Blue Lives Matter: Support Your Police
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It’s not the police who need to be retrained, it’s the public. We have grown into a mouthy, cell phone wielding, vulgar, uncivil society with no personal responsibility and the attitude of it’s the other person’s fault, or you owe me. A society where children grow up with no boundaries or knowledge or concern for civil society and personal responsibility.
When an officer says “Put your hands up,” then put your hands up! Don’t reach for something in your pocket, your lap, your seat. There’s plenty of reason for a police officer to feel threatened, there have been multiple assaults and ambushes on police officers lately. Comply with requests from the officer, have your day in court. Don’t mouth off, or fight, or refuse to comply… that escalates the situation.
Police officers are our sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. They’re black, white, brown, all colors, all ethnicities, all faiths, male and female, they are us. They see the worst side of humanity… the raped children, the bloody mangled bodies of traffic victims, the bruised and battered victims of domestic violence, homicide victims, body parts… day after day.
They work holidays while we have festive meals with our families. They miss school events with their kids, birthdays, anniversaries, all those special occasions that we take for granted. They work in all types of weather, under dangerous conditions, for relatively low pay.
They have extensive training, but they are human. When there are numerous attacks on them, they become hyper vigilant for a reason, they have become targets. When a police officer encounters any person… any person, whether at a traffic stop, a street confrontation, an arrest, whatever… that situation has the potential to become life threatening. You, Mr & Mrs/Miss Civilian, also have the responsibility of keeping the situation from getting out of control.
Many law enforcement officers are Veterans. They’ve been in service to this nation most of their lives, whether on the battlefield or protecting us here at home. They are the only thing that stands between us and anarchy in the streets.
If you want to protect your child, teach them respect.
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Sorry folks, but I had to add something here. To blindly support the police or the black community, or the Hispanic community, or anything else is the same thing that is getting Donald Trump support for president. It doesn’t make any difference what he does, he is always right. It does not make any difference what the cops do they are always right. It is pure bull shit for people to be saying that if you do as you are told you will not be shot. That is worse than a dictatorship or a police state. To believe that any citizen can be told to lie down on the ground because the police think the he or she should has gone way beyond the normal powers of police. Refusing to obey the orders of a police officer now carries a death sentence. WHAT??? Under certain rare instances probably. But lately I am seeing police officers who have forgotten basic protocols of safety and putting themselves in dangerous situations. In Cleveland they rode right up to the kid who supposedly had a weapon. In what reality do police do that? None. They pull up so they have cover and try to get the weapon away from the kid. They try to save lives, not take them. What happen to backing off a tense situation and getting someone to help with someone who appears to be mentally impaired. Why, in Charlotte was it so imperative that the police force the man out of the vehicle that instant without first being behind cover. This not the old west where we go looking for shoot outs. When did immediacy take precedent over human life? This a total misunderstanding of what it means to take command of a situation. Command implies control, not action.
The cops in Tulsa, instead of surrounding the subject from points of cover to figure out what was going on all 4 were lined up like ducks in a row. At least one should have been on the other side of the car to determine if there was anything or anyone in the car. She called for back up, back up arrived, and the back up chose to use a Taser. She had a Taser on her but pulled her gun instead. There is a wrong mind set. Police are supposed to be about saving lives, not taking them, and that includes theirs. Putting safety protocols in place. In many cases they can wait for back up. They can have the advantage of numbers. They can avail themselves of experts to intervene, they simply choose not to. OK, enough of my ranting, but someone needs to go back and do an assessment of the use of safety protocols and how they could better use them and dial down the immediacy for police action in these situations. Time is on their side.
I agree with you Re: Tulsa.
I have been in and out of this argument too much and too long. There are a lot of things going wrong in society today. This includes a lot of people who do not like being told what to do “just because” some tells them to do it. There are those in authority who believe and like the idea of people “doing what I tell them to do immediately”. In 1972 the then Director of the FBI, Clarence Kelly told me one evening at a banquet dinner, “In terms of power of the individual citizen the individual officer is in the top three of the most powerful persons on earth. He has at his discretion the power over an individual’s liberty and life or death. That is an immense amount of power an authority and responsibility and should never be tolerated without accountability.” It is not that police (a generic term) are out to kill people (a generic term), but when an officer makes a mistake or intentionally takes an action that causes the death of another person, then there has to be accountability. If one can find a defense for the shooting of Walter Scott occurred on April 4, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina, following a daytime traffic stop for a non-functioning brake light by Officer Michael Slager, then there is no need for laws. We have anarchy. If one remembers that case the officer was shown to have placed an object by the body of of Mr. Scott after shooting him in the back to presumably justify the shooting while his partner watched. Had that person not videoed that incident, how do you think that incident would have turned out? In the recent incident in Tulsa, was Officer Shelby too quick to fire her weapon? The victim, Crutcher, was not following her commands, but for that he deserves the death penalty? At the point she fire and officer beside her fire a Taser, a non lethal means of getting compliance. We will never know whether the Taser would have gained compliance because her shot killed him. An error in judgement, or are we now at a point where a citizen failing to do as a police officer commands they are eligible to die for it, right then, on the spot. I know it is difficult for Mike and Timothy to do this but in some cases it would help if officers first tried to communicate with a person before it gets to that point. I am not going to get into my police experience nor theirs, but at this point their is a credibility gap on both sides. There is little reason for a black male to presume that they are not going to be shot and killed anytime they are stopped by a police officer except for the fact that most police officers are good, hard working people trying to do a tough job. By the same token there is little reason for a police officer to think that the person they are stopping for a simple traffic stop is not going to try to kill them, except for the fact that most people, black,white, or brown are good people just trying to make from one day to the next as best they can. There is something that everyone should have the opportunity to do and that is walk a mile or two in the other person’s shoes to put things into perspective. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen and may never happen. There are two subcultures on the brink of war and only reasoned people who can think with their brains and not their emotions can avoid it. I wonder, at times, is South Africa, going to have to call us to task in order for us, as a nation, to get things straight in our country as we did with them. Gross exaggeration, I admit, but it is something to think about for those who actually think.
You write:
“I know it is difficult for Mike and Timothy to do this but in some cases it would help if officers first tried to communicate with a person before it gets to that point.” Sorry Bill, but that’s just bullshit. The vast majority of police officers do just that, as did I, and Tim. I find that statement insulting. I’ll let Tim speak for himself.
Mike, in the latest cases there has been no attempt to talk the people down. Back in the day when you and Timothy, and certainly when I was on the street communicating with the people was job one. But that seems to have disappeared in the protocol with officers these days. In the Charlotte case case the officers chose to press the issue even when the man’s wife was off to the side screaming that he had a brain injury. Since he was in a car apparently reading, and from the officer’s report, had a marijuana cigarette where was the emergency to get him out of the car without trying to first assess the situation. I saw the video where he was backing away from the officers with his hands down at his side. The officers were, or should have been, behind cover. No one was talking to him, they were demanding him to comply. I am still not convinced he had a gun. It would not be the first time in North Carolina where a police officer planted something on a shot suspect, a la the Walter Scott case. It is simply gotten to the point that do as you are told or we shoot you. They were shouting at him and there was no indication that there were any signs of communication. I have talked people down before that have guns and I am sure you and Tim have also. I don’t know why you are insulted Mike because in your day you have that kind of personality that you would have the guy believing that you and he would be going for a beer afterwards. I know you. That is communication. It seems that these days that the officers are in some kind of rush to end things too quickly. The Dallas PD did a great job of trying to talk their suspect down. It did not work, but they tried. I am just tired of people saying that if you do as you are told you won’t get shot. There use to be a pride and a skill to being a cop that we got results with the least amount of force that seems to be lost today.
They are so mistrusted that the public doesn’t want to wait for due process, demands the evidence outside of court and is prepared to convict without a trial. It’s not right and of course it helps weed out the good cops who find the job a bit less rewarding, to say the least.
TV selects for the most outrageous things and ignores everything else so that we get months on end with nothing but Trump and police shootings of black people. We have no idea about what’s going on or in what proportion.
Cable news is the enemy.
Well said Glenn, and you are absolutely right. My son is a police officer, and has been for about 18 years. He’s says it’s gotten so bad he’s thinking of retiring early.
Well, Timmy I’m a liberal, and I support the police.
Liberal cop haters are like Trump supporters. You will never change their minds with logic.