Well now it’s gone too far. The political narrative that has turned police officers into racist monsters and given protesters and excuse to denounce them has helped create the environment that got two of them murdered, execution-style, in Brooklyn.
Two incidents, neither of which the public really knows the facts about, have provided the fuel for all this. But race-hustling activists, opportunistic politicians and media personalities all too happy to play up racial tension built it into the wildfire it’s become.
And now a murderer, vowing revenge for Michael Brown and Eric Garner, has ended the lives of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.
There are so many things about this that are unforgivably egregious, but perhaps none more than the way police officers are being characterized by people who should know better. Last week I came across a narration by Paul Harvey about police officers. This was one of those bits where he extols the virtues of a particular profession by pointing out in a rather poetic way both the challenges and the expectations people face when they work in a particular field. A lot of people remember the one about farmers that was used in a Super Bowl commercial a few years ago.
This one was arguably even better, and worth considering given the current mood of much of the public where the police are concerned. Harvey points out that we expect cops to be expert diplomats, both tough and gentle, and able to make decisions in a split-second that a lawyer would stew over for months. And we expect them to be right every time.
We all know, of course, that they put their lives on the line every day. That fact will never lose its salience. But the cops who make it home safely every night can still tell you many stories of almost impossible choices and dangers that affected their lives.
We can’t forget this in a political and cultural environment that wants to make every confrontation between a cop and a citizen a major controversy, especially if there is the opportunity to turn it into a racial story. What really struck me about the Michael Brown narrative is that you had people demanding a certain outcome to the investigation, without knowing the facts or the evidence, simply because of the racial makeup of the parties involved.
I suppose only God knows whether Darren Wilson did the right thing in pulling that trigger. But we do know that as a police officer, it was his job to confront a suspect in a robbery and to demand cooperation from that suspect, which he did not receive. Instead, he found himself physically threatened and faced with the need to make a difficult, on-the-spot decision whether to use force in defense of himself.
It’s easy to sit around and debate whether he got it right based on what you think you know of the evidence. A better question, though, is this: Could you handle the pressure of that situation if it was you? Could you even make it through the training? Could you face the realities of patrolling the streets, often in hostile environs, and being expected to confront people that everyone else runs away from?
Because that is what a police officer has to do every day.
That certainly does not give them license to gratuitously kill people, and I do believe there are situations where they make assumptions they should have reconsidered. (The black pastor of a friend of mine was pulled over not long ago because the officer was suspicious upon seeing a black man driving a Cadillac Escalade. In his mind, that screamed out “drug dealer”. Come on, man!)
But even allowing for poor judgments some people will make, it is wrong to treat the police as if they are a cabal of brutes just looking for an excuse to abuse people. That is the farthest thing from what they are. These are the people we expect – we really take it for granted, if we’re honest – to get in the middle of the most dangerous situations involving violent people who don’t have the slightest regard for right and wrong. They choose this career, knowing they will never make a lot of money at it, with a full understanding of the risks and responsibilities they are going to take on.
I get more than a little tired of people who insist on viewing police officers as if they are the biggest threats to the safety of innocent people. The truth is, in many cases, they are the only ones protecting your safety. Whenever we have to deal with a situation where it appears an officer may have done something wrong, we need to remember these realities instead of falling into some irrational and juvenile attitude that completely forgets what these brave men and women do for us every day.
In the end, it is of course the shooter who bears responsibility for the murders of Officers Ramos and Liu. But let’s not pretend the current environment did not contribute to his rage, and let’s not let those who gladly encouraged that rage off the hook.
