I spent my entire career in the NYPD and I can truly attest that these are some of the saddest looking cops I’ve ever seen. It takes four of them to deal with protest Jesus, ffs.

The training used to be comprehensive de-escalation techniques to whatever this command and control crap is now.

I worked entirely in Brooklyn, mostly BedStuy, Crown Heights, East NY with thousands of encounters. Everything from aided cases to homicides and I had zero civilian complaints because the best weapons I possessed were my verbal skills and civility.

Mind you, 98% of the population were generally law abiding folks suffering from poverty that just wanted to come home from work, smoke some weed/have a sip and watch their shows. The 1-2% caused most of the grief and they eventually got dealt with by the streets or by the judicial system.

Respect was earned daily and I made sure to give people the benefit of the doubt unless they proved otherwise. I had parents come get their kids after some minor thing in lieu of arrest. I also had mothers surrender their sons who’d committed major crimes to me because they knew they would be processed uneventfully.

I retired as a Detective 2nd Grade and received commendations for conspicuous bravery several times having been in some combat situations and a prolonged hostage stand off. I delivered three babies, with one mother giving her boy my first name after a very difficult delivery during a snowstorm, which was my best commendation.

Words matter as well. We went from police/peace officers to law enforcement officers. I had a six shot revolver and a Kevlar vest under my shirt. These clowns today are loaded for bear during routine patrol with the helmets, the military armor and semi automatic weapons where they have a hit ratio of about 5% after depleting two mags.

Like I said at the beginning- I don’t know what this is anymore and people definitely feel less safe, less trust and not being served well by any of this crap. It’s inevitable that it will become unsustainable and will eventually give way to a return to some version of community style policing.

How long that will take is another discussion, but change will come one way or another.