DEFUND THE POLICE!!

2

Every once in a while, in the deepest, darkest hours of night, Officer Apples would lie awake, pontificating, his mind a maze of racing thoughts…

Like a lot of cops, he came from a cop family. His dad, uncle, older brother, aunt, cousin, all cops. And that was all he ever wanted to be. A policeman.

As a small child he’d played with toy cop cars and had a huge poster of Dirty Harry on his bedroom wall, right next to his Reagan-Bush ’84 campaign banner.

And while other kids dreamed of being baseball players or astronauts, he dreamed of donning the blue uniform, saving damsels in distress, going on high-speed chases… having shootouts with bank robbers… putting bad guys behind bars…

Officer Apples had loved everything about the police and loved any book, magazine, cartoon, comic, TV show, or movie about cops. He even loved those goofy Police Academy flicks. He’d pictured his life being something like that, like a Hollywood movie, like something between Heat and Police Academy.

But reality had been so much different. On most days, he felt more like a nanny with a gun, a babysitter, or a bouncer more than anything else.

Much of his work had consisted of drudgery like dragging an irate drunk from a bar, breaking up screaming match domestic disputes, assisting firefighters to rescue a housecat from a tall tree, or helping an old lady pack groceries into her car. Then there were the mountains of paperwork, the bureaucracy, useless meetings…

Then there was this. These kids…

Officer Apples had hated going after stupid teenagers for shoplifting, spray-painting… Having to break up house parties was especially brutal… At first, it’d make him feel so old, banging on doors, turning off loud music, facing down pissed-off, booing crowds full of angry faces.

Sometimes the kids were terrified, too, looking like they saw a ghost. Kids scattering in every direction, simply at the mere sight of the police. Kids dashing off into residential streets, running fast as athletes at a track meet.

As time went on, though, so much of that… just… bothered him less and less.

But what Officer Apples struggled to accept was the recent increase in hostility toward the police. The slander. The lack of respect from society. Most all he and his partner got these days were stink-eyed, dirty looks and passive aggression.

Not to mention the ever-increasing number of insta-lawyers, amateur journalists, and brazenly cantankerous fucks, assholes talking back, making George Floyd quips, brandishing smartphones, and pointing fingers, flapping their gums, lecturing cops on how to do their jobs, and blabbering about horseshit like “defund the police.”

Of course there’d always been entitled assholes being plain belligerent, yelling stupid crap about how “MY TAXES are PAYING YOUR salary!” But somehow, in the 2020s, it was different… worse…

So this is what we get for putting our lives on the line, every day, to serve and protect?

Officer Apples remembered the days following 9/11, the outpouring of respect for police, first responders… Random people wearing NYPD baseball caps… What happened to that?

Nowadays it often felt to him as if his badge had become a talisman of illegitimacy and ignominy, a haunted vessel, a magnet of hatred. A festering wound ready for a sprinkling of salt.

It’s not like they ever walked in a cop’s shoes. Let’s see the crybabies on social media and the protestors work, for a single day, as a police officer. Let’s see who they call when a homicidal shitbag runs into a high school and shoots up the place. See them cry about “canceling” the cops, see their whiny “defund the police” bullshit then.

Few could ever truly understand what police underwent, Officer Apples would ruminate. The daily dangers. The mortal dangers. The strain on marriages and relationships. The misanthropy and lost faith in humanity… Always looking at everyone as a suspect. Always expecting the worst…

The things cops see, no one should ever have to see… An officer Apples served with had been a first responder at Sandy Hook, witnessed the aftermath and inspected the crime scene… Hasn’t had a decent sleep in nearly ten years…

The graveyard shifts… Late-night traffic stops. Approaching a shady vehicle with tinted windows. Never knowing what might happen, never knowing who might have a weapon… And a reason to use it…

People, everyday people, whether it’s a working stiff in an office, a factory, or a shop, none of them, none of them could know. None of them could ever truly understand what law enforcement endure…

Here and there Officer Apples thought about switching jobs. Doing something else.

But what? He had no idea.

He was nearing 50. He had a mortgage, a wife, a kid, a thickening waistline and an assortment of worsening middle-age maladies like back pain, bruxism, IBS, and acid reflux… At his station in life, he couldn’t just up and do something else. He wasn’t going to learn to “code,” or learn “crypto.” Whatever any of that crap even meant.

More and more, the only enjoyment, pride in his job Officer Apples took was at least he was ridding the streets of a few losers, illegal immigrants, junkies, and young punks.

Officer Apples had largely grown to hate today’s youth.

Teenage boys. Hip hop punks most of all.

Officer Apples detested rap music. The way it sounds. Its negative influence on society. Its glorification of criminality.

He hated how hip-hop assholes talked, their slang, their degradation of the English language. He hated their breakdancing, their graffiti, their face tattoos, their weird haircuts, and the hip-hop kids’ shiny, bright and tacky clothes that were always either too tight or too loose, and he hated how they’d walk around with their pants hanging to their knees, with their underwear and butts all loose and hanging out.

The fucking kids look like baboons.

Teenage hip hop punks, they always acted so cool and tough. They’d talk back, mutter insults under their breath, puff out their chest in front of their “boys.” But once lots of these little hip-hopping heathens were alone in custody, and locked up in a windowless, cold cell, everything shifted to a simpering “yes, sir,” and “no, sir.”

Some of them even cried, cowered like little wounded beasts, and confessed, snitched out those same “boys” later, the young punks performing humiliating rituals of inexplicable, sickening bitchery…

Fucking horseshit… What a bunch of fucking horseshit…