Does it ever bother you that the only people separating our entire culture from absolute chaos and anarchy are cops? We have a choice between rampant, insane lawlessness and power-starved, overgrown adolescents who get to carry guns. I’m sure there are cops out there who genuinely care about the public good and want to keep the streets safe from miscreants; I just haven’t met any of them yet.

Think back to high school about your classmates who eventually became policemen. Were any of them not the burnouts, the kids who drank every weekend and always knew where to find pot? The ones who always looked angry, ready to snap at whatever was keeping them from meeting girls? They hated the jocks, they hated the smart kids, they hated the cheerleaders. And now they’re getting their revenge.

Forgive me for making blanket statements, but seriously, what would possibly possess a person to become a cop? Nobody likes you, people get nervous when you walk into a room, they do everything in their power to avoid you at all costs (come to think of it, maybe I’d make a good cop). You’re the scourge of society, unless of course, we actually need you for something, in which case we’re annoyed that you didn’t show up fast enough. It’s an utterly thankless job, and the only two possible benefits I can think of would be that you have a chance to make the world a better place - and I’m sure our streets are patrolled by the world’s do-gooders - and that you have absolute power over your fellow man. I think that’s it. You’re despised, you’re feared, you’re looked down upon. But at the end of the day, you’re the guy with the gun, you’re the guy who can pull someone over just because you feel like exerting some authority. Didn’t have the chance to do that in high school, did you?

I know some cops actually go out there and study criminology and how the criminal mind works. There’s a certain science to it, I guess, but, unfortunately, it seems like these guys always end up in the higher-paying segments of the police world we don’t come into contact with that often, like homicide or, in what I’m sure is the busiest police job, internal affairs.

Forgive my skewed - yet, I believe, pretty darned true - view of police officers. My first girlfriend Myra was five years older than me. We dated on and off for about two years, still seeing other people, until she met Jason, a cop in Mattoon, Illinois. Almost immediately, I was forbidden to see Myra, and after a couple stealth lunch meetings, in which Myra looked nervously around in case Jason drove by, we lost contact altogether. Eventually they got married, and they still live in Mattoon. I’m told Jason still doesn’t like me - though I can’t for the likes of me remember ever meeting him - and every time I go home, my father warns me to drive very carefully, because Jason is just waiting for an excuse to bust me. My friend Andy knows Jason and says he’s actually a pretty nice guy, but if that’s true, why in the world did he become a cop?

My friend Matt met a girl a few months ago, but because he made the fatal mistake of being a really nice, sincere guy, they of course became merely friends. She began dating a policeman, and Matt actually met him once, when the two of them ran into him while he was on duty. He gave Matt a huge grin and boasted, “Yeah, I saw some people illegally parked over there. Can’t wait to nail ‘em! Well, gotta go; got a bunch of tickets to write, heh-heh.” A couple of months later, Matt received a phone call from the girl, who asked if she could come over because her cop companion “just grabbed my wrist and twisted it, and I’m scared.” Here’s a guy who of course simply cares about the public good. By the way, this guy carries a gun. All the time.

I won’t lie to you; another of the main reasons I loathe policemen is that they don’t seem to like me too much. I don’t think I look dangerous to policemen - come on, guys, I’m not even black; everybody else I see you pull over appears to be - but for some reason, they always seem to find me whether I’m doing anything wrong or not. I just want to peaceably coexist with my fellow man, but you just won’t leave me alone.

My mother likes to boast that she’s been pulled over seven or eight times in her life, and she’s never once received a ticket (Reason No. 5,643 it sucks having an attractive mom). No such luck for me; I lost count at about nine, but I can’t ever catch a break. Every time, I get that disapproving, condescending “Son, do you know how fast you were going?” nod, as if I had just been caught trying to smuggle crack in the bodies of dead babies. I know there are plenty of snappy answers to this question, but I try to put aside my smart-ass instincts long enough to act like the deviant I am. When I was pulled over recently, Sgt. Superior - I always think of cops as being like those overly strict nuns in Catholic school, except not as free-spirited - actually asked me if he needed to call my parents. Dude, you saw my license; just because I can’t grow facial hair doesn’t mean I need a parental permission slip to drive.

That’s not to mention the time my stereo was too loud late one night, and rather than knock on my door and tell me I’m a shitty neighbor, the guy who lived downstairs called the police. I heard a knock on my door. When I opened it, a cop promptly entered my apartment and started looking around. Thankfully, I’d already put away the 40 kilos of heroin, but I still didn’t think they could do that. Are they like vampires? If you open the door to them, all your usual weapons against them are powerless?

A couple of months ago, I was pulled over after leaving a happy hour with a friend. I’d had a margarita and a beer, hardly enough to leave a dent even in someone who doesn’t eat. Nevertheless, rather than writing me my speeding ticket and leaving me alone, Dudley Do-Right decided to give me a sobriety test. There’s something most degrading about a sobriety test, especially when you’ve got an old friend from college in the car with you that you’re trying to impress with your standing in the grownup world. I had to do the Follow-the-Pen thing, then the Hop-on-One-Foot-and-Say-the-Alphabet-to-J thing. Then he asked me to raise the other foot and “count to 21,000.” Not to be unreasonable here, but that’s going to take me a while, sir. “Oh, wait, I mean 21-one thousand, like you’re waiting to sack the quarterback in sandlot football.” Sir, have you done this before?

I passed the test and went home, embarrassed and feeling, truth be told, somewhat violated. Still, I guess I can forgive him because he was just doing his job, if not particularly well. It’s when cops just make things worse that gets on my nerves.

A friend called me at 2:30 in the morning the other night. She’d been finishing up some work at home and was ready to settle in bed for the evening. She shut off the light and then heard a knock at her living room window. Opening the blinds, she saw a man, standing alone, doing something you really, really don’t want to see when you’re an attractive single woman living alone. The amount of horror in this situation is difficult, no, impossible, for me to fathom.

She called 911, and the operator tried to calm her when the man attempted to crawl through the screen to get into the apartment. Now, I’m trying to think of a situation where our need for police officers is more evident than this one. After about 10 minutes, the perpetrator gave up and ran off. A half hour later, the police showed up. A half hour.

Now, this friend lives very close to a bar I frequent, one that has an armed policeman always patrolling the parking lot. It would have taken him about, oh, 30 seconds to get to her apartment. But he was too busy checking IDs and smooth-talking the waitresses, I guess. When the officers finally arrived, they reassuringly told my friend, “Yeah, we figure he’s probably been staking this place out for a while. We wouldn’t be surprised to see him come back sometime. Be on the lookout, and call us if you see him again.” Then they left her, alone. She was petrified, she called me, and I came over to provide the illusion of a strong, manly, protective presence. However, I’m not always going to be there even though I can get there faster than the police.

It’s probably not a wise thing to write a column intricately describing how much I hate police officers, considering I’m in the phone book and could have an undercover guy outside my door in, well, however long it takes a cop to actually show up somewhere. I’m not paranoid, but just in case, I feel like I should tell you, Will Leitch is simply my pen name. My real name is Andy Wang, and I’m the editor of a Web magazine and live in Columbia, Missouri. I drive a Chevy Malibu, not a Toyota Camry, and I always go the speed limit. Always.

*BT*

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