I've pointed out before I consider myself a working-class intellectual, although I am no longer working-class. But I was raised that way. Both my parents were high-school dropouts who later got their GEDs. I consider myself to have common sense, a sense of humor, and compassion.
So imagine my surprise when some years ago I started reading some of Joseph Wambaugh's novels about his years as a police officer in Los Angeles. Wambaugh wrote the best police officers were working-class, with common sense, a sense of humor, and compassion.
In other words, someone with an IQ with 125 is probably going to make a pretty bad police officer. The average police officer IQ is about 107, I think, which is the minimum IQ it takes to get a civilized society off of the ground and functioning.
I've never hated cops and have found that people who don't much like them - especially the more boneheaded "libertarians" who think society doesn't need them - live in small, safe towns. Unlike me who was raised with a bunch of psycho criminals.
Some people need to be removed from society. Punishment sure as hell doesn't work and "rehabilitation," rarely. The purpose of prison is to remove chronic criminals from society. Personally I don't care if they give criminals whores and drugs (by the way, sex and drugs are easy to get in prisons - it's just sex with men. As for drugs marijuana is easy to get because it calms people down.). Just as long as these people are removed from non-criminal society.
I have found stereotypes about people are true. After all, they wouldn't be sterotypes if there wasn't truth to them. Promiscuous, diseased, drug-ridden homosexuals...yep. Impulsive, low-IQ blacks...yep. Nerdy, boring Asians...yep. Alcoholics who act as if they're possessed by demons and you can smell the booze coming out of their pores? You bet. Hookers with hearts of gold? That, well, no.
I have never met a police officer who was a liberal. When you have as much experience in life as I have, you wouldn't be a liberal, either.
I was the second-closest thing to being a police officer - I owned a taxi for five years. And there is no such thing as a liberal cab driver. We've just about seen it all (about a quarter of the time I felt like I was working vice).
Of course there are bad police officers. I'd estimate about ten percent, which of course is way too many.
But I'd like to see society function without a minimum of them.
