A toast you don’t hear much anymore

It goes something like this:

Here’s to cops. The beat cops: uniforms, flatfoots, the rookies and the vets. The men in blue – and the women – who get called everything your mother told you not to say, back when you were a kid and remembered what it was like to respect other people. The cops who endure lectures on their failed lives from drunken teens when they’re breaking up keggers in the woods; who pull those same teens out of ditches and off power poles, and sometimes have to call their parents with the worst news a parent could receive and it’s not about their totaled car.

Here’s to the cops who wade alone into barfights, whose responsibility it is to preserve life and property in the midst of a dozen throwdown rednecks who are ready to swing at anything. Here’s to the cops who enfold a child in their arms and tell them it’s going to be alright when they know it won’t, at least not anytime soon.

© Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons

Here’s to the cops who get called “stupid” every day by clean-fingered technocrats who think sea kayaking is an adrenaline sport; who are called “racist pigs” by every mother of a black gangster and just plain “pigs” by white kids who tag mom ‘n’ pop stores with anarchy signs; who are even reflexively termed “statist oppressors” by grown, prosperous adults who really ought to know better. They go to work anyway. They pray their kids never see them on TV.

Here’s to the just plain cops who are always depicted as bumbling clowns in movies and on television because they’re not tacticool SWAT guys or high-speed federal officers or sports jacket detectives; who’ve never seen a “drop gun” that wasn’t laid down by a screenwriter; who have faces and names and are your neighbors, if your city can afford to pay them enough to live on your street. They saw the same movies you did, and took the oath anyway.

In an age of armored hoplites locking down cities under the watchful eyes of rooftop snipers, here’s to the cops who still have the guts to go talk to American citizens in short-sleeved shirts, with no bigger shields than the ones shining on their chests.

Here’s to the cops who swear to serve and protect, even when that means trying to bring peace to a house where violence has erupted like a family pox and there is no right answer for the broken people behind that door. They take a deep breath and knock anyway.

Here’s to the men and women who drive fast and run hard toward the things that chase you, sweating and screaming, out of your nightmares. And chase them out of theirs, too.

Here’s to the cops who take the baggie from your son or the shoplifted pendant from your daughter and tell them not to be stupid at their age; it’s too much paperwork and just go home, willya? Go home and don’t be stupid next time.

Here’s to my cops, in my town, who have entirely failed to make themselves into Facebook-enhanced, cartoonish images of justice gone awry – yes, even the Shoreline guy who gave me a ticket for rolling a stale yellow, and even those SPD guys who gave no citation whatsoever to the idiot who ran down my motorcycle from behind.

I’m not perfect, either.

Here’s to the 99 percent of honorable officers who aren’t a “thin blue line” of omerta, but the wide blue flying wedge of civil stability in a society of mostly reasonable laws. Here’s to the guys who smile quietly when they hear about high depression rates among dentists, go home, clean their service weapon for the thousandth time, and consider.

Proud to have you on the force, officers. Thank you for honoring your oath – especially when it seems so many of us, from national-level politicians all the way down to those of us who elected them, have such a hard time respecting it.