One of my fave bloggers, Kevin Hayden, explains...
Why I resigned from the Police Dept.
I know many of you are wondering why I resigned from the New Orleans Police Dept. so abruptly. Some have asked me if I was under criminal investigation, or similar. Some have asked me if I’ve lost my mind; if I was ‘okay’ or needed some help.
The answer is a resounding NO.
I resigned, in part, due to my frustrations with a system built around obvious and inherent problems. I finally said ‘enough is enough’ when I woke up one day and could truly see this department for what it really was and how most police officers turn a blind eye to the injustices occurring at their very own hands. I realized that I joined this police department in order to effect change; to ultimately help people in need and leave this community in a better state than which I found it in. But sadly, after 5 years…I’m done. Some Officers have called me a ‘quitter’ or that I lacked the fortitude to be a police officer. Even the Officers who say I’m one of the best cops they’ve ever known still question my motives with a degree of disgust and anger. I politely shrug their ego-driven hostilities off my shoulder and look back on a 5 year career in which I effected massive change on the streets in many neighborhoods, changed countless citizen’s opinions on a very publicly corrupt and flawed police department, and stood my ground during one of the nation’s most unbelievable disasters; Hurricane Katrina.
I resigned due to the fact that the term ‘peace officer’ has disappeared from society’s vocabulary. Gone are the days of a ‘neighborhood patrolman’ or the Officer whom you become familiar with because he’s walking down your sidewalk every afternoon. I don’t know how many times I arrived on a scene of a call to find other Officers berating the victim, or even taking the reporting party to jail because of a simple traffic ticket when they’re reporting a residential burglary. I wonder if these Officers ever stop to realize that by interrogating a victim or handcuffing them, they have further alienated the police department. This complaintant will never again call to report a crime in progress or have a positive outlook on police officers.
Most of the inherent problems within this department, and most others, are a lack of application and employment standards and arrest quotas. Every department denies having these issues, but they are there. Arrest quotas, ticket quotas, mandatory drug arrests, etc etc. It needn’t matter what the offense was; merely that you come in at the end of shift with enough arrests, whether that be taking someone to jail for an unpaid seatbelt ticket that is 7 years old or the 65 year old cancer patient in possession of a marijuana joint, on his way home from work. The police officers that are being churned out at an alarming rate are being brainwashed into thinking they are different from the rest of the citizens. They are being ingrained with the “Us vs. Them” mentality to such an extent that they lose their own identity. These new Officers are commonly prior military or it is their first ‘real job’. They refuse to question orders to such an extent that they become robots for someone else’s agenda.
Now, there are plenty of these robot cops who firmly believe they are serving in the interest of justice; that they are protecting society and doing what is right. I was one of those robots.
It took a lot of questioning to see the truth of the matter, though. I had to break free from a mold that had been built around me, conditioning me to deny civil rights, forget integrity, and become so disillusioned by that ‘magical number [of arrests]‘, that I lost my own identity.
Police Officers are nothing more than Corporate Revenue Collectors. Yes, there are cops out there that are doing what is right, but sadly – the sheeple robot officers far outnumber them, spreading them so thin into the flock that they become non-existent and unable to change the tide. Everything that ‘the few’ work for, the ‘masses‘ unravel.
My questioning began when I first heard about Ron Paul and became interested in politics. I had been a police officer for several years at this point, working on a pro-active street crimes team. I was in blind favor of the “war on terrorism”, George Bush and everything else that seemed so damn American and Republican. I fit the mold of a clean cut, conservative police officer to a tee. I changed myself, both inside and out, in order to be a police officer and it just become normal. But when I heard Ron Paul and others speak so passionately about topics such as Liberty, constitutional rights, the economic scheme that is being pulled over our eyes, the injustices suffered at the hands of common people by corrupt and pointless laws, and limited government, I felt as though I had been pulled out of a coma. And I suddenly had an ill feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was a part of this ‘machine’ that was the problem. I might have effected change on a small scale by being a police officer, but I began to feel as though I was doing far more harm than good on the grand scale. I was, in fact, a part of the ever growing police state.
I began to research many topics and question my very orders as a police officer. Respectfully, mind you…but I realized that I was just another cog in this massive machine that could not be stopped by any conventional means. As I fell deeper down the rabbit hole, I discovered that I was not fit to be a modern police officer. I am not qualified to sit idle and take blind orders while victims are arrested, belittled and not cared for. I am not a company ‘yes man’. I DO believe that the Citizens of New Orleans – or more importantly – the Customers of the New Orleans Police Dept., deserve more respect than they’re receiving (to put it nicely).
The world around you is a deception. You have been tricked into believing that you are in control of your own life, that you have rights, that you are a FREE person. But you aren’t. The minute that you allow a government to license, charge a fee for, or regulate your Liberties – you have become a slave. This is my attempt at breaking free from the shackles that I have allowed the world to place on me.
http://www.truthistreason.net/why-i-resigned-from-the-police-department
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