This past Saturday, my wife was carjacked at gunpoint, her car and everything in it (phone, driver license, atm card, credit cards, immigration forms with ALL of our personal data, etc...) was stolen.
It was raw and violent, though she doesn't have a scratch on her physical being. I will be posting a more full story about this in a couple weeks, as I am monitoring her reaction and the progress of the trauma on her.
Yesterday I got a letter telling me her car was found. Nothing like using snail mail to reflect a real sense of urgency, right?
So I arced out and called around trying to find out why in the hell a letter would be used in the 21st Century. We sorta need that car, you know?
I managed to get in touch with a detective in the county where her car was found abandoned. He was very professional and this professionalism got to me and made me drop my attitude.
He called this morning to follow up on the car and provide me with details that the county wehere the crime had occurred wanted to fingerrint the car and such to do their detective work, adding we could bypass that and get the car back quickly.
"No, " I said, "we want that mofo who stole it to get what's coming to him"
"In fact, when you guys catch him, you have my permission to beat him down; I promise not to savage you on twitter".
The officer laughed "We won't be beating him down, probably. The police have got a lot of bad PR right now and we aren't real focused on that".
"Oh, it's OK if you actually get the right ones"
He just laughed again and said, "yeah".
I then got off that topic and I thanked him for his assistance and professionalism.
I don't have a problem with the idea of cops and believe they are essential to a civilized society. I have no problem being supportive of police officers who are working hard to do their jobs correctly, just like me.
But I ALSO BELIEVE they need to do their jobs well. I have to have some professionalism and I KNOW they have such expectations as well.
The officer I talks to was really good. He managed to defuse my frustration and help us out with useful information.
He's right: Cops have themselves a boatload of really bad PR right about now and if the police were smart they'd be corralling these bad apples and making sure that their best faces are out there.
We always here about these good cops.
We need to hear a lot more from them, I think.