Aw, Shewt...

So, I've been learning a lot about myself lately.

One thing that I've learned, looking at my resume (as I have been doing quite a bit lately) is that I've had many jobs, but no careers. A dear old friend of mine has been trying to convince me that many people my age are this way, and that, if this were the 1920s, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

He's probably right on both points. A great many people my age flit from job to job, wandering directionless well into their late twenties, searching for a place where they fit, whilst spinning their wheels in a lot of places where they don't. And, were this the 1920s, I most likely would have apprenticed in some trade, and stayed with it for the rest of my life, or perhaps changed paths once, if at all.

This friend, by the way, decided that he wanted to be a physician when he was 24, requiring a post bac year to get himself up-to-speed. So I guess he knows what he's talking about. As much as anyone I know, at least.

But I still can't help feeling, I don't know, insecure. Singular in my inability to prove myself on a career path. Different. I guess that what comes from your parents telling you you're special, unique, apart. Didn't your parents tell you that, too?

And so I've got my job, and I'm using it as a place-holder until the career in law enforcement starts. To prep myself, I've been lifting weights-- turning my spindly little arms into, um, less spindly little arms? I've been running, jogging, sprinting, sit-upping....

Oh, and shooting.

A month ago, I had never fired a gun. Seven years ago, when I tried to become a cop the first time, I took apart a 9mm semiautomatic handgun, and I put it back together again in a small classroom in front of a retired police officer. Oh, and I also did a fill-in-the-blank ditto sheet, identifying the parts of the gun. I never fired it. Realizing that I would be amongst individuals who are ex-Army types, and huntin' types, and people who've been popping off rounds since before they had any peach fuzz to speak of, I decided that it was time to bite the bullet.

Ha.

My wife and I are fortunate enough to live in what I feel is a sort of neighborhood that is on the cusp of upper-middle class. In any case, you have to drive for a while before you can arrive at a destination where people shoot guns on a regular basis. The closest firing range open to the public that I know of is around fifty minutes away. I've been twice, and Mrs. Apron went with me both times. The first time was after a very strenuous hike, and Mrs. Apron had slid down a rocky embankment, mostly on her butt, but some of it on her arm, which she managed to gash up.

"Did he do that to you?" the gun shop clerk asked with a wry grin on his face the first time we went. We were covered in dirt, gravel dust, and sweat. He was dressed in a denim collared shirt, denim shorts, and he wore a Glock in a holster on his hip. I guess it's like waitresses at Flingers needing to wear 36 pieces of flair. I was surprised he wasn't wearing 35 other guns. I'm sure there was at least one other one that we couldn't see.

Mrs. Apron vacillated on whether or not she wanted to shoot or watch. Finally, she capitulated. The clerk was very friendly, in spite of the Tea Party literature all over the place and a sign that said, "Gun Control = Two Hands on a Gun" and he didn't make us feel like the incompetent Jews that we were. He started us out on a .22 caliber handgun, which felt extremely dangerous.

Until we went back the next time and fired a .38. That motherfucker was big, and heavy, and loud.

Firing a gun is very strange if you've never done it before. Then again, I guess anything is strange if you've never done it before. While we were at the firing range the first time, I can remember putting the bullets into the gun and thinking about my "firsts." I couldn't remember the first time I was behind the wheel of a car, and what that felt like. I do remember the first time being behind the wheel of an ambulance, totally convinced that I would kill my partner, the patient, and myself. I remember the first time I had sex. Let's just say shooting the .22 went better. It lasted longer, too.

I felt much more confident the second time we went, and I kind of got a little smitten with the .38, even though the ammunition cost a LOT more. I'm, of course, ashamed about the fact that I enjoyed utilizing an instrument of death and destruction. In Tad Friend's book, "Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor" he writes of a choice abbreviation that his mother frequently employed: "NFOCD."

"Not For Our Class, Dear."

When I first approached my mother at the tenderish age of 22 and announced my intention to take the police officer exam and enroll at the academy, that is, essentially, what she said to me.

"That's not for you," she informed me seriously.

"Oh, it's okay for some other mother's son, but not for your son?" I asked, expecting that to be a retort that would sting her into a shocked silence. It didn't.

"That's exactly right," my mother replied, before descending into the basement to do laundry, which was, and still is her way of avoiding any unpleasantness more unpleasant than laundry.

She's doing a lot better seven years later. Now, she actually asks me questions about my preparations, she wants to know timelines and takes an interest in where I am faxing resumes and when tests are coming up. When I told her I had applied to the FBI, she didn't flinch. Maybe it's because I'm older, or because she's older, or because my middle sister is the squeaky wheel-- with a baby that my mother is basically raising and a marriage on its way to dissolution, and my eldest sister having moved back home under topsy-turvy circumstances.

"I guess I just don't know where to start worrying first," she told me this week.

"Oh, mom," I said, "you started decades ago-- and you'll never finish, so just kind of start in the middle, in the thick of it all. Maybe you'll stop worrying when you're dead."

She laughed.

"Maybe."

"I guess that's why some people call it their 'sweet release'," I said, pushing out the screen door after a brief visit with her and my nephew.

"Well," she said, ever the pragmatist, "I'm not especially looking forward to that either."

Black and Blue

There's been a lot of ink spilt, both very recently, and in the short history of this country about the relationship between African-Americans and law enforcement. Two very recent incidents stick out like sore thumbs as concerns the ever-flowing controversy that surrounds the black and the blue: the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his own home in Cambridge, Mass, and the whirlwind that has erupted here in Philadelphia surrounding the unofficial online meeting place for Philadelphia police officers, www.domelights.com.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with both or neither, here's a quick sum:

1.) A few days ago, Cambridge Police were summoned to a home by a passerby who observed two African-American males trying to force entry into said home. When the police arrived, there was a verbal altercation between officers and one of the males who was identified eventually as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a Harvard professor and the person who lived at that home (he was having difficulty opening his front door, and so he had forced his way into his own home). According to the arresting officer, Gates became "agitated" and disruptive, and he was placed under arrest for disorderly conduct. The charges were dropped after a maelstrom of protest from the Cambridge community, Gates' lawyer, and Al Sharpton. Last night, during his press conference about healthcare, President Barack Obama addressed the incident, stating that the did "not have all the facts" but that the "Cambridge Police acted stupidly."

2.) Also a few days ago, the Guardian Civic League, Philadelphia's local chapter of the National Black Police Association, filed an injunction to attempt to ban on-duty officers from logging in and posting articles or commentaries on the website www.domelights.com. Domelights was created and is maintained by a Philadelphia Police Department sergeant and is, according to its own text, a "forum for interaction, information exchange and friendly debate among police officers and law enforcement agents, as well as their friends and supporters." The Guardian Civic League claimed that hostile and/or racist comments are frequently posted on the site about black police officers, creating a hostile and racially charged work environment. The League wants the site shut down, but the courts have requested that all parties involved preserve all relevant comments on the site and settle the matter out of court.

I have no idea what to say about the first incident. Is breaking into your own house a crime? No. Did the police initially know the man they approached was breaking into his own house? No. Was Professor Gates being verbally abusive? I don't know. Did the arresting officer "follow the letter of the law" in arresting Gates? I don't know. What exactly happened inside that house, blow-by-blow? I don't know. So I really don't feel it's fair to comment on the case, and I really don't think it was fair for President Obama to do so, either. People are talking about how this was a case of "racial profiling." That may be true, but the police aren't to blame-- blame the white passerby who summoned the police to the scene. She's the one who observed the two black men trying to gain entry to an upscale home in suburban Mass, after all. All the police did was respond.

There is a problem with profiling in this country, that's for sure. African-American males are assumed to be miscreants and felons, and that's a tragedy-- just ask the family of New York City patrolman Omar Edwards. He was off-duty and out of uniform, just leaving his precinct house after a tour-of-duty when he saw a man breaking into his car. Edwards drew his gun and chased the thief, only to be gunned down by several officers who mistook him for a criminal. Edwards was black. This tragic incident is just one of many like it, and it proves that we have a long way to go in this country before race relations are normalized. So many stereotypes still exist about African-Americans, and in spite of successful recruiting programs to hire more and more black officers in metropolitan and suburban police departments across the country, that divide is most keenly felt when black and blue come together on the streets of America.

The www.domelights.com debacle is living proof of that.

The Philadelphia Police Department hired its first black police officer in 1881, and, today, the Commissioner of the department is African-American, as are many of its officers, but don't let that fool you into thinking that Philadelphia's police department, or any other police department for that matter, is a cross-racial utopia, with black and white police officers singing "Kumbaya" while holding hands at roll call. I've been a posting member of www.domelights.com since January of 2008, when I found an editorial that I had written for the Philadelphia Daily News reposted on domelights without my knowledge. I tried my best to post comments that fit within domelights specified message: to foster interaction and friendly debate. I quickly realized that my way of doing things was not appreciated, understood or welcomed at domelights. When I complained to a friend of mine in the EMS industry about the hostility I encountered on the site, he laughed and said, "What do you expect at dumblights? Those guys are all assholes."

Go see for yourself-- the blatantly offensive and racist material that gets posted on this site, by men and women who still patrol the streets of Philadelphia, will make you cringe at best. I have no doubt that, if I were African-American and a police officer and I went on domelights and spent even just one hour on there, pointing and clicking, I would be afraid to return to the station house the next morning. Furthermore, if I were a black citizen of Philadelphia and I went on that site, I would be outraged and appalled that people who are openly expressing these views and using that kind of language are charged with protecting me and my family. It's disgusting and disgraceful. The behavior exhibited on that website is not just an affront to African-American police officers, it is a violent slap in the face to the citizens of Philadelphia, who deserve better knights errant.

Yes, I know that there will always be racist police officers, just as there are racist lawyers and doctors and teachers. I know that policing is better off than it was in the 1950s, when officers could openly and proudly serve as both police officers and members of the Klu Klux Klan and fear no repercussions. I know that black police officers can find meaningful, important employment in police departments across the nation, and that's great, but we're still really, really, really far away from where we need to be as a society.

Police officers, like anybody else, should be able to express themselves openly and candidly, however, the need to remember that they are public servants first and foremost, and that their conduct must be above reproach twenty-four/seven, for they are representatives of law and order, integrity, equality under the law, and fairness.

The motto of the Philadelphia Police Department is Honor, Integrity, Service. You can't hide behind a screenname and call African-Americans "monkeys" while claiming to uphold those ideals.

Respect Your Elders, Or You Will Get Tased

Two very interesting things have happened recently involving crime and the elderly. One happened a month ago, one is unfolding even as I type.

In May, a 72-year-old woman was pulled over by a police officer alongside a very busy road. She was going sixtysomething in a fortysomething. She refused to sign the ticket. She yelled and screamed and carried on. Then, after being ordered out of the car, she kicked it up a notch, moving erratically and and cursing up a storm. The officer pushed her towards the berm to keep her from getting hit by a car, and she renewed the fit, "You gonna push an old lady!?" He warned her six times to comply with his instructions, or she would be tased.

She didn't comply, and she was tased.

Granniekins was up-in-arms about the incident, calling the police officer a "liar" for claiming in his incident report that she was combative and that she resisted arrest. Interestingly enough, after the dashboard camera video was released to the news media, she shut the hell up and hired a lawyer-- which is a smart move, seeing as she's being charged with resisting arrest. The officer's superior went on ABC News and stated that his "mom is 76" and that, if she behaved the way this suspect did, he'd tase her, too.

And now, today, an 89-year-old white supremacist bastard is undergoing emergency surgery at George Washington University Hospital after he shot up the National Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was felled by bullets from two security guards after he shot another security officer in the head. In all likelihood, they're both going to die.

What should the security guards at the Holocaust Museum have done with this guy? Respect their elders? Maybe they should have turned on an episode of "Matlock" in the hopes that it would distract him long enough to be disarmed and subdued.

The images of a young, physically fit and imposing police officer lighting up an old lady are admittedly disturbing and irregular-- the general public is conditioned to thinking that all dangerous lawbreakers and miscreants look like Jean Claude Van Damme, or, unfortunately, Chris Rock. Here's the thing: they don't. Violent and unstable people come in all sorts of packaging, and this is precisely the reason why profiling doesn't always work-- because life is always pitching, and there are always curveballs just waiting for you to take a swing.

Was the tasering of a 72-year-old woman justified, the media asks? You bet your ass it was, Gram-Gram. There are penalties for non-compliance when dealing with a police officer, especially a lone officer on the side of a busy highway. We all make decisions in our lives, and our decisions and actions precipitate reactions from others.

The most regrettable incident at the Holocaust Museum is a chilling reminder that old people don't just shuffle around in their bedroom slippers with their mouths and zippers agape-- they're capable of committing crimes as well, and it is patently ridiculous to imply that somehow they should be treated with kid gloves, or that law enforcement personnel should approach them in a benign way as if they were all innocuous and incapable of criminal acts.

Guess what? Some of them are crazy and armed to the teeth, too, even if the teeth are false.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys...

I love watching COPS.

Even though it's silly and predictable. Lots of people probably wouldn't think a show about police work could be predictable, but it is. There are three "incidents" per 1/2 hour show. The first incident is almost invariably a high-speed vehicle pursuit. This gets the adrenaline going, and will sustain you through the relative banality of the second incident, a domestic or a drug call, and the third incident, a domestic or a drug call.

The little monologues that these poor police officers have to suffer through delivering at the return from commercial break are as predictable as they are deadly:

"Well, I've known I wanted to be a police officer since I was (insert single-digit number) months old. My (insert any number of male family members) are cops-- I've got (insert slightly smaller number) brothers who are sherrif's deputies over in (insert name of some bullshit hicktown) County. There's over (insert very large number) years of law enforcement in my family. I was in the (insert branch of U.S. armed forces) prior to joining the police department. I love my job, there's always something exciting and different and the people of this city are basically (insert untrue, positive-sounding adjective)."

But that's COPS in a nutshell. More people these days are getting tased instead of shot, so I guess that's a good thing.

Sometimes on the show they will mix it up a little bit and devote an entire episode to a sting operation, where the police are working to get the drop on a suspect. They find the scummiest looking officer in the narcotics squad, tell him to stop shaving for a week, dress him up in a wife-beater and a pair of shat-in jeans and have him walking around selling drugs to the kindly townsfolk who are out... well, looking for drugs. Once a sale is made, an army of unadorned Crown Victorias come from out of nowhere and the druggie is efficiently whisked away, clearing the scene for another bust.

Rarely, they'll do reverse prostitution busts where they pad a female officer's bra and shove her in a duct-tape mini-skirt and red vinyl heels to go parade along some shitty street and pick up the local horny bastards who are looking to bust a cheap nut.

Just this morning, Mrs. Apron and I got into a rather heated discussion about the merits of these types of operations. Our debate was prompted not by an episode of COPS (yeah, we watch it together-- that gay or something?) but by a news report about a dentist who was arrested by police after the dentist had arranged to meet a "14-year-old girl" for sex. Of course, there was no fourteen-year-old girl, it was police officers posing online as a 14-year-old girl, presumably clinging to a sheet of common interwebisms like "ROFL" and "WTF?" to augment their assuredly stunted online tweencabulary.

While Mrs. Apron obviously has no love for pedo's, she made the argument that this style of policing was entrapment.

"Um... yeah, it is," I said. "So what?"

She claimed that at least some of the individuals arrested for crimes online may not necessarily have committed those crimes, or planned to commit those crimes, if the situation itself had not been there, i.e., if these police officers weren't posing as a vulnerable, lascivious 14-year-old girl, might this dentist just have kept going on practicing non-pedo dentistry in peace and harmony with the rest of the non-fondling world?

"So much of what I've learned about crime is that it's situational," she said. And indeed she is right about that. A crime is committed by a poor person. Let's say someone lost their job, and then they lose their house, and their car, and their means to get food. Well, sure, that person is going to steal. And, in order to steal, because stealing's dangerous, might he not try to procure a gun? And, in the course of stealing while being armed, might he not encounter a situation where the gun will be used? He might.

Mrs. Apron is right, of course-- crime is situational but I have to believe that, if these touchers and tweakers have the motivation, the lust and the drive, they will find and seek out a situation through which they may carry out those desires, whether the police are out there or not.

Just like the fact that so much of crime is situational, so much of policing is responsive-- and that has to change. The days when officers sit on their doughy asses or drive around the parks and cemeteries at night and just wait for the radio to crackle so they can hit the lights and gun the engine are over. With information technology and creative thinking, there have to be better ways to utilize law enforcement resources. Police respond generally after a crime has been committed, when there's a victim crying in a corner or lying, bloody on the ground. After the victim's dealt with, the police then go out and hunt for the offender. Wouldn't it be great to snag an offender without having the victim?

I don't believe the argument that trapping suspects by foiling them or presenting them with bogus situations is unethical, but I'm very curious to open this up to you readers to see what you think.

Here's my final two cents: if you go trolling the internet looking for jailbait, you need to know that you're playing Russian Roulette-- maybe it'll be what you think it is, and maybe it won't. That, frankly, is your problem.