A Tale of the Policia

A long time ago I was sitting at a park table at ocean beach.  They have a nice green before you get to the sand of the beach.  Back then I smoked.  Sally(another that got away and her life improved at an exponential pace.  I'm the finishing school for women who go on to good lives.  Great for them.  It kind of sucks for me, but we make our own path for the most part.  Still irks me, no matter if I am to blame) and I were both smoking a cigarette.

Then a San Diego cop car comes flying up over the curb not very far away.  Maybe 17 1/2 feet.  He gets some kid of maybe 21 years old for smoking on the beach.  Where we were is off limits for smoking.  The cop made the kid stand in front of the car for thirty minutes.  The kid had to go use a bathroom, but the cop made him stand there.  He managed to hold it.  He was not a bad or impolite person.  The cop was being a bully.

The cop acted like the kid had robbed a bank.  He did more damage to the grass with his car.  The young guy did not throw the cigarette on the ground.  He would have shot the kid with a stun gun if he could have, at least that was his attitude. A very disrespectful bullying man.

When he finally let the kid go after writing him up for something he couldn't afford to pay, he sort of nodded to us with an arrogant, "..afternoon folks".    wouldn't swear to it but I think he called us "folks", as he flashed a creepy artificial smile.

We had figured out that it would be best to snuff out our smokes rather than risk getting shot or jailed by this lunatic.  Maybe he was a deranged anti-smoking zealot.

Unbelievable: this is a photo from the recruiting page of the SDPD web site.  Join up and wage war on the public. Yahoo!!!

It is no surprise that the San Diego police department has been weathering one bad cop scandal after another.  And what is a cop's reaction whenever the corruption and abuse of power catch up?   Aggrieved f-ing victim!   As if it is their inalienable right to abuse people.

I keep hoping the cop Sally and I watched is one of the ones who gets sacrificed to prove the department is cleaning itself up.  Expecting a little karma to play out now and then.

They seem to be sacrificing a cop a week on the altar-of-deadly-force-you-can-trust.  "Oh look, we protect and serve, and cull the bad apples!! (when there is no other choice but to throw one under the bus to satisfy the stupid public who resent harassment, being shot, whatever. Whiners)"

I don't even follow the police story closely.   I hear episodes, like a soap opera, on the radio news.

So, I wonder at a system that generates and tolerates bullying, and at people for allowing it.

And I wonder at myself for being an anachronism of a self sacrificing finishing school.

I get it, actually.  I've not made things easy for many years.  Maybe I wish I had.  I'm not real clear on that.  Regrets do no good.  People often find it difficult to take the course of least regret through life.
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On the other hand, I'd like to give a thumbs up to Venezuela; I see you are predictably happy and thriving as the policies of your late president continue to take hold.  You were smart, like us, and elected a guy who rates Castro as a god of justice and economic development.   Your guy was like Castro's mini me.  We envy you for that.   Our guy is more like mini-Michele, I think, and she's nobody's mini.