In a country where there is heavy anti-police sentiment, I am so proud to say my father is a police officer. For eighteen years, I watched my father put on his uniform everyday with one goal in mind: to protect and serve. I remember growing up and being so proud to talk about my father, but little did I know the response would soon change drastically as I grew older. Now mention of my father being a police officer comes with backlash and dirty looks. Since when did the profession I have always admired become the center of public scrutiny?

It breaks my heart, in all honesty. My father goes to work every day never knowing what is to come. It is not like he sits at a desk crunching numbers or typing reports day in and day out. The only reports he will type happen after a robbery, accident, or death, for example. He has seen things he refuses to tell me because they are so morally unjust. Police officers see the lowest of the low and the most heinous of crimes but still show up to work on time for every shift.

My father is a good man. There have been weeks he worked over a hundred hours of overtime (not even including his regular shift hours) just so he could provide our family with everything we needed. He took those extra shifts to help put me and my two brothers through private schools and to now put us all through college. For his sacrifice, I am forever thankful. His job and his hard work provide me and my family with so much, another reason as to why I will not let society deface the profession.

When injustice occurs, it is okay to be angry. I fully understand that there have been police officers that have made mistakes or who have been the cause of injustice. I am not defending those who have done wrong. I do, however, believe it is wrong to label the entire profession as being corrupt when it was only the smallest percentage that are, in fact, the problem.

Ask yourself this: when you are in trouble and need immediate help who are you going to call? If your house is being robbed? If you are in a car accident? If your life or someone else’s is in immediate danger? Police officers run toward danger while everyone else runs the other way. So why do we continue to deface the name of the men and women who will, no matter what, always respond when you need them.

I’m not saying you need to hug every police officers you see. All I am saying is that there needs to be more respect. When one person starts spewing words of hate, others follow along. Let’s kill this hateful sentiment. This does not just go for police officers, this goes for hate toward race, political values, religion, and all other social issues. Use the injustices seen in the media as a platform to advocate unity between all to weed out the good police officers from the bad ones.

Maybe, if you are an anti-police advocate, try thinking about police officers as real people. They have families like you, people they love and who love them too. They have passions that drive them, for many of them that is serving their communities. They have goals and aspirations for their lives. They are just as important to our society just as you and I are. Police officers are not their own breed, they are human beings so let’s start to treat them as such.