I’ve never personally met ex-police officer Derek Chauvin and I don’t care to. I already know him, far too well. For years, I spent eight hour shifts working beside him. I backed him up on the violent streets of Baltimore City. I watched as an entire squad of good cops tried to reign him in. I participated as we took his gun or pulled him off a handcuffed suspect. I witnessed it first hand. And it’s frightening. I watched as supervisors were informed of these actions and many did nothing. As citizens made complaints of brutality, and although investigated thoroughly, never yielded sufficient evidence to fire him. And, long after my work in the FBI, I studied and researched him throughout my doctoral years and beyond.
Derek Chauvin is not new to me. Nor is he unique to our society. Derek Chauvin is a bad cop and most of all, a bad person. A bully who uses his job for his own sick pleasures. A man defined by his need to be in charge. An entitled man, driven solely by self centered desires. The job is merely a vehicle to fulfill his need for power and control.
Derek Chauvin exists in every police department in our country. He also exists in every institution throughout the world. He’s the university medical doctor that abuses his patients.
He’s the business man or woman that finds pleasure threatening or firing colleagues or underlings, perceived to be a hinderance to his goal. Sure, he may be racist, homophobic and sexist, but most of all, he is a bully with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.
Life to Derek Chauvin is about fulfilling his own needs, not those of others. In his mind, he’s entitled to do whatever it takes to satisfy these needs. He didn’t join the police department to protect and serve. He joined to intimidate and harm vulnerable individuals, no matter their race, color, gender or creed. The job is about him. All about how he looks and what he wants.
It’s not about the safety and well being of society.
And with the greatest of sadness, on Monday, May 25, 2020, it was about an African American man, handcuffed and unable to fight back, named George Floyd.
Patricia Kirby
Kent County
Patricia Kirby is a former Baltimore City Parole and Probation Agent, Police Officer, Homicide Detective, FBI Agent, FBI Profiler and college professor. She holds a PH.D from American University in Sociology: Justice, Law and Society and lives in Kent County and Long Island, ME.
Jenifer Emley says
Brava, Pat. Thank you for expressing this.
Tom Mack says
Pat, an eloquent explanation of something we’ve witnessed everywhere around the country, North & South, Urban, Suburban and Rural jurisdictions!
Ken samson says
Hear! Hear!
Thank you Ms. Kirby.
Michael e Heffron says
Patricia Kirby,
Your letter brought to mind a police officer in the town where I grew up in the suburbs of Philly. His name is one that I’ll never forget but for this purpose he’s simply “Paul”. We were a lily white suburb back in the 1960’s when I was a teenager. Paul didn’t have any minorities to focus his “needs” on so it fell on the teenaged boys. I felt his wrath more than once having been pushed into mud outside of the high school football game because I happened to be occupying space he wanted or slammed into a wall because my hair was too long. To my knowledge he never killed or seriously injuried anyone but one day we realized he wasn’t around anymore. Maybe he got tossed aside before he did permenent harm. I also have 3 cousins who were cops, now retired. Two are good guys, really good men. The other is a bonafied racist and still rants on Facebook about “thugs” and “perps”. Fortunately, he and the people of the community he “served” all seemed to have survived his law enforcement career.
So, yes, I see clearly what and you are describing. It’s real and they are out there looking for opportunities to prey on those they see as weaker or vulnerable, regardless of color.
Carla Massoni says
Pat –
An extraordinary statement – thank you, thank you, thank you.
Patti Hegland says
Are you saying it is hopeless? That a police bully can’t be blocked?
Beverly Smith says
Thank You, thank You, Thank You. Thank you for yours years of service dedicated to serving all people with respect, for your concern for their safety and for their rights which you swore to uphold. I hope, like most of the people of America, this time will make a difference for justice for ALL in America.
Deirdre LaMotte says
“The job is all about him” . Sounds like the POTUS we are experiencing.
Hugh B Silcox says
Well said, Officer Kirby. Thank you.
George Hardy says
The sad part about this analysis is that there is no fix for the problem. Diversity training and/or new institutional policies will not change the personality of the type of person described. How do you identify and excise a “bad cop…a bad person?”
Chris Kelsch says
True words…in 1973, I was the one at the wrong end of a severe beating while handcuffed…I had been stopped hitchhiking…and almost died, I was a child, he was a sick, sick person with a badge, you are very correct in all you said, I thank you for your eloquence. These monsters exist in ALL walks of life, ALL colors….
Beryl Smtih says
There definitely has to be better screening of potential police. Way back when I was in school I remember reading of studies that looked at various occupations and the personality traits of those who aspire to them. Law enforcement produced a preponderance of bullies! There are personality tests that can screen for such traits and those who would be potential bad cops should be eliminated before being placed in a position where they can do harm.
Cheryl Hoopes says
Thank you for your words. As of a year ago, at least one bully existed on our local police force as well.
A story just told to me 2 days ago was this: my friend was telling me about an incident in her apartment complex. She had glanced out the window and had seen a young African American boy, in his early teens, walking down the street. Just walking. But he looked scared to death. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the reason for his terror: there was a police officer, in his car, just behind him, following the boy slowly as he drove. She decided she’d better keep watch. The boy sat down on the steps close to her apartment and the officer stopped. He put down his window and shouted out, “What are you doing??!!”
The boy said, “Nothing.”
The officer challenged him with a menacing statement, “I know who you are.”
The boy said, “You don’t know who I am.”
The policeman threatened, ” Before all this is said and done, I WILL know who you are!!” And then drove away.
The woman telling me the story, an African American grandmother, said she began to breathe again at that point. At least for that moment. But she worries. Every night when her granddaughter has to drive back home from work on dark, lonely roads, this woman is scared. She started to cry, as she told me that she doesn’t rest until she knows that her granddaughter is safe again. At home. It’s the only place an African American person in this country feels that way. And even then, sometimes, even that is not good enough.
It’s time: there needs to be training, testing and talking by those who know what they are looking for – so that these bullies do not continue to reign, yes, even in Chestertown.
Marie-Paule Dendooven says
Absolutely but the difference between the abusive businessmen and the dangerous cops is that the bad cop actually can incarcerate and take away life.
There is no returning or healing from that.
Kristian Canadic says
Great observation……I suppose all that’s missing from its conclusion is that it is then a lack of virtue to support good morals and sound reasoning that plagues people like Chauvin, and that Police Departments across the nation are the ones that should bare the brunt of the social outrage and change that is required, for they are the ones that are charged with the responsibility of choosing appropriate individuals to train and employ in the security of others. It goes to say that the current police force psychological evaluations and interviews of candidates do not go far enough to ascertain the existence of the right types of characteristics for such a role in society, and that their training lacks enough training and oversight on moral fitness.
It is true that the virtues, good morals, and sound reasoning begin in the home from a very young age and so the ultimate solution to the greatest number of afflictions will begin in the home….. however, considering that choosing a police officer is dependant on time and place, the responsibility at the time and place that candidates are qualified to become police officers lies with police forces.
Would you then agree that a very specific and major type of reform is required to the criteria that is used to choose police officers for the role of daily intervention as peace officer s vs candidates that you would choose for other roles in the department?