I Support the Police

I support the police.  It's a scary thing to say that in today's climate of rampant hate and unbridled ignorance.  Just hitting publish on this post could bring a shitstorm down upon my head.  Not from my friends, but from the scads of internet trolls with nothing better to do.  (Case in point, the young woman who is getting death threats because she makes teddy bears for the families of fallen officers.  Death threats because of teddy bears.  If that ain't nuts, I don't know what is.)  Lucky for us all, I moderate the comments so no one but me has to see it, if it occurs.

Anyway... here goes nuthin'.

I support the police.

I know the majority of law enforcement is made up of good people doing a job most of us would not be willing to do.  Day in and day out, they risk their lives to make our world a safer place.  And every day, they take a tremendous amount of shit for it.  Still, they do the job to the best of their abilities.

Condemning the entire police population because a few bad ones wear the same uniform is like condemning all blacks because some criminals have the same skin color.  Or condemning all Jews.  Or condemning all gays.  All are painted with the same brush because of a few?  Not in my world.   

True, I haven't had a lot of contact with the police.  There's a reason for that.  I'm a law-abiding citizen.  I don't touch things that don't belong to me.  I don't trespass.  I don't get drunk or violent or loud.  I occasionally drive faster then the speed limit, and if I should get pulled over for it, I will take my medicine and pay the ticket without bitching because I know I'm breaking the law.  And we are, after all, a nation of laws.

In the times I have had interactions with law enforcement, both outside and inside of things I have done wrong, they've all been fairly positive.  My grandfather was the first Chief of Police in a Detroit suburb, so I've had a positive slant toward police my whole life.  I never met my grandfather, but from all accounts, he was a good man.  I spent a summer working with the City of Marquette police department, with their animal control division but still.  Those officers were a good group of people.  The officer who pulled me over for speeding when I was thinking too hard about my niece's car accident and whether she would survive long enough for me to see her, was super nice, even if she did give me a ticket.  The officers who handled the accident I caused and then had to transport me to where my wrecked car had been towed were super nice, even if I probably deserved a harsher interaction for being that damned stupid.

When Owl was young, every Sunday we would get dressed and go to breakfast at a Big Boy in Flint, MI.  The local police officers also ate breakfast there.  They would come and go as we were eating and would sometimes stop to chat with me and my daughter.  A super positive experience I hope she remembers to this day.

I had one less-than-positive experience with a deputy back in the summer of 1988.  Not super bad, just a Barney Fife type with short man syndrome who decided he was going to try and roust my large boyfriend.  Barney's partner brought him in line and my boyfriend walked away with a warning.  Well, we both got warnings, since we were doing private things while parked on the side of a public road.  =oO

Are there bad officers out there?  Sure.  Take any group of people and you'll have a small percentage of shitty individuals in there.  If the officers in Minneapolis did what they are accused of, they should pay for their actions.  And before you point to the video evidence and accuse me of being racist for even suggesting the possibility they might be innocent, the internet isn't a court of law - even if some are using it like one.  Every accused gets their day in an actual court, before a jury of their peers, who will decide their fate.  Not me.  Not you.  Not the media.  Twelve individuals tasked with doing their damnedest to get to the truth.  If the truth is that those men did what they are accused of, then they should face the penalties for their crimes to whatever extent the law allows.

I support the police as a whole.  I support humanity as a whole.  And humanity as a whole needs laws.  Oh, if we lived in a perfect world, people would do what was right without the law, but we don't live in a perfect world.  We live in this world - where there are murders and rapes and thefts and assaults and...  Yep, we need laws.  Which means we need people to enforce those laws.  We need the police.

So, yeah, I support the police.  As unpopular as it might be right now to make that sentiment public, I like to think I'm in the majority, despite what the news, entertainment, and academia would have you believe.  I don't want to think about living in a world where I am in the minority.  =o\

The Law is the Law

The law is the law for a reason.  Mostly, it's because, as a whole, people are stupid and can't reason their way out of a paper bag, so they expect the government to do their thinking for them and tell them what they should and shouldn't do.

"Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life." - Aristophanes.

But that assumes people are wise.  Mostly, they aren't.

Like there's no posted speed limit back in here.  The wise person knows enough to drive slow (25-30 max), but there are some numbnuts who think because there's no posted speed limit, it's fine to drive like a bat out of hell.  I had one gal who couldn't stand the fact that I was driving at a reasonable rate of speed pass me in here.  Then a couple days later, there's her husband riding my ass in an area where a curve was coming up and he couldn't pass.  I pulled over so he could joyfully get the hell away from me.  One of these days, one of them is going to hit a deer, I swear.  Or the neighbor's grandkids who like to ride their bikes in the road.

Going back to my point about 'people', lest you think I'm talking about you, another great quote is...

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - Agent K, Men in Black

Individuals have a great capacity to be smart.  In a group, people tend to be stupid herd animals.  And they generally don't pay a whole lot of attention to who's doing the herding.

So we have laws.  Most of them are pretty good laws that keep people from doing stupid things and that punish the super stupid who weren't smart enough to obey the law and avoid punishment.  Occasionally there's a stupid law - like the one where it's illegal in some places to marry a donkey, as if anyone would want to marry a donkey -  and we ignore it or the people work to get it changed.  That's the way it's supposed to go.

Except there seems to be a culture rising that thinks laws are made to be broken, that laws don't apply to them, and that there shouldn't be any consequences to breaking the laws.  Depending on who you are, of course.

There's a reason Justice wears a blindfold.  It's not supposed to matter who you are.  And she's carrying scales because justice should be doled out equally among us all.  What goes for a plumber goes for a celebrity or a politician or an athlete.  Right?  Pretty simple stuff.  Not sure why there is a certain segment who don't understand this.

Facts and evidence are supposed to be the rule.  Hearsay?  Nope.  Feelings?  Nope.  Conjecture?  Not really.  Just the facts, dude.  Without facts and evidence, anyone can say anything and you'd find your ass in jail.  "I heard from Joe who heard from Mary that she felt this person killed Fred.  And since Mary is certain, it must be true."  Which, in a bizarro world, would then land that person's ass in jail.  Without facts and evidence, lies rule the day.  And your freedom hangs out there in the breeze generates by other people's whims.

Is that really the kind of world people want to live in?  Probably not, but they aren't thinking about it that way.  Because, you know, people are stupid.  Be a person, not a people.

Just something to think about.