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comment by elizabeth
elizabeth  ·  1387 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop

Reading from my personal perspective, the "average" police work feels very familiar to me. At Burning Man, I've done Ranger training, where you become the official first responder, with a radio calling for emergencies but mostly dealing with conflicts and noise complaints. Sometimes bigger things like consent violations, assault, drug-induced states that require compassion.

Judging by how similar the actual work is, it's crazy how different the typical person it attracts is when you don't have toys like guns to play with. I find BM Rangers to be usually nerdy, compassionate people very concerned with Doing The Right Thing, due process and feedback. Annoyingly so at times, where sometimes i find they take things too seriously and my dark humour dosen't read well with everyone.

One of the first thing explained in training is the concept of "social capital" where you have to be nice to everyone and earn "capital" so they respect and acknowledge your non-existant authority. And actually listen to you if at some point you come tell them nicely to lower the music.

Sure, there's not a lot of gang violence and poverty to deal with at a festival, but I think there are still a lot of parallels to be drawn. Our job as first responders is to de-escalate situations to avoid having to call the police. The only times cops are called are basically when an arrest needs to be made for serious stuff like a participant assaulting someone. I can see how police work can be both draining emotionally and boring as hell. So people that got in for the flashy car chases, start provoking and instigating violence for a little action.