“To Protect and Serve”?

Here’s the deal: I’m not a police officer. I’m not related to a police officer. I don’t come from a long line of ‘boys in blue.’
But I am a white, middle-class man, which means I’m in the category of “least-likely people to get harassed by a cop.”
So lets talk about the biggest problem I see regarding the current political unrest.

I’ve heard, from multiple people I know and from a couple different media sources, various iterations of “a cop’s life is dangerous, and they have to make split-second decisions that can be the difference between life and death.”
Got it. I’m not going to pretend that it’s a safe job.
The problem with that perspective is that it assumes that anyone and everyone in America is a threat. It puts you in the mental space that any time you go out in public, there are people there who’s sole goal is to kill you.
Is that true?
Maybe.
But that’s a mindset that should be reserved for a military deployment to another country where there are insurgents and aggressive, known threats who want to kill you daily.
Using that mindset in America simply serves to view the American populace as the problem instead of the people they are supposed to be protecting.
You know, with all those police cars that say “to serve and protect.”
It’s the “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” problem.

That kind of problem is what leads to the police brutality that got these riots started.
Why did the police feel it necessary to get a no-knock order to get into Breonna Taylor’s home?
If your answer is “she used to know the guy they were after,” then I need you to come up with a reason why shooting was an acceptable response at all.
”Well her boyfriend started shooting first!” Yeah. Obviously.
If the police barged into your house and you had a gun, I’m sure you’d start shooting too - there’s no way that your default response to your door getting broken through would be “hold on a sec, let’s see if it’s the cops.”
There’s no excuse as to why the cops were acting on old, if not outright wrong, information.

Alternatively, there’s this clip, of a cop pushing an old man to the ground, where he’s clearly bleeding from the head.
The cop who pushed him seemed to feel a little bad about it, but was them pushed by the rest of the cops to get back in formation for their march.
There wasn’t a rush to call an ambulance. There wasn’t an immediate swarm of other cops trying to provide CPR or first aide.
And why did the cop who did the pushing think that was an acceptable response in the first place?
“To serve and protect” huh?

Then, of course, there’s the bit where the police used tear gas against a bunch of protesters in DC so the President could go to a photo-op in front of a church.
Why?
So the president could go to a photo-op?
How is that “To serve and protect”?
Police don’t swear an oath to follow the orders of the President; they serve at the order of the state’s governor and/or city’s mayor.
And despite what the right-wing media wants to say about the protesters “actually” being violent and that the left-wing media is making it up, that video clip is from Reuters and is an hour long. Tell me where you see those protesters being violent.
If you’re a cop and you’re reading this, how can you justify what happened there?

Furthermore, there’s the issue of police departments acquiring military grade hardware.
I understand the need for SWAT vans and riot shields.
I do not understand the need for armored personnel carriers.
I realize that the DOD is the one selling them to police departments to recoup some war costs - that doesn’t make it better or more acceptable for the police departments to be buying/accepting them.
How many other police officers could get hired for those costs? How much more training could get paid for? How many more neighborhoods could have a healthy, safe amount of patrolling done for the cost of buying and maintaining military toys?

I’ve been called an “armchair cop” for the same reason that some historians (or basement dwellers) get called “armchair generals,” with the reasoning being “you don’t know what it’s actually like/how you would react?”
And that’s true.
Again. I’m not a cop.
I am sure there are times and events and places where a cop needs to be riding that adrenaline rush and ready to shoot whoever gets close, because if they don’t it could be their life.
But that can’t be the answer to everything; life is not that exciting.
That’s not an acceptable answer to George Floyd’s death.
That’s not an acceptable answer to Breonna Taylor’s death.
That’s not an acceptable answer to Atatiana Jefferson’s death.
That’s not an acceptable answer to Justine Damond’s death.

I recently shared this video on my social media account.
I got three different people who said variations of “He should have just kept driving!”
But real talk for a moment: would you have? If it happened to you, if a cop shot at your car with anything, would your answer be to simply put your head down and carry on, or would you have been enraged like that driver was?
Why is that police misbehavior being met with anything other than public outcry?

America has to reckon with a history of slavery and the uncomfortable fact that long-term racism has reduced a part of our own population to an unofficial underclass, because racist policies were allowed to exist and persist and no one bothered to question it.
This is an issue that stretches well past the Tulsa Race Massacre, which happened simply because a bunch of poor white people were upset that black people were more successful than them.

“I don’t see the problem where I live” or “we had a black president!” says the white man.
Sure, we did, and I have the utmost respect for President Barack Obama and the life he was able to build for himself. But by and large, there is a horrifying history of racism in America where the systems we have in place kept POC populations kneecapped.

The current protests are about Black Lives Matter, but that movement started because of police brutality.
Somehow, nation-wide, we have a police force that views the American people as the enemy, made magnitudes worse by the long-term effects of racism.

Black Lives Matter.
All lives matter, yes, but when the black population of America is the target of a majority of police killings, we need to take a long, hard look at why that is.

Finally: There are times when I am thankful that we have a police force. I know there are good cops out there who are doing everything they can to keep the American populace safe.
I’m not talking about that. I’m not talking about the part where they’re doing their jobs to “protect and serve.”
This is about the times when they cross the line.

***

And just in case this didn’t convince you that there’s a police brutality issue that needed to be addressed, check out this list.