Do you Believe in Your Police?

In a time when the need to support law enforcement is at an all-time high, so too is the risk for announcing that support.

In early March, I shared a photo showing only 20 police line-of-duty deaths for the year. It was a good number--of course still too many, but down from March, 2019. My celebration was premature.

Tonight, two Tulsa officers are barely holding on to life after being ambushed and shot in the head. Many others have been shot--and so many more have been shot AT. You only hear about the local ones, and often not even those, especially in the news cycles today focused on Covid, protesters, rioters, and the rest of it. You didn't hear about the hundreds of safe arrests made today, or the thousands of excellent interactions officers made today--officers who are willing to work in an environment so radically charged against them. You likely didn't hear about the lives saved by these officers, or the burglar they chased and finally captured, or the man they captured for beating his girlfriend while she was driving despite the protection order she got months ago, or the preschool class they got to spend time with, or the lifetime of impact they had re-directing someone destined otherwise for a life of crime and prison time. Those were my officers this week in a little town outside of Seattle.

You also didn't hear about the grief they held each day they showed up for work, wondering if it would be better or worse than yesterday. The silent question in their minds if their efforts are even worth it, or if they can somehow find the strength to keep doing it. Nobody did a news story on how these officers' spouses and children are silently pleading for them to find a new line of work, or how they feel isolated or even targeted because they are suddenly "part of the problem," when all they ever wanted to do was to help people. All people.

You might have missed the announcement today that none of the 113 line-of-duty deaths this year didn't include those officers who died of suicide. That number is at least 70 as of today, June 29th. Last year more than 200 officers killed themselves, so again, it's better this year. So far.

Of the 113 who were murdered or died on the job this year, nearly half of them died of Covid-19, because apparently the risks weren't high enough already. Next to medical personnel, I'm not sure what other job has this kind of risk from this virus. Even if it doesn't kill, police officers are at a tremendous risk of catching the virus and spreading it to their families. It causes us to hesitate, to back off, to wait. Those are habits that don't always serve us well when seconds count to save a life.

Our friends give knowing looks when they ask how we're holding up. They know it must be pretty tough being a cop right now. They're right.

But we've been here before. I can count at least 5 or 6 different cycles when police were hated by a loud group of people for months at a time, whether a minority population or an ethnic group or politicians or activists or anarchists or whatever. Being hated, being yelled at, spit on, despised, flipped off, belittled, fought, criticized...it's just part of the job. We knew it going in, and we accepted it because we believe in freedom of speech just as much as we understand that people in crisis don't always make the most rational or wise decisions in the moment. We believe in this thing called policing, something fundamentally necessary for the stability and safety of people in a world where evil still shows up.

I believed in it so much that when I sat in the 1992 police academy in Idaho and watched the breaking news of the Rodney King video tape, I determined in that very moment that I would do my utmost to ensure I made strides to improve police relations with all parts of the community. My training officers emphasized how police interactions with people in crisis are often the only interactions those people have with the police, and how their issue may not seem all that important to me but it's the WORLD to those who call out for help. I determined to take pro-active steps to ensure I could relate with people who were not like me, especially people of color. I had an advantage having grown up with three black step-brothers for a few years, so I figured I ought to be able to help the profession progress well in that area.

After nearly 30 years of thinking I had done just that, I was informed in June, 2020 that it wasn't enough. Not even close to enough. Certainly not enough to convince decision makers in Boise or Seattle or Pittsburgh or San Francisco or pretty much anywhere that all that training, that effort, that work to root out my own prejudices and my own hidden biases would show enough proof to warrant some sort of honorable level of okay-ness. Quite the contrary: now the sentiment is to defund, replace, and eliminate policing as we know it. And it's far beyond sentiment this week! Put something else in its place, something that doesn't focus on drugs or "minor" offenses like property crime. We've learned robbery is an expression of rage, like resisting arrest or ignoring the order of a police officer to disperse or stop. We've learned that no matter how many anti-bias classes or sensitivity training seminars we have attended, they weren't enough. They'll never be enough.

In 1997, my best friend was killed in the line of duty when he and the current Boise Chief of Police, Ron Winegar, were shot by two brothers during a traffic stop. Ron thankfully survived. It was the 7th in a series of officer-involved shootings in Boise, those events that make the public cringe and wonder if it was really necessary to shoot the offender. We wondered, too. We especially wondered why people had become so blatant and arrogant in their manner of despising of the police. We wondered why the city leadership so quickly embraced a narrative that the cops had become "trigger happy" and required a couple more layers of review to the eleven layers that already existed.

But when Mark died, suddenly that proverbial Silent Majority we'd heard rumors about actually came out. They showed up. People were finally willing to speak openly of their belief that the cops were okay, even pretty good in most cases. They posted things on billboards, put signs in their windows, and put blue ribbons on their trees. People were driven to stand on the side of the roadway holding their hand over their heart when the cops drove by with Mark's body. Seven miles of roadway lined with the Silent Majority.

And we finally knew that the thing we believed in, the thing we risked our lives for, and in that one case lost everything, we finally knew how important the community thought it was. They believed. They honored it. By the thousands upon thousands. The visible support would soon fade away, but the police didn't forget: it re-established their own belief that the community truly supported their police.

My neighbors asked me this week what they could do. One made a chalk art sign with her daughter saying police are heroes. Melted my heart. Another just wanted to give something--coffee, food, anything really. It was kind, especially knowing that to voice support for law enforcement in today's climate is full of risk of being labelled a racist who doesn't get it. Several families or small groups have brought coffee or food to the station, sometimes with cards or hand-written notes. Someone put yellow post-it notes on our police cars with messages of trust and encouragement. All beautiful and so important right now.

What do I want? I want you first to believe in the mission of the police department in your area. Then I want you to say so. To your kids. Those in your home, your social group. If you're really brave, maybe say so in your workplace. If you have evidence of a cop being a racist, a thug, a bully or a crook, nail him or her for it: turn them in, file the complaint, and press hard until you are heard. But if all you know is what you've heard from others, just shut the hell up. Take responsibility for yourself and for your sphere. Make that space good. Then make your community good, the kind you can brag about. Then brag about THAT. Find out how amazing your police department is, then brag about it. Of all the noise being made, I've yet to hear anyone publicly brag about their police department, how amazing they are, how they are AWESOME about figuring out race relations and empathy and mixed cultures. And how they respond quickly and professionally to 911 calls and figure stuff out fast and get to the root and hold people accountable for their actions. Brag. Praise. Be loud about it. Because when you raise your voice to support us while we stick out our necks, then we might think you actually believe in us, and we might stop feeling so alone, depressed, and worthless, as if our efforts were futile. We wouldn't have to rely just on our own personal conviction that our work is necessary despite what the public thinks in the current mob mentality that shows up on the evening news.

We need to know the Silent Majority exists again.

You need police in the community. You need officers to be amazingly strong, supremely trained, dedicated and creative enough to find new ways to solve problems. No matter how good your cops are, they need to be constantly improving. You need them to be more violent than the violence they face in order to overcome it in that awful moment in time. You also need them to be ridiculously soft, caring, and empathetic in your time of need. They must be slow to anger but extremely fast to action. They must have the tools and personnel to handle the unknown somehow safely. They must not be prone to force but skilled at communication, but also very capable of knowing when to stop talking and take action. They must be accessible, transparent, and yet perfectly confidential with the most sensitive of information. They must be entirely trustworthy--but mostly trustworthy to those who themselves are honest and trustworthy, to those who's opinions are grounded in objective standards of truth. Your cops must serve justice--they must never bow to the pressures of politic or greed.

And somehow, they must keep showing up.

If you have that in your town, please, PLEASE say so. If you don't, then make it happen. That is as much your responsibility as it is of the police themselves.