A disgusted policeman who has hired many rookies reports that they all say they want to be cops in order “to help people.” He was sick of the formula. When we had too many applicants for the available practice teaching slots, applicants vowed in interviews that they wanted to teach in order “to help students.” Again, a formula.
Wannabe teachers and cops want a steady job that pays well, guarantees retirement, bennies, etc. They lie for practical reasons: they want a job and the respectable identity that comes with it. They don’t see the job as a profession or themselves as professionals. They’re desperate for a slot.
This is partly the way the post-Vietnam economy has developed in the US: the war against the working poor. You see it when the young fight for a livable minimum wage and also in Black Lives Matter protests.
But what’s also missing is recognition that all people fantasize. While big city and suburban cops may have different motives, they share in American culture’s fantasies of heroism: of rescuing people—or helping them.
We’re sociable animals, but built around self-esteem. A young cop once told me that there is no feeling like knowing that the sidearm in your holster makes you the most important person on the street. Cops carry guns, logically, because someone may use a gun to kill them. That is, in fantasy and sometimes in reality, cops—like soldiers and doctors—command respect when they wrestle with death. They’re not flipping burgers; they’re special.
Of course we’re ambivalent toward that authority. We can be envious of cops’ power and morally enraged by their failures—as in killing unarmed Blacks. Rarely do we remember that dozens of cops are killed every year.
Usually we keep our ambivalence in check by fantasies about training. With perfect training, a cop could handle drug addiction or mental illness— like a doctor. But no such perfect training exists, not even for doctors. What’s more, training is abstract–lists of rules and procedures–whereas the decision to shoot a fleeing suspect in the back is made in a split second for reasons that are often out of conscious control.
One way of taming our ambivalence toward cops is to split it off as sports. After all, athletes wow us by skillfully playing on the edge of control. In football, say, the killing is disguised. Hooligan fans may run amok after the game, but the aggressive players are penalized.
Training can work in sports. In matters of life-and-death policing, training may be inadequate, but it can be better.