Beginning in the 1960s, and continuing into the 21st century, Americans developed a healthy skepticism about police officers.  Countless incidents of crooked cops, bullies with badges, and cops too lazy to answer calls or do anything beyond arresting the first person they encountered filled the news.  As a result, the default setting for most American minds was a healthy distrust of police officers of every sort.  The bungled raid on the Branch Davidian religious center near Waco, Texas, was perhaps the high-water mark of public contempt for everyone who wears a badge.  In Waco, we saw a badly bungled raid that was clearly unnecessary escalate to the point where, despite many experienced voices recommending against an assault, 82 people were slaughtered by the police for their religious beliefs.  Among the dead were over 2 dozen children -this is especially ironic in that then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno listed prevention of child abuse as a major reason for the Federal attack.

So we, as American citizens, grew even more skeptical about the police.  Then September 11, 2001, occurred.  Dozens of New York police officers and fire fighters died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.  Suddenly Americans developed a blind-spot with regard to police officers.  Sympathy for the officers killed in New York, and fear that without the police protecting us, we would experience many more terrorist incidents, effectively shut down criticism of the police at all levels.  But is giving the police a free pass in the post 9-11 world rational?  Not according the the daily reports of police brutality and misconduct.  Every day we are treated to ‘dash-cam’ images or cell-phone videos of out of control police officers beating unarmed and restrained citizens.  It is estimated that at most 1% of police misconduct gets reported.  Only the cops who are too dumb or too lazy to move their victims out of dash-cam range or public view before brutalizing them make it to the evening news.  Most victims of these bullies with badges are anonymous.  They are too frightened, too intimidated, or too dead to complain.

It is time for American parents to return to commonsense in what they teach their children about the cops.  The “Three-fold Nature of the Police” needs to be drilled into the heads of all of our children.  To do less is to leave them helpless in the hands of these thugs.

The first rule when confronted by a law enforcement officer is to remember the Three-fold Nature of all cops.  The nature of a cop applies across all cultures, times, and locations.  Every parent owes it to their children to drill this into them from an early age:

1.        All cops are bullies.

2.       All cops are lazy.

3.       All cops are crooks.

If ever confronted with a cop that doesn’t seem to fit this mold, just wait a little while, and everything will fall into place.  Little girls who grow up not having this Three-fold Nature of Cops drilled into their minds tend to end up being sexually assaulted in the back-seats of squad cars from an early age.  An unlucky few of them will end up married to cop spouse abusers.  Little boys who aren’t adequately taught the Three-fold Nature tend to end up being sodomized by the bullies with the badges, beaten senseless without provocation, and often behind bars for crimes that they didn’t commit – their conviction simply helped a lazy cop to clear a modestly difficult case and earn plaudits from the police agency he or she serves with.

Increasingly women are taking on police careers – which just goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Give a woman a badge and a gun and her behavior becomes almost immediately indistinguishable from that of male officers.  Instead of a 30-something getting between our daughters’ legs in the back-seat of squad cars, lonely parks, or isolated interrogation rooms, it is a lesbian assault with night sticks serving as phalluses and demands for oral sex at the point of a gun.  With young boys the female officers know all the tricks of their male counterparts, and many a young boy has been ridiculed by a female officer who wasn’t yet satisfied by the ride.

In the post September 11^th world, most Americans have adopted a knee-jerk response to the police, showering them with accolades at the drop of a hat.  Parents who fall into this trap are letting down their children badly.  Children who aren’t warned are easy marks for crooked cops.  On the other hand, children who have incorporated the Three-fold Nature of Cops with their world view are constantly on guard.  They know that an encounter with a cop is on average more dangerous than an encounter with a mugger or rapist.  During the late 20^th century, most parents were confident in warning their children about the danger posed by cops.  After September 11, 2001, however, it has become politically incorrect to call cops what they really are – bullies with badges and guns, lazy sneaks that will look for the closest person to tag with blame rather than diligently trying to get at the facts, and crooks who will rob, cheat and steal, rape, and assault with impunity as they hide behind the veneer of respectability bought at the cost of a few thousand dead police and firefighters ten years ago.

So what is a parent to do?  Teach your children to fear the police.  Teach your children to avoid the police.  Teach your children to offer up nothing to the police when they are accosted by a badge-wielding bully.  Teach them to cooperate only the point of enabling rapid disengagement with the corrupt cops, before they turn really nasty.  Teach your children to remember the names, faces, and badge numbers of the cops they encounter.  So that they can provide appropriate consequences for the horrors visited on them by the lazy, sleazy, louts in uniform.  There must be consequences.  Cops go home at the end of their shift, too.  They have families that they don’t want to see hurt.  So teach your children to hit them where they live.  Teach your children to make life a living hell for every bullying, crooked, lazy no-good cop that abuses them.  No cop should ever be able to stop looking over his/her shoulder, wondering when pay-back is coming.  No cop should ever be able to send their spouse and kids out to school or shopping without wondering if they will be behind bars before they ever see them again.  In other words, every cop should have to live with the same fears that they provoke in the rest of society by their brutal, evil ways.  Only when cops fear the general public more than the general public fears the cops will society be free and open.

Prepare your children for the real world.  Prepare them for the evil in uniform that is every police officer.  Never cooperate with evil.  Never assist the bullies and crooks in brutalizing your fellow citizens.  Never vote for funding, raises, increases in force, better armaments and technology for the cops – because it will only be used against you or other citizens whose only crime is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when these demonic cops show up.  Be prepared to defend yourself against the cops – they are the real enemy in our midst.  And one day, the people will rise up and demand an end to the police corruption and brutality that is endemic in every police agency around the world.