I have been a member of the "Blue Family" for my whole life, my dad was a member of the NYPD for 22 years, last couple years of his career was in crime scene. When I was little I knew the job my dad did was important and I thought it was so cool that he got to help save lives everyday. I remember teachers asking me what my parents did for work and I was beam with pride saying "My daddy's a New York City Police Officer!" For a little girl, dad was a superhero. But as I got older I would sometimes get mad that his job was so demanding. His tour hours would sometimes be different than my sister and I's school schedules. He would be working while we slept, and sleeping when we got home and he would leave right before dinner. Sometimes we only got to see him for a few hours. There were holidays missed, school functions missed, sometimes weeks with just goodnight phone calls, last minute overtime. Sharing your parents with the victims who need help means sharing your parent with the bad guys as well. I also grew more and more aware of the dangers and hate that cops face. I would always get scared when my dad would leave for work. Every time he put on that uniform he was also putting on a target. A target for hate fuled words, hate filled actions, death stares, comments. But my dad never let that stop him, like many cops, the words didn't mean anything to them. The words the people were saying doesnt stop cops from protecting everyone in the community. Even the people who hate them.

My dad tells us stories of his time on the job, some good, like how he would be able to tell a family that they caught the person responsible for killing their son/daughter/dad/mom. Or how the finger print he lifted at a crime scene was the one who nailed a killer. My favorite story is when my dad was still on patrol, he responded to a emotionally disturbed person call. When he got on the scene the women had set her house on fire, with her children tied up inside. My dad and his partner ran inside and saved everyone inside. A few years later, a boy came up to my dad in a city bodega and asked him if he remembered him. My dad apologized and said he didn't. The boy explained that he was the little boy that my dad saved in a fire and how he just wanted to thank him for saving him and his sister. My dad hugged him. His mom eventually did end up killing herself while she was in a mental hospital. That stayed with my dad. That story made all the hardships of being a cops kid so worth it. I sometimes didn't mind sharing him with the people who really needed him, he was a great dad so I knew he would take care of any victim who reminded him of his kids.

With the good stories came the bad, and scary. The perps who would hit my dad, threaten him, the crime scenes he had to see, the victims of all ages he had dead or alive. No parent should have to explain to their kid that a mother can in fact kill a baby she gave birth to hours before. The worst I heard happened when I was a few months old. My dad was on patrol with his partner. A car passed by them and failed to stop at a stop sign. It was a routine traffic stop. As my dad exited the car, he heard a gun shot and the bullet hit his head rest seconds after he moved his head out of the car. The car who fired sped off, and my dad and his partner pursued a police chase. It crossed into jersey where jersey police got into a shoot out and killed all 4 occupants of the car. It turned out they were wanted for armed robbery and when my dad went to pull them over during a traffic stop the guys in the car thought it was because of the robbery. My dad and his partner had no idea. My dad almost didn't come home that night.

I'm not blind to the imperfections of the police in the nation, I know they're are cops who abuse their power and target people based on their race or even religion. The senseless killings of Sterling and Castro made my heart break. The senseless shootings of Dallas PD and Baton Rouge PD broke my heart as well. I'm a daughter of a cop. I support police but I also support Black Lives Matter. I'm against police brutality and I'm agasint the killing of cops.

The media makes it sound like if you're pro-cop then you're anti black and vise versa. Why? Why does being pro mean you have to anti something else. Saying to be pro black means anti cop is pinning human lives against each other. The Daily Show host Trevor Noah said it best "It seems likes its pro-cop and anti black, or pro black and anti- cop, when in reality, you can be pro cop and pro black, which is what we should all be. It should be what we're all aiming for."

No life is more important than an other, and the whole premiss of BLM isn't that only black lives matter, its that its reminding people that yes they are humans too and their life is JUST as important as any other persons. BLM doesn't want ANYONE getting killed senselessly by dirty cops. BLM is opening the nations eyes of the broken justice system and the desperate need for police reform. And reform within the police departments doesn't mean making them "soft" its asking for more attention on looking for bad cops and getting rid of them instead of sweeping it under the rug. It works, Las Vegas PD is a great example, In 2011 they admitted that they did have bias issues and they better trained their officers to resolve conflict. They have 36% less police shootings. "If the police can get their shit together in a city where you can rent a tiger and then get married to a Filipino Elvis Presley, then the rest of America has no excuse."

Shootings like Sterling and Castro shouldn't be happening, killing officers shouldn't be happening. I'm against violence of any kind. You shouldn't be killed because of the color of your skin, your gender, your sexual orientation, your occupation, your religion, or social class. I don't believe every BLM follower is for killing cops, a good majority know that violence doesn't solve violence. Black people have faced terrible hardships that you would think are abolished now that its 2016, but they still face racsism and ignorance. I don't believe every cop is a racist and ignorant, a good majority are good and want to make every community a better place to live. They receive an unbelieveable amount of hate and ignorance. Both groups are people, with families, with feelings, with a want and need to make the world a better place for EVERYONE to live in. We need to stop making it a dividing line, we need to be pro human lives and starting treating everyone with the same respect and dignity that we all deserve. We need to stop the hate and support each other. The world is such a hateful place already, but we all have the power and ability to change it.