The Honest Courtesan

If cops only had cop powers and privileges when wearing their magical clown costumes and/or carrying their magic tin talismans while in disguise to deceive people, whether they were “on duty” or not would be important.  But that’s not the case, so it isn’t.  And yet in story after story, both spokespigs and journo-parrots obsess about whether or not a cop was “on duty” when he murdered someone, or “in uniform” when he raped someone, as though this somehow made the crimes better or worse.  But a corpse is no less dead if the hail of bullets in his back were fired “on duty”, and a woman or child no less traumatized if told that their rape was actually a “search” or “investigation”.  If the State wants people to care about this, it needs to severely punish cops who act like cops when “off duty”; require cops to wear proper uniforms when “on duty”; eliminate the poisonous doctrine of “qualified immunity”; and dramatically increase the penalties for those using their badges and titles as an excuse to commit crimes.  Because as it stands right now, “cop” isn’t a job, but rather a privileged ruling caste who are virtually immune to the laws they enforce on everyone else, whether they’re actually on the clock or not.