It's astonishing how corrupted American cops are

Many critics of the American police forces call them a "gang". The biggest gang in the country. Regardless of how provocative that notion is, it's actually not extraordinarily far from the truth.

American police forces consider themselves a "brotherhood". Their own term (as has been seen in some videos and testimonies). I suppose they consider themselves a similar kind of "brotherhood" as the Marines: Every Marine/cop is your brother/sister. I have your back, you have my back. I look after you, you look after me. I support you, you support me. We don't step on each other's toes, we don't stab each other in the back. The brotherhood always comes first: Bros before everybody else.

And indeed, there are plenty of well documented cases (even sometimes getting to the news) of a "rogue" cop ratting on the misbehavior, abuse, crimes or corruption of other cops, and quickly becoming ostracized, isolated, harassed, demoted, and even fired. Ratting on your fellow cops, even when they step over the line, is absolutely not allowed. And this is not just enforced by other fellow cops, but by superiors. About the only situation where a cop experiences consequences for his illegal actions or abuse is when there's enough public scrutiny and pressure, and the misbehavior was so utterly egregious that the police chief just has to do something to save face. Even then, the punishment tends to be a slap on the wrist: A reprimand, or a temporary suspension, or a "re-education", or in very rare circumstances, firing the officer. But usually not more than that. And when people have started researching what happened to these fired cops, in a good portion of cases they just ended up being hired again by another precinct. In other words, the consequences of extreme corruption and abuse is generally just a mild inconvenience of having to change precincts.

But that's not what this blog post is about. That's just the context, the background.

Given that American cops are a "brotherhood", what happens when one cop eg. makes a traffic stop on another cop, who committed a minor (and sometimes even not so minor) traffic violation? Like a bit of speeding, or not stopping at a red light?

Well, what do you think? Something along the lines of "oh, have a nice day." That's pretty much a given.

This, however, leaves them with a bit of a dilemma: Shouldn't the courtesy be extended to the wife of the cop as well? What if the cop's own son gets stopped, shouldn't he also get the courtesy?

And in general they are, rather obviously, extended that courtesy. If cops don't slap traffic tickets onto their fellow cops, then they shouldn't be doing so to their spouses, children, family members and so on either.

But this presents a problem: If the cop doing the traffic stop doesn't know that eg. the woman he stopped is the wife of a fellow cop, and he writes her a ticket, this causes all kinds of hassle and inconvenience: The traffic stop, the woman's ID and the ticket will all be logged into the system, and there will be a permanent record of it. Even if the woman's husband cop later "rectifies" the situation with the issuing officers, and the charges are dropped, there will still be a permanent record of it, which is inconvenient. Not to talk about just the hassle of having to "rectify" such things in the first place.

Wouldn't it be so much nicer if the family members of the cop aren't issued any traffic tickets at all in the first place? It will be as if nothing had happened. No hassle, no inconvenience, no paper trail, no logs.

But how? Well, at least in New Jersey (and possibly other states as well) they got a great idea to make this happen: Cops started printing out "courtesy cards" that their family members could present to traffic cops and in other situations. When the traffic cop sees this card, with the info of the cop who issued it, he can then just let the person go without further incident.

In other words, these are quite literally "get out of jail free" cards, for cops to distribute to their family members and friends.

Which is, of course, highly, highly corrupt and illegal. But they don't care. And police chiefs, prosecutors, mayors and judges don't care. Of course they don't care. Cops and their families are above the law. Cops are the true "sovereign citizens" of the United States.

You think I'm making that up? Well, it's real.