Occasionally someone will say to me, “So I hear you hate cops.”
I’m still perplexed by how seemingly reasonable people can interpret a call for law enforcement accountability as a sign of being “anti-cop.”
There was a time when I used to hold in my sigh, an attempt at being courteous. Not anymore. Now it’s my passive-aggressive wish that my disdain for their accusatory question is evident in a sigh that is so heavy it ruffles our respective shoelaces.
“Where’d you hear that?” I ask them and in response they refer to the number of posts on social media I have referencing police shootings or uses of force, especially those involving unarmed people. (They fail to mention the stories I post depicting cops and law enforcement officers acting exceptionally bravely or unexpectedly human but, to be fair, those are fewer. After all, I’m not paid to be their PR and image consultants).
My answer to them is, “I’m not anti-cop, I’m anti- (and here I use street slang for bully). Especially ones with badges and guns and the authority to immediately strip away someone’s freedom.”
Sometimes the sigh is sufficient and the exchange ends before it gets going. Other times it prompts a dialogue that ends with their telling me, “Well, I hope you never have to call one to come help you.”
Thanks, dude. That’s kind of you. Really. Same to you.
It’d be a perfect and perhaps painfully dull world in which law enforcement personnel were not needed. But given the reality I’m not naive enough to want to abolish the profession. There are awful people in the world that the typical citizen is not equipped or trained to handle. And as more social services are cut, there are more desperate and mentally ill people who live among us, on the streets, in the shadows or under our roofs, people we are not capable of handling when things get dicey.
But as our society and demographics change, so should the way law enforcement interacts with the people they are paid to watch over. Police practices, like everything else, need to evolve if they are to get better.
Part of that growth includes acknowledging that there are bad players in uniform, cops who have been created either through DNA or department policies, procedures and training — thus the stories about bad cops and the calls for their dismissal or prosecution.
Another facet of the evolution is oversight, understanding and accountability. That is why it is important when the state legislature drafts laws to hold law enforcement personnel accountable, such as the original AB 284, they receive more support from lawmakers who are not beholden only to donations from police unions but also to a public that wants the best law enforcement people wearing a badge and earning a check. It’s not about being anti-cop. It’s about wanting what’s best for everyone: crime fighters, victims and the innocent.
