Cops Get The Best Dope

Lessons For The Masses

There's been quite a bit of chatter on the blogs lately concerning this site, where police officers can piss & moan about their brethren having the outright gall to write them tickets for legal infractions, rather than show "professional courtesy" and let them off the hook.

To read some of these missives is to take a look into a seriously effed-up worldview where apparently due to your job as a cop, you're allowed to ignore society's laws at your pleasure and suffer no consequences for your actions.

Now, I know that this POV is not universal amongst police officers. Working for The Man, I've had a chance to meet a lot of cops, and I've "met" quite a few more online via their blogs. Most are sincere, dedicated professionals who hold themselves and their brother officers to high standards. There are more than a few shitheels wearing the badge, however, and they do damage to the reputations of police all out of proportion to their numbers.

Back when I was in high school, there were a few catchphrases that were in common usage. "Shit happens" was quite common, as was "Gag me with a spoon", "Fuckin' A right, buddy!" and "Totally awesome!"

Another one used quite frequently around town was "Cops Get The Best Dope". This phrase came up whenever there was a situation that completely sucked, but it was such a done deal that there was no use bitching about it. In other words, it signified any situation or series of events that shouldn't happen, but it did happen, was going to continue to happen, so no use fighting it.

To understand it better, I've got to take you back to 80's style drug enforcement. Back in the day, we were barely in the "Just Say No" era, much less the "Zero Tolerance" phase. Cops could catch you with a couple of joints or a small baggie of weed, and would frequently just confiscate it or dump & scatter it, maybe writing you a misdemeanor ticket for possession, but usually just hard-assing you for 15 minutes while you grabbed car hood before letting you go.

This wasn't true in all jurisdictions, and if you got mouthy you ran a good chance of wearing the silver bracelets, but weed just wasn't seen as the Corrupter of Innocent Youth that it's become today.

Now, when you put a group of stoners together and let them share stories of weed confiscations, sooner or later the question comes up. "What did Officer Bob do with that sweet-ass skunk?" A pattern began to emerge. That $40/oz Mexican ditchweed got flung to the wind, but the $80 1/4 oz. homegrown got tucked in the cop's shirt pocket. Hmmmm. Curious.

Pretty soon, it was a truism amongst the herbalists that schwag weed was discarded, and the cops kept the best stuff for themselves, hence "Cops Get The Best Dope".

Much later in life when I talked to some retired officers I finally had the balls to ask if cops ever sampled the fruits of their confiscatory labor. Their answer? As I had suspected, it was not unknown for seized weed to be "sampled for purity and THC content". After all, before cops became cops, some of them were stoners, too!

So, when you see your CongressCritter jetting to Aruba on a 1st Class "fact finding" tour, or corrupt cops get no-billed, or OJ is found 'Not Guilty' again, don't blow your top! Just remember...

"Cops Get The Best Dope!"