An Open Letter To Law Enforcement Personnell

Dear Law Enforcement Personnel,

I grew up in the era of exciting cop TV dramas and Good Guy vs. Bad Guy movies.  I watched Hunter and Die Hard and a number of other movies and shows where the cops were always decent, hard-working, noble, honest people trying to save the streets, trying to serve and protect.  Maybe they were a little more flexible with the rules than they should have been, but their motivation was always to defend the people and protect their community from harm.  I have family and friends who work for the police departments and the military police.  I have always operated under the assumption that the police are there for my protection and that the bad seeds are not representative of the organization as a whole.

As I've become an adult, I've learned to see more nuance, more shades of grey, in the concept of law enforcement, and I'd like to think that I'm not as naive as I was as a child.  But I still maintained the position that people wearing a badge or a uniform should be respected as a default and given the chance to prove that they are Bad Guys before I make judgements on that assumption.

I've had friends and peers my entire life whose automatic reaction to a uniform is to snarl and say "pig!", regardless of what the cop is doing, whether they know that cop or not or even whether they have actually had any first-hand negative experiences with cops (or good ones, for that matter) or not.  I've had many white, middle-class friends, with every opportunity in the world, nevertheless develop the attitude that cops are The Man sent to keep the People down, often for no better reason than it's a buzzkill to be arrested for DUI or making too much noise at a party and disturbing the neighbors.

And I have always defended the cops, telling my peers to wait until he does something objectionable before they object; that our society would be much worse off without the service they offer even with the horrible stories of cops raping women that they pull over late at night and racial profiling and harassment and beating people just because "looking suspicious" is defined as "having brown skin".  I've been far harsher on TSA and private security doing law-enforcement jobs.

Law enforcement personnel, I have always stood up for you.  I have always held to the ideals that you are supposed to be enforcing: to protect, to defend, and that we are all innocent until proven guilty.  But too many members of your group are making it more and more difficult to stand by you and defend your service to our communities.  

You can argue all you want about "bad apples" or it being a small minority or it's not your fault, it's the people in command making you do these things.  But the fact of the matter is that these "bad apples", no matter how many of them there are, are committing atrocities in our communities and using the very same authority that gives you the honor and responsibility that comes with those ideals that make you, hypothetical law enforcement personnel reading this, a Good Guy.  If they are "bad apples" or just some minority, well ... it's your job to protect us from Bad Guys and, according to this theory, they are a minority.  This is what you do.  And you are utterly failing.

But I suspect that the reason why your overwhelming numbers of Good Guys haven't gotten rid of the few Bad Apples yet is because this is not a minority problem, that this is a Very Big Problem.  As law enforcement personnel, I hold you honor-bound to do something about this.  Your inaction is part of the problem.  Your unwillingness to clean house first before cleaning the streets makes you complicit in their bad deeds.  Your silence is undermining your duty to protect and serve.

I still believe in the ideals that make up the foundation of your service, but a foundation is worth less than an empty lot when the building on top is rotted through to the frame.  If the problem is, indeed, a few "bad apples", then clean out your house, fumigate it, slap on a new coat of paint, whatever, but you need to fix it up because, frankly, it's starting to look bad and bring down the rest of the neighborhood.  But if the problem goes deeper than some dirty carpets and and faded wallpaper, you need to do some serious renovation.  Hopefully, this problem can be caught before the entire house needs to be bulldozed into that empty lot and started over.  At least an empty lot still has potential.  A house in disrepair is, at best, an eyesore and something to be embarrassed about.  At worst, it's a danger to the community around it.  And your house has passed "eyesore" long ago.

So dear law enforcement personnel:  clean up your shit so that I can continue to defend you as being, not just a necessary evil, but something to take pride in - an organization that supports its communities, and is supported by its communities; an organization made up of honor and duty.  And please do so before I, and people like me, come to resent you for all the time and energy we put into defending you and trusting in you and we start to believe that we wasted our time and loyalty.  I want to go back to having faith in my law enforcement personnel and I want to believe that all the time I stood up for you wasn't in vain.  I'm having a crisis of faith and only you can restore it.

Please restore my faith in the goodness and nobility of the profession of Protectors of the People and Defenders of Justice.  I know there will always be those who get into law enforcement for the wrong reasons and who abuse their authority.  But you don't have to give them a place to hide or make it so easy for them to get away with things.  In fact, you should be making it twice as difficult to get away with it and the punishments twice as bad.  

If your Brotherhood of the Badge bands together when one of your own is harmed or targeted, you should have even more investment when the one doing the harm or targeting is also one of your own.  You should consider that a betrayal on top of the offensive committed.  The law enforcement personnel who abuses his authority has betrayed the trust of the public, the duty and honor given to him by his badge, and your brotherhood.  These are the last people you should be protecting.  Anyone with honor, with a sense of duty and responsibility for his position, should be in front of the line to protect the rest of his brothers (and sisters) from the fallout caused by one who would destroy the house from the inside.

Because that's what all these abuses are doing, you know.  All these racial profiling programs, all these beatings and macings of peaceful protesters, all these attacks by SWAT for minor and/or non-violent offenders, all of it are the works of saboteurs  destroying the house from the inside.  They are destroying the public trust and your image of noble, duty-bound, honorable peace-keepers.  It's a sad, sad day when the general public starts wanting to take their chances with the thugs and criminals rather than keep a corrupt police system in power.  

And it is getting increasingly more difficult to side against them and to defend the need for a law enforcement system.  I am no longer seeing the luxurious middle-class youthful rage against The Man from people who have never had to live in a crime-ridden world.  More and more, I am seeing the very legitimate fear of the uniform and the badge that is supposed to inspire fear only in those who do wrong, and security and trust in those who do right.  I am seeing a more and more legitimate fear of harassment, of violent response to non-violent actions, of racism, of power-hungry authority abuse, of what seems like the desire to hurt and the willingness to follow unethical orders.

I once thought of law enforcement as a noble profession, of Good Guys vs. Bad Guys, of the few and the proud standing in defense of the people.  If you still see yourself in that light, then do something to earn it that perception back from the people you serve.  Stand up for the citizens of this nation and our fair treatment with due process.  Expose the corruption and oust the troublemakers.  Protect your community and honor the ideals that are behind your badge.  Win back our trust and faith in you.  Because I really want to go back to defending your reputation with a clear conscience.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen