Over the past year, the ongoing debate over police brutality has been streaming across social media and the news. Videos of alleged police injustice have appeared across Facebook walls, and anti-police slogans have become a cry often heard across the country.
The debate continues to thrive after the killing of officer Randolph Holder, a man dedicated to the NYPD who was fatally shot in the head in East Harlem last Tuesday. Holder was the fourth officer to be killed in the NYPD in the past eleven months.
The numbers around the country continue to rise as well. According to the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, a job as a police officer ranks in the top ten most dangerous jobs in America, with a staggering average of about 151 deaths per year in the line of duty. The average number of assaults against police officers is 57,364, and 15,375 of those assaults require hospitalization due to injury. The top three states for police deaths are California, Texas, and New York. A staggering 117 officers were killed in 2014, and those numbers aren't even close to the highest number of officer deaths the country has seen. In the past ten years alone, 1,466 officers have been killed.
The most disturbing part of these killings is the method often used for the killings. Out of all American occupations, police officers have the highest rate of murders. 539 of the 1,466 deaths over the past ten years were caused by firearms.
And yet, we continue to slander the men and women who wake up every day with the intent to protect and serve. The men and women who leave their homes with the knowledge that any day, there is a possibility of becoming a number in the disturbing statistics.
With all of the dangers officers face every day, it is surprising to see the amount of hate targeted towards the police department in the past recent months. In the past few years, civil rights activists have raised their heads and started protests throughout most of the country. One of the biggest movements coming to light is the "Black Lives Matter" movement, an activist movement that President Obama himself said he supported.
Unfortunately, the movement meant to create equality and understanding has caused a backlash of hate towards police. Two of the police officers murdered in New York this year were killed execution-style in their car after an alleged activist became angered over a police-related death.
The "understanding" part of the movement appeared to fall completely flat, as people rioted in the streets calling for "cop blood" and "death to officers."
Over time, the protests became less race-oriented and more of a direct fight between the activist groups and police officers, despite race. In fact, about half of the police officers who have been killed were African-Americans. This is extremely ironic since the amount of African-Americans killed by cops is less than half of the amount of police officers who die in the line of duty.
Yet, the hate still resonates. Prejudice, misunderstanding, and blame are only a few of the reasons for the police slander in our country. While there is always bad people throughout any organization, almost all police officers are leaving their homes with only one intention in mind: to go to work. Not to murder, not to oppress, and not to dominate the populace. But to provide for themselves, to make the streets a safer place for their children to live, and to help people in their everyday lives. A job where your day is filled with rapes, murders, robberies, shootings, and assaults can take an emotional toll on anyone, and making sure you get home to the loved ones you live to protect would be the only thing on anyone's mind.
A video showing the hardship of high-tension police interactions has surfaced on the Internet in the past few months. The video was shown by Fox 10 Phoenix News but can be found on multiple video streaming websites and blogs. The video shows Jarrett Maupin, a political activist who had been very vocal about his anti-police views and his thoughts on police brutality. Maupin underwent police force training with local authorities in his area. When given multiple scenarios where he had to act against a perpetrator, Maupin chose to fatally "shoot" the police officer conducting the training with him every time. At the end of the video he explains he panicked and decided to "shoot," even in an orchestrated scenario where he knew he was in no actual danger.
But the danger is real for police officers out on the street every day. A decision to not act can result in the loss of their life, and this is a thought that our heroes in blue carry in their mind every day of their lives. This is a thought that their loved ones and friends are reminded of every time they leave to go to work.
We as a country need to stop dividing ourselves into groups of hate. We need to stop placing the blame on others, or using violence as a way to make ourselves be heard. No one can win in this war that has overtaken and separated our country. Only with acceptance, open-mindedness, and the understanding that so many lack can we move forward and stop the hate and murder that is happening all too often among us. It is not just one group who faces oppression, and despite the mantras, all lives matter. In the words of the renowned minister and humanitarian Martin Luther King, Jr., "We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools." Black lives matter, white lives matter, Asian lives matter, Hispanic lives matter, gay lives matter, straight lives matter, and finally, blue lives matter.
