There is a lot of police-bashing going on right now, mostly in the United States, but some of it is creeping into Canada as well, and it needs to stop. Yes, there are some very questionable incidents that need to be dealt with quickly and harshly — there ought to be no tolerance for officers who kneel on the neck of unarmed people and crush the life out of them.
What is unacceptable are the extreme reactions to the point that cities like Minneapolis want to disband the police.
A properly disciplined police force keeps the peace and enforces the laws of the land. Since police officers are humans and, last time I checked, humans are not perfect, you are going to run into problems once in a while.
With all of the protests ongoing about the racism that never seems to end, the videos showing police officers using unwarranted and unreasonable force are surfacing, which crowds and the broadcast media are running to.
This does not excuse the action of any government to just throw away all police officers and say we’ll use that money somewhere else.
People, give your head a shake! Do you really want criminals to have free rein, to have no rule of law, and to be able to do anything and everything they want as they steal, murder, pillage and rape all because some people don’t want to fund the police?!
My wife’s brother Blake has many close friends who are long-serving officers, and he’s passed on some observations from the police side of things, including the fact that what most people know about police is from watching TV.
One post he passed on was a list of things the police wish the public knew about their line of work. On the issue of bigotry, it’s admitted there are officers who are prejudiced, but the majority of police don’t care about what race you are, what religion you practice or what your sexual orientation is.
“Cops see every kind of person, often at the worst moments of their lives. They know there are good and bad people in every category. They do have a strong bias against jerks, so don’t be one of those,” said the post.
One of the points made was that most people do not understand police work, which is true.
“This applies even if your father, mother, sibling or next-door neighbour was a cop. Until you have actually done the job for a few years, you will never understand what it’s actually like.”
I, for one, support our men and women in law enforcement, who put their lives on the line every single day in order to serve and protect all of us.
