“Assassin police. Yeah guys, automatically, I totally agree Well, except dad of course! Fuck the police, except dad of course…”. It is with this refrain that the Commissioner’s Son, the famous Belgian rapper and humorist James Deano made himself known 15 years ago. “Children of cops, a youth in the shadow of the uniform”. Last month, our French colleagues from Le Parisien addressed this subject, little mentioned until then, of the difficulties encountered by these sons and daughters of police officers, through five anonymous testimonies. And in our country, do these children proudly name their parents’ profession or do they hide it for fear of reprisals?
It all clearly depends on the schools. The big city or the countryside greatly changes the situation. “In certain neighborhoods in Brussels, it is impossible for a child to say that mum or dad is a police officer without risking being insulted”, affirms a divisional commissioner. “I have two children, an 11 year old girl and a 7 year old boy. Neither of them says that dad is a policeman at school. We act as if my profession did not exist. I’m the one who asked them to hide it at school because in their class, some like the police but others demonize them. To prevent them from being involved in debates that risk making them suffer, I don’t want them to talk regarding my work”, testifies another policeman from the western zone of the capital (Molenbeek).
Julie, commissioner’s daughter, harassed because of her dad’s job: “Insults, blows… I’ve been through an ordeal”
“Mom is a civil servant. It’s so much simpler. My 17 year old daughter has recently been talking regarding my work to her friends. In primaries, she always hid it. My 7 year old son, he still hides it. When they are small, it is too delicate. Some see us as bad guys, so it’s better to protect them from criticism from comrades”, assures a police officer from Schaerbeek, proud of her job while refusing to see her children follow the same path. “My job is my whole life. I can’t see myself doing anything other than wearing the uniform. No way, however, that my children will join the police later. I would be too scared for them and when I see how we are considered by a large part of society, I would not want my children to suffer this”.
Agent undercover for a while, investigator today, Paul has forced his children to keep the secret. “For their safety, they knew that if they were asked regarding Dad’s job, they had to answer that I worked at the Ministry of Finance. When I was younger, my sons weren’t particularly interested in my job. Teenagers, they had friends who all had one day a blood alcohol test or a somewhat muscular arrest. As adults, their vision has completely changed”.
“My son is very happy when I pick him up from school. He brags regarding his dad but it must be said that we live in a small village. I imagine that it is not the same in all the schools of the big cities”, continues an inspector from Walloon Brabant.
”We notice with the colleagues that we, the female police officers, are more afraid of the reaction of the school friends of our children. A police mother is too often perceived as more fragile than a police officer. In the minds of the little ones, it’s still a typically masculine job”.
Why “son or daughter of a cop” became an insult
”Chicken wire. Traitor, son of… Insults are never lacking as soon as my son approaches the profession that I do with his friends. But he is a teenager and learned to defend himself. When he was younger, he said nothing to his friends. Now, he does not hesitate to explain to them all the difficulties his dad faces on a daily basis in the field. I’m proud of him because he doesn’t have it easy every day”, confides to us this member of the federal judicial police of Brussels. A daily of insults in which Julie bathed all her youth. Harassed on the school benches, she tells us regarding her ordeal opposite.
Once common, visits by the police to schools allowed children to discover this profession in a different light. These so-called “Mega” operations are maintained in some schools but are tending to disappear for lack of resources. “Neighborhood agents regularly visited schools to present their work. The lack of personnel causes a shift of these effective human capacities in the quarters towards the intervention sections. With the consequence that these agents no longer know how to go to schools. It also generates a misunderstanding of what the police really do and are. This is detrimental to the serenity of their children, especially in cities. This problem can be integrated into the general violence once morest the police. When your child comes home complaining regarding being teased at school because of your work, it’s an additional psychosocial workload to bear. And this load is already heavy enough to bear”, concludes the president of the SLFP Police, Vincent Gilles.
