Do you "back the blue" or do you hate the police?

Do you support your local law enforcement or are you a part of the Black Lives Matter movement?

I was raised in Bismarck, North Dakota. Everyone knows a police officer or firefighter or EMT or all of the above. Other than the insane blizzard that just swept through Bismarck, they have been gaining quite the attention in the media lately. The Dakota Access Pipeline has been the center of attention following an incident with the police, water hoses and protesters in late November. I want to say that what makes me almost as disappointed and angry as the mistreatment and on-going systematic and environmental oppression of Native American people is the way people from my hometown have made this obvious violation of human rights into "you either support the police or you're a criminal."

I am disappointed (to say the least), and here is why.

I grew up in a predominantly white city. I'm white, my family is white, my friends are white, a lot of people are white in Bismarck. We had police officers come to our elementary schools and hang out with us and our parents taught us that these are the "good" guys. These are the people that will always help you and won't ever hurt you. They are here to serve us. I have believed this wholeheartedly up until I left and saw more of the country and immersed myself in the world of diversity, education and news. I don't believe that the police are "bad" people or that we shouldn't have police or that they don't do great things for the community. What I do believe is this: if the police do things that are inhumane, unjust or illegal, I am under no obligation to support them when they do these things.

"But police officers help you if you get stuck in a ditch, they lock up bad guys, they risk their lives every day on the job. You don't appreciate their public service?"

If you are saying I should support the police for doing their job that they have the option to do or not do, then yeah sure I support them when they write traffic tickets and haul me out of a ditch. I appreciate what the police do to keep our communities safe but not when they are spraying cold water at people in below freezing temperatures, spraying crowds with tear gas, or using concussion grenades against people for burning tires. I don’t support illegal activity but I definitely do not support police brutality.

"You either back the blue or support black lives matter."

I don't want to call these two separate "movements" because one is a modern day civil rights movement and the other is not. It's a platform for people who don't believe in the Black Lives Matter message, that black lives also matter. It's a platform for people who have read too much fake news and believe that the BLM movement is about black people trying to "take over" or that they matter more than other people. To hear people say that we are in a "post-racial society" makes me sick to my stomach to know that people are that blind to blatant injustice. "Back the blue" and BLM can not be compared as if they are in the same category of needing support. A person can choose to be a police officer, but you can't choose to be a person of color. People can choose to shoot someone who's hands are up in the air and are unarmed, they can't choose whether they will be profiled as a thug by police just for being a person of color.

Here is something to remember: the police work for us.

They don't just work for the state and enforce laws, their job is to serve and protect the people. In no situation is someone obligated to support them or be content with them when something corrupt is going on. The DAPL protest is not a war between protesters and the police. The police did not initially go to the camp to arrest them and hose them down and push them out, they came to protect them. There are permits you can get to protest and if you'd like, you can request officers to be there to protect you and help facilitate a protest. I know this, I have applied for a protest permit and I have seen the application.

"Well, if it's a protest why do they need police to be there?"

Safety. The president has the secret service, celebrities have body guards. Police do not respond to things solely to punish, they help facilitate large gatherings of people because if something does happen, there is a system in place to help.

To label the DAPL protest as aggressive and erroneous because of a few people who burned tires (people from my hometown seem fascinated by the crime of burning tires and always have been) is hypocrisy at its finest. Police officers killed nearly 1,000 people in the United States in 2015. If we apply the theory used against DAPL, BLM, and Muslim refugees that a few "bad apples" ruins the whole batch, then surely, the police are a corrupt, aggressive, unlawful group of folks.

The police can do wrong. Just because they enforce the law does not mean that they are the law.

People have the right to assemble and protest when they believe in something. In the case of DAPL, Native American people and tribes believe that they must protect water from being contaminated by oil. They also have burial grounds located where the pipeline was routed to lie, which is not up for debate and it is not up to the federal government to tell them where their burial grounds are and are not.

"It's inconvenient for a protest to be going on."

Yeah it is, it is also inconvenient that Flint, Michigan still doesn't have clean water after a pipeline broke and contaminated their water nearly two years ago.

Saying that people deserve to be sprayed with hoses in below freezing temperatures, to be pepper sprayed, to have concussion grenades thrown at them for practicing their first amendment rights is not something I agree with.

"They were trespassing and burning tires."

OK, but do they deserve to be treated inhumanely for this? I don't believe so, and I have faith that a majority of people see what is wrong with this. To say that breaking any law should result in inhumane punishment is not okay. To say that someone deserves to have their arm blown off because they were at the front lines of a protest is not okay.

I have seen the DAPL protest tear apart and divide my community. People are fed up with the traffic and families are tired of having family members work long hours due to the protest. I have lost friends due to the division and it makes me sad and disappointed. It's hard to grow up in a community where people have completely disregarded a movement with a message and chose to make an issue about clean water and the environment into a head to head battle between the Native American people and the police force.

I love my small community of Bismarck, North Dakota. I love feeling as if the police are the good guys. I don't love knowing that people are being treated unjustly by police officers. I don't back the blue. We, as civilians hold the police to a high standard for a reason, their job is to protect us and our rights, not infringe upon them. I don't believe that they need support for doing their job. I appreciate the great things they do for my community. I don't appreciate police brutality.

The first picture is from the Birmingham March, 1963. The second picture is from the DAPL protest on November 20th, 2016. Think about it.