During my hippy-dippy college student days I learned what it was like to be harassed by the gendarmerie. Of course, we weren't getting gunned down in the streets like the blacks today, but except for a little pot smoking, we weren't exactly dangerous law breakers, either. I certainly don't mean to claim we were a viciously abused minority, but we were obviously second class citizens as far as the cops were concerned. They just didn't like us. We didn't look, act, dress or talk like them. We represented everything they feared and hated. We were privileged, uppity, know-it-all smart-ass college kids; we had sex and drugs whenever we wanted it--money for nothing and chicks for free.... It was a class thing, to a certain extent. And although some of us had been to Vietnam, none of us wanted anyone else to have to go.

Most cops treated us tolerably, but there were more than a few who obviously tried to provoke something every time there was an encounter. And I suspect that many would have welcomed any "back-talk" or "guff" as an excuse to give us the third degree. A few of my friends learned that the hard way. I remember once, after a minor fender-bender, the trooper was giving me so much shit that the other motorist (a kindly old gent) had to intervene and tell the cop he was at fault in the accident. I had no doubt the cop was not going to accept my version of events.

Of course, those were different times. A black friend of mine was run out of town because he had the audacity to marry a white girl who bore his child. He could not go anywhere without getting a traffic ticket, or be delayed for hours. Twice, I was stopped for no good reason simply because a black fellow was riding in my car with me. These are anecdotal, isolated events. They really are not evidence of anything. But they stay in your mind, and if one of these episodes ever goes south on you, it can change your attitude, or your life, forever.

Again, I want to make it perfectly clear my own police experiences were completely benign compared to the "Black Lives Matter" incidents we hear about today, but I can easily extrapolate how a community of citizens can easily come to see themselves as being in a city occupied by a foreign army. And I can easily see how the soldiers in that army might be infuriated by the citizens not accepting them as liberators fighting for their "freedom". We are a nation full of Baghdads. I'm surprised the IEDs haven't appeared.

One night, my buddy and I went down to the local pub and were stopped at the door by several cops who questioned us, scrutinized our ID and had us empty our pockets-for no good reason. They were superficially polite, but they would never had done that to a couple of "straight dudes". We were fair game as far as they were concerned. The bartender gave us a pitcher of beer "On the house, on account of getting hassled by the pigs."

But I can sympathize with the cop who has to go day after day into neighborhoods were crime is rampant, civil order has broken down, drugs are everywhere, and everyone hates him and wants to kill him. In his place, I might be a little trigger-happy myself.