I’ve seen the benevolence from fire and police department employees. I contribute to fire and police charities myself, and have witnessed many kind acts by you firemen and some policemen. I’ve also seen way too much lack of customer service from police who have forgotten they are public SERVANTS, and behave like law ENFORCEMENT officers. They have not learned to protect and to serve, but rather to harass or bully and to fine.
So the job can be hard to do a lot of the time, and dangerously unpredictable at times. It take a special kind of person to keep the customer service attitude under pressure. He must have a servants heart. If a policeman can’t separate the times he has to be tough from the times he needs to be cordial, he needs to find a new profession.
When “good” cops outnumber “bad” cops, those good cops can straighten out bad cops or get them fired. What we see all too often is professional protectionism of bad policing, which leads me to believe that a whistle blower would be in danger of loosing his job or worse.
I agree with much of what you say. I can only speak based on my experiences which may be very different from people who work in other areas. But in my experience your impression about “good cops” being able to get “bad cops” fired is only partially correct. During their first year on the job they can be fired quite easily, but after that because of the unions it is very difficult to get rid of them.
Unfortunately, the type of police officer that you would consider a “bad cop” is often the type of person that is most adept at manipulating the system. They are also often the type of person who thrives within the unions. This is why when you see videos of union people harassing Scott Walker they can be so nasty. Some of them are also fairly good at climbing the ladder within police or fire departments.
Many years ago one of my very best friend’s daughter was murdered by her husband who was the chief of police of the city that I was employed by. He was a monster and under his leadership the police department lost its way for a while. My friend is now in his 80s and he still goes all around the country speaking about spousal abuse by police officers and I believe has done a lot of good.
It takes a lot of vigilance in the first year to make sure that those who are going to cause problems later do not make it. After that it can be a major battle to get rid of them. It is not as serious a problem for the public when you have a jerk fireman.
Macho jerk firefighters tend to be more comical in nature... driving around in a big brightly colored 4 wheel drive truck with a firefighter license plate and a bunch of union stickers. Often they are macho looking guys with well developed mustaches and an attitude that they are better than everyone else. They can be found in local bars and night spots drinking and chasing women. After their third or fourth marriage they usually have developed a large belly and can’t afford a newer vehicle and they have a bitter attitude. Other than being an extreme pain in the butt to their co-workers, unlike “bad cops” they are not much of a threat to the public.
So I will clarify, the vast majority of police that I worked with in the past few years were “good cops” who cared about serving the public. This was largely because they have been under the leadership of a great chief. This probably has skewed my feelings about the police toward the positive.