"worst Job on the planet" - Cops on Glassdoor

Common cop work gripes probably look a lot like yours.

Rest in power, Walter Wallace Jr.

Here’s a van I saw a cop taking a picture of on Tuesday night (when I was out voting), which means it’s probably floating around some pretty spicy WhatsApp chats and Facebook groups right now. That can’t be good for morale, can it? Enough to make a police force act like they’ll maybe, if we’re not careful, strike and let crime run amok, right?

Cops like to promote a narrative that situates their workday within a cosmic struggle between Good and Evil when they’re railing against the ungrateful public or the biased media or their pussy-ass electeds. But Glassdoor reviews from some of the largest police departments in the U.S. tell a different story. In posts on a platform expressly designed for job searchers, the critiques start to sound… a little familiar.

Comb through the reviews for a given department and watch some remarkably average themes emerge. LAPD veterans complain about how much more better the department used to be. NYPD officers feel “micromanaged.” CPD cops are pissed they have to actually live in Chicago. Long commutes, unpredictable hours, workplace drama, cliques, shitty bosses, gigs that were more fun a few years ago—sounds a lot like a normal fucking job……… except that at a normal job, you’re actually gonna face consequences if you fuck up and, say, kill another person.

Here’s my lowest-lift edition of All Cops Are Posters yet: a short tour through what cops say about their work life when they think a sympathetic audience might be reading. In no particular order, these are a few noteworthy reviews.

Los Angeles Police Department - 4.0 stars, 58 reviews

Chicago Police Department - 3.5 stars, 60 reviews

Houston Police Department - 3.5 stars, 22 reviews

New York City Police Department - 3.3 stars, 322 reviews

Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C. - 3.3 stars, 54 reviews

Blocked and Reported

• On Thursday, October 22, the Santa Clara DA announced that he will be moving to dismiss charges in 14 cases, where the testimony of one of four San Jose Police Department cops exposed for making racist Facebook posts in June was pivotal to conviction. Per the LA Times, the DA’s office have ID’ed up to 50 cases where similar dismissals could be warranted. Hell yeah!

• On Monday, October 26, Shreveport Police Department sergeant Brent Mason, who was placed on administrative leave in May for a Facebook post calling George Floyd’s death in police custody “a misstep, not murder,” actually got promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Boo, hiss!

Questions, comments, corrections? (“You don’t know what it’s like to be a police officer” is not a correction.) Shoot me an email at k80way@protonmail.com, or DM me on Twitter.