I train with a handful of staff members who work at three Baltimore Area hospitals, in the Emergency Room. Over the years I have been shocked at how much violence these people describe to me as happening in the Emergency Room and adjacent spaces. In the city it often has to do with gang members being shot and then relatives and set members coming in to demand life-saving measures, or rival gangsters coming in to finish the job.

In a New York City hospital a friend of mine works as an emergency room tech. He has to put up with much hysteria and occasional anger from bereaved family members. When I called to ask him for an out-of-town perspective on what these Baltimore area ER people had told me, he had this to say:

“We aren’t supposed to do anything to protect coworkers, not even female staff. Security—your big wannabe guys—are there. If anything rough goes down they call the cops. The cops take no shit. The security though, they’re selective. They jack up little old Chinese ladies that are worried about their husband all the time. But yesterday, this big black dude comes in and starts flexing, telling them he’s gonna kick their F-n asses, and they back off, let him have the run of the place. I’m trying to communicate with the nurse on duty and she can’t even think, she’s so freaked out about this guy—and this guy is threatening me. But security—you know, with the bully mentality—they give him half the room. If we drew a line around the area they let this guy walk around in, he would be the emperor.”

Something quite different happened on this same weekend in Baltimore. Joey and Arty were working in the ER when ‘this big muscled up drunk’ just began throwing punches at Joey, who is a Wing Chun and jiu-jitsu novice. He simply protected himself against a series of 6 to 10 punches, and then clinched up and gently took down the much larger attacker. Joey and Arty held the man and calmed him until security and police got on the scene.

After security cuffed the man one of them picked him up in a chicken wing and slammed him to the floor for no apparent reason. The security and cops then took the man on a stretcher into another room. The man was heard pleading for mercy and complaining that his ‘arm was breaking’ as he was ‘handled’ ‘behind a door’. Joey and Arty thought that all of the security and police actions were unnecessary and ‘post-incident’, in other words, ‘payback’.

I told them that two law enforcement people I spoke to recently have told me that three things are going into this increase in simple police overuse of force [and of course the imitation by security personnel who look up to the cops]:

1. the paramilitary ‘homeland security’ model of law enforcement that is coming down from the military contracting and SWAT community. I spoke to a recruiter for a military contractor based in Virginia this weekend, and he confirmed that local police use their facility as their home training ground. Why are domestic cops training with military security personnel prepping for a tour in Chad or Afghanistan?

2. the DOJ injunction against submission holds which, according to an FBI supervisory agent I interviewed in 2001, ‘has us going back to the stone age, beating people over the head’

3. prison overcrowding, which results in many ‘pain-in-the-ass’ offenders suffering little or no punishment as there is not enough room for more inmates. This later factor, I am told, contributes to a feeling among some officers that a little preliminary justice should be done in advance of booking.

Officers I have talked to go both ways on this. Some just admit to the fact that being in a decade long war with drug gangs has made them more aggressive and combative when it comes to ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘pain-in-the-ass’ work. One retired police lieutenant from a Baltimore area municipality had this to say:

“Most guys that you have to deal with are drunk. Let’s face it barring the occasional irredeemable asshole, and the professional criminal, we are policing drunks. Now, down in the City, well, that is another thing; that is war brother. I feel for those City cops and will not judge them. I don’t think I could have done twenty years of that! Fortunately, in an outlying area, you are doing more peacekeeping—but a lot of breaking and entering also. That calls for some diligence. Most of the drunks threaten you and want to struggle, and the next day, they apologize after they are sobered up. The lowlifes, the junkies and shoplifters and smash and grab punks, they just go limp and accept their fate. They’ll be back out doing it again, regardless of their treatment.

“There is nothing to be gained from working these people over; no upside. But there is a downside. I’ve dealt with professional criminals. Those guys—most of them—have a code. We have our code. They have their code. If you understand their code—not saying you have to agree with it—you can grease the situation, avoid the violence. One time I was working with this—well, ‘over eager’ officer. He decides to knock this burglar around. Now, this guy did not resist. Had a record; definitely a pro. He was going in quiet, and my partner has to get in some licks. This guy is quiet, rangy, hard, has scars on his knuckles, has healed bullet wounds. This dude has done at least twenty years on the street; a veteran with a code.

“He does not cuss, does not fight, does not make a peep; just gives the look, etching this idiot’s face into his memory. When we put him away he gives a look of ice—locks eyes with the other cop—and says, “We’ll meet again.”

“Now, how stupid do you have to be? Some guy that has been in the physical end of the criminal trade for decades, who is tough, who has beat down people and survived shootings, you’re going to make an enemy out of this guy; make it personal?”

“The policeman’s best friend is professionalism. You have to remember that one day you might be out with your lady, might be old and retired, and that guy—that ice man—might be there. Professionalism brother, it works wonders in many an occupation and is an absolute necessity for the peace officer, if a peace officer is what he desires to be.”

You know what, if every cop was like that guy, I’d organize a fundraiser for the local precinct. But what do I see when I walk down to the local supermarket on Easter weekend? Two cops beating the shit out of an 18-year-old employee for spitting in the gutter on his coffee break. No arrest, no citation, nor record, just another cop hater, who could have been nicely told that spitting in public was not sanitary, and would, ‘by the way Romeo, discourage the most desirable young ladies from associating with you.’

I’ll do what I can to keep abreast of incidents from local hospitals, but will be mindful to obscure the hospital and the identity of the staff. Anything like this going down in a hospital has law suit written all over it. Hell, half the people who use the hospital ER for their medical care are already thinking law suit on their way in the door because people at their income level are targeted with TV ads by ambulance chasing lawyers.