The backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement is unfortunately prominent.
“Blue lives matter” has been one response; it hijacks the language of Black Lives Matter, and
claims to advocate for the lives of police officers -- because there’s a war against cops and no one respects them anymore.
Blue lives matter is right about one thing: there’s a war against cops, but not all cops -- just cops that expose corruption, including violent acts committed by their brothers and sisters in blue. Here’s four people who served their communities, most for decades; people who sacrificed their careers to blow the whistle on corruption. These people, and too many others, are victims of the real war on cops.
1. Cariol Horne
Cariol Horne was fired for stopping abuse by one of her fellow officers, Gregory Kwiatkowski, who was choking a suspect. Kwiatkowski punched Horne, and yet she’s the one who was fired. Horne was charged with 13 counts, including obstruction, for intervening on behalf of the suspect. She was fired, one year short of 20 years on the force, and thus one year short of recieving a pension for her service.
2. Laura Schook
Laura Schook exposed corruption in her department, and faced retaliation: for instance, Schook alleged that officers were instructed not to send her backup. She was eventually fired by the New Albany Police Commission -- the same commission she went to for help exposing the corruption in the New Albany Police Department.
3. Joe Crystal
Joe Crystal, formerly a detective with the Baltimore Police Department, won the Commissioner's Award for his service as an officer. He was labelled a "rat cop" for reporting two officers for police brutality. Shunned by the department, he experienced retaliation for his good deed: among other things, a dead rat was left on his windshield and he was threatened with being charged with perjury after he testified. He left the department and Baltimore.
4. Shanna Lopez
Shanna Lopez, a rookie at the time, unintentionally reported fellow officers for corruption: they inflated their numbers by writing illegal tickets. She didn't know what they were doing was illegal, but the person she told did. She was forced into remedial training and desk duty, even though her numbers -- of arrests, tickets issued, etc. -- were stellar. One of the officers she reported was later charged with sexual assault, and committed suicide.
I am grateful for police -- I am even grateful for the cop who gave me a ticket for running a red light my senior year of high school, because it means he was paying attention and protecting other drivers, and me.
But the system of racism, brutality, sexism, and corruption in law enforcement departments is unacceptable. Good cops should not be expected to protect bad cops. Good cops should be celebrated; they should be promoted, and pass their morals and techniques onto other generations of cops.
Instead, good cops are fired for exposing the violent, ugly underbelly of their departments. Their good names are smeared; they will never do the job they love again, because no city's police department will hire them if they have an arrest record similar to Cariol Horne's, or were fired so early in their career, as Shanna Lopez was. They don't want someone like Joe Crystal or Laura Schook, who they know will sacrifice their careers to expose corruption and brutality.
So the next time you cite the war on cops to negate the Black Lives Matter movement, remember that the cops who are the real victims of that "war" have fought against the police brutality and corruption that inspired Black Lives Matter.
