Officers, opinions, and understanding.

About 5 years ago, I got a police scanner. It was a gadget. A throwback to my childhood. A window into the crazy that was real and outside my window instead of on TV. Like every other normal person, when I see a cop in my rear-view mirror, I go “Oh fuck…. did I roll a stop sign? Are my tags expired? Did I forget to signal?….” - and they would turn off and drive the other way and it would be nothing. In general, people don’t want to deal with the police. Even me.

In order to understand the scanner, and what was happening, and my neighborhood - I had to understand the police. While I was raised to respect law enforcement, I never really had an opinion or thought one way or another about the police. After getting to know the police, and learning to understand the police, and in turn the dynamics of my neighborhood I quickly came to one conclusion: we need them. We need the police. Their job is extremely misunderstood. People make common, knee-jerk assumptions about their jobs and their motives and what they should do because you pay taxes… and as I was… they are mostly completely wrong. I’m not sure what your job is, but mine doesn’t involve being spit on, fought with and lied to by a large percentage of the people I deal with.

Statistics in the mouths of the uninformed paint divisive pictures of law enforcement, as if it is an “us against them” situation, and it just isn’t. We are all human, and while that makes us capable of incredible things, it also makes us petty savages.

I know that people are going to believe what they want to believe. I’m not writing this to change your mind. All I ask is that when it comes to the police, they and their actions reflect and respond to ours. I can only speak from my own experience, because I ask. I ask the police a lot of questions ( not when they are in the middle of an incident ) - and I am always learn something I didn’t know about a job that is far more complicated than I could have ever imagined. So maybe, like we all would love when we feel judged or misunderstood… maybe you can make a little effort to understand that which of such vital importance to our way of life in this community. They aren’t going anywhere. Maybe, like me, if you understood them a little more - you’d feel better about where you live. Understanding helps us all.