By Just A Guy
I feel like ranting, so I’m going to.
There’s a TV show called Southland on NBC, a show about cops in LA that’s actually quite entertaining. At any rate, in the show, one of the cops is addicted to pain pills, to the point where he buys them illegally. I guess what I have an issue with is the way the show portrays this cop with an addiction, causing one to feel sympathy for him. But when you see the other addicts in the show, the ones who are criminals, they are portrayed much more, shall we say, negatively.
It’s almost as if a cop’s moral compass is more finely tuned because he’s a cop addict and not your general street addict.
Most shows portray addicts as thieves or crooks, and while I appreciate Southland’s attempt to honestly look at addiction in uniform, I think it’s disturbing that the media generally promotes addiction as something that only thugs and gangsters experience.
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I have certainly blogged about the lack of programs at CDCR, but feel compelled to mention this: A couple of day ago I noticed a signup sheet taped to the officers’ podium in my building. It read: “sign up sheet” on the top sand underneath, “emotional maturity class”
There are 200 people in my building. One has signed up. Question: How many others in prison are emotionally mature enough to realize we may benefit from such a class? And how many really know what emotional maturity means?