AUTHORITY.

AUTHORITY
REDMOND QUINN
A lot of people don’t know that my uncle was a policeman. I got on with my uncle growing up because we shared a lot of interests. He was the cool uncle, whereas my mother and father were very much the embarrassing kind. I’d sometimes pretend I wasn’t with them on family trips out, but not my uncle.

And there was something to be said about respect too. I think I got on with my uncle even more because I knew he was trying to make the world a better place. He was one of those cops who was in it for the right reasons. He truly cared about people. Because of that he was heavily involved in the community. Any fundraiser and you could guarantee he’d be there, head in the stocks with wet sponges being thrown at him. You’d see kids causing grief on the park because they had nowhere to go and he would be the only cop to go and speak to them human to human, rather than demonising them. They grew to respect him as I did and stopped causing trouble.

But for some people, honour and nobility counts for nothing, and authority becomes a crutch on which to hang disillusionment. Soon, with the increasing cuts to the police force enacted by the government, my uncle had to stop attending the fundraisers, and didn’t have time to talk to kids any more because there was nobody else on the beat. The community, they thought it was him turning his back on them, and they didn’t like it. Crime rates crept up, and my uncle – through no fault of his own – became the target of ire for a cynical community led down the garden path by politicians.

My uncle was an honourable policeman, who had to leave town because of what the community thought he was becoming. But it wasn’t just the politicians who contributed. Men like Nightstick are also to blame. Nightstick claims to be doing the wrong things for the right reasons, but all I have seen are arrangements to turn blind eyes to the shady gangsters, a will to control the streets with fear rather than mutual respect, and a tendency to break laws to achieve his aims.

Is it any wonder the general public grow wary of the police? Is it any wonder that AUTHORITY is now synonymous with a hated public figure, rather than a respected civil servant? In some ways, Nightstick is worse than Wolfgang. Vile as he is, Wolfgang is at least honest about it. Nightstick pretends to be a good guy, but he’s the kind of guy that could have been paid off by Wolfgang. Just like the ones who framed me. Just like the ones who have forced me to degrade myself at Wolfgang’s beck and call.

My uncle died without ever going back to the community that once revered him. He had fallen out of love with being part of an authority that cared only about themselves. Nightstick, I will make sure he is not the only cop run out of town come Monday. Be ready.