While
the news seems to carry no recent story of police shootings, or police being
shot, I want to make some comments unrelated to an immediate or current
situation. I know that there will be
future killings which I believe to be inevitable; though deplorable and tragic
it is nevertheless fairly predictable.
As a Christian, and as an American, I am
vested not only in the concept of justice, but in its practice. I want our country to be great, and I want
each local municipality to be great in the living out of the values of our
country, of equal justice under law, where police departments are created,
supported, and held accountable by the citizens that pay for those services and
who are entitled to the fair and equitable provision of those services as
Americans. I believe we need great
policing in every place, and not just that which is adequate, and certainly not
that which is corrupt or incompetent.
I believe in the administration of justice
through those ordained to that task in our various levels of government. I believe they deserve our respect, our
support, our encouragement, our prayers, and even our protection so that they
might carry out their duties with integrity, diligence, and under law.
One of the reasons I become so disturbed when
I see or hear of an unjustified killing by a police officer or government
official is that I believe it puts police officers at risk in general. It is part of American history and lore that
when sheriffs, marshals, or city constables became oppressive or bullies, the
populace would take measures into their hands to get rid of them, even to the
point of violence. I believe the Earp
brothers had this experience. This was
much easier to do in smaller towns or cities compared to today’s large municipal
cities and counties where policing can be more impersonal and even fairly
anonymous.
When citizens fear for their lives, or have
the idea that any police officer can be dangerous to them, Americans have not
casually abided with that atmosphere.
The current situation between African American communities versus police
is not an atypical American scenario, from the perspective of history. Obviously in our current American situation
African Americans are the community that feels the threat, and some individuals
in that community have begun to consider some kind of retribution for what they
fear has been oppressive and selective violence.
As a Christian, as a citizen, I cannot and do
not condone violence against anyone, especially those who are in
authority. The criminal, outrageous, and
insane retaliation against men and women while doing their duty, most of whom
had nothing to do with incidents in other states, is a shame and threat to all
of us. We are a nation under law, and
neither individuals nor groups should be allowed to take the law (or the law of
revenge) into their own hands. Such talk
of revenge and violence on social media, or even in private conversations,
should be immediately rebuked and rejected by everyone.
There are legitimate reasons for African
Americans, and all people, to be upset about targeted profiling, abusive
conduct, gratuitous violence and even murder at the hand of police
officers. African Americans who have
gained much in the last fifty years have come to the conclusion that their lives
should matter just as much as anyone’s. It is enraging to them that their lives
might still be considered disposable by authority or the wider society. The use
of authority to be oppressive is one of the most heinous insults to a fair and
just democracy. The idea of America is
to oppose governmental oppression; it is how our nation was created.
Police officers carry out an incredibly
difficult task in often hostile environments, if not solely at moments of
conflict with potentially dangerous individuals. If they are to do their job well they must be
very well trained, and trained in techniques that are not simply based on their
own self-defense and personal protection.
We don’t train our officers as well as we should. We don’t pay them as well as we should. We don’t have enough of them. One other thing, we have not done a good
enough job of holding them and their departments accountable for how
they are doing their job.
Maybe this a good opportunity for change,
maybe be we can gain from the ashes, and tears, and funerals. How much training do we give officers in
defusing conflict, rather than simply gaining control of the situation, or of escalating
the violence until they have the suspect under complete domination? If ever there was a time for more courage from
officers instead of following their training to take down suspects until they
are helpless or dead, it is now. This
means I think some of the training is wrong, and has had the wrong emphasis.
How much have we trained our citizens that
the police work for all of us, and that it is our job in a democracy not to let
them become their own fiefdom? Police
unions are not the authority on justice or citizen rights, they speak to defend
union members. Police are usually given
the benefit of the doubt by Grand Juries, Prosecutors, and criminal
juries. It is very difficult to convict
them if a jury can be convinced an officer feared for his life. We ought to train them well enough that fear
ought not to be such a believable and easy defense.
Why has fear become such a universal defense for killing people, both for
people like Zimmerman, and for officers?
Good people doing the best they can still
make mistakes. Some officers have done
all they can to refrain from using force but sometimes the people they are
confronting give them no choice. Things
can happen so quickly and predicting how a person will respond, even to
legitimate commands, is unsure. This is of course where the community has to be
understanding of the dilemma an officer might have been in and all of us must
close our ranks around them and support them. They are our police. However, because they are ours and do not
exist independently, where there has been abuse, profiling, needless and
escalating confrontation, gratuitous violence such as body slamming, knees in
the back, beatings even when handcuffed, electric shocks as punishment and
shootings while subdued or in the back, then officers need to face the
consequences of their criminal actions.
When the larger community sees officers
facing justice, and the system actually holding them accountable, then
confidence grows, trust is reestablished, and respect for authority is
maintained. In this world we are never
going to stop all evil, either from real criminals or from failed
policing. We can stand up against it,
and we must, if are to maintain the agreement between the citizens who create
police departments and those in turn who police them. It is not true that the police are the only
defense of the people from evil. The
people themselves are that protection through the agencies they create,
support, and hold accountable.
END.
