I am the product of law enforcement.
My father is a 32-year veteran of the force turned court officer after retirement. My uncle is a 30-year veteran of the local sheriff’s department. My grandfather was an MP and then started his own security guard service. Many of our family friends are lawyers, judges, and various ranking officers.
I, on the other hand, well—I have been detained five times, charged three, and jailed beyond arraignment, twice. I still respect the premise of law enforcement despite my interactions from the criminal end of the spectrum.
Was I treated well during my arrests, even with my connections? Meh. There was certainly room for improvement, but I can put myself into their shoes and accept why they must be so hyper-vigilant and semi-cocky.
Can things be changed within the governing system to better screen, monitor, and reinforce our officers so that there are fewer bad apples getting through?
Hell yes.
Is it the fault of the entire force from coast to coast for the supposition of the very small percentage of officers who are dishonorable to their oaths?
No. Not even close.
Blaming the partial sum of the whole equation isn’t going to let you math very far ahead in this day and age, especially when the whole sum reaches across the great divide and into every home this country has ever built.
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Each morning as a young girl, I would watch my father come out of his bedroom struggling to tuck his sweat-stained Hanes undershirt into his uniform pants. Those pants were such a dark blue, they seemed black from a distance. Such irony to me in the fact that the hearts of those he arrested were just as easily mistaken for the same color of blackness as those trousers he wore.
He’d make his way to the bathroom, stretching his sore back the whole way. When he was done, he’d make his way to the living room where I would be waiting on the couch, taking in the sight this enormous, powerfully built man in blue has left embedded in my memories for all of time.
I would watch him pull on his uniform shirt and button it from the bottom up, because he always missed one whenever he started from the top. Tucking it in, he would make his way to the chair by the front closet where his utility belt always lay and hoist it up and fasten around his waist. I used to sneak when he wasn’t looking sometimes and try to pick it up, but it weighed almost twenty pounds (without the gun) and I would topple over into the chair, as the weight of it pulled me down like quicksand. My father wore that belt as if it was any regular, old belt, never flinching or wincing as he strapped it around his waist, day after day as he prepared for departure.
The minute it was secure, a familiar rumble would begin to grow inside my tiny, little belly. The twisting, churning of butterflies would reflux into my throat, choking me up and rendering me unable to speak. Had my mouth actually worked, you would have heard my sobbing pleas for my daddy to please just stay home. To not go to work. Just this once.
What if he never came back home again?
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All across our country, in every city, state, and community, this scene plays out repeatedly in the living rooms of law enforcement officers with every change of shift. Whether it be their children, spouses, parents, siblings, or best friend— someone is terrified their loved one is never going to return again. The weight of the decision to walk out the front door anyways, making the conscious choice to serve and protect, despite the risk involved, rests on the shoulders of every member of the force and follows them until they return home once more.
If they even return home again.
Unfortunately, we live in a world full of escalating violence and unnecessary disrespect of authority, today. We have become so wrapped up in stigmatizing, stereotyping, and status quota climbing that we have lost sight of the common ground we all share as human beings.
This discord in society is leaving a blatant mark on our communities and the ones who are left to deal with the consequences of all this internalized segregation are the ones who wear the blue. Time and time again, they are the only ones to bear witness to the aftermath of what divided causes, personalized agendas, and individualized benefits are doing to civilization, cleaning up the garbage we litter in the streets without a care to its affect on our future environment.
Law enforcement officers have become jaded because of us, the citizens, and our need to manifest every brief thought or perception into action on our self-righteous, self-serving conquests to change the world to fit a mold designed for a one-human-is-all, not a one-size-fits-all, fit.
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End the labeling and the hate will end, too.
It’s as simple as that. It is in the titles of thug, punk, junkie, retard, terrorist, gay, transgender, nigger, cracker and the like, that the human race has ceased to place value one another’s lives and reduced a life to a title—lives which originated from the same single strand of DNA all those thousands of years of go.
Our police are the only ones who are there when our failure as a society comes to light. They do not deserve the hatred we spew towards them for serving the very people who pave the way for deviancy. It astonishes me that a species so vastly evolved and abundantly intelligent, cannot seem to grasp this concept. We continue to separate, segregate, organize, sort, and compartmentalize everything in our wake, including each other. For all of that, we have become a narcissistic world – only caring about other people’s plights when it is self-serving or personal.
As an officer’s daughter who knows both sides of the law well, it is clear to me that the citizens of this country have forsaken the patriotism we once found ourselves united in, and with it, the officers who are sworn to serve under the ideal of it.
Instead of embracing humanity under the common thread of our shared freedoms, we have pledged our integrity to individualized causes that only bolster personal agendas. And for what? The loss of respect for the ones who wear the blue, leaving their families for the unknown every day—the very officers who sacrifice their own lives for the fellow citizens we are determined to destroy with labels and the prejudice in our hearts.
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Photo: Getty Images
Read Kristina Hammer every week here on The Good Men Project!
“What if he never came back home again?”
My dad, three uncles, 4 cousins. I can validate just about every word spoken here. There were times when all hell had broken loose in the city, and my mother, aunts would sit there quietly hoping the phone did not ring. There were times, but that particular phone call never came.
My dad worked the night shift. First thing I’d do every morning would be to peek into their bedroom to see if he made it home. For that second before I’d look, the fear was intense. “What if” always echoed.
I’m sorry you know this feeling, too. It is something we’ll carry with us wherever life takes us. Thank you for reading and sharing your similar experience with me. I always look forward to your comments!