The View From The Other Side
We’ve all heard the liberal narrative about police violence; now we get a different perspective
Note: this transcript was compiled from interviews conducted by several different journalists who all, by totally bizarre and inexplicable coincidence, ended up in hospital being treated for blunt force trauma.
Journalist: First of all, I want to thank you, Officer Donut, for being willing to answer some questions on the subject of police brutality. Not many serving law enforcement officers have been willing to talk to us.
Officer Donut: Woah there, back up. Step away from that microphone or I’ll be forced to shoot. We don’t talk about so-called police brutality, OK? What we’re talking about here is justified use of force to protect lives and property. Got it? Or do you want a taste of my Taser?
Journalist: No, no, please don’t Taser me. I have a heart condition.
Officer Donut: Best then you don’t stress yourself by asking dumb questions. Know what’s good for you. Am I right?
Journalist: Let me ask you about the recent incident seen by over eight million people on Youtube where you and fellow officers take turns Tasering an African-American teenage boy and beating him with your nightstick while he’s unconscious, face-down, with his hands cuffed behind his back. You and the four other obese officers continued to sit on the suspect for forty-seven minutes while eating your donuts and drinking your coffee. The suspect was pronounced dead on arrival when you reached your precinct station yet you threw his corpse into a cell and left him there for thirty-six hours before permitting a coroner to examine the body.
Officer Donut: OK, I’m getting pretty tired of this kind of insinuation. First off, that was no innocent kid. Did you know that when he was four years old he stole a worn-down Crayola from the daycare center? And that when he was seven he was arrested with a bag of cocaine hidden eight blocks away in a neighbor’s backyard? Are you aware that when he was eight, after only seventy-two hours of enhanced interrogation, he signed a confession of his own free will that he and six other kids from Second Grade were planning to hijack a commercial airliner and fly it to Afghanistan so they could join the Taliban and become insurgents killing our brave troops? Get your facts straight before you start whining about how tough we are on terrorists.
Journalist: Let me ask a different question: is it usual for all twenty-five of the mandatory bodycams issued by your department to be non-functional 99% of the time they’re worn?
Officer Donut: Don’t blame me. We work with what we’re issued. We’re not the problem here. Not my fault if those cams are so fragile they can’t hardly take one or two teeny-tiny hits from a ten-pound sledgehammer.
Journalist: You were in the Marines before you became a police officer, is that correct?
Officer Donut: Damn right. Proud to have served my country.
Journalist: Do you really think the mindset and training you got in the Marines was appropriate for life in the police force?
Officer Donut: Why d’ya think I took this job, asshole? It’s practically identical. Marines: you get a uniform and a gun. Police: you get a uniform and a gun. Marines: you get to ride around in Humvees. Police: you get to ride around in Humvees. Marines: you shoot dark-skinned folk whenever you want, no questions asked. Police: you shoot dark-skinned folk whenever you want, no questions asked. Couldn’t be an easier transition.
Journalist: But aren’t you supposed to protect and serve the community, not brutalize them? I mean, that’s what it says on the side of your patrol car. Wait! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I meant “apply justified force to protect lives and property!” Please stop hitting me!
Officer Donut: Goddamn liberals, always whining about the folk we kill through the totally justified and safe application of lethal force. There’s something on the side of my patrol car? Really? So now, in addition to all the other crap we’re supposed to put up with, we gotta learn to read as well? Damn, there are days I hate this job. (Radio crackles, Officer Donut listens and then turns back to journalist). OK, turns out, you were right about what it says on the squad cars. But that’s the motto of the Police Federation, our union. It’s there to protect us and serve our interests. Glad we cleared that one up.
Journalist: What do you think of the fact that across the USA, police officers kill more than fifteen hundred citizens each year, most of whom are unarmed. Meanwhile in Europe, which has a much larger population, police cause fewer than fifty such deaths per year?
Officer Donut: Yeah, it’s bad. I mean, we got armored personnel carriers, grenade launchers, 30mm cannon, .50 cal machine guns, plus all the usual stuff, and we’re still only killing fifteen hundred people a year? Seems like we need to spend a lot more time on marksmanship training.
Journalist: Ah, no… What I meant was, why do US police forces kill thirty times the number of people killed by European police despite the fact the US has a hundred and fifty million fewer people?
Officer Donut: OK, now I got it. Another of those smart-assed questions you people like to ask. Here’s the deal, Jack: them Yurpeens don’t have Freedom ’n’ Democracy ’cause they don’t got guns. But over here in the land of Freedom, everyone’s got at least one gun, maybe more. So we gotta be on our guard seven-twentyfour. Sure, it turned out to be just a phone or a popsicle or someone waving a white flag shouting “don’t shoot, I’m unarmed” but it could have been a .50 cal M2 pointed right at us. So we shoot first and ask questions never.
Journalist: Does that mean you’d be in favor of gun control?
Officer Donut: You see this here patch on my arm? National Rifle Association. I’ve been a proud member since I was two years old and shot my grandpa in the foot with a .308 hunting rifle he’d just handed to me. Guns are what keep us safe and free. You atheist communist baby-haters want to take our guns and our freedom from us. But you never will. Never!
Journalist: Finally, what do you think of efforts being made to defund the police?
Officer Donut: I think it’s goddamn hilarious, that’s what I think. If we’re not there, who you gonna call when someone breaks into your home and starts tossing stun grenades into your child’s crib at three o’clock in the morning while executing a no-knock warrant? Huh? Just answer me that. Oh, can’t talk now, huh? Not so full of smart questions after a taste of my Taser and fifteen rounds of 9mm hollowpoint. You goddamn liberals just don’t understand: you gotta trust us. We know what’s the right thing to do. The far-right thing to do.
Officer Donut out.
