There are bad cops and corrupt cops and racist cops and brutal cops. But the great majority of police officers are not bad or corrupt or racist or brutal. If they were, given the 375 million annual contacts that police have with citizens, our country would look very different.
Think about it for a moment.
Police officers generally perform thankless jobs. (How often do you thank the officer who pulled you over for speeding, let alone thank the officer who arrested you for committing a crime?)
Police officers do not get rich doing their jobs. (Have you ever heard someone say, “I’m going to become a cop so I can make a lot of money”?)
Police officers risk their lives protecting us. (Yes, bad guys shoot at cops and try to kill them.)
Police offers do difficult jobs. (One of our sons-in-law is a police chaplain and has done many ride alongs, arriving at homes shortly after suicides or homicides, with devastated family members standing nearby.)
Yet in every community in our nation, we expect the police to be there if we have an emergency and call 911. That includes the police responding to calls reporting a domestic dispute or to calls reporting a neighbor’s dog barking in the middle of the night.
And if shots were fired in your neighborhood and there was no response, your first question would be, “Where are the police?”
Of course, none of this justifies or excuses police brutality. And none of this brings back George Floyd or Daniel Shaver (an unarmed white man shot by police while begging for his life) or others wrongfully killed. And none of this denies that some people become police officers because they are into power or control.
But it does remind us that the current demonizing of police is an unhealthy, unfair, and even dangerous trend.
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SOURCE: Christian Post, Michael Brown
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