Read these two statements very carefully, multiple times, and tell me which one is wrong.
Everyone hates law enforcement until their lives are threatened.
Everyone loves law enforcement until their lives are threatened.
The problem is, you cannot see the wrong answer because both of these statements are true, at the same time.
This is the dichotomy a police officer lives with each and everyday they put on their uniform, strap on their weapon, and put the police car into drive. No one else in the world has to face this duplicity in their job. No other profession, save possibly the military, faces a cascade of love/hate emotions from the people they protect and serve, and then await the Jekyll and Hyde moment when those who love or hate them, turn towards or away in the blink of an eye.
It’s an often thankless, tiring, bloody, dirty, nasty, ugly, emotional, scary, thrilling, heart-pounding, adrenaline-spiking, and maybe every once in a while, rewarding job. You have to be a special breed of person to be a law enforcement officer. And right now, departments across the country are not always recruiting the best and brightest. As well, politicians and the media, with their firebrand level of visceral police-hate are doing the nation and its citizens no favors in allowing the good ones to walk out the door, or sidestep applying to the ranks because of the fear they may be eviscerated in the public eye without a shred of support. But, these are only parts of this deep, and systemic issue.
And I suspect you believe I’m going to speak about racism? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Racism is not the major issue in our law enforcement community. Though I am not ignorant enough to believe racism doesn’t exist in law enforcement and does not play a role in some interactions we see or read about. But on the whole, it is not the major factor in the problems we currently see arising within police departments around the country.
The biggest problem we have in law enforcement is politics. Politics is going to kill more than police departments, law enforcement, and the current criminal justice system. It’s going to kill our communities, our nation, and the lives of so many people. Believe it or not, the hardest hit people in this whole political war about law enforcement, use of force, and outsized assault on minority communities are criminals, the police, and the victims of crime, all of which are but pawns in a fast-evolving deadly game.
For context, and so you know I am not simply blowing smoke about a subject you may think I know little about, allow me to give a little background. I grew up around the law enforcement community my entire life. My father was an 18-year veteran of a small department outside Tampa, FL. He was a street officer, moved up to become a shift sergeant, and was also in the detective division as both a detective and supervisor. I had an uncle, multiple cousins, as well as my brother and various other friends who were all members of the law enforcement community in some capacity.
Also, I occasionally worked in dispatch taking complaint calls and sending officers to various locations to provide service. I have ridden along with officers on various occasions in order to get a better idea of what law enforcement officers deal with on a shift-by-shift basis. In all, I have spent hundreds of hours in the law enforcement community in various capacities and have a fairly intimate, personal, almost familial knowledge of it. By no means am I an expert, nor do I have the absolute first-hand knowledge and training of a badged officer. But I certainly have a unique perspective beyond that of many others.
Use of force by the police has been a very hot button and often contentious issue in the public sphere for decades. The most prevalent case of police use of excessive force that made national headlines and was a subject of much public scrutiny, especially in the age of television, was Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991. No other case galvanized the country around the idea of excessive force (and yes, certainly racism in this case) than any other, save the exploits of the ruthless and racist Bull Connor in Birmingham, AL.
The use of deadly force, as highlighted by some pretty high profile cases in the last decade, is a subject everyone seems to know something about, but always after the fact. What is always left out, is that these officers don’t have the luxury of hours and hours to review the tape, opine about the mistakes to be made, and then make a decision on what course of action to take in order to save or take a life. This little piece of the puzzle, that is the time factor, is always left out of the misguided and oftentimes outlandish conceptions of our journalistic and political betters.
“Shoot it out of their hand!”
“Shoot them in the leg!”
“Give them a warning!”
These statements are so foolish and completely devoid of perspective, they border on moronic. People talk as if these ideas have never been discussed or reviewed in the history of law enforcement. No, they have and found to be ineffective when it comes to thwarting human nature, also an area devoid of understanding by those who love to armchair quarterback cops.
Now, I am not naïve enough to think the police are completely innocent, nor unprejudiced in their work. To say that would make me disingenuous. There are some real bad actors in the law enforcement community. Some do want to go out and bust heads, and yes maybe even take down a person of color. That is a fact and an ugly one at that. But, on the whole, just like any profession, most want to be good at their job, get paid well to do it, find satisfaction in helping their communities and save lives.
Police do need to be held accountable for the special responsibilities they have been given to serve the people and protect life. They need to take the extra second to truly see if there is a weapon. Too often in our trigger-happy society, police have been impulsive and reactive instead of patient and proactive. My father once said to another family member, “You have to think before you act.” And I believe that is missing from what is being taught to our officers currently. It seems to have turned into a Ready, Fire, Aim mentality and that is dangerous for officers, suspects, and bystanders.
Unions need to hold their members accountable as well. They need to be the first line of defense for the public against the officers they know to be bad apples. Without the unions, and possibly the end of qualified immunity, we will remain mired in the current state of police/community affairs and nothing will get solved.
In the end, use of force incidents will continue to be dangerous and deadly, until the police and community leaders learn that they must work together, devoid of politics, for the good of the country and our nation. Safety is paramount, but pointless, unless we can find the most effective ways to protect our communities by, and sometimes even from, the police.
Reality Politics 