Prayers for the Officers Shot in California, Arizona, and New Jersey
End Game?
Violent demonstrations, ambushing police sitting in their cars, even shooting at their homes while children are sleeping. When did this become accepted, condoned, even encouraged? What is your end game, because this is not getting you the desired results you are seeking; unless chaos IS your motive.
The basic concept of policing calls for maintaining law and order in communities. It begins at the local level – town, municipality – then cascades up to state and federal levels. It is the responsibility of local government to identify THEIR specific needs and provide services to the community. Looting, rioting, violent actions that include bodily injury and death, in the name of justice, should not become the norm.
Calls to defund, demilitarize, abolish law enforcement are concepts - even Communism sounds great in a vacuum, (look no further than John Lennon’s song “Imagine”). When you remove policing and/or equipment from your community, you increase your personal risk. For example, demilitarizing – “Why do police need tanks?” Folks, they don’t have tanks; the vehicles in question have the capability of withstanding armor-piercing rounds used by criminals, can breach walls, or save lives during natural disaster. Ask any of the dozens of Miami Pulse Nightclub survivors or Hurricane Catrina evacuees if they agree with taking these effective tools away. I do agree, however, that not every small police department should have these vehicles, but they should be available at the county or state level, if the need arises. It goes back to identifying your specific community needs and allocating the resources.
There are several examples highlighted recently in the media that address law enforcement’s inadequacies in dealing with mental illness. Again; if the community feels strongly that law enforcement should not respond to a call where a person is brandishing a weapon because they have some mental health issues, then the government leaders need to write that into policy and decide which agency should respond, (law enforcement, social work, hospital response). Right now, these calls are going to the police, and they are acting on the service call. If your policy dictates the change to service, then you’d better prepare to train your dispatchers on intake to make the correct decision as they will be the ones to decide agency response.
750,000 law enforcement officers go to work each day with the commitment to make their community a safer place. These brave souls come in contact with the community during millions of interactions every year. If we are to believe that there is a systemic problem in policing across the United States, shouldn’t the number of bad examples, therefore, be much higher than the ones we hear about? (Clearly I don’t agree with any abuse). But if we are to identify policing as systemically flawed, I call on communities to decry the systemic nationwide abuses of violence, disregard of preserving life and property, calls to commit such acts, and lack of remorse by these individuals and groups.
Demonstration signs, election slogans, and bullhorn chants are encouraged, but the dialogue needs to take place so citizens can make informed decisions about the necessity in policing, what it should look like in their community, and how collectively through police/community relationship, they can better effect positive change.