THEN AND NOW: SHOOTING OF COPS

Nowadays hardly a day goes by without a police officer getting shot somewhere in this country

By Howie Katz

Big Jolly Times
August 18, 2018



Back in the 50s and 60s when I was a cop, the shootings of cops in this country rarely occurred. Not so nowadays. Hardly a day goes by without a police officer getting shot somewhere in this country. Why the change?

There are a number of reasons people now decide to shoot at cops. Probably the main reason is that the police have lost the respect they once held. Daily media reports of police misconduct, whether true or not, have created disrespect of the police by many whites. And the shootings of blacks by white cops, even when justified, have led to hatred of the police by many blacks. Disrespect and hatred of the police lead some lowlifes to feel they are justified in taking out a cop.

Sweet talking cop killers into surrendering is another reason for the alarming increase in the shooting of police officers. In my day, when a cop killer did not immediately give up, he was wiped out forthwith. Today, they bring in a hostage negotiator and sweet talk a cop killer for hours in an effort to take him into custody unhurt. That does not discourage others from killing cops.

I remember a case back in New York when a couple of cops were shot to death by two or three thugs. I think it was early in the 50s. NYPD traced the killers to an apartment in New Jersey. Did they call in a hostage negotiator to sweet talk those pieces of shit into surrendering? Hell no! New York cops kicked in the door and shot the scumbags until they had more holes in them than Swiss cheese. The knowledge that cops would set out to snuff them, discouraged many a criminal from opening fire on the police.

The absence of the death penalty is also a contributing factor. Back in my day, cop killers who were captured alive received the death penalty and they were executed within a couple of years. Then most states still had the death penalty. Today many states no longer have the death penalty and in those states that still do, the condemned inmates roost on death row for up to 20 years or more. That amounts to a de facto abolition of the death penalty and does not discourage the killing of cops.

Then there is the internet, something not even imagined in my day. The internet gives every Tom, Dick, Harry and Mary the opportunity to spew their poison against cops if they have a beef, real or imagined, against the police. The flooding of cyberspace with anti-police rhetoric and smartphone video clips, which can be misleading, showing the police in a bad light tend to spread disrespect and hatred for the men and women in blue.

Back in my day of course, there were some questionable if not outright bad shootings by cops. And when a black man was shot by white cops, there were no protests and riots in the streets. There was no Black Lives Matter rabble then, calling cops murderers. Calling cops murderers, even when the shooting of a black man is entirely justified, brings out the worst in society as exemplified by the assassination of five Dallas police officers and the now not so infrequent ambushes of cops.

Those were truly the good old days for the police when I was a cop. Today it’s no wonder that cops are now quick on the trigger, what with the daily shootings of police officers in this country.