Barney Fife, of the celebrated 1960’s sitcom The Andy Griffith Show, was the lovable, bumbling deputy with a heart of gold. His clumsiness was endearing and provided a large portion of the comic value of the show. Even when his gun accidentally discharged, the audience would chuckle, and no one ever got hurt. Yet Sheriff Andy Taylor, clearly aware of Fife’s inadequacies, allowed him only one bullet, and kept him on a tight leash. Taylor, for his part, knew the damage such an accident-prone bumbler could cause when allowed too much power, even one as pure-hearted as Fife.

If only every police department employed an Andy Taylor, someone with keen judgment and an understanding of the real human cost of a jittery, paranoid cop. Unfortunately, in the real world, departments are utterly devoid of anyone approaching the character of a Taylor, but what they do have is more than their fair share of Barney Fifes. These cops mirror all the worst of Fife’s character flaws, while devoid of the save grace and purity of heart that the fictional Fife exhibited. Instead, this legion of Fifes appear to have been trained to see themselves as another fictional character: the Punisher.

The Punisher, most of us know, is a guns-blazing, mass murdering vigilante, branded as a dealer of justice against those who get off too easily in a court of law. No due process for any of his victims, they all get cut down equally in an unending barrage of gunfire and explosions. Many cheer him on in his rampages. Too many, in fact. This also includes cops and members of the military, and their sick worship of this murderous character is a telling sign of the state of mind of the armed enforcers who patrol our communities.

Instead of consequences, these Barney Fifes are given a union card, a plush pension, steroids in many cases, and “qualified immunity. And the results are about what you’d expect: around one thousand Americans killed each year, many more beaten to a pulp, harassed, and subject to frivolous arrests by the thousands.

The problem? In the real world, Fife is taught to see himself as a soldier deployed in a warzone, stationed deep within hostile territory, lethal threats around every corner. How else to explain completely unnecessary confrontations like the murder of a sobbing, crawling Daniel Shaver by Philip Brailsford? Who was cleared of murder, by the way. Another perk for the real-world Barney Fife: commit murder while on the job and you’ll get off scot free.

One tell-tale sign of a real-world Barney Fife is their extreme sensitivity to sleights to their authority. Whether real or perceived, any challenge to their power is met with escalating hostility up to the point of getting shot, tased, or choked to death. Fife is taught to say that he feared for his life after the fact, when sitting in the courtroom, but the bullets fly and the beatings commence because commands, screamed by an emotionally overwrought agent of the State, weren’t obeyed quickly enough. How else to describe the completely avoidable murder of Terence Crutcher by female Fife, Betty Shelby? It’s “contempt of cop”, a phrase that could only exist alongside a police force composed of Barney Fifes who believe they’re the Punisher. Shelby was also cleared in Crutcher’s death.

They’re deadly sensitive, these cops.

Entire SWAT teams of Barney Fifes kick down the doors of U.S. citizens by the thousands each year, and god help the unsuspecting residents and their pets inside. These trigger-happy, paramilitary-style units adorn themselves in military cosplay, except that, for these cops, their machine guns and grenades are real. Amped up on fear and adrenaline, these cops barrel through the door, pointing their guns at adults and children alike, gunning down any family pets that happen to appear while acting out some childhood war fantasy. A SWAT team of Fifes creates tragedies such as the Houston raid that left a middle-aged couple and their pets dead, a raid based on a lie made by another Fife cop, Gerald Goines. Goines has been charged with murder, but we know what the outcome will be.

Fife’s real-world analog also cannot apparently deal with the mentally handicapped without killing someone. A harmless autistic man was shot to death by an off-duty Fife in a Costco earlier this year. His parents, who were with him at the time, were also shot.

Tony Timpa, who suffered from schizophrenia and depression, was suffocated by three gleefully murderous Fifes in Dallas in 2016. He’d called the police for help from a parking lot. They showed up, and now Timpa is dead. While he lay dead, the three cops chuckled about his plight. They had apparently slaked their desire to rough someone up for the hell of it. Timpa’s story, though, is a recommendation on the strict use of body cameras, because without them we’d never know the real story of his death.

A study published by the Treatment Advocacy Center found that people with an untreated mental illness were 16 times more likely to be killed by the police.

The Barney Fife of the real world is also terrified of dogs, particularly ones that pose no threat at all. He’s so terrified that he will apparently draw his gun and fire in wanton fashion, regardless of the consequences to bystanders. The phenomenon of police killing family pets is so common that the term ‘puppycide’ has been created just for it. The stories are horrible, and are so endless that it would be impossible to adequately catalogue. Suffice it to say that it takes a special kind of sadist to kill a family pet unnecessarily, but those are the kind that now go in for police work.

Recently, a Barney Fife employed by the Arlington PD fired wildly at a loose dog, only to kill 30-year old Maggie Brooks in the barrage. Brooks, the owner of the dog, was apparently in the process of restraining her pet when she was shot. It’s a familiar story to many pet owners, and they are rightfully terrified of a chance encounter between their pet and the police.

U.S. citizens encounter Barney Fife on a daily basis, and it is a terrifying experience for many. What has happened in the way of reform? Nothing substantial. Police unions haven’t been abolished, neither has qualified immunity. Cops have been given bodycams, but even that tech, that was supposed to provide a modicum of accountability, has been perverted. Law enforcement want those cameras equipped with facial recognition capability, which would transform an officer into a walking avatar of the Surveillance State. Thankfully, a major manufacturer, Axon, has so far refused to equip their bodycams with facial recognition, citing the inaccuracy and bias inherent in the technology.

But there has been no effort to reform the attitude of these police, to screen for signs of empathy, for signs that within the prospective employee resides an actual human being. It’s an epidemic of impunity, and bad cops are being protected at the expense of public safety. When I say ‘bad’, I mean: emotionally unhinged, short-fused, sociopathic, devoid of empathy, etc. The kind of cop that chuckles with his cop buddies while the person they just beat dies before their eyes. Until the Barney Fifes of the real world are restricted to one bullet, fired outright, or barred from employment with the local PD, the public will continue to be victimized by the people ostensibly hired to protect them.

The reflexive escalation of every single situation on the part of the person with the badge and gun has to end. This inability on the part of police to handle even simple situations without escalation is absurd, and an outrage, and must be stopped.

“Shane Smith is a writer hailing from Norman, Oklahoma. He blogs at www.RepublicReborn.com. Liberty is his religion.”