I understand that there are dedicated, ethical cops out there. Nevertheless, I’ve had some bizarre encounters with cops over the years:
When I ran the Bitterroot Baseball League and managed one of the teams, a cop who was on my team called me drunk one night and tried to intimidate me because I didn’t give him enough playing time.
When I called a cop in a nearby Montana town and expressed my displeasure that he had killed and skinned a snake that was minding its own business, he vindictively promised to go out and kill twenty more “just for me.”
When I picked up garbage along a nearby road, and got into an argument with a neighbor over my good deed, a sheriff’s deputy showed up at my house and belligerently threatened to arrest me, because he could see my footprint at the end of the neighbor’s driveway. Yes, I trespassed one foot onto someone’s property while trying to explain to that person that I was doing something good.
When a right-winger called me, saying I should be shot for publicly speaking out in favor of wolves, I told the person to go fuck himself, noted the number on caller-ID, and dialed 911. A sheriff’s deputy responded, said he knew the guy who threatened me, and that he was just a “good old boy.” If I pressed the issue, he would arrest the guy for the threat, but also arrest me for swearing over the phone (there is actually an obscure law about this).
So, needless to say, I wasn’t at all shocked when someone identifying himself as “retiredcopper,” gave my new novel Time Is Irreverent a one-star review on Amazon. His review, complete with misspellings and comma splices, said, “This book must havd been writen by a 16 year old, it’s juvenile. Save your money and don’t waste your life with this read, it’s not worth it.”
So, I wonder what parts in my book the retired cop thought were juvenile? That my character President Handley was a parody of Donald Trump, that the Christian Right is becoming indistinguishable from the Muslims they purport to be better than, that Republicans are willfully ignorant accomplices to global warming, that Mexicans will be able to climb any border wall with a simple rope ladder, that a United States theocracy is possible if the far-right gets its way, or that my character Nellie Dixon, a feisty lesbian, bit a male cop who was expecting a sexual favor.
Oh, yeah, that last one sent him over the edge—for sure.