# It’s a Curse, I Swear



## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

*The Street Survival Newsline*
with Calibre Press

*It's a Curse, I Swear*



By Dr. Joel F. Shults
Chief, Adams State College Police Department

Police officers are subject to a double and even triple standard in many respects. We are expected to catch bad guys without hurting them, solve problems in a few minutes that existed for years before we got called, get to emergencies instantly without driving too fast, and stop crime without making contacts with minority groups or rich white people.

I remember listening to a citizen make a complaint on one of my officers for using foul language on a contact. I don't remember her exact words but it was something on the order of "Your [bleeping] cop used some [bleeping] language around my [bleeping] son and I think it was [bleeping] uncalled for and you should [bleeping] reprimand his [bleep]." Her point, although not well articulated, was that she could cuss but my officer couldn't. I actually agreed with her.

Naturally if I begin a diatribe against the use of swearing the first offended person will say "Oh, like you never cussed in uniform!", and I confess I have. My use of foul language has been very rare and it was used for linguistic effect given the context, and with a purpose to achieve a specific communicative effect. Have I ever said other inappropriate things or acted out of emotion? - yes. As Sgt. Friday famously said "The only problem with police work is that you have to recruit from the human race."

Words have meaning. I used to have morning coffee with a cranky retired physics professor who would get a pained look on his face during holidays and sunny weather. On one particular morning he was talking about the silliness of thinly disguised euphemistic language in a sitcom he had watched in which the word "boinking" was used to refer to sex. His final assessment was that words are meaningless so you might as well use the "real" words. As I thought about his foolish assumption that words are meaningless I considered looking him in the eye and saying, "You know, you old bastard, that's really true," as a means to test his theory.

Full Article: http://www.policeone.com/community-policing/articles/1775591-Its-a-Curse-I-Swear/


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## jettsixx (Dec 10, 2005)

That is probably one of the funniest yet true articles I've read in a long time.


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## Johnny Law (Aug 8, 2008)

That fucker wrote a great fuckin article!


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