I have access to several copies of the Anarchist Cookbook at my office. I think they were seized at various marijuana grows and methamphetamine labs. If somebody has that book, it's reasonable for me to treat them as more of a threat than somebody who has a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. And if I'm dealing with somebody who has a cop-killer CD, I'd be stupid not to consider that in my threat assessment. That doesn't mean I unsnap my gun every time I hear a rap beat. Even somebody with a Woody Guthrie album could suddenly reach under the seat and pull out a gun and kill me with it. There are things they teach you from the time you're just a baby cop. It's an indispensible attitude, that there's one very important thing you absolutely must do every day. It's a rule, written in stone:

Go home in one piece.

They probably don't have access to the internet or the Mudcat in a hospital room.

But I chose to be a police officer in the United States of America and to support and defend the Constitution. That means that even the vicious gangsta brat, or the snot-nosed upper class frat boy, gets to listen to whatever stinky music he wants, and to say whatever he wants, and I'm sworn to defend those rights. He has the right to be full of shit up to his eyebrows, as long as he doesn't break the law. He can sing about killing cops, but I won't point a gun at him as long as I can see his hands are empty. Let him sing. I'll just be that much more careful.

And that's my suggestion as far as government censorship. Don't censor language or art. But each individual has a responsibility to be careful with it. Put it under a light. Examine it. If people are sceptical of the police, they also need to be sceptical of the critics. I enjoy the Woodie Guthrie song about Pretty Boy Floyd, even though in a sense it offends me.

...Well a deputy sheriff approached them In a manner rather rude Using vulgar words and language And his wife she overheard

Well Pretty Boy grabbed a log chain And the deputy grabbed a gun And in the fight that followed He laid that deputy down

But I can't help but picture myself as the maligned deputy that Pretty Boy whacked with the log chain. The deputy ain't around to tell his side of the story to old Woodie Guthrie, and folks who write folk music are given to hyperbole. That's part of the folk process. But it is not documentation.

It's been fashionable to hate cops and glorify outlaws since before Robin Hood. I sometimes wonder if the Sheriff of Nottingham might have been a damn nice fellow who just didn't have a balladeer on his payroll.

Some of the people who listen to Cop Killer will find that the time may come when they're in a pickle, and it's going to be a cop that comes and saves their little anarchist butt.