rlfj: Blog

Lots of comments on the last chapter. One theme was that nobody would hang Grim out to dry. Cops commit murder on a daily basis and get away with it, so why should this be any different, murder or not.

First, cops don’t commit murder on a daily basis. There are almost one million police officers in the U.S. We can argue statistics all we want, and we all know we can find statistics to bolster our particular cause. However, even with the heightened surveillance the public has on the police, there is only about one outrageous thing going to hit the news a week. In a nation of over 300 million people, this is not a crisis. Even at one a day, it is not a crisis. That does not mean that I condone such actions; they are crimes and should be punished. Still 99.99% of all police officers are good people, and the level of shit they have to put up with would drive the average citizen bonkers!

Second, for those who think Grim wouldn’t be hung out to dry, get real! In today’s heightened sensitivity, if there is even a hint of impropriety, the officer is going to get fired and/or go to jail. In this story, there was a Ferguson precursor about three years prior. Would you want to be the cop who shoots a minority member in Ferguson now? Crime rates in some areas are rising because of the ‘Ferguson effect’, where police are avoiding anything that could be videoed. It is safer to let the crime be committed than go to jail for stopping it.

Third, the investigative procedure I outlined is very common across the board, especially if there were improprieties in the past that have been discovered. None of the police I had as editors thought this was at all out of line. Most politicians do not want cops around who shoot people. They think that TV is real, and that you can wing somebody with a snub nose.38 from 200 yards. When you don’t shoot the gun out of the bad guy’s hands, you must be a psycho killer yourself. One of the things I love about TV cop shows is that they never show the aftermath. In any real department, whenever an officer fires a weapon for any reason at all, it will be investigated, and that investigation can take weeks. On TV cop shows, the officer is back in the saddle that afternoon.

In any case, as we see at the end of Chapter 57, maybe things aren’t quite so bleak for the Grim Reaper after all. We’ll just have to see.

The events depicted in Chapter 56 are quite possible. The dangers of police work go far, far beyond simply getting hurt on the job.

I just received a very interesting question from a reader:

Here's a vaguely related question that you might have come across the answer to -- who, if anyone, sets standards for which departments have captains and which only have sergeants? Or equivalently, what's a sergeant's responsibility and what needs a lieutenant? I assume that each department makes its own decisions, but there seems to be more consistency to it than I would expect without some agreed-to criteria. If you don't know, who would you ask?

My response:

The one thing I learned was that police departments vary incredibly. Each department has the legal right to set itself up as needed. There are no national standards. Everything is a state standard, sometimes superseded by local municipalities.

Matucket has 196 total officers. There are three ranks - patrolman, senior patrolman, and sergeant - and then lieutenant, captain, and chief. The LAPD currently has about 8,800 officers, 3 types of police officer (patrolman/senior patrolman in Matucket), 2 types of sergeant, 3 types of detective, 2 types of lieutenant, 3 types of captain, and then 4 more upper ranks!

Who does what? In terms of routine duties, sergeants run things. Command types run departments, deal with policy, reporters, and budgets. Forget what you see on television and movies. Lieutenants and captains and police commissioners are not going out and solving crimes and arresting people. That is done by patrol and detectives with a sergeant supervising.

I hope this helps.

As for the latest chapter, it’s time for a little excitement in Grim’s life. Just like soldiers hate excitement on the job, so do police officers. Enjoy!

Final comments on psych evals for police officers. I have heard from several police officers who said that even though state standards might not require them, their local force did very thorough testing. I also heard from some who said they either weren’t required or were limited to seeing if you were drooling and twitching. A real high-quality psych eval can cost thousands of dollars. Some forces have the money and some don’t. Everything I learned showed that some forces have them, some don’t, and that some jurisdictions require them and some don’t. I don’t think what I wrote about Grim needs to be modified. End of discussion.

Final comments on sending medals back. It looks like it isn’t terribly unusual. Here are three comments by readers. This will be the end of the medals controversy.

“Don't listen to all the people who complain about sending back medals. I did throw mine away when I was discharged following the Vietnam disaster. My daughter did the same when her husband was killed in Afghanistan. Some people think that those medals are important, on the other hand they remind you of what went wrong so often.”

“Just want to add my two cents on the metals. Being a vet and working with other vets I think your readers would be surprised at how many don't want the medals that they have earned, thinking, like Grim, that they didn't do enough to save their brothers or sisters. I just got out of a VA Hospital after eight months of fighting cancer. Before going in, I worked with a lot of our new vets after they got home and even more while I was in there. Almost everyone would tell you the same thing I'm telling you. The only ones that want the I-Been-There medals are the ones that have never been there and thought they wanted to or the REMF. I have seen many medals just thrown in the trash, sent to their fallen brother's family saying that they didn't earn them because their son didn't make it home, and, yes, sent to the DOD.”

“On the blog entry about medals, many of my friends during the 60s and 70s sent theirs back. Never asked if they didn't have a return address. I know one CMH winner that won't claim the benefits – no taxes, free car registrations, etc. Grim's actions are highly consistent with his frame of mind.”

Lots of controversy about Grim sending his medals back. A number of people figured he’s gone too far this time. Maybe yes, maybe no. This is not an unheard of thing. Some soldiers send them back as a form of protest. This happened in several cases when Carter gave a blanket pardon to draft resisters following the Vietnam War. There have been other instances as well. One reader commented that various Army regulations require Grim to keep uniforms available until his Individual Ready Reserve service is complete. I suspect that probably wouldn’t be prosecuted all that vigorously. At least two readers commented that somebody at the Pentagon would be able to track down whoever returned medals by way of return addressing (required by the Post Office, can be falsified), inscriptions on the medals (which may or may not be present), or reading the postmark and figuring out who had all those medals from Matucket. That might well be true, but I would simply ask…why? I can’t imagine, even in a bureaucratic institution as large as the military, that somebody is waiting around to track down and return medals.

I am simply going to say that Grim is a bit messed up about his service. Several readers wrote that you wear the medals not for yourself, but for the ones who can’t, and I think I have mentioned that in earlier sections. On the other hand, Grim considers his service to be a failure to the ones who can’t, rightly or wrongly. Keep reading. There is more to come.

On a totally separate and considerably more amusing note, I put The Grim Reaper on my wife’s Kindle for her to read. When she got to Chapter 29 she asked me why all the female leads in my stories end up going to jail. I told her that I was attracted to the flawed kind of women who spent time behind bars, at which point she kicked me out of the house and sent me to work.