Off The Cuffs: Poetry By And About The Police
Book Reviews | Feb 19th, 2007
Author: Jackie Sheeler, Ed.
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 250
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com link
The police are traditionally easy targets to vilify and demonize. Many of us (at least here in NYC) feel uneasy around cops, if not outright hate and fear them (at least under Giuliani). Regardless of justification, we’re quick to paint the lot of them as anything from rude with a bloated sense of entitlement to brutal, racist and corrupt. And yet most of us know at least one cop, a family member or friend, who is the antithesis of our mental image of that asshole authoritarian law enforcer.
But the police must have done something to change the public’s opinion of them from protectors and peacekeepers to power-mad perpetrators. This isn’t a case of a few bad apples ruining the batch – there IS something about the job that hardens ordinary people, slowly turning them into what they hate in some Nietzchian fashion.
Of course, this can all be debated, and Off the Cuffs initiates debate by offering new perspectives into the lives and behaviors of the police by letting them tell their own stories. Alongside anti-authority poems are also poems FOR the police, as well as poems BY the police. Certainly, bad behavior isn’t justified, but the pieces by the cops offer more understanding, mostly about how putting their lives in danger daily affects and desensitizes who they are. Many of their poems are disturbing, describing horrific images and experiences that most sane people would rather not encounter. That is not to say the police paint self-serving, sympathetic portraits. Some of the poems are machismo cowboy swagger, and a few are downright nasty and even racist in tone. But even those poems that fit the negative views of cops also offer a rare personal glimpse into their psychology.
The poems by the cops are by the far the most interesting part of this collection. Anti-police poetry has become pass, and while a couple of the poems may be stirring, most are just annoying. And in most cases, the cops prove to be better and more interesting poets than the activists and poets themselves.
Written and edited before the hero worship resulting from 9/11, this book is a ballsy move from a leftist publisher, and yet it seems like a no-brainer to invite people from the other side of the fence. The inclusion not only improves understanding of both sides, but also greatly enhances what would have otherwise been a typical and boring cop-bashing poetry anthology.
Bottom Line: Cops channel their inner poet, and it’s very arresting.
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