Something has been bothering me for quite a while. I go on social media every day and see people absolutely bagging on law enforcement. Whether it be people calling them all “pigs” or “racists.” While of course there is video evidence of SOME police officers acting in bad faith, it is very ignorant to claim that they are ALL bad people.

I have met a variety of different police officers. Some were assholes, but most of them were very nice and were in it for the right reasons. While I see the horrible videos that surface about police brutality towards all people, specifically minorities, and African Americans, that is not the majority of police officers in this country.

According to the Stanford Open Policing Project, “On a typical day in the United States, police officers make more than 50,000 traffic stops.” Being that traffic stops are the most common form of police interaction, it is very important to know that there are 50,000 a day in the United States. When we see a viral video of a white police officer hurting and treating others with disrespect, we assume that it is the majority.

One instance of police brutality a week is just one instance out of over 350,000 stops that happened in that week.

According to my math, that is a .00000285% chance that there will be an instance of police brutality being recorded.

Of course, I believe that there should be a 0% chance of police brutality for each stop, but that small percentage is not enough to warrant calling all cops bad. These officers are harassed every day because of the actions of a small percentage of them. If you reread the prior sentence, you may think that it follows the same line as racism. Neither is acceptable, so for people that think it’s ok to harass officers, you are in the wrong.

Put yourself in their shoes.

Wake up every morning to go fight crime and keep society safe, for society to turn on you and treat you like dirt. No wonder there are shortages of police officers because the job is dangerous and they are treated horribly. I’ll watch the show “Live PD” on television, which is a show that follows police officers real time. I can not explain to you how many friendly officers there are that are filmed being kind and doing their jobs correctly, and are treated like shit in return and are framed as being racist.

It is not true that a white police officer is racist for arresting someone of color for doing something illegal.

I believe there are some racist police officers out there though, and I believe there is an easy way to catch this. Obviously, the screening process for police officers is too lenient. There is no excuse for anyone to be racist, especially police officers. I know that there are screenings for officers, and these need to be tightened.

There need to be harsher questionings in interviews, stricter background checks that involve a dive into the life of the police officer, and lie detectors galore. While I do argue that police officers need to be respected more, I do not argue that they shouldn’t be held more accountable. The police officers that are caught doing bad things need to be held accountable.

Cracking down on the bad guys will ultimately help you find the good in people.

Overall, the point of this article is to shed some light on the bullshit.

It is unbelievably ignorant to claim that all police officers are horrible people because that is proven to be false.

If you are a person that is afraid every time they get pulled over, you have a right to be because there are some cases of evil. But it should not go to the extent to treat every police officer like shit, because not every officer acts in bad faith. There is more positivity than negativity, and we need to treat officers with more respect.