“Let me tell you a story. Who knows, it just might be yours.”
“The story has lots of beginnings, but only one ending. Maybe your story began after a gang of punks forced you to stop your car while they smashed out your windows with garbage cans and slashed your girl’s face with a switchblade as part of some godless gang initiation. Maybe a strung-out addict made you kneel at gunpoint on the floor of a grocery store, and before you knew it, the begging words rose uncontrollably in your throat. Or maybe some swastika-tattooed bikers pulled you from the back of the bar and sat on your arms and legs while one of them unzipped his jeans.”
“Regardless of how your story began, you walk into the police station, seeking to restore the safety, justice, and order that your life lost when you became a victim. Your body is still hot with shame. Your voice is full of thumb tacks, strange to your own ears. Your eyes are full of self-guilt and loathing while uniformed people walk casually by you with styrofoam cups of coffee in their hands. Then somebody types your words for a report, and you realize that this is all you’ll get. Investigators will not be out at your house. You probably won’t be called in to pull somebody out of a line-up. A sympathetic female attorney from the prosecutors’ office will not take a large interest in your life.”
“Then you will look around at the walls and cabinets and lockers in that police station, the gun belts worn by the officers with the styrofoam coffee cups, perhaps the interior of the squad cars in the parking lot, and you’ll make an ironic realization. The racks of M16 rifles, scoped Mausers, 12-gauge pumps loaded with double-aught buckshot, .38 specials, and .357 magnums; the stun guns, slapjacks, batons, and tear gas canisters; the drawers that contain cattle prods, handcuffs, mace, wrist and leg chains, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition—all of these things have nothing to do with your safety or the outrage of your person. Nothing. All that firepower, all those golden shields, and uniformed personnel—they aren’t for you. You’re just an increase in somebody’s workload. A report to be filed and forgotten.”
“The end.”
Louis Fontaine, retired NOPD detective

Protect and serve. That is the motto of the enforcers of the law. But Kindred and kine alike know this is not entirely true. In most cities, many people are truly wondering who the police truly serve… and why. Most of the time, they are serving their Kindred masters. Those with this influence are able to control and direct the police and their affiliates. Contacts and allies include beat cops, desk jockeys, prison guards, special divisions such as SWAT teams and homicide, detectives and all the related clerical and ancillary positions associated with law enforcement.