#I know I'm preaching to the choir but I've seen some members of the 'some cops are good' crowd on here and mmm nah

[perihelionicarus]

Alright, it’s long story time. I read a whole bunch of accounts of ex-cops yesterday, and they were all TOO similar to how my experience in cadets went. I think (I hope) I can shed some light from the inside about how easily corruption happens in a space like that. While you read, think about how similarly the police system works.

If you have no idea what cadets is, think of it like a junior military (ages 12-19). You get discipline training and drill training and classes about how the military works, but there’s no obligation to go into the military after. A lot of people do, though. A lot of them also go on to become cops. I was in cadets because you could get your pilot’s license without having to pay for it.

The way a cadet squadron is organized is you have commissioned officers (COs), who are actual military members and sort of oversee the whole thing. Then reporting to them are non-commissioned officers (NCOs), who are the kids, usually in their older teens, who pass a bunch of tests and stuff and achieve the rank of sergeant. At this point you become one of the “leaders” and are in charge of cadets, who are divided into sections and aim to work their way up to NCO.

Our squadron was famously pretty hard-ass about the NCO/cadet dividing line. Once you were a NCO, the other NCOs and the COs would make you delete your friends off Facebook who were cadets, and you had the “privilege” (eyeroll) of learning the NCOs’ first names. The phrase I heard a lot was “don’t fraternize with cadets”.

My friend who I went to high school with was promoted to sergeant before me, and had to delete me off Facebook. She pulled me aside at school, though, and warned me not to become an NCO. I asked why. She wouldn’t tell me at first, but after a while she confessed there was “initiation”, yeah, a fucking hazing process and the other NCOs would treat her like garbage if they found out she told me. I later found out they didn’t like her anyway, because she had spoken out and fought back during the hazing. Also because she told one of the other guys not to smoke weed while she was in the car.

I went ahead anyway, because I wanted my pilot’s license and the higher your rank the better your chances of getting on the course. I got promoted to sergeant at 17 at the same time as two other cadets.

I honestly can’t remember too much of initiation, because I’ve long since stuck it in a trauma box in my mind. I remember it involving tying our belts around our eyes, being shoved around, forced to say things, dance, and it ended with us being herded into a car and brought to someone’s house (at which point it was over). You have to realize though that I went into it fully prepared for it because my friend had warned me. I can’t imagine how scary it was for the other two who were with me.

After that, we learned their first names. They suddenly treated us like their best friends. The worst part? It worked. We were part of the inner circle.

We were then privy to the email chains. It was so long ago I don’t remember specifics, but it got pretty fucking racist, sexist, and any other -ist you can think of. We weren’t all white or straight, not everyone outright made racist statements, and it never got n-word bad, but it was still awful and we were all complicit in that the rest of us never called it out. And if you made fun of your own groups? Your respect level shot up. (I might even still have those emails, since I rarely clear my inbox).

We also basically had a no-narc policy where if one of us did something wrong--gave a kid contradictory orders, didn’t back down if we incorrectly scolded them about uniform etiquette, singled out and humiliated someone--the rest of us would not report it to the COs. But the number one no-narc policy was about initiation.

We had another initiation in the dead of winter, when three new sergeants were promoted. Their initiation was similar to mine, but they were also forced to strip down to their t-shirts while it snowed outside. One of the boys (he was only 14!!) got fed up, ran out, and called his mom to take him home. Another boy finished initiation, but was crying. For the coming days and weeks, we treated these two like less-than, ignored them in meetings, and generally treated them like shit, until they got fed up with it and reported the whole initiation thing to the COs.

I say ‘we’ throughout this whole thing because even though only 3-4 of us (out of 15-20 of us) were the perpetrators, the rest of us were fully complicit in our silence. We knew it was wrong but still allowed for it to happen. A lot of us were “good people” and treated the two boys, not to mention other cadets, just fine. We allowed ourselves as a whole to become a corrupt body because of “one or two bad apples”. Sound familiar?

Our punishment for initiation was a stern talking-to, a couple people (the ‘most guilty’, I guess) getting demotions, our parents being called, and being told to stop excluding the two boys who had reported it to them. That’s all. We were all still NCOs, and still in charge of a whole bunch of kids. My mom, notoriously strict, didn’t even give a shit. She was proud of me for not being a weakling for once. Really, staying silent was the weakest possible thing I could have done. The strongest people among us were the boys who reported it despite the threat of being ostracized by their peers.

I aged out of cadets shortly after, so I don’t know if initiation happens anymore. It stopped for a while as the COs kept a scrutinizing eye on us. But before I had even been promoted, initiation had happened for years, so it may well have started up again. That’s a lot of corruption that went unpunished. We were told that to be an NCO is to be a leader, and that integrity was to do the right thing even when no one was looking. We passed these sayings among ourselves, all believing we were the paragons of doing right. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

There is a really sinister high you get from being liked by a group of people that hates everyone else. It’s something I’ve been incredibly wary of ever since. In cadets you are given camaraderie within the NCO body, and power over other cadets. Recipe for disaster.

My point here is that I am 100% sure this is what happens with police. I don’t know if they do hazings, but I would not be surprised in the least. No matter how “good” they are, they power inevitably trip. They lose sight of what they’re supposed to be doing. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism all run rampant. Their bonds with each other overshadow their supposed “sworn duty”. Every single cop is complicit in this; complicit in their actions and ESPECIALLY their lack thereof. All the ones who want to and do speak out are immediately ostracized. They’re organized by fear and not much else. There is no such thing as a good cop, just as there was no such thing as a good NCO. And it is no coincidence the sheer number of NCOs who later go on to the military or the police. 

It’s been almost 10 years, but to this day I’m ashamed of the way I acted. I’ve told this to maybe one or two people in my life. I’m sharing the story now because now is the time to see how easily “a few bad apples” can fuck up a whole organization. Google some of the memoirs of ex-cops, and you’ll see just how similar this is and just how easily that happens. So let me reiterate: power corrupts. There is no such thing as a good cop.

#long post #very long post #someone let me know if i'm swerving way out of my lane here but cops are garbage and i need yall to know why #I know I'm preaching to the choir but I've seen some members of the 'some cops are good' crowd on here and mmm nah #I was on the 'some cops are good' side until a few days ago when I started reading and remembered just how easily cadets fucked me up #not that im like naturally a good person but i certainly never had bad intentions and yet. here we are #sh*t percy says

[gnostic-heretic]

FUCKING THANK YOU!! I swear I've read so many fics where Russia out right calls people f*gs and tr*nnies given the current laws in Russia. It's disgusting and kinda spits in the face of the lgbtq+ of Russia. My wife put it best in saying that it'd make more sense and be less insulting for Russia to be closeted gay/trans. Same goes for period pieces. Lgbtq+ folk have always existed and I'm certain there were gay couples in the middle ages who wed in secret.

you’re preaching to the choir tbh this is a Good take... i have to admit i don’t read a lot of fanfiction with aph russia as a pov character BUT i can only imagine... ew

if you wanna know more about lgbt people in medieval times. this is so long so it’s going under the cut

tbh the persecution of lgbt people hit peak during the inquisition which means that we’re already at reformation vs counter-reformation times sooo post-medieval. and yes MANY people died. i’m not trying to deny it. however. first of all we only have trial records of those who were FOUND OUT and ACCUSED. so there’s a whole world we don’t know about (especially when it comes to lesbians since sodomy was seen as more of a men problem)honestly just because we are missing records of something it doesn’t mean it’s something that didn’t exist.secondly even if one was accused of sodomy... pal... at a certain point in the late middle ages more than half of the men of florence had been accused of “sodomy”. most of them got away with it or paid a fee and that was it. otherwise they would have burned like half of the city... not cool huhmost accusations were a smarmy power-move and not made out of moral outrage (unless someone was personally involved/someone’s family member was involved, then it became a matter of “it’s easier to get away with it if i say it was forced by the other person”). in other cases, someone could be completely str8 and yet be accused of sodomy- it was kinda like accusations of witchcraft really- and it wasn’t really as easy to prove as we might assume.

thirdly... as i said... especially in specific environments (especially in the upper classes, but also in some cases not- example from the records we have, “crossdressing” was more common with lower class people, possibly because it was easier to hide your identity/birth when you were not the son of the duke of the county of ‘stocazz) “sodomy” just like other “punishable sexual acts” (adultery, masturbation, sex before marriage) was... pretty much seen as not a big deal. like what people need to get about human history is that when a behavior is part of normal human sexuality you can condemn it as much as you want but it won’t go away. and people will just eventually think like... “yeah, this sure is happening”

tldr people knew that lgbt people existed- and more or less tolerated it, if they were not lgbt themselves. just like... at most points in post-xtian history i would say, lol. the victorian era was known for sexual repression: does it mean that people didn’t have sex? no, then i don’t see why we do not apply the same logic to lgbt people in the middle ages (oh wait i do know. it’s homo/transphobia)***by this i absolutely don’t mean to diminish historical homo/transphobia, i just mean ... to make a modern comparison, most homophobes are the “anyone can do what they want in their own bed as long as i don’t see it/think of the children/casually says a slur and thinks it’s funny” type of homophobes, not the “today i’m committing my fourth hate crime because all gays go to hell” type of homophobes... both bad, both make our lives hell not denying that, but you get my point4 and most important there’s also some p relevant records (though comparatively few) of people who, even back then, lived openly as lgbt and YES i am including the T. (i didn’t read shit tons of books about “””female crossdressers””” in history to endure people who deny that trans people existed even back then. in a book i read recently about a “crossdresser” called Giovanni/Caterina Vizzani there was the story of a trans man who managed to live his whole life as a monk and even get his gender recognized by authorities so if people could jot that down :^) when i say lgbt i mean lgbT)

but since history is full of these “exceptions” after a certain point it makes you wonder like... were they really that exceptional? or maybe medieval people were less... anal (lol) about these things than we think they were? more at 11 (i’m sorry if i’m not super coherent, it’s like half past midnight and i’m sick jdfhgjf)