My grandson wants to be a policeman. He has wanted this for a long time. He found a course of study in his high school
that taught the students how to do police work and he excelled in it. Since then, he has tried to find jobs as a
security guard until the time would come for him to join a real police
department. He is a good kid. We have always loved him and he shows to me
every indication that a career as a police officer would be an excellent choice
for him.
On the sides of police cars all over
the country are the words To Protect and Serve. Those words are an
attempt to convey the mission of the police force to the community. The idea is to be a force that keeps order in
our towns and protects the citizens from any threat. I think that in the last decade or so, this
excellent mission has been somewhat compromised by the increase in force given
to our police and by the inherent racism that also exists in our society. This was never intentional. The increase in force started with the STAT teams
who began to arm themselves and to behave as military forces. They were equipped by surplus defense department
equipment. There is hardly a big city police
department that doesn’t have STAT teams and several armored cars or other pieces of large style
military equipment.
The racist streak that permeates all of our
society comes with a long history. We
enslaved African Americans from the start in this nation. Their economic value was seen early in the
South as plantations grew up, raised their crops and used slaves as their
workers. The Civil War brought an end to
some of the effects of slavery, but the practice continued long after the war
and is still with us today. African
Americans serve frequently in lower paying jobs and live in parts of our cities
that white people don’t often frequent.
It isn’t hard to find examples of this; every city has its ghettos.
This has produced an “us and them”
mindset in our culture. When the Black Lives Matter movement started,
many white people didn’t quite understand what was being said. The counter argument: All Lives Matter was certainly true, but missed the point. The problem was that African American people felt
that they were often targeted by police because of their race. Ferguson, Missouri was the beginning of an
understanding that there was something terribly wrong with the way that police
officers were approaching people of color.
The killing of Michael Brown in that community by officer Darren Wilson triggered a protest that
was felt all over the country. Subsequently
the white police officer involved in that killing was exonerated, which
brought more protests. This has happened
over and over again in our culture.
Whenever there is a police shooting of an African American, there is a
protest, followed by an exoneration; recently, this predictable protesting grew
into horror after two police killings in two nights in Baton Rouge and in St.
Paul provided an excuse for a former army veteran to kill five police officers and
to wound a number of others in Dallas, Texas who at that time were supervising a
Black Lives Matter protest. These three
horrible events need to be clearly seen as an indictment of all of us for the
way that we act toward one another. We
need desperately to find a way to help our police and our citizens of whatever
race to get along and to see the “Protect and Serve” words as truly meaningful
for everyone in our communities.
I was impressed by the way that the
Pittsburgh Police department accompanied those who were protesting in the
streets of this city. There was no
animosity, only a spirit of protection for those involved in the parade and the
protest. That is a model that ought to
be held up for all of us in this society as a way for our police departments to
act out their mission. Certainly, this is what the Dallas police were trying to
do.
My hope is that my grandson will be
able to enter a police department where those words Protect and Serve are deeply meaningful to the members of his
team. They are wonderful words and mean
a great deal to our society. We
certainly need protection and we need competent police to serve us with their
skills.
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