Inside cop culture: A night on the street with the Trump-backing boys in blue

“Through this door walk Toledo’s finest,” boasts a poster hung above the threshold of the Toledo police department. It’s just after 10 o’clock on a Saturday evening and I am here for a ride-along with an officer.

There are similar signs everywhere: Lining the hallways of varying shades of blue, in the break room where the Ohio State game is blaring on a flat screen television, and in cubicles throughout the department. They emphasize the importance of discipline, encourage the protection of, “brothers in blue,” and remind officers that weakness, among other things, is not to be tolerated.

As a cluster of officers walk through that threshold and get ready for their shift, I wonder what each one’s definition of weakness may look like.

It’s not long before they notice me sitting at one of the cubicles. There are no other women in the room. Curious glances become gaping and downright scowling. I confirm I’m a journalist. “Well then, from here on out, I’m Officer Smith to you.” The others snicker and dole out fist-bumps.

As a recent graduate of Ohio State, I know a fraternity house when I’m sitting in its waiting room.

“You should come with me and this guy,” one officer says as he elbows his partner in the rib. “We’re taking in some transgender whores tonight,” his chin juts into the air with the arrogance of a playground bully.

They mention one particular prostitute’s name and mention seeing them in, “boys’ clothes,” during a day shift. “He almost looked normal.”

A wiser cop throws them a look. “Dude, she’s a journalist.” I don’t know whose cover is more blown: Mine, or theirs.

***

When I began this story weeks ago, I wanted to investigate the state of Ohio’s peace officer training scheme. I wanted to know whether or not there could be some correlation between how officers are taught, and the current violence involving law enforcement and people of color.

There’s good reason to be interested in how Ohio hires and trains its law enforcement, not least because of its treatment of minority communities. As a born and bred Ohioan, I’ve wondered about the dynamics of the police since the fatal shootings of Cleveland’s 12-year-old Tamir Rice and Beavercreek’s 22-year-old John Crawford III, both in 2014.

The question became harder to ignore after the death of 13-year-old Tyree King in Columbus just last month. All were shot by officers under suspicion of a deadly weapon that turned out to be a BB/air pellet gun.

And then there is Donald Trump. It was in Cleveland at the Republican National Convention that Trump accepted the nomination of his party by harking back to Richard Nixon’s rhetoric of national emergency – and law and order.

Now, with Ohio on a knife-edge, Trump has swung through our state again, talking tough about law enforcement. At his rally in Toledo last week, an introductory speaker pointed out a long-serving local police officer in the crowd. “He retired today, and came straight to the Trump rally!” the speaker said, to wild applause. As it happens, Trump received the overwhelming endorsement of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Union this month.

After the event ended, Trump supporters ostentatiously shook the hands of police officers as they left the venue outside, with Black Lives Matter protesters chanting nearby.

***

I first sat down with a recent graduate of an Ohio basic police officer training academy. Despite finishing at the top of his class, interviewing with nearly every department in the state and a background in law, he has yet to receive a placement with a department.

He began with the more technical aspects of the curriculum. He underwent a 680-hour program that covers everything from school shootings to terrorist attacks to routine traffic stops in a matter of six months. A typical day includes both physical training and classroom lessons. An early cause for concern was the restrictive schedule.

“Once we fulfilled a requirement or ran through a scenario well enough, we moved on without a look back.”

He says emphasis was more often than not placed solely on the physical aspects.

I am given a copy of his basic training audit sheet, a list of how many hours are allotted to specific lessons. Things like, “Responding to Victim’s Needs & Rights,” are given three hours while Physical Fitness & Conditioning is given 40, and Driving and Weapons are granted 24 each. I ask if this is what he means.

“Yes. Interacting with people who have mental illnesses was also barely touched on, but I can remember days where we spent 9-10 hours at a shooting range.”

His law degree, he says, held a certain stigma, both in the classroom and out of it. “It was very clear my education was a source of resentment. In partner and group work, if my group did well, the officer would make snarky comments like, ‘Did you just do it all yourself? Maybe you should come up here and teach the class.’”

That stigma of higher education became the motivation for performing well in physical training. “As soon as I proved myself physically, I had friends. They became drinking buddies and as they got more comfortable with me, admitted to thinking I was a douchebag and questioning my intentions.”

His class, 18 men and one woman, he describes as, “several of your prototypical Trump supporters.” He says: “I was raised more liberal so my beliefs did not exactly align with the prevailing ultra-conservative views.”

These crept into training, notably one scenario-based exercise. He describes a day in which an instructor chose two students to portray an officer approaching a, “Gay guy.”

“He told one of the students to, ‘act gay.’ You know, as if all gay men act a certain way. It was the most flamboyant and offensive caricature of a gay man I’ve ever seen. Limp wrist, lisp, the whole thing.”

As for the reaction of the class: “Everyone was laughing. The student playing the officer had to stop because he truly did not know how to respond. It was so fucked.”

I am curious about whether or not another recent graduate would agree with some of his unease involving the curriculum and the culture of the academy.

I speak with a young female officer who had received a placement in 2014. Being one of two women in a class of 22, she too felt a certain pressure to prove herself in the physical training.

“From day one I could tell I was looked at differently. When we would train as a class, I knew the males looked at me as a slow runner, and I even heard they were afraid I was going to struggle on my pushups and sit-ups.”

I ask if she ever felt that the notion of a woman’s weakness ever exceeded the physical training portion. “I was definitely looked at as weak or soft when I first started my career, people were afraid I could not handle my own. I can’t help but have some care and compassion unlike some of my male officers.”

***

I meet with two retired officers to inquire further about a possible correlation between training and the current state of law enforcement and its relationship with the African American community. One is the first African American Sergeant-at-Arms in Toledo. The other is a former agent for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations (BCI). Both have polarizing opinions.

I mention the first student’s experience with bias within the academy, directly referencing anecdotes like the offensive scenarios and the cases in Ohio. The former Sergeant-at-Arms describes an overall lack of race and gender diversity in law enforcement almost immediately.

“Men are men. When I came on the department there were maybe 10 women and a handful of men of color. Now, there have certainly been advancements, but men always want to be king of the hill. Those in power want to maintain that power at all costs.”

He believes CPT hours, or Continued Professional Training, to be of importance, but also calls to mind the reform needed within recruitment, academy training, and promotions.

“What we need is more diversity and open, honest conversations about racism. The only thing worse than racism, is the expectation that we should accept it.”

The former BCI officer is decidedly more restrained on this subject, and says promising changes are occurring in Ohio’s police training.

In April 2015, Ohio Attorney General DeWine’s Advisory Group on Law Enforcement Training recommended that Ohio increase annual, advanced training for all peace officers and troopers in the state. The Ohio legislature then mandated that all officers take 11 hours of CPT in 2016, an increase from four hours in 2015. Next year those 11 hours will become 20.

Of the advanced training offered, is a Community Police Relations course that includes a focus on implicit bias. The program seeks to confront the unconscious sources of prejudiced behavior by making officers more aware of automatic, non conscious stereotypes, such as the stereotype that all young African American men are criminals.

The former agent is confident the updated curriculum will be key in the relief of systemic racism. But upon further inquiry, I found that the implicit bias course is merely “suggested.” It is not required of any officer in Ohio. And despite its implementation in departments from New York to Los Angeles, there is no official estimate of how many agencies nationwide have actually undergone the training.

***

“No quotes,” is the first sentence that leaves the mouth of the officer I am paired with.

I am also not allowed to take any pictures or recordings, but I am free to ask questions pertaining to what I see.

The first call is a domestic violence case. The victim stands on the porch with her arms crossed defensively over her slight frame. Her hair has been pulled out and there are scratches spanning the width of her back. She answers the questions from the officer with quiet, measured responses. Her boyfriend, who has fled the scene, has been arrested under the same charge multiple times in the last year alone.

The next call is a suicide threat in which the officer parks two blocks away in an effort to protect me from the possibility of, “seeing something I don’t want to see.” The man is still alive and intact when we pull away just 20 minutes later. “A drunken threat to his girlfriend,” says my partner.

The calls that follow are routine and generally quite boring: loud music complaint, fist fight outside of a residence, and traffic stops in which we are forced to return to the department to file long and tedious reports.

Officers mill in and out of the office, each one eager to relay tall tales involving violent arrests and kicking down doors. The terms, “the bad guys,” and “pussy,” are used more times than I am able to make note of.

In each narrative, these men are the fearless heroes. Except for the occasions in which they are forced to call for back up.

“Whenever someone calls for officer assistance and sounds like a little girl, he gets ripped apart for weeks. You don’t want to be that guy,” divulged one young officer.

I sit in silence wondering where all the women are. I hope somewhere kicking down a door.

***

It’s only in the final hour of the shift that the officer I’ve shared a car with on the lonely roads of Toledo’s west side drops his guard.

Calls have come to a halt and he gives me a tour of his former stomping grounds. In a matter of moments he shows me where he went to school, his childhood home, the place he got his first kiss, and the secluded parking lot where he takes his lunch and does his thinking.

I ask about his family. He has a couple of nephews, but no family of his own. After his shift he will return home to his father who lives with him due to poor health, and I will go home to write this story.

“You’re not going to slam us are you?” he asks with genuine concern as we drive back to the station. I shake my head. “Good, because I’m just trying to do a job like you are.”

After the shift, I feel pangs of remorse for my rush to judgement of these individuals. Seeing life through their lens, even if just for a few hours, is every bit as sobering as it is disturbing.

Yet I cannot bring myself to stop thinking about the flaws in this system’s foundation.

The propaganda posters and the misogyny coagulating in every nook and cranny of that place.

The offensive remarks like, “transgender whores,” and how often they are a part of the discourse.

The aversion to “weakness,” and the lengths one may be willing to go to avoid it.

In a time when stories that mirror this one are being written on a weekly basis, one thing is apparent: This issue is neither black nor white. But reform, real enacted change, is crucial.

Pictures courtesy of Toledo PD.