Rob Zombie On His Changing Relationship With Cops

That was kind of how police had total autonomy. They had so much power and authority back then. Yeah, it was crazy. I remember another incident. This was right before I left. I think I started talking about this, but I didn't finish. It was like they had Tompkins Square Park and they were trying to... That's when that area was getting gentrified. That was the big word. And there was kind of a riot. There was all the people protesting the gentrification of the Lower East Side. This was probably like... I don't know. Fuck. I forget. Maybe early 90s, late 80s. And the cops showed up on horseback. I had just walked out to go to the deli. I didn't even know this was happening. I just walked right into the middle of it like, what's going on here? Then the cops just started racing through the crowd and I just started running. And I saw a friend of mine, he died down, he was a singer of this punk rock band Reagan Youth. And I saw this cop just jump on him and start pounding on him. So bad he had really long dreadlocks. The next time I saw him, his head was shaved and it was all stitched up because he just had so much damage to his head. He had been in a coma or something. And then it was a big scandal. You could probably find this music because the cops all put black tape on their badge numbers so that no one could tell who was who while they did all this shit. And it was like on the front cover of the New York Post, a picture of like, I think the Post, the badge with the black tape. This shit was wild back then. See if you can find it. Well, the Chicago elections and the riots during the 1960s was like a turning point in Hunter S. Thompson's life because he was there and he watched these cops just beat the fuck out of people. And he said that he saw far worse beatings by the Chicago police than he ever saw for the Hell's Angels because his first book was the Hell's Angels book. But he was around those guys for a year watching them get into biker brawls and shit. He's like, this fucking paled. It paled. Crazy. I mean, it's crazy too, but sometimes being a cop must be a crazy job. Horrific. Because I can't imagine, I mean, it doesn't justify any of the stuff we're talking about, but I can't imagine how you couldn't go crazy in that job. Right. What you see every day and what you... Most of them I think have PTSD and it's not addressed. Most people have disdain for them. Almost everybody they meet's a liar because you meet a guy, I didn't know how fast I was going. Oh, this is my house. Oh, I just can't find my keys. Everyone's lying to you and you're the enemy. You are a professional enemy and you're wearing an enemy outfit. For all these criminals, you're the enemy. It's a terrible way to live. We need them badly. Right. And it's... I don't know. You can't win on that job, I don't think. No, no, you can't. And people don't... They're paid enough, people don't respect you, they don't appreciate you. They don't want you around until they want you around. Yes. And then you're not there fast enough. Exactly. And then you suck. Yeah. Yeah, it's... I mean, in cop movies, that's what's crazy is like cop movies, people love. People love cop movies and the cops are the good guys. So strange. But like their interactions with humans in real life, like, boy, if people treated them the way they think about them in the movies, it would be a wonderful time to be a cop. It's weird though, because I remember that time period in New York, like, so strange. Like, I have a different relationship now when I see cops, but as a bum kid at 19... Like I remember walking down the street and a cop would cruise alongside, roll down the window and they'd start taunting me, saying shit. Like... Police. And they were cops. But they're just like waiting for you to say something back. Right. And I was like, wow, this is weird. You know, I was just walking down the street. I wasn't even J walking down the street. Now whenever a cop comes up to me like, oh no, what's happening? And he'd be like, dude, I saw you at Slayer. It was fucking awesome. I'm like, that is weird. Yeah, it's got to be super strange. Yeah. I mean, they're more accountable now than ever before. I think that's one of the great things about body cameras and cell phones. Cops are, you know, you just can't rock it that way before. But I don't think they get enough counseling and I don't think they get enough money. And I don't think it's a stringent enough screening process. I think there's a lot of people that are, you know, they're powerless twats when they're young and they want, oh, I just wish everybody's going to fucking pay if I could be a cop. And they become a cop for all the wrong reasons. And then they're the ones that give the good cops a bad name. And if you think about the amount of interactions that people have with police, and this is why perspective is so important, there are fucking 320 million people in this country. And cops have millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of interactions with people all the time. But how many of those interactions are positive? The vast majority of them are not police brutality. The vast majority of them are not shooting someone and planting a weapon on them or planting drugs on them. The vast majority of them are cops doing a really hard job and doing their best. But nobody gives a fuck about that. You only care when the cops go bad, you know? It's just perspective. Which, you know, nobody has. No, nobody does. That's too nuanced of a conversation with the world now. There wasn't any perspective on anything.