Note: If you’re offended by curse words, do not read this blog post.
“I used to be the professor of F-ology,” Ricky Taggert says to snickers. Now that he teaches at the NYPD police academy, the 30-year NYPD veteran says he knows that “if I do it, the recruits do it.”
Taggert is one of four Smart Policing trainers leading one of the new segments of training that NYPD officers have to go through, a plan that was underway for over a year but expedited by the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island in July 2014.
Cursing is a New York tradition and one that police officers in the city often partake in, including against citizens and the accused. A training slide shows that common community complaints about cursing include officers’ favorite phrases (using only the “F” in the slide): “Shut the F up”; “What the F?”; “Move your F-ing car.”
The trainer uses an example to convince the officers why calling people “scumbags” or using other expletives is bad public service—”and we’re in a service industry, believe it or not. You may not like it, but it is what it is.”
He tells them to imagine that a waiter walks up to you table and asks, “What the fuck do you want?” Or, at the end of the meal, “Give me the goddamn check already, mother fucker.”