There have been two periods in my life when I really thought I wanted to be a policeman. Now that I am an adult, I am grateful that I did not get my wish. Partly, it's because I have seen at least nine officers in the last 24H doing traffic stops on the highway (it was 104F yesterday afternoon), but partly it's because of how I think their job affects their perspectives.
One of my relatives works closely with the police processing warrants and such. This particular individual has gained gratitude that members of our extended family are not only largely law-abiding, but also that we're living good lives. You see, not being bad isn't the same as being good.
Contrast that to one of my close acquaintances whose father is a retired cop. He is extremely suspicious. He has spent his entire career basically looking for the bad in people. It's not necessarily his fault, because they send cops to people about whom they already have suspicions, but he really does walk around wondering what hidden sins people are hiding. For him, you are guilty unless you can prove otherwise.
It has been said that it's not a crime unless you get caught. Usually when people use this to defend their aberrant or abhorrent behavior, I ask them if the following conditional based on their own logic applies. What is it if you are caught for a crime you do not commit? You can spend a great deal of time under a microscope that limits the rest of your life. I think of the Duke LaCrosse players whose lives were affected and wonder how George Zimmerman will recover if it is discovered that what he did was self defense. Notice we haven't heard about him in several weeks.
I know someone very intimately who, by virtue of his choices, regularly gets in trouble. The funny thing is that he doesn't actually do the things of which he is accused, or at least not for the reasons unjustly ascribed. However, once a police report is written, it cannot be unwritten. Once an arrest has been made, it cannot be undone. Sure, you can seal your records if you are found not guilty, but all too often people blame them for things they did not do. Once accused, how does one clear one's name?
We are all people, and people make mistakes. I wonder how jaded and suspicious I might be if I went out looking every day for miscreants and malcontents, if everyone at whom I looked with any degree of scrutiny ended up having skeletons stacked in his closet, and if I knew about the hidden pasts of people I admire right now. You see, in the end, if we really believe in Repentance, then the new person becomes as if the old one were dead, and they begin anew. That is what we hope others and God will grant us, and yet sometimes we are loathe to extend the favor.
Although at the time when the Nevada Highway Patrol rejected me I was upset, I think they did me a favor. That wasn't their motivation, but I am grateful in a way. It seems so easy to slip in a way that can ruin your life completely, particularly now that the police are enforcing small things in order to raise revenues. (I have heard about arrests for jaywalking and taking pens home from work for example.) It makes me grateful that my status and upbringing kept me afield of the influences that were strong enough perhaps to persuade me along another course. It makes me grateful that I do not know about people's past lives. I feel bad for those who do this for a living, because it must be difficult to deal with it, especially if you have children, and I feel bad for this acquaintance whose father, although he means well, has over-corrected. If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will. People tend to find that for which they look, and so if we look for the good in them eventually we will find it.
I agree with CS Lewis who, in the preface to my personal copy of The Screwtape Letters, talks about how he does not believe there is any such thing as a bad man. If you take away all that is good in man, you are not left with an evil man, you are left with nothing at all. I hope that these policemen are left with something when they finish their careers. I worry.
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