Sarah got very uncomfortable here when JVL talked about the types of boys who might grow up to be cops, contrasting them with the types who might grow up to be firefighters, and she brought up her own teenage experience of friends who were volunteer auxiliary firefighters. My personal experience of seeing a lot of cops before they were cops makes me think JVL is basically right.

I was a volunteer EMT as a teenager through Scouting. I was really into Scouts. I did all of it — I went to the National Jamboree and on High Adventure, I was a Den Chief (meaning I was attached as a “big brother” to a Cub Scout den and went to den and pack meetings and events), Order of the Arrow, Leadership Corps. I had two full uniforms and a closet full of camp dress. My Eagle Scout ceremony was so big that, just to fit all the kids and adults in all the organizations I was in, my parents rented out the fancy downtown club where people usually had weddings and bar mitzvahs.¹

And after getting my Eagle, I turned my attention to Explorers — the older-Scout umbrella at the time for career-oriented and outdoor adventure activities.² I’d really gotten interested in first aid and lifesaving and got certified on my path to Eagle (and did pick-up assistant lifesaver shifts at local pools and beaches). My Explorer post³ was attached to the local fire and police departments, and our fire department at the time also handled EMS and ambulance duties. So my crewmates were divided into kids learning firefighting, kids learning emergency medical response, and kids learning police work.

In any setting like that, kids divide into whatever color cliques they can identify,⁴ so I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that we “Meds” had sometimes-contentious relations with the Fire and Police Scouts. But the Meds and Fire Scouts were joined by our attached department, so when we were in “Explorer land” (events with Scout uniforms and Scout ranks and volunteer leaders) we banded together against our natural enemies, the Police Scouts.

But, even allowing for that rivalry, I wasn’t the only kid who noticed that there was a clear personality divide among the boys:⁵ the geeky boys like me went Med, the strong and kind boys went Fire. The bullies went Police.

I was assumed college-bound,⁶ unlike the probably 75% of my crewmates who were using Exploring as a direct path into a job. In Fire and Police there were limits to what we were allowed to do before age 18 (like no entering an actively burning building, or carrying a service weapon), in Med there weren’t (I was a certified EMT before the law changed to set a minimum age of 18), but we all did real academy training and got real certificates we could use in future careers.

Almost all the Fire kids expected to go directly from high school into the fire department. And almost all the Police kids expected to go directly into the police. I told someone the Fire Scouts were all “like golden retrievers” and I think this was before that term was used to describe a certain kind of young man. A bunch of great guys.

At big council or regional camporees the Explorers who had been Scouts would take on aligned roles: we Meds would man the assistance tents, the Fire kids would work as brush and fire patrol supervisors, but the Police kids? They didn’t have any role that made sense at a camporee. The only law enforcement issues that might arise were snack-swiping and illegally setting off fireworks. But we got special status that exempted us from latrine and water and KP duty and they felt they should, too, so they were “Security Patrol”.

Even when I was a 11-year-old Tenderfoot on my first camporee we knew about Security Patrol. We didn’t know how they got there or what their connection to Scouting or to the actual police was. We just knew they were the big kids who would descend on you when there were no grown-ups around, boss you around, and then say they would go get their guns if you didn’t respect their authority.⁷ (This was some years before South Park; they would literally yell at us, “you will respect my authority!” and nobody laughed.)

But it was a pattern: always targeting the youngest and smallest, always with humiliating demands — like “inspecting” our gear “for contraband,” then showing off and making fun of an asthma inhaler or prescription medicine. (God help you if you had an old teddy bear crammed into the bottom of your pack.) They’d always find some “violation” and demand discipline — just in the form of push-ups with all your clothes on, if you were lucky. When a grown-up or even an older Scout would approach, they’d quickly clear out, yelling over their shoulders “no more roughhousing!” or something.

When I got older and was in Leadership Corps, even before I joined Explorers myself, I’d keep an eye out for those Police boys, and told the little kids to do the same.⁸ If they were coming, I’d stand at the perimeter of my troop’s campsite and say the words I practiced: “I know your authority, and I know mine. If you have any problem with my Scouts or my campsite, you go through me — or if you really want, we can take it up with our scoutmasters.”

Then I’d stare them down (even though I was younger and smaller than most of them, I had righteous fury in my eyes remembering my own indignities). Usually they’d just go away. And when they wouldn’t, I had plenty of witnesses on my side to whatever happened next.

Like Sarah, I have known honorable and kind police officers. But like JVL, I know the type, too — and I knew them from before they were real cops.

—

¹ My mom went all-out with a buffet and an open bar (for the grownups, but my friends really liked the unlimited Cherry Cokes), which was pretty unheard of for an Eagle Scout ceremony that was usually a church-basement affair with maybe a potluck after. I was just barely 14, and I sometimes wonder if she did all that because planning a bar mitzvah was the one part of observant Jewish life she really wished we were part of.

² It would just a few years later be split into “Sea Scouts” (maritime career), “Learning for Life” (non-maritime career) and “Venture” (outdoor) paths, and today the “Learning for Life” portion I was involved in is called “Exploring”.

³ In Exploring, a “post” is equivalent to a Cub Scout “pack” or Scout “troop.” Looking at the regs I can find from back then, I think we may have been organized as two posts since fire and medical could be combined in one “Emergency Response” post, but not with “Law Enforcement Scouts”. But we had events together as one.

⁴ And regular Scout troops made use of that by being divided into squad-like Patrols with Patrol leaders, so that patrol rivalry became an incentive. When the kids were in a competition with their patrolmates against the other patrols, forget KP — even digging latrines became fun somehow.

⁵ Boys. Explorers was co-ed, but the girls weren’t so easy to classify. I don’t recall any girl Fire Scouts in my post, just Meds and Police.

⁶ Actually, hopefully academy-bound — but at any rate, collegiate education of one kind or another. In retrospect, it’s probably for the best I got outed at 16 by my high school — I can imagine actually ending up in the officer corps before and during DADT, and that wouldn’t have gone well.

⁷ A lie, I assume; even if a camporee had a firing and/or skeet-shooting range, scouts weren’t allowed to possess their own guns. But I wouldn’t be half surprised if some of them were secretly packing.

⁸ And unlike at the post, these were all “boys,” because it was a still sex-segregated Boy Scouting event.