Police

I don’t think there is an easy solution to what is going on with all these people of color being treated badly by police, or worse, being killed by them. I don’t understand what is going on.

I can’t imagine, though I have tried, what it must be like to know that if I get stopped by the police, I may not live to see the next hour, no matter what I say or how I act. It scares me, and it is not likely to be a reality for me. But it is a reality for so many people, and it is not right.

It scares me that I could be sleeping in my bed some night, and cops could break into my house and potentially kill me or my loved ones, just because they got bad information from some informant. Again, it’s not likely, but it is within the realm of possibility.

I don’t have an answer,  but I do have lots of questions. When I watched the video of the man getting pepper sprayed at a traffic stop in Virginia, the policeman who lost it seemed to be on a real power trip – why was he even a cop? Why is it that we seem to have a lot of white supremacists in our police forces? Why do we ask our police forces to be responsible for so many things they are not trained for? Why do we allow so-called “no knock” warrants? Why do we rehire cops who have been fired for cause? Why do we keep blaming the victims for their own deaths?

Yes, I know, there are many good cops; I also know there are many bad cops. It is heartening to hear that the old situation of cops always backing up cops, even when they are wrong, seems to be going away, at least in the Chauvin trial. Until good cops are always comfortable speaking out against bad cops, we aren’t going to solve this problem. And I am a huge union supporter, but until we stop allowing unions to get bad cops reinstated after they have been fired, this is never going to get better. In the meantime, the bad cops are going to continue to give the good cops a bad reputation.

I don’t know how it can get better, but it has to … soon.