The Blue Meanies Are Back

First there was the Rodney King beating, then there was the awkward police response to the ’92 riots and now we’ve got the “F” word: Fuhrman.

It hasn’t been a good time for the El Lay Pee Dee.

They are either looked upon as racist thugs by those who are anti-cop or as puppy dogs of pity to be snuggled and comforted by those who believe they have been unfairly maligned by the Fuhrman Tapes, poor babies.

I haven’t heard this much roaring and whining on behalf of cops since the 1960s, when the revolutionaries called them pigs and the right-wingers waved banners of support . . . and the rest of us wondered when the hell everything was going to get back to normal.

Granted, the taped words of Mark Fuhrman do not represent glorious moments in police work. Whether or not what he says is true is incidental to the way he says it, in terms of moral impact.

I don’t care if he was creating swaggering, fictional cop characters, his racial epithets came from deep inside, where hatreds steam and fester. Fiction emerges from the realities of one’s experiences. Fuhrman’s voice was echoing the sentiments of his soul.

How this should effect the O.J. Simpson Circus is problematical. The whole trial is in such a state of dishabille that it really doesn’t matter. It has gone beyond justice, even beyond reality, and dwells in a little world of its own, on the other side of the looking glass.

Only when the circus is over will we be able to weigh the worth of the clowns.

*

Meanwhile, cops all over town are responding to the F-tapes by either falling to their knees at busy street corners begging forgiveness or trying to restore whatever shredded pride they have left.

I’ve been talking to a lot of them the past few days, and they all say more or less the same thing. They want nothing to do with Fuhrman.

From a captain about to retire after 30 years: “A mental health professional would have a field day with the man. He thinks he’s the only worthy guy in the world. He makes me sad for every cop who goes out every day and tries to do the right thing.”

From a homicide investigator with 18 years on the job: “Fuhrman has dishonored anyone who has ever worn the badge. We were a bastion between chaos and order until he came along. He’s just one more reason why it’s very hard sometimes to say you’re a policeman.”

From a sergeant in patrol: “Fuhrman is an embarrassment to law enforcement, and if he lied on the stand, I hope they prosecute his ass.”

From a captain who has weathered many storms: “We supported Fuhrman until those tapes came out. Now everyone is totally down. Their spirit is gone. We’re not a proud organization anymore.”

I heard from a patrolman who can’t wait to leave the department, from a wife who jokingly tells friends her husband is in “security” and from a cop-father who lectured his son, a recent graduate from the department’s academy, this way about racial stereotypes:

“When you see a person of color driving a new sports car and you stop him for that reason, you’ve dishonored the oath you just took in church.”

Saying that, he then turned to me: “Every cop in the city is standing in a corner cringing,” he said. “Fuhrman has done this to us. I disavow him both as a human being and as a policeman.”

*

Someone once said that good police officers, like red squirrels, ought to be protected. Those quoted above are good cops, the best, and, right, they ought to be protected.

I’ve known the other kind too. One was a secret Klansman, another hated blacks with such ferocity that his hatred turned inward and killed him. He died of a heart attack vilifying Martin Luther King Jr.

I’ve heard cops say “nigger” more times than I can remember, from one end of the state to the other. But you know what? I’ve heard preachers say it too, and doctors and politicians . . . and journalists.

Newspapering survived eras where if a black was murdered it wasn’t considered news, and if a black achieved success it was, at best, a back-page story, if it made the paper at all.

We’re all burdened with ancient biases, because we’re molded from the same clay that fashioned our progenitors, and they from the same stuff that fashioned their antecedents.

Racial and cultural antagonisms have deep roots, but each generation gets a little better. I’m less burdened than my father, and my son less burdened than I.

Fuhrman is an anomaly, but there will be others like him now and then. Do they represent everyone who wears a blue uniform? Of course not. While I’m not about to run out and hug every burly cop on the beat, I still think of most of them as being OK.

It’s just the nuts around the red squirrels that cause problems.