John Hoberman

It’s not just giant banks that are too big to fail. According to John Hoberman, police officers are so hooked on illegal testosterone and steroids, that taking just one officer to trial would cause the collapse of all urban, most suburban, and many rural police forces. Management won’t do it, unions fight it, and officers routinely lie about it. This has been known for decades (60 Minutes ran the story in 1989, hardly the first). Welcome to Dopers In Uniform.

Hoberman focuses on police behavior, noting family violence rates four times higher than the general population, and alcohol abuse at twice. Then there are the unexplained sudden rages and killings of (mostly black) people in routine encounters. These are all symptoms of steroid abuse, and if they are more common now, it is because police abuse of steroids might now be as high as 20%. Might is the key word here, because police forces are careful not to keep stats, do tests or collect any data that could be used against them. It is another manifestation of the Blue Curtain or Blue Code of Silence. Police lie in their reports, they lie in the courtroom and they lie to each other. Their primary mission is to protect and defend – each other.

The problem is police are charged with enforcing the law. But if they’re the ones breaking it… How can they arrest people for illegal drugs when… How can we trust the police to enforce any laws when they selectively… How can we trust the very institution when its management and political overseers routinely defend... “The war on drugs has been waged … everywhere but inside police culture.” Like the cliché about marijuana leading to further drug use and crime, numerous prosecutions show that police use of steroids has led to lives of crime including bank robbery, prostitution, murder, and of course, drug dealing. When accused, their excuses are as lame as any teenager’s: They didn’t know steroids were illegal, they didn’t know the prescribing doctor was a fraud, that his diagnosis was absurd, that the steroids in their blood must be residue from vitamin supplements, that the supplements must have metabolized into steroids, and on and on. But unlike for you and me, the system buys these lines from police.

The book makes a strong case, but then Hoberman suddenly begins diluting it. He examines steroid abuse in popular films, the military, among film actors, bouncers, fighters, convicts and rappers. He eventually makes it seem like steroids are so common, so acceptable, that even the police can use them without fear of reprisal or penalty, which is a very odd way for this book to turn out.

Also, because there is so little real police data, most of the book is anecdotal. It is so repetitive the chapters could stand on their own as magazine articles. You get tired of reading the same story about the case of the 248 New Jersey cops on steroids, after the third time.

It is nonetheless a very readable, shocking and revolting summary. The sad conclusion is that at this point, there is so much steroidal drug abuse, police forces couldn’t do anything about it if they wanted to. Seems the bad guys won the war on drugs.

David Wineberg… (mere)