This week has been a rather rough week for America. Just recently during a protest in Dallas, TX, 11 police officers were shot by sniper fire in the Downtown area. This ambush has brought about the deaths of five police officers so far, making this the deadliest attack on police since 9/11. According to the police chief David Brown, the suspect simply "wanted to kill white people, especially white officers" (source). The suspect, 25 year old recluse Micah Xavier, made it clear that he was not affiliated with any organization or group, and that he did this alone. These attacks were conducted during protests regarding the police shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in St. Paul, Minnesota. This is no doubt a tragedy that will be talked about for years to come. Police officers around the country put their lives on the line each and every day to protect and to serve us citizens, and it is a sad day when we as citizens turn on those who risk their lives for us.

There will always be "bad cops." There is corruption in every nook and cranny of this country within almost every profession imaginable. And as long as there is corruption, there will be police shootings that are deemed unnecessary or ridiculous. The officer who shot Philando Castile was one of these officers, who shot Castile as he was reaching for his wallet. Philando was a concealed carry permit holder and let the officer know that he was armed while reaching for his ID when he as shot. The Governor of Minnesota even stated that race played a role in the shooting. This is a "bad cop." These types of incidents should not happen. Period. And it's sad that a majority of us citizens think that all police officers are like this.

Everyone is so quick to associate the "power hungry" sheriff with entire population of police officers within this country. But just because there are some officers like this does not mean that all officers are like this. In fact, a large majority of officers within the country are not at all like "bad cops." The officers involved in the Alton Sterling shooting, in my opinion, were just doing their jobs. They responded to a call about a man who was selling CD's who threatened to shoot someone with a gun he had on his person. From what I can tell in the video of this incident, Sterling was confronted by police, refused to cooperate and resisted when the police tried to subdue him with non-lethal force, then he tried to get his gun from his pants which the officer responded by shooting him. That's not police brutality. That's a police officer doing his job. He responded to the scene, tried to get the man to cooperate, tried to subdue him with non-lethal force, then, when the man resisted and tried to pull a gun out, the officer shot him. The officers involved in this incident are hard working men and women who sacrifice so much so that we can have a decent life. And I've heard that there are alternative ways to subdue a suspect besides shooting them before. News flash: it is EXTREMELY difficult to make that kind of split second decision in the heat of the moment. I'd like to see what you would do when presented with that situation. I know I couldn't make the perfect call, and I'm willing to bet you couldn't either. Hind sight is 20/20, people.

Now the opinions above are my own, and it's okay if you don't agree with them. But something I think we can all agree on is that this kind of mindless violence needs to come to an end. Black lives matter. Blue lives matter. I don't care if you're purple, yellow or tie-dye. All lives matter. And at this point in time we need to be unified more than ever. Do not let these kind of events take the love from inside your heart and turn it into hate. We need to stay strong and support each other through these challenging times. And believe me, these are very challenging times. Pardon my language, but we need to figure our sh*t out. This country should not be revolving around the idea of "it's police vs blacks." You can be pro-police and pro-black at the same time. That's what we should all strive to be anyway. Actually, strike that. We should all be pro-human. No race is better than another, but you'd be an idiot if you didn't believe that racism was still very much apart of our country.

I'm scared for this country right now. I hate that shootings have become almost a daily occurrence. When I used to see a notification of a shooting on my phone, I would become very distraught and would have so many questions. But now I've become desensitized. I don't become sad or unsettled. I just ask, "Why does this have to happen?" The problem is, this doesn't have to happen. Right now, we are leaving our country worse than we found it. Go out, make a change. Make a difference. Leave this world better than you found it. And violence is not the answer for that.