While those neo-cons hate the liberal media, I happened to belatedly notice the beloved New York Times’ story about the burgeoning Brooklyn South Narcotics scandal.  Cara Buckley just gushes sympathy for those poor undercover narcs.  Oh, their job is so difficult.  Oh, there’s so much temptation.  Oh, there’s so much risk.  To borrow liberally from my good Republican buddy, Young Shawn Matlock, boo hoo.

Cara mia, save your sympathy.  Not only are they not worth it, but they wouldn’t give you a second thought if the shoe was on the other foot.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, difficult about distinguishing between being a police officer and being a criminal.  There is one big, huge, impossible to miss line the runs between the two.  When a cop chooses to cross that line, he knows exactly what he’s doing.  He makes his choice.  That’s it.

Oh, but undercovers have to live in the gutter, in a world of crime and violence, and they have to play the role in order to be effective and to stay alive.  You’re watching way too much Law & Order.  The rules for undercover work do not mandate that they steal drugs or money from dealers and put it into the trunk of their personal car.  Being an undercover has nothing to do with skimming enough to buy a boat, or a roadster, or a house.  It has to do with using a shield and gun, together with a whole lot of trust and authority (like the authority to put a bullet in someone’s head and claim, they were trying to kill me), to break the law.

And what about the sex part?  Is that forgivable too?  Are you fine with these fine married with children police officers copping free sex with prostitutes, drug addicts, perhaps the occasional lone woman at night pulled over for speeding?  This is just sick, and somehow the New York Times finds it understandable?

“The problems that come with vice enforcement are as old as policing themselves,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. (Mr. O’Donnell also briefly represented one of the arrested officers, but no longer does; he would not comment specifically on the Brooklyn South case.)

“It’s a dirty business,” he said, “and it’s hard to be involved in the business and not get your hands dirty.”

No, it’s not hard at all.  In fact, it is unbelievably easy.  Just don’t commit crimes.

There is a difference between cops and criminals.  It is at the core of the criminal justice system, that the cops are cops.  They are expected to be truthful, honest, law-abiding.  That’s why they are the cops.  When we start to excuse them for being criminals, then the system is reduced to a farce.  

Police union leaders love to say around contract negotiation time, “if you don’t support your cops, the next time you’re in trouble call a criminal.”  It’s a great line.  Utter crap, but with spectacular surface appeal to ignorant people.  Criminals are not the measure of law enforcement.  Criminals are the people we defend and they try to put in jail.  That’s the game. 

The notion that police officers can somehow simultaneously be heroic law enforcers while suffering the occasional, understandable, “slip” is garbage.  When police officers break the law, they are every bit as heinous a criminal as any other person.  Indeed, they may well be viewed as worse, having sought and received a level of trust that few others in society have.

“But in a Police Department of around 35,000 members, some people will go astray.”

Lost dogs go astray.  Law-breaking cops are just dirty.  So Cara Buckley, save your sympathy.  They know exactly what they’re doing when the deliberately break the law.  It’s just not a problem for a cop to figure out which side of the law he wants to be on, and being a narc has nothing to do with it.