16 AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: SEPTEMBER 2017 OPINION/EDITORIAL American Police Beat Chairman & Publisher: Cynthia Brown Chief Executive Officer: Sarah Vallee Editor-in-Chief: Mark Nichols Advertising Sales: Dave Quimby Digital Manager: Jeremy Lange Office Assistant: Brendan O’Brien Designer: Karin Henderson Aside from the occasional complimentary cup of coffee (or gift cards – see page 8) there aren’t really a lot of perks that come with a career in law enforcement. As a matter of fact there’s a compelling argument to be made that the job comes not with perks but rather with a lot of sacrifice. Ask any cop and they’ll tell you about the missed birthdays, the long hours and nega- tive impact on health due to shift work and a job that goes from zero to 150 MPH in a heart beat. People used to understand that a person dedicating their life and career to public service should be rewarded, or at least helped out with some of the sacrifices required of them. Sadly that appears to be changing. One of the ways we used to encourage people to become police officers is by promising to help them avoid the predatory enterprise that is the student loan industry. The US Depaartment of Education, now run by Betsy DeVos, will no longer guaran- tee eligibility for police officers in student loan forgiveness programs. Previously law enforcement people who had made pay- ments on loans for 10 years or more could be eligible for “forgiveness” and not have to pay the rest of what they owe. Cops, teachers and others were told they’d get help with paying off student loans after that 10-year window, but the feds at the Dept. of Education just reneged on that deal. There’s plenty on this out there on the web and it’s no use getting into the fine print and legal details but essentially what cops with loan debt need to know is this: the forms you filled out that said you’d get some relief on the payments are no longer valid according to Dept. of Ed. lawyers. Chong Park, a partner at Ropes & Gray who is representing loan borrowers in the program that have filed a lawsuit, describes the Department’s attitude towards the bor- rowers as “cavalier.” “The Department itself created a pro- gram, the plaintiffs relied on it,” he said. “They followed the process. Years later, the Department just pulled the rug out from underneath them.” One of the guys who is suing is Jamie Rudert. He did the math and decided he would use the Dept. of Ed. loan forgiveness program to go to college so he could go on to work representing veterans at Vietnam Veterans of America. He says if he’d known that the feds would pull the plug on loan forgiveness he never would have done it. “It just adds to this level of uncertainty I have as to whether I made the right deci- sion to go into public service to begin with,” he said. Sometimes people do dumb stuff. This applies to cops as well as those on the “outside” or whatever they’re calling it these days. As a matter of fact, the idea that officers are somehow naturally equipped with things like intelligence, good judg- ment and basic competence from birth is ludicrous. Training can help, and solid leadership can also be a factor, but there’s really no getting around the fact that some individu- als in the policing profession can’t give up their bad habit of making life more difficult for their colleagues. In a major US city recently, a gun pos- session case was dumped by a judge over a T-shirt worn by officers that were slated to testify as witnesses. Like some other popular police t-shirts, this particular de- sign seems to have had some problematic imagery frequently associated with white supremacy groups. The T-shirt came to light last month after an officer on the “Powershift” was seen wearing it at a restaurant and in Superior Court. Police officials pronounced it dis- turbing and suspended that officer and opened the internal investigation. There’s a lot we can’t control. There are suicide-by-cop scenarios where officers never had a choice and were forced to fire their weapons. There are single vehicle accidents where officers have been killed racing to the scene where injured people needed assis- tance. There are too many police suicides. A lot of these things we can’t control. But let’s not pretend like there’s nothing we can control. Because if we can’t call out moronic behavior that jeopardizes crimi- nal convictions and makes other officers look foolish by association we’re going to have an ever-increasing number of really bad days going forward. In other words, wearing your “Human Garbage Collector” T-shirt in court is a pretty serious red flag that you might be in the wrong line of work. Feds abandon their promise Some just can’t give it up What they’re watching: Netflix Life and policing is different in Europe – particularly in Denmark. On the Danish series “Dicte” the stunning Iben Hjejle plays a journalist that frequently works with, for and against local police. It’s totally over the top and a little silly but the acting’s great and the characters are compelling. You don’t need a good idea to get rich in the USA, you just need to know when and how to steal someone else’s good idea. Michael Keaton shines in the true story of how a guy made a billion-dollar fast food franchise his own. “The Founder” didn’t do well in theaters. That might be due to the fact that there are no space wars or giant robots that people seem to enjoy so much these days. But it’s well worth watching and Keaton kills it. Ever wonder how world- class athletes beat those drug tests? Well wonder no more. “Icarus” is a fast-paced and gripping docu- mentary that looks more like a thriller or an action film.