The most scathing, real, impossibly fierce piece of police exposure I've read. Through my many positions that required close relationships with cops, I have staunchly defended 95% of them as brave, selfless, even compassionate. Yes, I was aware they had the blue code and would never turn on a fellow cop no matter the severity of the action. I knew that their leadership could demonstrate the same kind of bureaucratic, political cowardice I saw in other large institutions. In the 80s I read the Joseph Wambaugh books and thought: 'Damn, what a tough life. Cops are tragic heroes.' When the talk recently turned to de-funding or abolishing police departments I thought: 'The vigilante and para-military groups will have a field day. The rich will create their own armed-to-the-teeth militias; the racists will run out of white sheets to costume the new Klan; I'll end up on a neighborhood watch patrol 4 nights a week with some character like George Zimmerman.' But all of this pales next to the world Officer A. Cab describes. I await more thoughtful and reasoned thinkers entering the conversation. Someone has the genius and the aura to lead us out of this. Someone needs to take this on his or her back and lead us out of the wilderness. But Gandhi didn't save India: right in front of his eyes Hindus and Muslims killed each other over a glance, an animal, an ancient grievance. We need to stop for a moment -- a moratorium on violence and battle tricks. Can we ask the Dalai Lama to step in? Mike Tyson? Who can make us still?

A mauve vine corkscrewed up from the deep

oblivion, carrying the singed fume

of things beautiful, noble, and wrong - from Mary Carr's Apocalypse poem.

This is real and scary and Officer A. Cab is courageous and deeply honest and maybe if we had five or twenty more like him we'd have a chance.