A Broken Part of the Thin Blue Line: The Angriest Man I Ever Met (Not for the Faint of Heart)

[Waffles731]

The angriest man I ever met was a former Lieutenant in the Massachusetts State Police and out of respect for him and his family, I will call him Lieutenant H.

Lieutenant H, was homophobic, sexist and Islamophobic yet by God I cannot help but feel bad for him when I think of him and what he went through to make him like that.

I met him in my Drivers Ed class, He was supposed to come in and talk about accidents for three hours. Instead he came in and talked about that for five minutes, then talked about his worldview; women were meant for the kitchen, being gay was a crime against god, and Muslims were completely wrong in everything except the fact that they believed in the Abrahamic god.

Everyone else thought this was an act.

Me, I knew better.

I remembered some conversations I had with my parents about police officers. Most police officers deal with people who have made a single mistake. Now that is easier to deal with though some can't deal with that. However, Lieutenant H WAS A STATE TROOPER.

We call them Staties up here. Now Staties are the ones who patrol the highways and as such they are the generally the first ones to respond to an accident.

I remembered a story my mom told me: After she got out of the Air Force had had kids she ended up working retail, she was working at blockbuster with a man lets call him Y, they got to talking about their past, she mentions that she was in the military and he mentions that he was a State Trooper and eventually they got to know each other well enough for him to tell her why he quit.

Y's last night on patrol he gets a call about an accident, a drunk had slammed into another car and there were injured. He gets there and he finds a woman obviously dead and splattered all over the front drivers side but in the back was the part that made him break.

There was a ten year old girl and she was in bad shape and while I was given the more exact details, that is all I'm going to say because its really rather uncomfortable to even type.

But this ten year old girl was dying and she knew it. So Y climbs into the car and talks to her and holds her. This Girl was screaming and covered in her own blood and then she just wasn't...

The girl had died right, in his arms. When the coroner arrived he went back to his car and just cried. He quit that night.

When I met Lieutenant H I also thought back to a story my dad had told me.

When my dad taught Air Force ROTC he had a student who would go into the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations. That's fancy talk for a person who investigates Criminal Activity on Air Force Bases; let's call him X. Now when my Dad first met X, X was a bright eyed and idealistic young man, he really just wanted to help people. A few years later my Dad met X again and he was a very angry person. X's day job was to investigate criminal activity on a military base. He saw it all, child molesters, wife beaters, murderers, rapists, even a human trafficker once. That is what he dealt with day in and day out. X just broke, it was all he could think of. The darkness of his job consumed him.

That's what I knew had happened to Lieutenant H.

My suspicions were confirmed when I actually talked to Lieutenant H's nephew when I worked at the pool store, it turned out that his nephew was a regular customer (small world). His Dad and his Uncle were both Staties and while his dad came out of the job with his sanity intact, his Uncle did not.

Lieutenant H had responded to accidents day in and day out. He had seen people dying horrifically in car accidents, he had seen the occasional murder and plenty of assaults, and sexual assaults as well and Lieutenant H just broke, he turned into the man I had met in my Drivers Ed Class, When he had first joined the State Police he was idealistic, Now he is far from it, he is a truly broken man.

So that is why I feel sympathy for Lieutenant H. That is why I feel sympathy for the Angriest man I ever met.

[SweetHomicidalQueen]

So he's mentally fucked up

[Waffles731]

Pretty much. If we saw things like that all day We might be too, I don't excuse his views but I understand why its happened

[SweetHomicidalQueen]

Yea I understand why but i dont see what muslims have anything to do with that line of work unless he participated in the clean up of terrorist attacks done by muslims (like the orlando thing)

[Waffles731]

His kids a marine

[Waffles731]

I see him as just another victim, he is just a broken shell of a man

[Waffles731]

I honestly do not know how much of him is left

[behnam1999]

Interesting!

[Rocket_Queen]

This take is exactly what people fail to realize. And this is all of our public safety men and women. They don't all come out hateful but a large majority of them come out broken and many don't even realize that they are. This is why I forever support our public safety crews. They really sacrifice so much for so very little in return, and it definitely isn't for the pay. It takes a selfless person to do the things they do.

[Rissyanne]

I am very proud of you Waffles. This was actually a good take. Not the antagonistic and bitter views you normally have.

[Waffles731]

I'm the son of two air force vets, I really do respect most public servants as most of them are good people worthy of respect

[Rissyanne]

That is great... but you know sometimes you can be a little negative and combative.

[COCOCHANEL]

i feel bad for people who have to see that stuff. i sometimes wonder how they do it.

[pervertedjester]

There was a reason I left the service which comes close to this. But very well written, Sir.