Let me start back in 1942. That's right, 1-9-4-2, way back in the WWII days.
That's the year that I began attending school in the kindergarten. It was the parrochial school where my Grandfather was a factotum roaming the entire property keeping things clean and in order. He was the one who taught me the way from the school to his apartment where I was scheduled to have my noon meal.
For the first week, he taught me how to walk in the city. He showed me the way where I would have to cross the streets in order to be safest and protected from the busiest traffic patterns of other streets. He also introduced me to Officer Griffin, the policeman who walked the streets of the ward in which the school and the apartment were located. Officer Griffin and my grandfather, Joseph, were long time acquaintances and sincere exchangers of smiles and sincere "hello's" but not much more since Officer Griffin spoke no French and my grandfather's English was almost non-existent. At the time, I spoke passable English on top of my native French.
For a few years I would see Officer Griffin several times a month as I walked the neighborhood to and from Grandpa's house and the bus stop one block down the street in the opposite direction. I would see that Officer Griffin knew just about every soul he saw. I never saw him with any other facial expression than that of calm and peace. In fact, he was about the only policeman that I ever saw because my home was in the outskirts of another municipality where there was no policeman walking the streets. The only other "government" person whom I knew was the community warden in charge of WWII citizens' behavior, mostly in times of black-out drills and updates pertaining to them.
Then, as the years passed I got to know some police in the town of my residence where my father was also a Selectman on the town council. Then it happened.
I was now an adult, home on vacation from overseas. It was Christmas morning and there was an accumulation of about four inches of snow. My mother and I went to the church and when we got there we ran into the chief of the local police, Donald St. Pierre. Well, we shook hands and exchanged the usual banter about how it felt to see one another as adults after all the years of growing up together. And of course the jab about "How can YOU be the chief of police?
What I will never forget about that encounter was this little exchange:
Me: "Did someone steal the snow plows? Man, four inches all over the place!"
Him: "Yeah, you want I should ruin the Christmas gift from God?"
Ouch! I had been abused by the chief of police right in my home town! At church to boot.
That was early 1970's.
I finished my life overseas and came back to the USA and settled in California. By then, the cop on the beat had gone the way of the unicorn. Also, I was now forging a career in a big city, with lots of different kinds of people and tough police. That was 45 years ago. In that time I have had my eyes opened and my heart ripped apart by the comportment of the Boys in Blue from sea to shining sea. Of all the countries where I have lived and worked I have not seen the level of viciousness that I see here. Every time I hear someone use a superlative adjective to qualify the USA I compare it to my experience in Italy, the Vatican, France, Mexico, Philippines and Canada. I must say that the superlatives I hear do not apply to US.
In my entire life the only country where I have had to bear the news that the police had killed a person out of an extravagance of arrogant power is here in the USA. The police live a culture of untouchability and dictatorial arrogance. It will take centuries of pressure on that institution to change its culture. By the time that happens, my memories of Officer Griffin will be snugly ensconced with me in the bosom of Abraham.
