One Cop’s Story

This is a fictional story. However, the impetus for the character and the elements of my story are the amalgamation of many people I have known who have become members of law enforcement. This is in no way an attempt by me to illicit pity for or exonerate bad behavior by law enforcement when it occurs. This is just my singular effort to put a human face on the high percentage of decent individuals who are police officers and to ask for a little empathy from those who would vilify them as a group. In my opinion, the whole movement to stop police brutality is about flawed societal norms which either support or ignore racially motivated violence. We all have a stake in the betterment of the future; a personal responsibility to improve our individual behaviors to achieve those expectations. This is a time when we are all asked to separate the good and the righteous from the bad and the morally vexed. Easier said than done in the deeply felt emotional energy of this moment.

The Story…

Hello my name is Joe Roberts and I am a cop. I have been a San Francisco Police officer for 14 years. I am a native San Franciscan, raised in the Richmond District. I went to George Washington High School and upon graduation I went to work in construction. I have a wife and daughter and we currently own a house in the Sunset District that I am remodeling in my spare time. We are just an average middle-class family getting through life one day at a time.

I met my wife Maria at the Arguello Street Branch of the Wells Fargo Bank where she was working as a teller. I would go there every week under the guise of doing my personal banking business just to see her. I finally got up the nerve to ask her out on a date, she agreed to go, and we went out to lunch the next day. We hit it off immediately and a year later we got married. Two years after getting married we had our daughter Helen. 

In my late twenties, I took the exams for both the fire and police departments. My name came up on the list for the police department first so I went to the academy, graduated and became a police officer. In the back of my mind I always thought I would change to the fire department at some point but life flies by and I never made the move. I decided to become a cop because the pay was more consistent than in construction and the benefits were good. It also afforded me blocks of free time to work on the house and to coach basketball which is my real passion.

I try very hard to be a good police officer but I have made some mistakes. Early on in my career there were times when I overstepped the mandate of power afforded me in my role as a police officer. As a young officer I mistakenly thought that my job was to fight crime and bring justice to my area of patrol. With that mindset guiding my actions there were a few instances when I crossed the line physically and legally. As I matured into the job I realized that my responsibility as a police officer was to deter crime with my presence and clean up the mess once a crime has been committed. Over time I came to understand that contrary to what is depicted in police dramas on television a police officers job is for the most part a daily repeating of common activities. What we mostly do is ride around in a patrol car, write tickets, make the occasional impaired driving arrest, secure crime scenes, direct traffic at car accidents, quiet domestic disturbances and respond to the aftermath of domestic violence. In these capacities most of the people I work with are decent people with backgrounds somewhat similar to mine. I do know some individuals on the force who are truly bad cops. They are police officers who either never understood the mission of law enforcement and do not have the temperament for the job or morally poisoned people drunk with the power the uniform provides. It is also sadly true that there is no real mechanism within the police force for me to report a rogue officer without being ostracized by the police community. The thought of being out on patrol without the support of my fellow police officers is a scary proposition. So like the majority of other cops who see the job as I do, I disassociate myself from the bad cops in our department.

My wife and I mutually decided that a strong education was very important to our daughter Helen’s future and so we enrolled her in a private school. This tuitional burden coupled with the high cost of living associated with being a resident of San Francisco really stretches our budget to its limit. So when Helen, who has shown great promise as a basketball player, expressed a strong interest in attending a basketball camp during the summer I knew that there was no way we could afford it unless I could make some extra money. I was thinking about finding some side construction work to get the money when I saw a flyer on the bulletin board at work asking for volunteers to train for a tactical squad that was to be used for crowd control. It called for four weekends of training and then overtime if the squad was called into action. I had worked some overtime providing crowd security at Giants games so I thought it would be simple assignment. Solely based on the thought of extra income I signed up and did the training; all the while looking forward to the smile on Helen’s face when I gave her the basketball camp for her birthday. It appeared to be a good plan until another white cop, thousands of miles away, killed another black man while in custody. As I know from my cringe-worthy personal experience with them in my own department, there are bad cops on every police force.

So now I am standing here with fifty other police officers as the crowd begins to form to protest the latest case of egregious police brutality. At first I am relaxed; it is just a couple hundred people rhythmically repeating slogans and demanding justice for the victim. If the truth were to be known, I agree with everything they are saying. As the crowd starts to swell the energy of the chants change to a battle cry; empowered by sheer numbers and angry in tenor. My previous sense of calm is now a distant memory that has been replaced by foreboding anxiety. The crowd has morphed into a mob of thousands and the collective voice is no longer asking for justice but instead they are calling for payback. The protest is focused on me and the now 100 fellow officers who are here to somehow maintain control. The protesters are standing across from me yelling obscenities and threatening my life and I am overwhelmed mentally and physically by fear. My weekend training is lost in the adrenaline of survival. I wish I had never signed up for this assignment because now I am in the middle of a life or death situation without a clue of what to do. If I could, I would press a pause button on this situation and ask for direction. This is what I would ask in that minute of pause:

To the protestor…Why do you hate me, I am not the man who killed George Floyd? I am just a regular guy doing a difficult job with very little direction from those I am sworn the serve and protect. So what do you want me to do now? Should I walk away and leave you to have your protest as you see fit? Should I throw down my equipment, disavow the police department, and join you in the protest? Should I allow the most militant of your group to assault me as restitution for the police officer who actually did the crime? Can you please tell me what you want me to do because unlike you who made the choice to be part of this moment I am here because my duty as a police officer requires me to be?

To the distant supporter of the protest…Could you please tell me how you want me to behave in this caldron of emotion? Do you even want me to respond to this crowd or should we as police just stay away? 

To the business owner…I am standing in front of your corner liquor store. It has been in your family for three generations. A large group has formed in front of the huge plate glass windows of your establishment. Should I walk away and let the mayhem begin? When your store widows are smashed, your inventory looted and then the building burned to the ground are you still going to support a policy of non-aggression towards the mob or will you blame me for not protecting your property?

To the news commentator…When you run the footage of the protest can you show how outnumbered the police are and how dangerous it is for us to try and maintain order? I understand your wanting to highlight the protest in an effort to show your support but as journalists you are tasked with telling the whole story and letting the facts drive the collective conscience of society. Can you explain that crowd control is only possible if control is strictly maintained because once thousands of people begin to rage, aside from using deadly force, which no one wants, control is irreparably lost? Can you tell people to stop taking out their frustrations on every police officer they see simply because they are affiliated with law enforcement?

My hand is still shaking on the pause button. The faces of the crowd frozen in anger and so menacing. I glance at my fellow officers and mostly what I see is absolute terror. Some are trying to mask their fear with bravado and aggression but I know, just like me, that they are acutely aware of the deep trouble we are facing. I want to run but I am also paused in place. So I scream into the silence of the pause, ”What am I supposed to do now!” I push play button and the carnage begins. My singular goal is to survive the coming disaster to see my sweet daughter Helen play basketball again. God, I wish I was a fireman!

I have always been moved by music. Lyrics of certain songs seemed to mirror my life condition. When I write I often call upon the emotions that music has inspired in me to find a way to explain my feelings. This essay is a prime example of that evolution of emotion to thought. My first story is a fictional character but his name is taken directly from a song. The name of the song is Highway Patrolman by Bruce Springsteen. The song is a story told from Joe Roberts perspective. He is a somewhat conflicted highway patrolman with a brother named Frankie who he plainly describes as “no good”. In my early twenties, when I was getting ready for Friday nights I would take two beers into the shower. As I drank them I would listen to different songs as I contemplated what trouble I was going to find that evening; trouble that that I knew from experience could easily find its way to a confrontation with police. Highway Patrolman was a staple of that ritual. At that point in my life while I understood his perspective I did not identify with Joe. I was Frankie, the brother who was “no good”. That was more than thirty years ago and like most of us I have survived my youth and grown to be far different from the person I was as a young man. What I am is a human being with strengths and weakness; capable of both good and bad deeds. I am both Joe and Frankie; we all are. For those who would dismiss me as unsympathetic to people of color brutalized by law enforcement and somehow suggest that the color of my skin automatically affiliates me with racist actions of any kind I will say this. I am not the enemy of anyone who seeks justice and a better way of life for all. I support all efforts that produce positive and much needed change. I am just one of tens of millions searching for how we can get there. My story is just an attempt to possibly narrow the gap between the battle-entrenched sides. We all must move away from the angry fringe and meet in the human middle where most solutions reside.

If you have a quiet moment take a listen to the song…beers in the shower are optional but not recommended.