Cops have no Morals
Cops have no Morals
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This is a conversation I had with a police officer that dramatically changed my life and perception of society. I haven’t told this story to too many people and like all of my stories, I’m pulling it from memory as best I can so the dialogue certainly is not verbatim.
In 1998 I was arrested for selling a few ounces of pot to an undercover cop. At the time I still believed that the police were the good guys. I already believed that marijuana and mushrooms were a huge benefit to society and believed that police and lawmakers simply didn’t understand this and didn’t realize people felt this way. I thought they were trying to make the world a better place and were just confused about certain details. In other words I somehow, despite being a drug dealer, still trusted the police to do the right thing. I wound up giving in to their pressure to join them and work with them, like a fool, buying their promises of immunity and safety.
But I still tried to talk to them… or at least the one officer I was working with. I had been pestering him for a while about his morals and rarely got a straight answer beyond his favorite phrase, “You’ve got to look out for number one.” But I kept trying, kept pushing.
As we were on our way to a dealer’s house for me to make my first purchase, I asked the officer about the ethics of arresting someone who is merely along for the ride on a drug deal, like a random passenger in the vehicle, not having anything to do with the actual deal.
“It doesn’t matter. They know what they’re doing. They know it’s illegal.”
“But they have no reason to believe there’s anything wrong with it. You expect them to call the cops for something they know isn’t wrong?”
“Well of course,” he said. “It’s illegal. It doesn’t matter what their opinions are.”
“But don’t you think it’s wrong?” I said. “Don’t you think it’s wrong to destroy people’s lives over–”
And finally he seemed to be done with my moral pressure, and shouted the words that have echoed through my brain almost every day for over a decade. “Let me explain something to you, Kalin: cops don’t care about right and wrong. How could we? We wouldn’t be able to do our jobs if we did.”
“No,” I replied. “Everyone has some sense of what’s right–”
“No!” he said. “You’re wrong. What’s important is legal and illegal. That’s what holds our society together. I mean, when I’m at home with my family, yes, I try to do the right thing and I care about ethics, but when I have this badge on I shut all of that out, just like all police. I mean stop and think about it for a second, Kalin. What kind of fantasy world are you living in where you think everyone is working for the common good? How do you think we’d be able to do our jobs if we cared about right and wrong? Stop and imagine us going into someone’s house to arrest them–a bank robbery suspect even–and I go in there with my guns and there’s a four year old little girl screaming ‘why are you taking my daddy?’ and an old lady crying ‘Boo hoo, whose gonna take care of me? I’m gonna die without my son.’ The only way you can deal with that is to shut off all human compassion, forget about right and wrong and trust that the public made the right decision in building this system. You just gotta do your job.”
“So you’re a monster?” I asked.
“Label me whatever you want, but at the end of the day, society wants me like this and at the end of the day, they see me as the good guy and you as the bad guy, regardless of what’s actually true. I’ll admit to you that many of the people I’ve put in prison were more ethical and noble than myself, but you know what? They’re sitting in prison right now and I’m out here enjoying life. And yes, I sleep perfectly well at night. So if you think you can make me feel guilty by using a few moral or ethical arguments, you are sadly mistaken.”
“Well, I refuse to let go of my sense of right and wrong,” I said. (Even though by working with the police I kind of already had.)
“Then you’re a fool,” he replied. “I’m sorry if that’s offensive, but you need to grow up. The world doesn’t work the way your school teachers said it did. Everyone is in it for themselves. Do you really think the CEOs of all those companies really care about right and wrong? Do you think an insurance salesman cares, or anyone marketing their crap to the masses? What about politicians? Do you seriously think there’s any politicians who would sacrifice their careers for the common good? If there are, I’ll tell you they aren’t going to make it very far. Do you really think anyone got to be a millionaire by being humble and doing the right thing? That’s the secret, Kalin. That’s the secret successful people don’t want you to know. The secret to success in America is to stop caring about right and wrong. You’ve got to look out for number one. Yeah it’s hard, but you can train your mind to shut out all those moral values that prevent you from getting anywhere in life. Nobody’s ever gonna give you a prize for being a good person. You need to learn how to focus on number one, to manipulate and climb your way up instead of focusing on trying to make the world a better place. That’s what all the successful people in our corporate America are doing. None of them are working toward the common good, Kalin. None of them.”
I don’t recall exactly what I said in response, though I know I was shocked. It was probably something cliche about the human soul or ‘love will conquer all’ kind of thing. Or maybe I was simply silent.
“I’m telling you,” he said. “If you continue making decisions based on right and wrong, you will never get anywhere in life. Certainly not in America.”
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That was one of the most life-changing conversations I’ve ever had. I discuss this in this blog post.
I’ll keep my response simple. The officer with whom you had your conversation has a common misconception about success. Success is not about how much money you have; it is about becoming a fully actualized human being, and that has to include ethics and morals in everything you do. Also, everyone must work for the common good; that’s called evolution.
I totally agree, which is why I hope that humanity someday comes to a point where we no longer have money as I think the concept of money has been perverting our entire perception of what’s important.
http://www.leap.cc Every LEO should know about this site. If you are a good cop who still supports the funding coming in for prohibition, you’re simply telling us naive citizens that you support the retention of “bad apple” police officers. Without the money for the war on drugs (war on American citizens who use marijuana), those bad cops would fall to the budgetary axe. Sadly the law enforcement welfare tit of prohibition just never seems to dry up so all those free tax dollars keep being spent cleaning up the mess that the 1% (that’s what LEOs say is the percent of bad cops) make. http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com is a good site to find that incredibly large 1%.
I follow LEAP on facebook. Wonderful organization. I’d never heard of injusticeeverywhere.com, but it’s exactly what I’ve been hoping to find since I became an anarchist. Thanks so much for pointing that one out. I’m gonna have to make a microblog post about it.
You had a personal experience with a bad cop. So you title this “Cops have no Morals”.
Two weeks ago I arrested a black man who anally raped his 12 year old niece. Should I write an article called Black men rape children?
If you want the police to judge you by your actions and character than do the same for us. Give the good cops your support and report the bad ones and work to bring their actions into the public light.
Don’t give broad sweeping generalizations about any group of people based on the actions of one.
Did you actually read the story? All I did was quote what an officer said to me. These were his opinions. I have a right to talk about things that have happened to me.
Edit: okay, I’m sorry I got snippy with you. I understand the title is used to shock and bring in readers more than anything else, and understandably can seem like an offensive, blanket statement. This story, to me, is more about Capitalism and corporate America than it is about police officers. This speech actually helped me tremendously to understand the world. This cop did kind of try to have me killed a few months later, but I’ll forgive him for that because this conversation opened my eyes and helped me in such profound ways. It’s not just cops who must turn off their sense of right and wrong. I have to do it too when I go to work. I spent two years working in advertising. Advertising is an industry based on telling lies and manipulating people, and every day when I walked through that office door I shut off all sense of right and wrong. It was the only way I could keep a good job and I would not have been able to do that if not for this officer. I think there are countless careers in America that force us to do this, but we dance around it and make excuses for the way society functions, and we lie to ourselves. It’s not our fault. We need to make a decent living. You have to admit that if you were assigned to arrest someone for a crime you did not believe was wrong, or if you believed the person was innocent, you would still have to go arrest that person. In other words, your job requires you to care about legal and illegal before you care about right and wrong, just like my job in advertising required me to care about selling a product before caring about right and wrong.
Thank you for the honest reply.
I agree that not every offense falls into my personal range of ethics. However the majority of the offenses and laws that I enforce everyone agrees are necessarily and ethical.
The main reason I came to your post was I saw it linked on Reddit, a site that I often browse but seems to be infected with irrational cop hate.
Probably the worst side effect of the anonymity of the internet is how people demand the cops treat them fairly, be respectful and not lump them into broad stereotypes. However they then turn around (many times in the same post) and inflame peoples sensibilities by stating a personal experience where they felt they were treated poorly. They then state that all cops are this way and demand sweeping terminations or outright revolt.
It gets to me when I work all day going to domestics, arresting drunk drivers, directing traffic, freezing my butt off in the snow and not had an argument or bad experiences with anyone. Then I come home and just want to read some funny rage comics but end up depressed over how much the internet seemingly hates me.
All I ask, ALL is that you judge me by my actions and not the 1% of cops who cause trouble or break the law.
“You have to admit that if you were assigned to arrest someone for a crime you did not believe was wrong, or if you believed the person was innocent, you would still have to go arrest that person”.
This happens with marijuana laws, I just write people tickets as long as they are polite and cooperative about it. Now if your driving and smoking or selling to people under 21 I’m going to take you to jail.
I agree they should just duplicate the laws of alcohol and apply them to marijuana. So there we got that out of the way.
Same applies to speeding, I start writing tickets at 12+ which in my opinion is pretty common sense.
Do I honestly think your brand new car is dangerous and going to fly out of control when your doing 81 in the 60 in the middle of the night. No.. but you agreed to not speed when we gave you a drivers license so man up and take your ticket.
The guy you met in your story sounds like a jaded burned out drugs and vice cop. I wouldn’t want to work with him with that attitude and I don’t think his department would like him acting that way.
Please give your support to hard working average cops, when you meet the bad ones be polite and an adult and then go inform his department if you think they behaved inappropriately.
Sorry it took so long to respond. I felt it worked better as a new blog post.