How I write cops · 1:22pm Jun 23rd, 2020
This is me trying to get some thoughts in order, based on a lot of things at once. Normally this would be a Wholesome Rage piece, but too much of it has happened on this site to separate it from that context.
What made me process all this together started in the Writing Group on FimFiction, in a thread about bullying.. I ended up having to justify a lot of thoughts in that thread, and I'd say they're worth checking out.
That's not where it really started, though. Some time ago now, I got a new job editing videos for a Twitch streamer. The first series I worked on was about a police-themed squad tactics game.
It was a great game, I loved it when it came out. And the last video I edited included jokes that, back then, were tongue-in-cheek. They were about lethally chokeholding victims for no adequate reason, since this is a game with non-lethal takedowns. It included jokes about flashbanging civilians, it commented on how the game actually disincentivizes the player from using non-lethal ammunition, because you were strictly rewarded for giving them the bullets that set people on fire, instead.
Those jokes were made because we knew those things really happened. Joking is how you relieve tension. But first you have to feel safe from that tension, and what changed is that we stopped feeling safe.
That last video aired on the day George Floyd was murdered. We haven't touched that series since.
In the downtime, I've been working on Beautiful Night again, and that meant looking back at Cinema Verite. Personally, I think it's my best work. Ultimately it's a story about the role of law under fascism. It's a very personal story to me, because it is based on my own experiences with the law. I've had a lot of them.
So. How do I write cops?
The detective rolled his eyes. Then, he slammed his hooves on the table. “Miss Octavia, please!”
“What?”
He kicked the leg of the table hard, juddering it. “Please, restrain yourself or you will have to be restrained!” He roared at her, “Miss Octavia—” He slammed his hoof on the table again, hard.
Then, quietly, he reached across the table and hit the stop button on the tape recorder.
Like that.
Alright, that was the easy answer. But it doesn’t tell you why I write like that.
It may not surprise you to hear that I’ve had bad experiences with the police. What may surprise you is that most of the contempt - on both sides - has come from being the victim, not the perpetrator.
My family has had a lot of cops in it. One grandfather was a crooked cop who may or may not have been killed in a hit. The other was the head detective of a very large portion of Australia during the 70s and 80s. My stepdad for a while was a police instructor. My cousin is studying to get his masters in criminology. Dad’s not a cop, but he has got a medal from the police for doing a vigilante justice. So that’s cool.
Here’s what I’ve learned, from all of them; Cops have two categories they see you in. You’re either a “criminal” or you’re a “victim”.They might not say it in as many words - they know they’re not supposed to - but it’s a very core belief of the profession. .
This is one of the reasons why they handle backtalk so badly. Why they tense up at the most minor stuff. There’s a constant threat assessment going on in their heads all the time, and there are only two criteria to sort you into. If you’re not acting like a victim, then you’re a criminal. And if you’re a criminal, you’re a threat.
‘Criminal’ is a classification you get regardless of guilt. It’s a state of being. It’s more of a taxonomic category than a legal one. It’s why most guides to not-getting-arrested specify making yourself as pathetic as possible.
It’s also why I think so many police were seen attacking doctors last month. When an area becomes a no-go zone, and doctors are treating people hit by rubber rounds and tear gas, that person is no longer a doctor to cop-brain. There is only Criminal and Victim. They are in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, helping the wrong people.
They are criminals. If they’re not following orders, use violence. You need to do whatever you can to feel safe, and having a criminal behind you when you’re closing lines isn’t safe. You need to hurt that person so they can’t hurt you.
Do you see what just happened there, in that thought process?
The fact that someone was doing something ‘wrong’ categorized them as a threat. The fact that they’re a threat justifies self-defense. Violence is not only justified, but necessary. .
This is kind of inevitable given what we know about the human brain, how it handles stress and violence, and the fact that we need cops to be conditioned to inflict that violence. To just do their job, to just follow orders.
It was not an aberration when you saw a cop push a 75 year old man down, crack his skull, cripple him, walk over his body in a line when someone screamed blood was coming from his ears. It is the inevitable result of what cops are.
I can’t source this, but the response in police forums seemed to respond to that situation with this: The officers were forming a skirmish line. When you form a skirmish line, you have to keep moving and not let people through it. That’s what a skirmish line is. The man should have known this. The cops did what they were supposed to do.
And just like that, even an old man who can’t keep his balance is a threat who needs to be met with force.
I’m going to link to bodycam footage of the murder of Elijah McClain, but I’m not going to make you watch it. If you don’t believe what I am saying is as clear cut as I am saying it, then you can watch everything I just talked about happen here.
Elijah McClain was ‘suspicious’ - because he’s on the spectrum, and he wears a ski mask when it gets cold. Police immediately restrain him.
He doesn’t follow orders, saying he hasn’t done anything. He hasn’t. He was just walking home, dancing awkwardly. Doesn’t matter. He’s a threat.
The police put him in ‘carotid restraint’, blocking blood to his brain. Six minutes is enough to cause permanent brain damage. Elijah was held in one for fifteen minutes.
He screams he can’t breathe. The cops shout at him in bored tones to stop resisting. They shout at him to relax. His last words are;
"I can't breathe. I have my ID right here. I have my ID. My name is Elija McClain. That's my house. That's all I was doing. I was just going home. I'm an introvert. I'm just different. I'm just different. That's all. That's all I was doing. I'm so sorry. I have no gun. I don't do that stuff. I don't do any fighting. Why're you checking me? I don't even kill flies! I don't eat meat! And I'm not a vegetarian, I don't judge people who eat meat... Forgive me. All I was trying to do was become better. I will do it."
Elijah was taken off life support a week later.
The officers report their bodycams were ‘knocked off’. They knocked them off. We have clear audio of one of them saying “Move your camera, dude”.
The officers received no criminal charges.
Why would they? According to the Chief of Police:
“From the officers’ perception, it went from an investigatory stop to a potential life-threatening incident, and it certainly raised the officers’ use of force.”
He did something “wrong” - wearing a ski mask in the cold. This means he was a threat. The police had to act in self-defense. The self-defense justified force.
And just like that, an unarmed kid with anemia was killed in self-defense by four police officers, who never stopped fearing for their lives in the whole fifteen minutes they had him restrained.
Do I even need to tell you he was black?
By all accounts, my grandfather was a lovely man. Tried to do his best for his children. Pillar of the community. Did his best to treat people well.
Some of my favourite stories as a kid came from the fact that he tried his best to be a good man, a good cop. One time, a family friend called my grandmother and asked which night my grandfather was on duty that week. And when she got that answer, she picked that night to murder her abusive husband, since my grandfather was the good one.
Absolutely ruined her ability to say it wasn’t premeditated, bless her.
Another was a guy who shot his foot off. He was someone who’d had run ins with my grandfather before. Officially, it was a misfire while cleaning the gun. Unofficially, just to my grandfather, he said;
“Honestly, I was going to shoot myself, but the gun went off on my foot, and it hurt so much I couldn’t bring myself to do it again.”
I was ten when I was told that story. I laughed.
My grandfather went home after gunfights with a car full of bullet holes. He had to investigate murders where the victims were the same age as his daughters. He tried to be a good cop and a good man, but his personal experience of the world was fucked.
He is the most profoundly racist man I have met, an attitude he gave to his daughter - my mother. He was absurdly homophobic for most of his life, and hurt some people very badly. He assumed all gay men were pedophiles, and acted accordingly.
When I tried to show him my photography a few months ago, he called me immediately and spent ten minutes emphasizing that if I do this, someone will track me down and beat the shit out of me for it.
I’ll get back to that.
My other grandfather was apparently great fun at parties, and an absolutely charming man. Either he was murdered, or he drank himself to death and flipped a car with his seatbelt off. Apparently both are equally likely.
All these things exist together. They are connected. It is why this information has to become so compartmentalized.
To cops, we are all either victims or criminals. Victims or threats. That’s the world they live in. And it is more important to work out if something is a threat quickly than it is to work it out precisely.
But what does being a victim mean? The people who make up the majority of the population?
Victims are the reason they have to risk the threats. They’re the people who need protection because they can’t protect themselves. To cops, they only exist to get hurt, and put the the police in harm's way. Cops are the thin blue line between victims and the threat, and without them, there is nothing.
That’s why my grandfather had to call me to warn me about the drone hobby. I’m a victim, and a particularly victimy one at that.
It’s something I have had a lot of personal experience with, giving witness reports after being mugged. After nearly being murdered. After a pedophile tried to groom me. Etc.
Etc.
This is something, I think, an unfortunate number of you are going to relate to once I point it out to you. Ready?
When you are a victim, cops will often see you in some way as being the ultimate cause of the crime. Whether it is because of your weakness, naivety, or gullibility, you were not able to make the same threat calculations they are, and you were not able to protect yourself like you needed to.
And because of that you are now a cause of the problem, and they have to put themselves in danger on your behalf.
Why were you walking by yourself? Why did you dress like that? What did you think was going to happen?
You aren’t as responsible as the criminal, not really. But you’re not really a whole person, either. And a civilian is just a victim that hasn’t reported a crime yet.
I’m not the first writer who’s noted this, and I won’t be the last. James Cameron said about Terminator 2:
The Terminator films are not really about the human race getting killed of by future machines. They’re about us losing touch with our own humanity and becoming machines, which allows us to kill and brutalize each other,” he says. “Cops think all non-cops as less than they are, stupid, weak, and evil. They dehumanize the people they are sworn to protect and desensitize themselves in order to do that job.
To underline this, the cameraman who filmed the beating of Rodney King in 1991 had also filmed the set of Terminator 2, in the same place.
Youtube Jack Saint, too, just did a video on this, where he points out that fictional role that the cop action hero most resembles, at a deeper level, is the horror movie monster.
I remember him pointing it out, because that’s how I write them.
This is pretty much true of action heroes in general. Batman outright doubles down on it, using the horrifying nature of what he is as his primary weapon.
5291425
I'm actually working on a Punisher screenplay at the moment, from the perspective of the criminals.
You're not the first to make these observations. You won't be the last. I wish you would be, because that would mean that this has stopped. But it won't.
5291427
IIRC, the actual comics have done at least one issue that way, trying to make the point that he isn't the sort of thing people should be emulating. Also a different issue having Frank himself directly telling in-universe cops to stop idolizing him. Real life didn't listen in either case.
5291434
They have! They do. I just want to see it as a slasher movie, because I thought those were some of the best takes on the character, and I think the horror movie format is the best way to present that interpretation.
I agree with the majority of this, and am saddened by the details shared about your youth. However, I don't think the analogy of police as cold, unfeeling machines really makes sense. Feelings, at least a good number of them, are the problem. Cops can feel fear, can feel threatened, can feel rage. And they can be irrationally biased against one group or another.
As a hypothetical exercise, let's imagine that, rather than defunding them, we gave police departments more funding to replace all of the patrolling beat cops with autonomous robots built and programmed specifically for the task instead. What could that look like? Well, they wouldn't be Robocop, armed to the teeth, or even at all, really. You could only equip them with IR cameras, so race wouldn't be factor. Separate professionals, trained in empathy instead of violence, could analyze the audio and footage to pick up on abuse, for example, while they would only intervene directly for violent crimes. That would involve simply rolling up to the guy and grabbing them by the ankle with a pneumatic arm or some such and disarming them, if applicable, with another. Then it could just sit there and wait for a living officer to show up, calm them down, and take them in for custody. If they resisted, the robot wouldn't get upset, or afraid. It's probably covered in metal plating and weighs a thousand pounds, odds are the suspect would barely be able to damage the thing in the first place. You get the idea; it could actually work. More so than the current system, at any rate.
5291443
Just briefly I want to point out that this is a poor idea, if only for the fact that your hypothetical robot technology is at least a decade out and wouldn't be quickened by giving the money to police. Also the fact that even voice and shape recognition can encode racial biases.
The point of "defunding the police" is not to make the police less effective at their job. The opposite actually.
Right now, we're giving police a blank check to buy/maintain tanks and riot gear, then asking them "hey can you kindly check on this old homeless guy", and going surprisedpikachu.jpg when the old homeless guy gets beaten and shot by cops in riot gear driving a tank. Because police are violence enforcers. That's sometimes necessary, but not for EVERY SITUATION, because violent crime is only a tiny portion of what police are asked to respond to.
The idea is that we take those funds and put them into things like social programs and other first responders (like EMTs or firefighters), who are trained and intended for non-violent, helpful response to emergency situations. That way, you can safely call 911 and the old homeless man will get help from a social worker specializing in crisis counseling, rather than an urban solider strapped in combat gear.
5291455
I'm really glad you brought this up. As an anarchist I'm not fond of special bodies of armed men within communities, but even anarchists have ideas on what "police" look like after the end of the state. The goal of "abolish the police" isn't to get rid of policing altogether but to radically transform the entire system of criminal justice from a retributive system requiring mass incarceration to a restorative system. We'll probably always have a place for in society for first responders who can defuse, de-escalate, or manage violent crime that can't be addressed by social workers, but by building a better justice system we can both reduce the amount of violent crime committed and the number of people required for the specific function of stopping it with violent force.
For my money, the best places to start on that project are cutting the police-military pipeline and removing access to the heavy equipment currently used by police and, when police are required, making sure that the police are accountable to the communities they serve. Right now, cops are policing "criminalized" neighborhoods (read: black) with very little if any accountability to the people who they are ostensibly there to protect. And by accountability, I don't mean half-measures like officers being fired through internal review, or even body cams. I mean if a cop beats you up in the street and you weren't breaking the law, you should have the right to sue the police department directly.
What I'm saying is defund the police, removed qualified immunity.
5291455
Or better training.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/police-training-killings-usa-nordic/
That was a fantastically written blog post! It was really interesting to get your personal perspective with the police.
I really hope all these protests lead to lasting change to the police both in the US and elsewhere. Some of the steps being taken in places like San Francisco make me hopeful, but it'll be all to easy for things to stop once the protests do.
This is a system that needs to be handled all the way at a training level. If the police training isn't all about prevention and deescalation, what currently happens in the US and many other countries is inevitable. I'd like to bring up my native Finland as an example. Now, don't make a mistake, we don't have perfect police. Many are racist, many are corrupt. Many perform frivolous arrests and try to convince innocent people to confess crimes they didn't commit. But actual, violent police brutality is extremely uncommon here, because so much of the three year police academy training focuses on preventing it from occurring, and because when it occurs, the consequences are dire. It's better to siege an empty house for hours than to go in and accidentally gun down an innocent houseowner.
Just recently, an officer shot an armed man in the thigh when he refused to drop his gun. He shot once, and immediately went on to give the perp first aid, The perp survived with minimal injury. It also turned out that the "gun" the perp was carrying was actually a toy. Now the officer is suspended pending investigation to determine whether his actions were justified. They probably were, but you can't know without investigating. Even when it seems obvious that the cop acted correctly, whenever they injure or kill someone, it requires a full investigation before they can return to work. And that helps them think twice on whether it's really the right thing to do.
5291455
I mean, you are correct. Obviously we aren't there yet, and diverting the money to social services while erasing the culture of violence within the force is the best course for us right now. I just wanted to point out that comparing the police to soulless Terminators is inaccurate, when they're probably closer to the gangs of angry armed thugs they seem to lump every offender in with. Apparently I went about that in the worst possible way, though, judging by the reception of my original comment, LOL.
5291480
The trouble is, the US outlawed slavery without actually reworking their economy so that it works without slavery. As such, the mass incarceration is a deliberate feature of the system that is working as intended. Yes, it's horrible. Why do you think people are protesting?
5291538
I mean
Why do you think I became an anarchist in the first place.
The connection between slavery and the intensely carceral nature of the justice system, as well as neoliberal capitalism? Definitely worth commenting on. We built our society purposefully, to do this shit. That does also mean we have the power to build new systems. Actually it means we kind of have a moral responsibility to.
5291455
To back this up some, I'd suggest reading the Medium article, "Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop" with particular reference to this passage;
While I agree with your assessment, I do have something to say about the old guy gwtting pushed: the reason the police have to move forward after he falls is not only because that's the best tactic for displacing a protest, but also because that's the best mothod of helping him. The cops in the front of the line don't have medical supplies or training, those guys are in the back. The supervisor nearest to the incident immediatelly called an ambulance and the instant the second line was past the guy two medics started tending to him. That's about as good as you can do when you accidentally hurt somebody, and it was almost certainly accidental. IMO, they were clearly surpised when he ate shit.
People will also say they should have just arrested him. Maybe, but they aren't there to arrest people, they're just there to make them go home. Arresting people wastes their time and resources and isn't fun for anybody involved. Just my two cents.
5291578
Have you considered not having the police trample a fucking seventy year old so he needs medical care from the police, though.
5291443
Have you looked at police funding?
What would you take away from, to give them more? What bucket should have less? Road & bridge maintenance? Social services (I don’t have in-home health care—I’ve qualified for years)? City hall, who manages all the paperwork for the municipality? Animal control? WHERE?
5291712
5291551
To quote myself from 4 hours ago:
5291739 To directly address your point - the problem is that any talk of removing the human element of law enforcement being a viable path forward is both that it's a non-starter, and one that's been tried and demonstratably hasn't worked. We've seen police robots being used, and in practice they're just a way for existing police forces to harass people through the insulation of remote control - see the San Francisco 'bot and its war on the homeless back in 2017. Programming isn't unbiased, because programming is written by people. AI's aren't going to take over the world, they're going to be used by old rich white guys to control the world. The human element can't be removed, however many layers of seperation you put it behind.
Fundamentally, that Terminator 2 quote isn't really about cops being cold, unfeeling machines - it's about the ingroup/outgroup divide that's an unavoidable part of the psychological architecture of the human mind, and how cops treat their outgroups as worthy of contempt, with no regard for life and dignity. Saying 'feelings are the problem' is just kind of specious, because there's no getting away from the influence of emotions and biases, only a picking and choosing of which emotions and biases to lean into.
5291739
5291822
If anything robots are worse. Because if you give human cops a truly inhumane order, some of them might balk (probably too few of them, but some of them). Robots, though? Never.
And the people giving those inhumane orders are insulated from what the results actually look like because they have robots fulfilling them and they don't have to see it themselves, so they can order things they'd never be able to stomach personally.
Okay, I feel like we're skipping over something important.
Are... are superheroes a thing in Australia? What is your continent?
5291578
Er, no, that is wrong on so many levels. And it makes one really egregious assumption: Why is it the police's job to displace a protest? Why would they even do that? Protests occur for a reason, and the best way to stop protests from disrupting society, is to stop the problem that is causing the protest in the first place.
Second, just stomping right over people is what fascist thugs do, that should not be what we want police to do. Especially when it involved knocking down elderly people who cannot possibly move as fast as the police can.
This is even more wrong. Police can and certain did make arrests. They made hundreds and hundreds of arrests, of people who were completely and entirely peaceful, and violating no actual law; while turning a blind eye to white supremacists committing vandalism and violence.
Further, police do not consider arrests a waste of time and resources, exactly the opposite. They clearly enjoy the opportunity to commit some violence against those they view as "criminals" or otherwise "undesirables". Just watch them, watch how they react.
Even if they're not enjoying the actual committing of violence, police love arrests. Arrests get them off the streets and into a comfortable office, where they can pull in lots of overtime hours doing arrest paperwork, and lots more overtime hours showing up in court. Go read the link Imrix posted earlier. In my city, the average officer makes over US$100,000 a year, over twice the median individual income. A whole lot of police officers pull down easily double that after counting their overtime hours, over $200,000 a year (and that's not including the fact that they have some of the best benefits packages of any profession). All these arrests they make are a very large part of the reason that they make that much money (not going into the travesty that is Civil Forfeiture at this time). Further, police often make bonuses based on the numbers of arrests they make, or citations they handed out. This is ostensibly prohibited, but it's also commonplace. BTW, did you know that if they arrest someone, and that person has cash on them, the police get to keep the cash, it's not returned to the arrestee?
Wow! You're fucking wrong!
I write cops as real people trying to do a job. Because that's what they are. Should note that I'm ambiguously brown, wear a headscarf, am trans, and have never had an issue with police. Not even when two cops had to get me out into the ambulance after I slashed my arm open, was drunk and combative, or when my roommate died of a heroin overdose and I wouldn't allow the responding officers to search the rest of the house (because I had a gram of cocaine and $1200 in cash in my bedroom).
5291880
Officers get shit benefits and their average pay is around 30-40k. My friend's dad works for SLED, he does SWAT, bomb squad, dive team etc. He makes around 60k. Please close your mouth on things you have no real knowledge of.
5291880
Of course, I'm sure it was safer to just have the medics treat him in betwen the police line and a protest. Probably makes it easier to get the ambulance there to have it drive through a tightly packed crowd rather than the cleared path behind the cops.
5291907
Erm, no. I'm going by the numbers published by the city government, the ones who actually pay police officers. Those are the real numbers for my city, which is a mid-sized US city. All police salaries are a matter of public record, and anyone can go look them up online, or request that information from their city records office. My local PD even publishes their base salaries and benefits packages on their website as a recruiting tool.
https://www.seattle.gov/police/police-jobs/salary-and-benefits
5291913
What are you driveling about? He wasn't treated by an ambulance, but by medics among the protestors.
And you completely ignored the actual relevant part of my post which was there was absolutely no good reason for the police to knock him down and cripple him with a traumatic brain injury in the first place. That should never have happened; it's just another example, along with children getting hit with pepper spray and flash-bangs, and getting teargassed and shot with rubber bullets in their own homes. There are videos all over the 'net of police actually marching through residential neighborhood, places not even involved in the protests, and firing rubber bullets and tear gas grenades into people's homes as they walked by. I have actually been present in one instance where they did this.
5291907 oh wow, a personal anecdote, truly this has comprehensively disproved the mountains of evidence for how structurally fubar modern policing is. Kudos on your fantastical luck in your encounters with the pigs, but your response is useless.
5291946
He was treated by police medics seconds after he fell down. Have you actually watched the video in it's entirety? The supervisor who's nearest calls an ambulance and the cops move forward, and then two cops (they might have been NG actually, judging by the desert camo and ACH helmets) behind the police line move forward to tend to the guy. He was transported to the hospital by ambulance.
The guy didn't need to be pushed, but he wasn't pushed very hard. Both he and the cops were surpised when he took such a hard fall from it. Shit happens at protests/riots, for the same reasons it's a good idea to wear eye protection if you're at one. They wanted him to move away so that they didn't have to handcuff and transport a 70 year old for not moving since they and everyone else know damn well his charges will get dropped regardless. They pushed him, again, not very hard, and misjudged his ability to recover from said push. He took a bad fall because of that. Nevertheless, it was an accident and that shit happens. Why they were dispersing the protest is besides that point (it was after the curfew, apparantly) regardless of your opinion on it. They began treating his injuries as quickly as reasonable for the situation, which is the appropriate response, full stop.
I had two friends who became cops. They were truly decent people who wanted to make the world a better place. Both encountered and exposed criminal behavior committed by other police officers. They are, of course, no longer cops. The bad apples (i.e. criminals in uniform) that they tried to do something about retired with full (sometimes double) benefits.*
So, when people tell me there are good cops I have to agree. I personally knew two of them. But I also know what happened to them. It showed me that good people in a bad system don't make much of a difference. The system is bad, and getting worse.
-----------------
* Except for one SJPD guy who was so laughably, cartoonishly evil that nobody would believe me if I told his story.
5292010
66.media.tumblr.com/e33965b1138ba12d3b015cb5e107f2b1/87960246ce3f918b-db/s1280x1920/b0f1835fde22bdd2cb1f583e7f7d36a17930db2f.jpg
5292056
Seems that way.
5291480
As an anarchist you can shut the fuck up and go sit quietly in your idiot corner while the adults speak.
..those times when honest blogposts reads like very dark fiction .....
5291551
thanks for quoting this ....
Also, while this is (formally) about fictional future with fictional character ..I can't stop myself from thinking about Tales Of Los Pegasus / 8. The City In Blue. because ..I also feel very old, often. And very tired trying to solve unsolvable case of humanity. I hope current situation will be solved in some progressive manner - but because everything is so co-tied together .. May be only some very Out of the (human) box thinking will give us chance to break this downward trajectory/death spiral. And I probably must add explicitly - one of the best 'out of the box' lines of though I found exactly in ...various minorities, not in the big palaces of some Officially Great and Blessed by Power institution, be it science or arts/literature.
5292113
Aren't you the artist formerly known as Whisperwings AKA SexyPudgyPinkiePie AKA "I have four tulpas"? I'd be very careful about the glass house you'rein, accusing other people of immaturity. Scarlet's position is the one I most agree with here and they argued it well.
That's how I write them, too.
That's the point of the whole blog, in a nutshell, isn't it?
What their job is involves hurting people, and risking being hurt by people. All the time and forever. And how they have to position themselves to do that job involves massive amounts of compartmentalization and desensitization. EDIT: See Imrix's quote, actually, it's really good.
And that's what makes them so scary from a literary perspective. My favourite horror movie of the last few years, Green Room, is based on this idea; The scariest thing in the world is someone intelligent, who is reasonable but cannot be reasoned with.
It is because they are 'just doing their job' when these people are hurt, or killed, that cops are terrifying. Regardless of the kind of person they are when the shift ends.
5291907
So over the years you've given me about as many diagnoses for yourself as there are diagnoses in the DSM V. This has ranged from ASD to ADHD to BPD to Bipolar disorder to PTSD to Schizophrenia to DID to Too Many Tulpas (not a disorder I can bill, sorry) to Gender Dysphoria to several paraphilias to Antisocial personality disorder. Consistently you really, really, really love to come back to that Antisocial piece. It's always impressive to me how terrible you are at hiding the fact that you seem to enjoy sucking the life out of people by making sure they know you are there.
"Cops are good because they let me get away with hiding cocaine after my roommate died of a heroin overdose."
Neat. Poignant, to the point, and completely uncaring of the fact that your roommate died of an OD, but the good part was that you got away with it. That's a hell of an opener for you, and watching you come down through the comment chain is basically like watching someone further unload all of the inadequacies upon other people because that's what they seem to enjoy doing. Because your defenses were both 'hey this one time I did a thing that was completely fucking antisocial, the cops were cool to me!' rings super hollow when we go back to the fact that you have a tendency to be a pathological liar. In fact, consistently lying is criteria A2 of Antisocial personality disorder! Neat!
Oh but you couldn't just stop there. You've consistently shown a lovely level of irritability and aggressiveness in the fact that you tend to show up in comment sections with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball to the face, and seem to get a perverse pleasure out of picking fights. Considering that you could have left your comment and walked away, but then had to come back two hours later to randomly swing on Scarlett kinda makes me go 'hmm, I think that (insert name you are going by this hour) might be getting something out of creating a hellstorm of drama.' It's also criterion A4.
Going back to your comment about 'cops being cool for letting you get away with illegal shit', well darling there's that lovely Criterion A1 of consistent failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviour. I'll give you credit. This is one of the few things you've consistently admitted, nay, bragged about is your history of 'sticking it to the man.' I remember a rather long and involved and concerning conversation I had with you back in 2014 about how you really enjoyed dealing. It was concerning less because of your reckless disregard for the safety of yourself and others (criterion A5), but because you seemed to enjoy it so much.
You've also bragged about the number of times you've been banned places for being a shit, stirring up drama, and honestly I've experienced you do this in two separate places and have banned you from social settings on at least one because you cannot seem to actually get along with other people. You show a consistent lack of remorse for your actions (unless showing remorse will get you something you want, criterion A7), when you are told you are wrong you design fantasies in your head that you were right all along and that the reason your plans failed wasn't because you made impulsive decisions, no it was because they wanted to put you down. So it's never your fault that you make impulsive decisions that get you banned or you fail to plan ahead in social settings (Criterion A3), it's always the fault of others.
Because really, who wants to take ownership of the fact that their behaviour makes them look unhinged, and that they are the reason they keep getting banned for antisocial behaviour? Clearly you don't, otherwise you'd've actually listened to what I've told you several times over the course of the past 6 or so years about how maybe the problem isn't other people, it's you. But my guess is that the way you'll respond to this is either to 1. block me, 2. tell me to go fuck myself or 3. try to write up something to make me look like a terrible person because I dared, dared to inflict upon you the dark and evil ego wound of trying to hold you accountable for your actions. So in lieu of that, let's review your score!
You got:
Criterion A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, and A7. Three or more of those is enough to diagnose Antisocial personality disorder, but let's continue, shall we? Oh you're over the age of 18, that's criterion B. You've suggested you did shit like this before the age of 18, so there's the possible conduct disorder and Criterion C. And while you've said that you have Schizophrenia and Bipolar disorder at various points in time, the fact is that you've kind of consistently been a terrible person always, so we can rule out Criterion D because it doesn't matter if you are depressed, manic, or psychotic or stable: you are consistently someone who basically shows up to cause drama, start fights, and then wonder why the banhammer is being swung upon you.
"Oh but I have so many other issues that could explain my behaviour and I am going to hide behind them!" Here's the thing: having mental health issues is not a 'get out of being an asshole for free' card. I honestly think that, with your flair for drama, you likely also have co-occuring Borderline Personality disorder, and if I really felt like it, I could go into examples of that which I've observed over the long term as well. Really it goes far in explaining why even in a relatively innocuous blog post (which, admittedly this one probably isn't), you've found ways to stir up shitstorms. What it gets back to is accountability for your actions, and since you have repeatedly and vociferously denied any accountability for your own actions, I suppose giving you the name of a disorder that is essentially a nice, clean, billable way of saying that you're a rather terrible person may actually be doing you a favour. Or at the very least, it's a badge you can wear that warns people that attempting to interact with you will only bring about pain, suffering, lies, and disappointment.
5292238
Option 4. Shrugging it off as fair, aside from the caveats of "I've never said or implied anything other than schizophrenia" and I don't lie. But sure, paint whatever picture of me you'd like to believe in if it helps you hate me.
5292254
Funny that no matter the situation you can always make up some family member or friend to fit whatever bullshit narrative is most productive for your arguments.
5292254
Oh yes. Thank you for that reply. It reminded me of other things you like to do which is gaslight people, which is another predatory behaviour that doesn't really fall under any particular category. But again, there's no way that you could do anything like that, right? It's all in the heads of other people. That's the reason why others 'hate' you even though all they're really doing is setting boundaries with you. But like gara said, you often are whatever is most convenient for your argument at the moment which gets back to my thing about you lying like a rug. I'm also half tempted to do a mini experiment to see just how many comments you'll reply to because you have to get the last word in. So far we're at 1!
5292261
Is that not what you're doing right now? Oh well. I'll just let slanderous diatribes from people who don't really know me as much as they think they do slide in the future.
5292306
Your comment is literally just getting the last word in here about not needing to get the last word in. You just took bait clearly labelled 'bait'.
Take the loss here, try and figure out what to do about the things they're right about. I'm not particularly in the mood to stand up for you after you took a swing at my friend for no reason, here, other than to take a swing at someone. Your comments in this thread alone seems to provide a lot of evidence for what Heartshine is saying.
5292306
And we're at 2! Can we try for 3?
5292113
You know I’m not one to kink shame, but if you’re gonna be a bootlicker there are much more satisfying boots to lick than the State’s.
That being said, there's something to be said about dead horses, please? Wait for something new before piling on, here. Thank you.
acab
An excellent diagnosis. Got any ideas for treatment? Because police are necessary, they can't work without trust (at least not without going full=on police state) and at this point trust has degraded too much to be recovered without this stuff being fixed.
5292430
I would point you to Scarlet and Imrix's excellent comments upthread
5292431
So basically forking off a lot of their work into a new, unarmed emergency service?
I honestly can't tell if that's an amazing idea, or an utterly impracticeable one.
5292433
The alternative is having most social work done by cops, based on their training on how to survive a gunfight.
I'm not sure why this situation is seen as any more practical.