, and the apparatus of law enforcement in amazingly high regard. Even despite the fact that they’re busy locking up your friends, neighbors, and children. Why?

 

I blame Dick Wolf.

 

Okay, well, not really just him. The ‘Hero Cop’ myth is all over popular fiction, movies & TV.

 

I believe that most people, most Americans, are woefully unaware of what happens during arrests & in courtrooms. We've been conditioned by a lifetime of 'Law & Order' and other 'Hero Cop' shows to view the 'thin blue line' as our protectors against the truly evil criminal element, but what I've seen in real life is the opposite. Hapless, generally decent people, beset by circumstance, having their lives upended and their families torn asunder by government agents. Mostly in the name of the dysfunctional & counter-productive 'War on Drugs,' or simply to feed the prison-industrial complex by filling cells.

 

And this is why I write the stuff that I do. To counter this pervasive, destructive, and dangerous ‘Hero Cop’ myth.

 

This is not to say that there aren’t great cops out there, true heroes, who do some great stuff, really protecting people. Homicides, sexual assaults---we do need the blue line. But do we need so much of it? And, does just being a cop, even if you spend your time harassing poor people and locking them up over tiny baggies of powder---does that automatically make you a hero? I think not.

 

The simple idea that being a cop makes one infallible, makes one a hero who is then unaccountable for their actions, well… We’ve seen where that gets us. More cops shooting more unarmed people in the back, and not facing the consequences. And more arrests of people whom society is not better off without, more convictions, more incarceration, more dollars and lives wasted.

 

I suppose I'm preaching to the choir here anyhow; if you’re reading this, you’ve probably already seen, in some way or other, the intransigence & hypocrisy of the 'justice' system in stark relief.

For further reading, check out this LAT article: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2020-06-09/dick-wolf-law-and-order-chicago-pd-fbi-color-of-change