In recent months America has been plagued by violence and riots. Police officers have been raked over the coals for being racist and corrupt, denied service at restaurants, and murdered in cold blood. Innocent business owners have had their shops looted and destroyed, their livelihoods stripped from them overnight. All in the name of justice.
Here's the harsh truth: the brand of justice that rioters are looking for doesn't exist. There is no quick fix. Not all cops are racist, brutal monsters--in fact, the vast majority of them aren't. You'll find monsters in any profession--doctors, lawyers, mechanics, artists, and yes, cops. Even the best of humans aren't perfect.
Police officers have a difficult job, and the rising tensions against them make it even more difficult. Every day they get up, grab a cup of coffee, and face the stark reality that they might not crawl into their bed at night--they might be in a body bag. Their job is to protect us at the risk of their own lives, and they do their job well. But their job is also to do their darnedest to come home to their families at the end of the day--and that means staying alive.
Very few people pause to take that into consideration, and even less consider the fact that police officers have a split second to decide if someone has a weapon and intends to use it against them or someone else. Firing a gun needs to be a last resort, but we also need to recognize that these police officers are given a split second to decide their fate, the fate of the suspect, and the fate of any bystanders around them. That is one hell of an important second.
And that is exactly why it is so important that we give our respect and obedience to police officers. They keep us safe. Without them, this country would be an anarchy, not a democracy. They ask us to keep our hands on the steering wheel, to tell them if our ID is in our back pocket, because they don't want to make a mistake. They don't have the luxury of trusting everyone that they stop. Police officers are shot at routine traffic stops all the time. Can you blame them for trying to make it home alive? Respecting and obeying them, even if it's inconvenient or frustrating, isn't just respecting their profession; it's a way of respecting another person's life.
The bad cops are another issue altogether, but rioting and the murder of innocent cops does nothing to solve that problem. The system is not the entirety of the problem--individuals are a big part of the problem, too. The government can't suck the racism out of a person by sheer will, and neither can we. Changes can be made in the way that police officers are trained and vetted, and that alone would help the situation, but we can't stop there. Rioting isn't the way to accomplish any of these things, though; rioters' only accomplishment is hurting their own communities and innocent people and giving the jerks who are genuinely racist--whether they're lawyers, teachers, or retired grandparents--an excuse, a reason to point and say, "See, I was right!" Unfortunately, I've seen that kind of attitude in people I know.
Riots aren't a proud, loud, and brave shout for justice--it's beating a dog for something a rabid raccoon did, and the raccoon is laughing, snarling, and getting more and more sick. Rioting makes tensions rise and worsens the problem on every single level that it could.
Police officers are scared for their lives, and they have reason to be. They're being killed for no reason other than their profession, which for most of them is a sign of their love for this country, their communities, and people in general. You don't dedicate your life to the dangerous job of protecting people if you don't love those people. The more officers that are killed, the more innocent people you'll see getting killed--that important one second I mentioned earlier is getting more and more important, and police are understandably nervous and jittery. They don't want to be in a body bag any more than we do.
I'm not saying that there isn't a problem--there certainly is. But it goes deeper than simply racist cops. We still have poor communities filled with black people, where kids get a pathetic education and are surrounded by gang violence. We wonder why black crime rates are so high, with black people committing "75 percent of all shootings, 70 percent of all robberies, and 66 percent of all violent crime" in New York City despite the fact that only 23% of the city's population is black (statistics from 2009 data). Some have been attributing this to racist cops...but with statistics like this the problem has to be deeper than that. It's not the only problem, since middle-class, unarmed black people have also been shot by police officers, but it is a considerable problem that we need to take steps towards fixing.
There are bad police officers out there, that's for sure, and they need to be dealt with, but not through rioting and violence--through peaceful protests and real action. Anyone who thinks that riots are real action and will accomplish something real towards their goal needs to rethink their priorities. There's a reason that Martin Luther King Jr. urged peace in response to the violence civil rights protestors faced, and there's a reason it worked.
The media and rioters have swung to the conclusion that every single shooting of a black man by a white cop is racially motivated. That's a lie, plain and simple. Some of them are (the recent shooting of Alton Sterling being an example), but the vast majority of them aren't. If it's suspected that a shooting was racially motivated, it needs to be investigated on an individual basis--and the community needs to respect the decision made. That hasn't always been happening lately.
When Michael Brown was shot, there were days of rioting. It went to court, some witnesses' testimonies were proven to be false, the autopsy declared that Michael Brown was charging the police officer when he was shot instead of standing with his hands up, as some witnesses had reported, and the jury ruled that the shooting was justified. But riots, which had been going on since Brown's killing, reached a new level of intensity as participators refused to believe the court.
This is a democracy. The officer involved was given a fair trial and a jury of his peers deemed him innocent. The. End. It's the way our system works. A lot of people were infuriated when Brock Turner got off with six months (which will end up being more like two) in a county jail under protective custody for dragging an unconscious woman behind a dumpster and raping her. He was caught in the act, but he got off nearly scot-free. But we didn't riot in the streets. Sure, we were mad, we wrote articles and signed petitions for the judge's removal, and USA Swimming made sure that Brock Turner would never dream of competing again.
But there was no violence. That is how these outcomes should be handled, whether or not we agree with them. Regardless of if we think that the jury is wrong (and juries can make mistakes--people are fallible, after all) or even that corruption affected its decision, riots and violence are never excusable. We're capable of disagreeing--even of being angry--peacefully, and taking other routes to get across our dissatisfaction.
Yet when it comes to racial issues, Americans take everything to an extreme. On the news a few days ago I heard a woman claim that the police force needs to be dissolved entirely. She then spouted some nonsense about a civilian force taking over, which is absolutely idiotic (to put it kindly). What civilian is qualified to deal with hostage situations? To deal with armed robbers, proven murderers? What civilian wants to? There's a reason I didn't choose being a cop--it's because I know it's a difficult, dangerous job, one that I don't want to do. I don't envy police officers their job. I'll sit at my comfy desk and edit papers, where the biggest danger is smearing ink on my palms.
Isn't that how most of us are? We like our safe jobs, our safe cities, our safe homes. But those places are safe for a reason--there are people out there who chose to shun safe, comfortable desks and put their lives on the line every day so that we don't have to. We owe our comfort and our safety to police officers and soldiers. Yet we aren't acting like it. We don't thank them. Heck, we don't even respect them lately.
Police officers have been denied service at restaurants and even killed for something that a very small number of them have done--and they are likely as appalled by those people's actions as we are. A nation which does not respect the people who keep it safe is on a very dangerous, slippery slope. Our nation's laws must be respected, and the enforcers of those laws, the protectors of our peace, must be respected as well. Otherwise we'll slide into disregard and abandonment of the law.
There is a problem, and it must be solved, but never through violence, and never by picking out a specific group of people to ridicule, discriminate against, and attack. After all, isn't that exactly what they are accused of doing? This is a problem that law enforcement and average people have to work together peacefully to solve. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., "Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals."
