(This image of police department patches is from the Northern Colorado Gazette.)We have a serious problem with the way many police and police departments do their job in this country. That has become very apparent in the last year, with the number of unarmed citizens being killed (especially Black citizens) by police, and with statistics showing that Blacks are stopped more often and harassed by police. While many government organizations have done a pretty good job of eliminating racism, too many police departments have not.
In the last few months, a movement has been started that demands police do their job without racism -- treating all citizens equally. It is called "Black Lives Matter". I think this is a reasonable reaction to the serious problems that have been exposed with the police (and I say that as someone who worked nearly 30 years in law enforcement).
There were two reactions that could have happened in response to this movement -- demand the police do their job right, or try to cover up for the police doing a poor job. Sadly, many Whites have chosen the latter. To justify this poor decision, they have come up with a couple of excuses -- 1. that the police have the most difficult job, and 2. that the job of a policeman is the most dangerous job in this country. Neither is true.
A lot of jobs are difficult, and yet we expect people in other professions to do the job the right way in spite of that difficulty. They are not excused for poor performance just because the job is a hard one, and neither should poor performance by police be excused. And police do not have the most dangerous job in this country. Statistics show us at least 13 jobs (professions) that are more dangerous -- and none of the people doing those jobs are excused for poor performance because they have a dangerous job, and neither should the police.
Would you defend a doctor performing his job in such a way that unnecessary deaths were occurring? Would you defend a fireman that caused unnecessary deaths through poor job performance? Would you defend a construction worker whose poor performance caused unnecessary death and destruction? Would you defend any other profession where workers' poor performance on the job affect innocent citizens? Of course not.
Why then do we put police on a pedestal, and try to excuse (and cover-up) their poor job performance (and sometimes obvious racism). We shouldn't. They are no different than any other American worker, and they were taught the rules and proper procedures before being put on the streets. We should expect them to perform to the highest standards of those rules and procedures -- just like we would any other worker.
Other workers who fail to meet accepted standards are disciplined or fired. We should do the same with police officers. Anything less is a slap in the face to those officers who do perform at the highest standard (and there are many of them).
