Member-only story
Column
Cops Are Not the Victims Here
Officers are broadcasting petty grievances, showing their indifference to protestors’ calls for police reform
Milkshakes, McMuffins, and tampons, oh my! Over the last few weeks, police officers across the country have claimed their food orders are being tampered with by service workers with anti-cop biases. But the efforts to distract from police violence have largely failed — if anything, the fact that cops are painting themselves as victims while they simultaneously refuse to empathize with protestors brings more attention to how little they seem to care about deadly racism.
A Los Angeles cop told a reporter on Monday that he found a tampon in his Starbucks frappuccino (the reporter then tweeted out a picture of something that looked nothing like a tampon); a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia went viral earlier this month after she posted a video of herself crying outside a McDonald’s because she feared employees would do something to her Egg McMuffin; and in New York, police accused Shake Shack employees of poisoning their milkshakes — a claim proven to be entirely fabricated.
It is not a coincidence that cops are trying to paint themselves as victims right now. Protesters across the country are demanding police officers be held…
