There are so many people speaking out against violence towards and disrespect for police, it’s truly amazing. From every day citizens that thank a cop when they see one, to the President of the United States standing behind the men and women in blue.
President Trump is constantly posting on social media about his support for law enforcement. US Attorney General William Barr has spoken about this as well. Although it is completely underrepresented in the media, there are many Senators, Congressmen, House Representatives, and other political leaders that are behind law enforcement and are appalled by the recent treatment of police.
This being the case, why are we putting up with it? Why are we allowing it? Why is it happening? I have no statistics to back this up at all, but it seems like the silent majority of people are good, law abiding, authority recognizing people, while the vocal minority of people are more in favor of an anarchist country than encourages the harassment and assault of the very people protecting their asses.
I’ve never been big in the grassroots world, but that has to be a start, right? If we have thousands (millions?) of people who are sick and tired of how their law enforcement officers are being treated, why is the smaller group showing more support for their chaotic and unlawful cause?
I’m going to guess that one reason for this is fear. Fear of violence being turned from the police to themselves. I’m from the Bay Area in California and I was a 49ers football fan (note the was– I don’t give a crap about the NFL now). If I ever went to Oakland (home of the Raiders), I would never wear apparel supporting my team, otherwise I would get my ass kicked. Or another one. If I say I’m a Trump supporter, I get called racist (I’m married to a Hispanic), homophobic (I have several gay friends), sexist (last I checked I was still a female, or at least identify as one), and any other hurtful, mean, disrespectful generalization I can be called. It’s kind of like that.
There’s a good reason cops don’t go around advertising that they’re cops. That they tell family members not to announce it to people in restaurants or at dinner parties. That they don’t wear shirts with department logos, hats with “Support the Police,” or backpacks that say “I heart police.”
While many people would see the identifiers as a part of the law enforcement community as a good thing, a way they can know the person is a cop and extend their thanks and well-wishes (much like military veterans), many other people would see the insignia as a target. The shape of a badge over the left breast of a shirt would morph into a bullseye, and would also unfortunately extend to the family members around the person wearing the shirt.
Fear. It’s what is keeping the good people oppressed. Which is ironic, because there’s so much talk about how certain groups of the vocal and hateful people are the ones allegedly being held down.
This is something that may also be contributing to our prosecutors’ refusal to charge criminals with assault on police, and offering plea deals for murdering them. Someone commits a crime, they get arrested, they are punished with jail time, community service, and/or classes designed to correct the criminal behavior. That’s how our justice system works.
For whatever reason, if the crime you’ve committed is against police, it’s easier to forgive. In one county (so far) in my state, they don’t charge assault against a police officer as a separate crime. Assaulting an officer is just considered a part of taking them into custody. Read that again. Because it’s flippin absurd.
Other counties are following suit, in practice if not in law. It makes absolutely no sense. Which leads me to believe that prosecutors are afraid of backlash from the media. And afraid of their “wins” number dropping because the jury won’t want to convict a person with a crime against an officer. Because God forbid they work harder to convince juries and judges that assault on an officer should bring about the highest punishment possible. It’s much easier to refuse to prosecute and let the criminal go free. Makes much more sense too.
I hope the reader can pick up on the sarcasm there.
Oh, yes. Let’s not forget the media doing their part to tear our great country down. I get it, at the end of the day, news stations are essentially businesses. Ratings are important. Revenue from said ratings even more so. It helps attract people to watch their station if they can report something that pisses them off. Like police unlawfully beating people of an opposite race just for shits and giggles.
But there’s a difference between reporting on injustices and creating them. Or making them bigger than they are. Or encouraging them.
One of my closest friends is a part of the news media, and I have so much respect for her. She wears her MAGA equivalent hat to her job (MLEGA? Make Law Enforcement Great Again…doesn’t have as good of a ring to it but you get it) and stands proud to support her local police. That doesn’t mean she ignores it when they do something wrong.
If an officer makes a mistake or intentionally break a rule, policy, or law, they should be held accountable. If they’re in the wrong, they’re in the wrong. She’ll report on that if it becomes necessary. But she won’t participate in the open hatred of law enforcement, nor will she create stories which will further an unjust cause. Which is so different from many of her colleagues.
This should be the norm. She should be the rule, not the exception to it. Like them or not, police absolutely are the first line of defense in our great nation. I have taken reports of assault, theft, etc. from people who are actively telling me that police are corrupt and dirty and probably wouldn’t do anything to help them anyway. Some of them got solved and some of them didn’t, but I didn’t slack off on attempting to solve them just because the victim hated me. I still did my job the best I could and put the resources available to me into attempting to get justice for victims. Regardless of how many times they told me to go f#@% myself.
Because that’s what I wanted to do since I was a little girl saying goodbye to my daddy when he left to go patrol the streets of the community. Not be told to go f#@% myself, but to help people. To get justice for victims. To protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.
Police officers look like they don’t have emotions sometimes, I’ll give you that. But that’s more about survival and command presence than anything. We are human. We experience emotions; intense ones at that.
I wasn’t planning on sharing anything yet about a day in my life that I will never forget, March 21, 2009. But, this is where my writing has led me and it fits rather well right here. On the aforementioned date, four of my brothers were murdered by a drug-dealing, child-raping felon. More on that day will come later, but for right now I just want to talk about a specific part of it.
At a couple of points during that day from hell, I was on a perimeter line to keep civilians out of the crime scene area. If you’re a cop reading this, I don’t have to tell you that to some people, “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” doesn’t mean crap unless there’s a person standing there to reinforce it. Not that it means crap then either, but at least those people are a little more likely to obey it. Sometimes people are really just that dumb and don’t get that they can’t walk that way until the scene processing was over, and some people knew that, but wanted to be annoying anyway.
This day, however, this group of people wanted to be much more than annoying. They were so happy that the officers had been killed, and they were making sure we all knew it. By this time, the suspect had killed the first two cops, and the crowd had learned, thanks to a tip from a Good Samaritan, who the murderer was. They were already praising him as a hero and saying that they hoped he would “get a few more.” The loudest of the group was a lady (I use that term loosely) and…I will never forget her face. She was riling up the crowd, telling everyone it was time to celebrate. She turned around so her ass was right in front of us and “twerked” in our direction, which was not a pretty sight. Then she said, “Ya’ll want a cigarette? We gotta celebrate! Oh, you sad? Your little friends dead? Yeah, you don’t want a cigarette. How bout you go die too?”
And other similar statements. Which also prompted other people to join in with death wishes for us and expressing their happiness in the deaths of our brothers.
While she was doing her little dance and song, I was standing next to one of my best friends at that department. And let me tell you, thank God she was there with me. I reached down to grab my baton and started to say something in return, which would have been less than professional. She inconspicuously closed the distance between herself and I, put a hand on my arm and said, “Leah, don’t.”
Thanks, friend. She probably saved my job that day, because if I would have said or done ANYTHING even REMOTELY negative, it would have undoubtedly been my fault. Never mind the fact that I’m only human, and I can only take so much of a person poking me.
Watching the recent displays of hatred towards police (pouring buckets of water on them, assaulting them while they attempt to stop an active shooter, etc. etc. etc.) brings all this to the forefront of my brain and stirs up all the anger I felt back then.
I don’t want to sit here waiting for the next assault, attack, or abuse to happen to our nation’s police. I don’t want to keep feeling anger that gradually subsides until the next incident appears on national TV. I want to do something to fix it.
And I know there are so, so many more people who feel the same way.
So, let’s fix it. Thank a cop. Write a letter to city and/or county prosecutors and let them know that you demand prosecution and punishment for cop killers and people who assault police. Write a letter to your State Senator, your Congressman, your city’s mayor. Be vocal on social media. Be vocal on news outlets’ social media accounts.
Our country is on the brink of complete chaos. We can’t just sit by and watch.
#EnoughIsEnough