Black Lives Matter and Supporting the Police, You Can Do Both.

When I was young like a lot of kids, wanted to be a police officer. To protect and serve the community, who wouldn’t want to do that? To this day I look at our police as a very important part of our community. When I was lying on the front lawn with no heart beat and my wife performing CPR who was the first one there? A police officer. Part of their job is to be there when we need them and I needed them. I am alive today with the help of a police officer. Now, I will tell you that I am white but I believe that no matter what my color was he would have done the same thing. One of the dumbest phrases is “Defund the Police”.

Now as I stated I am white. I try to understand the Black Experience but being white I have never lived the Black Experience so it is hard. I do not know what it is like to walk into a room and have people look at me like I don’t belong there. I do not know what it is like to be racially profiled, to be judged just because of the color of my skin. I asked that question to a black friend of mine and she just said “Oh you get use to it”. I don’t know if I could just get use to it. We have seen racism rise in this country in the last 12 years and I don’t know how it will get better.

Now many of us call the police the Authorities. Is that the right term to use? Wasn’t the slave master the authority? Wasn’t the men with dogs chasing after escaped slaves the Authorities? Maybe to some the word Authorities has a very bad ring to it. Some races in the United States have been submitting to the Authorities for hundreds of years. Our police are supposed to protect the public and enforce the law. They are not judge and jury. We have courts for that. Even if the person resists we have courts for that. Even criminals have rights in this country. Every time a person is killed by the police he has been denied his rights to a fair trial by an impartial jury. This is supposed to be the foundation of our judicial system.

Now I am not saying that a policeman cannot defend themselves but we sure have seemed to have lowered the bar for what is acceptable. Maybe I am wrong with that statement. Look at the law enforcement presence when there is a black protests and then look at the law enforcement presence when there is a white protests. It seem that we always view the blacks as violent and the whites as peaceful. We may want to rethink that. 

As I said that Defund the Police is stupid. I did not say that we do not need reform. In many cases we seem to be sending them into situations that they have not be train enough for. Training is a funny thing; it has to be constantly reinforced and upgraded. We cannot expect them to be mental health experts but to save money that is a lot of the time the situation that we put them in. They are not marriage counselors either.

Not everyone has the makeup to be a police officer. Bullies should not be police officers. White Supremists should not be police officers. The ones that shoot first and ask questions later should not be police officers. We need men and women of dedication and compassion. We cannot let a few bad policemen spoil our opinion of all of them. Maybe if they did a better job of policing themselves and getting rid of the bad apples we would have less of a problem. That is what they want done to teachers and that is what we should do to policeman.

It is always a shame when any person dies in the line of duty. May 15^th is the Policeman’s remembrance day. I have to say we do not hear enough about that day.  This May 15 hopefully there is more attention paid to it. Remember a good Police Officer died protecting our Democracy on Jan. 6^th. Many more were injured. We must not forget.