Short Take: The Nipple of What’s Easy

Ed Mullins has a way with words. A really bad way with words.

Mullins is the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, the second-string bargaining unit in the NYPD. And it’s his job to say whatever he must to defend the honor of his union members or get ousted and be required to work for a living.

His twit comes in response to a twit from the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the CCRB, a well-intended but largely ineffectual group of people who putatively investigate complaints against the cops and then either dismiss them or get ignored. The CCRB’s twit was cute.

Hey, it was May 4, and what could be more natural for the CCRB than May The Fourth Amendment protect you? After all, the CCRB has just over a thousand followers on the twitters. The SBA has 7,700. So the CCRB tossed a cute pebble at the cops and Mullins lost it. Can you say Streisand?

But more seriously, the reaction has long been a bedrock of the NYPD playbook, the tacit threat that if you question or challenge cops, they might not be there for you. “Next time you’re in trouble, call a criminal” is the PBA’s favorite flavor.

Is the CCRB a “disgrace” for extolling the Fourth Amendment? Is Mullins right that nobody knows the burdens of cophood except cops, and the suggestion a cop might violate a person’s constitutional rights is to “target and disparage” cops? Sure, it hurts their feelings when people don’t appreciate their sacrifices of having to suffer the trauma of killing a person by mistake, or tossing black kids to make quotas, or warrantless searches because how else can they search?

What’s amazingly unsurprising is how cop culture rears its ugly head without the slightest recognition of what it reveals. Cops, love us or leave us? Cops, we may break the law but who else you gonna call? Cops, we may suck, but criminals are worse? It’s not Mullins job to raise the bar of police competence and integrity, but it is his job to promote his membership by not raining disrespect down on sergeants by revealing they are offended to the point of outrage at the suggestion that respecting the Constitution is way too much to demand of them.

Hey Sarge, are you really that bad? Mullins says so. Is he right?

And then there’s the “growing up on the nipple of what’s easy” line. What is that supposed to mean? It’s not just Mullins displaying his mad prose skillz, but an insight into the view cops have of the CCRB, and more importantly, the non-cops of the world. Children suckle at their mother’s nipple. The cops see us as children, them as our mother, our protector. And in their eyes, they make it easy for us to go about our lives, comforted by their protection.

If this sounds familiar, it should.

10 thoughts on “Short Take: The Nipple of What’s Easy

  1. Dave

    Do you really think CCRB is well intentioned? Every so often the agency gets a fringe left wing member who makes some noise and hurts feeling – a free Mumia type. However, by and large it acts as part of the cover up/protection mechanism for the NYPD. The investigators seem to be largely staffed by retired LEOs. There’s minimal effort expended in gathering evidence. Mullins would do well to ignore the agency, they are little threat to his members, unless they go full Volpe.

    1. SHG Post author

      Perhaps I’m being charitable, as I’ve written quite a few less than adoring posts about the CCRB, but I still believe they mean well, even if they’ve been largely co-opted by the cops and govt.

    1. SHG Post author

      1. Please stop using “Anon.” You have no reason to do so, and no further comments will be posted if you do.
      2. This contributes nothing and wastes my space. I posted it only to tell you these two points. If you want to contribute, do so, but do not waste my space and do not post as “Anon.”

      1. Ray

        Waste of space? Read the case. I thought it was on point to many of the issues in your post.
        You have a Noxx, a Skink, etc…
        What’s wrong with Anon.?
        I used that all the time on Hercules and the Umpire. A lot of others did so as well.
        I mean, I’d agree its inappropriate if i was making a personal attack on someone. But snarky comments on general issues seem ok.
        Your blawg, your rules, (which I like a lot), so okay. Of course, if you get too rigid we may have to start calling you Chairman Mao. (This won’t let me put an emoji here–but if I could it would be a smiley face).
        Peace out.

        Ray AKA Anon.

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