Suburban motorists seem to understand the State Police. They understand that at certain times, quarterly in some states, that troopers are rated on how much revenue they have brought in writing speeding tickets. This middle-class cop incentive is easy to grasp.

What about the working class cop down in the ghetto?

Due to the shrinking municipal tax base mid-sized cities like Baltimore can only field a police force with federal subsidies—kind of like a small militarized Middle Eastern country with no oil revenue needing U.S. subsidies to keep its troops in the field. With the subsidized money come stipulations from the federal government, generally tied to two things: fighting the Drug War, and fighting terrorism, both of which require law enforcement and militarized police using population sweep tactics to supplant traditional community-based policing.

Policing, as the American mind has traditionally conceived it; of having a local sheriff, or a beat cop, does not exist in mid-sized American cities, as policing is not compatible with fighting a global insurgency or with enforcing puritanical laws on a godless population.

Policing, in mid-sized cities has given way to law enforcement, making ‘protect and serve’ mottos anachronistic at best.

I am no friend of the police, but have interviewed a few, and have paid attention to their plight. [Note: for a pro police view from another fringe writer see Fred Reed’s website fredoneverything, for which there is a link on our network page.] However, I understand that most of what cops do that I disagree with is precisely what they have been tasked to do. As a Darwinist I don’t expect any man to jeopardize his job standing up for something as fleeting as morality.

Urban police, like suburban and rural state troopers, are expected to log a certain number of actions, determined by department policy and priorities and also in response to political and media pressure. In Baltimore for example, If Eyewitness News’ ‘Eye Team’ reporters go on air citing proof that the last 10 homicides attributed to drug dealing in West Baltimore have gone unsolved, and charges are made that it is because these victims are black—when in reality it is because they are drug dealers and no witnesses will talk for fear of retaliation—police will be pulled from traditional business support and preventive duty to round up corner boys who will just be released by the court commissioner on Monday, temporarily leaving certain business districts un-policed.

Overall the greatest distorting effect of the War on Terror is the federal government’s demand for proof of enforcement in the form of documented traffic stops of suspicious motorists near, for example, Martin’s Air Force Base, even though 24 of these stops are of Mary of the goddess like figure who slices ham at the deli across the street by the same three all-too-human cops.

In the city the feds demand arrests of the criminal population, with, in one particular year a decade ago, the Harm City police actually arresting 1 in 5 residents, including almost every boxer in town! Of course this is grossly in efficient, but there are logical reasons. Let me give you one example from one cop who was nice enough to discuss his dilemma with me.

Bill—not his real name—is a Northeastern District cop, who agreed to speak with me about why he was pulling me up, a 50 year old pedestrian, while he ignored the three groups of youths who were even then prowling the neighborhood looking for mugging victims.

“Okay Sir, if you were copping dope, you are in steady commission of a crime from that house back down there on Echodale I saw you leave, up until this point where I pull you over—all the way to your own front door, and beyond, into this residence and that residence.

“On the other hand, those hoodrats who you claim are out looking for mugging victims—and I believe you Sir—they are not committing a crime until they lay a hand on someone and they will never do that while I’m cruising by. Besides, based on what you are describing, they are working together, using their mommies’ smart phones to triangulate my position. How am I going to police that by myself, out here on my own Sir?

“Additionally, most locals on foot like you will not report being mugged to me, because they have a history with us, and have that animosity. It’s a lose-lose situation Sir.”

At this point ‘Bill’ got a call for a ‘domestic disturbance’ as he characterized it, and was off, reinforcing the fixed point and line-of-sight nature of car-mobile urban policing. He is an officer who is expected to produce, and production in the Drug War is much more doable than proof of protecting and serving common citizens in need. Just like athletes always adapt their methods and habits to the rules of the sport as they morph along the line of societal expectation, so does the law officer adapt his behavior to the changing rules dictated by his masters, who grow increasingly distant from his arena of action.

I, from my vantage among the population that Bill is tasked with ‘policing’, see no way in which his organization can effectively police in the traditional manner while doing Drug War law enforcement according to federal guidelines, and under the counterproductive pressures often brought by politics and the media.

For the common occupant of a Narco State town like Baltimore I recommend developing habits that will keep you off Bill’s to-do list while simultaneously using awareness and avoidance methods for surviving the smart phone using youths we discussed, who are members of a protected, privileged and state-subsidized class who may not be addressed by him according to his rules of engagement until after they hit you or me.

The Narco State is in my view a type of earthly purgatory designed by a committee of old fashioned leftist liberals and new fangled puritan neo-conservatives; people at odds with both the conservative nature of their law officers and the nihilistic nature of their urban slaves.

The police officer or law officer, such as he is, is as powerless as you and I, and has less impact on this environment than the violent criminals he is alternately sent after and barred from interfering with by his masters.

The Narco State must and will fall. Until then I’m enjoying reporting on the dystopian mess.