Reading is my life.
I know, it sounds laughable—both melodramatic and cliché; however, reading truly is my life.
It’s a pathetic –yet exciting—existence, exploring the wards of Greenlaw College with Faris Nallaneen, sobbing uncontrollably with Harry after his beloved godfather falls to his death, and catching criminals with Sam Vimes on the tough streets of Ankh-Morpork.
I own more books than most people read in their entire lives and I have read every single one, multiple times. I’ve even reread the ones I hated, like The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. It was both dry and dull, but words have power over me. Even dry and dull can pull me along to see if the next page will be an explosion of action or eloquence.
Words move people. The right speaker can set people on fire. Fewer people, however, are moved by the written word. I am one of those lucky people, and reading sets my world alight.
Corruption is rampant in law enforcement.
"The Taskmasters" really struck a chord with me on the topic of corruption in law enforcement. It really brought to mind a quote from a book I have read.
In Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett, a seasoned officer is discussing the morality taking bribes with a younger officer.
“Put it like this, Lance Constable, would you let a murderer off for a thousand dollars?”
“No, Sir!”
“A thousand dollars’d set your mum up in a nice place in a good part of town, though.”
“Knock it off, Sarge, I’m not like that.”
“You were when you took that dollar. Everything else is just haggling over the price.”
High level corruption like the situation in The Taskmasters is not a rampant problem in the U.S. police force, but I’d have to say that low level corruption is a problem. There are the neighborhood heroes of America, then there are the cops who speed ten over because they have the ‘high speed training’, or drive drunk on the back roads because they ‘know what they’re doing’. As the daughter of a police officer, I’ve seen petty corruptions in action.
To me, this story took a problem we have in America and exaggerated it, or ‘upped the price’. It begs the question: What draws the line between petty corruption and full scale murder and framing, like in the story? Morally, is there really a difference?
