Good Cop, Fat Cop

[Note: This is a blog post I first drafted on May 17, 2015, a few weeks after the Baltimore riots in protest of the death of Freddie Gray. I didn't post it then, perhaps out of fear I'd end up playing golf with the same cops again at some point. But it seems fitting to post now, in light of current events.]

Paired with strangers as usual. The starter told me they were city cops. I joked maybe we should go play Clifton Park. I wanted to put them at ease because I was genuinely curious what cops were really like these days. I'd dealt with cops in various ways in the past, in various cities and countries, and had a mixed bag of experiences.

The fat cop looked like Jonah Hill. The other one looked like he just graduated college. They said they were 31 and 28 years old. The younger one, the "good cop," said he just got engaged.

I couldn't help but ask if they'd been on duty during the riots. They said, "Everybody had to do their turn." They made fun of the TV personality Geraldo calling everyone anarchists. They said some media at the riots weren't even journalists, and accused one of throwing a trashcan full of bottles at the cops to try and start something so they could photograph it.

I asked them what they thought about body cams. The fat cop said, "I hope we have to wear them so everyone can see what kind of animals they really are." He went on to talk about the Clifton Park public golf course being racist against whites. "They think it's their country club." He said they patrol there in the afternoons to keep an eye on the kids who get out of school and cut across the course on their way home.

"Are you Korean?" the fat cop asked me abruptly.

The good cop elbowed him and said, "Man, that's racist!" Then fat cop mumbled something about his stepmom being from Taiwan.
I deflected by saying, "I suppose I can't say I can tell white people apart by ethnicity either." Looking at the fat cop, I said, "If I had to guess, I'd say you were German or maybe Irish." 

Fat cop looked stunned. "That's exactly what I am. German and Irish." Then fat cop went on to talk more about "them," like if you gave them a $30-an-hour job, would any of them be able to keep it, and how Section 8 housing didn't give them any incentive to earn a living. He said cops are afraid to do anything when making an arrest these days because they might get cited for misconduct.

Nothing they said surprised me. I was, however, amazed at their candidness about racial matters, though it wasn't the first time whites have revealed their secret racism to me. Some whites feel that Asians will share or at least sympathize with their racist views of blacks, and even Jews. (And I'm sure there are whites who share, with blacks, their secret racism against Asians.) 

The officers said they hoped things would get better for cops under a Republican governor. The good cop said he was already looking to leave the force and get into another line of work. He was soon to be married and wanted to start a family. I kind of felt sorry for the guy. He seemed like the kind of guy who became a cop to do good and found a workplace culture that made it difficult.

The fat cop, on the other hand, seemed spoiled by the system already. And he was always trying to give me golf advice, like about not leaving my putts short. He told me how his dad would tease him by saying, "Go in," in a sarcastic way whenever his putts were woefully short. He didn't realize that this story said more about him than it served as instructional to me. Rather than sink putts with regularity, he learned to blow putts way past the hole so he didn't have to hear his dad's taunting voice in his head.

It always amazes me how golfers who don't play particularly well always seem to know how to fix the games of others. He had no grasp of how golf is a game geared to favor the average man's swing, and that the odds are actually stacked against women. It would be futile to explain how the game he takes for granted actually has a long history of discriminating against certain classes of people.

The whole time the fat cop was talking, the good cop was sheepishly quiet, silently cringing. I could tell good cop was embarrassed but didn't want to say anything against his partner. 

Fat cop kept asking if I wanted in on closest to pin, but I said I didn't bet. On the 17th, par-3, my tee shot landed 3 feet from the hole. That's when I asked good cop to take a pic of me trying to make my birdie. "It's for my blog," I said. They both got quiet, perhaps suddenly realizing that I might write about them. They didn't ask for my blog name, and I pretended I would just be writing about my game. But if they learned a lesson that day, maybe it's one they should have known by now. You never know who you're playing with, you never know who's listening or watching.

At the end of the round, I shook their hands and thanked them for their service, adding, "You probably don't hear 'thank you' enough."

[... It's 5 years later and it seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same. I wonder what happened to the 2 city cops I golfed with that day. Did the good cop ever get out? Did the fat cop change his attitude? Between the two, if I ever needed a cop, I would prefer to deal with the good one. But if I had to make a bet, I'd say he was too smart to stick around.]