RUSH: Here’s Mike in St. Louis. Great to have you, sir, on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s an honor to be on your show.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I’m a police officer in the St. Louis area, and I’m pretty fed up with the way that police officers are being portrayed right now in the media. I’ve got two points real quick, and I want to make ’em on your show because in a week and a half of media coverage, I haven’t heard any of these points being made. The first is in reference to the militarization of the police departments. I don’t know if you remember in 1997 when two bank robbers with bulletproof vests and assault rifles held the entire LAPD at bay for two or three hours. Are you familiar with that?
RUSH: Not only, Mike, do I recall it, we just mentioned that last week. I don’t say that to disagree with you. I say that to confirm what you’re saying. The reason we have militarized police officers is because in LA and a couple of other places the bad guys had AK 47s, and everybody was talking about how ill-equipped the cops were with their peashooter handguns to deal with this stuff, and that’s why they were ramped up.
CALLER: That’s exactly why I called. Our police academy, they actually show that video, and the LA police department had to go to local gun stores to buy rifles because they didn’t have any. They also had to use armored bank trucks because they didn’t have any armored vehicles to deal with these people.
RUSH: Exactly right.
CALLER: My second point, real quick, is shooting an unarmed person. If you do a quick Google search you’ll find that in the last 10 years, 53 police officers have been killed with their own weapons. That means that some unarmed suspects took away a police officer’s gun and killed that officer with their own gun.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: You know, there are situations when we have to shoot unarmed people. I understand that we have Tasers and we have batons and we have pepper spray. Those are tools, and they are also tools that can be used against us. And it only takes one good punch from a suspect before we’re knocked out, laying on the ground unconscious, and they have access to all of those tools.
So, until the media or any of these people that say that we can’t shoot unarmed suspects rides along with us or maybe does our job for a month or two and realizes any time we knock on a door, there could be an assault rifle on the other side of that door, until they ride along us, I’m a little tired of hearing about how we should do our job.
RUSH: Amen, bro. I couldn’t agree with you more. You guys face an institutional prejudice and bias. Like this story in St. Louis is a myth. It’s a myth that people like you shoot innocent black kids all the time. In St. Louis or wherever, it’s a total myth that was created in St. Louis, and the reason they’re able to create it is because they’ve done a good job of negative PR on the police in general.
CALLER: I agree.
RUSH: I think the police are just as aware of political correctness as anybody else is, and they’re automatically on defense. Is it true that whenever, in any circumstance, whenever a cop uses his firearm, he’s immediately put on suspension for awhile, while they investigate it, look at it, and make sure he’s okay psychologically and all that?
CALLER: That is true. The first thing that happens is our firearm is taken away from us so it can be used for evidence if necessary, and then we’re immediately placed on suspension. Some departments require a minimum of three psychological evaluations —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — before you can go back to duty.
RUSH: Right. So it would seem to me, if I were a cop, the last thing I’d want to do is discharge my weapon. The last thing. Well, I wouldn’t want a perp to get it, but given what’s gonna happen to me after I discharge it, the last thing I would hope would happen in any circumstance is to have to fire that gun.
CALLER: Well, the biggest deterrent for shooting someone is the fact of shooting someone. I don’t know anyone in my department that signs up to shoot someone. You know, shooting someone affects an officer’s life for the rest of his life. If you look at the rate of police suicides, police officers killing themselves —
RUSH: So why do you want to become a cop?
CALLER: We want to become a cop because, A, it’s a stable job, B, we want to help other people, and the camaraderie of working with other guys. You know, I’m former military so I kind of fit right in with the police department. There’s a camaraderie that you have with your other officers, and when you see someone like the poor officer in Ferguson, you know, that was an unjustified shooting and it should be held accordingly, but you never hear any of the evidence on his behalf. All you hear is the evidence against him, and from what I understand there are several witnesses that did observe that subject assaulting the officer. You never hear about that.
RUSH: That’s why the myth is beginning to fall apart. Well, Mike, look, I appreciate your call. I really do. I’m way beyond time here for this segment, and I’ve gotta go. But I do appreciate you taking the time to call here and share your thoughts with us.