A friend of mine, reminded me of a critical incident I was involved in years ago as a patrol sergeant. How I miss the days of working a beat and working with a team of intrepid patrol officers. Its like going into battle with your best friends, defending the citizens against the evil of the world. Its tragic, its tiring, its nerve wracking, its frightening but its with your team and there is strength in that.
The incident that day was horrific. It was chaotic, frightening and violent. But there was quietness in our souls that day. We stepped forward towards the threat. With a flurry of commands, taser deployments, holstering of sidearms and cuffs in hand, I realized we probably needed some more help. As I fought a knife welding suspect with one hand, I exclaimed on my portable radio simply "We need more cops". No I did not use any fancy codes or alerts....I just said it.
We laughed about it a few hours later when calmness entered our hearts and the adrenaline had long since worn off. One of the officers, prophetically said "because of this incident, we (the three of us) will always be closer". He was right, we were, we are.
This week I read the words of
Nick Arvin a reporter for The Aggie, the school paper for the UC Davis. Arvin's article titled "
UC Davis Professor Thinks Cops "Need to be Killed". It was polarizing as I read and then re-read his article. Davis Police Department had just lost
Officer Natalie Corona in an ambush attack just weeks previous to this articles publish date.
I'll summarize, the professor tweeted and then later said:
“I am thankful that every living cop will one day be dead, some by their own hand, some by others, too many of old age #letsnotmakemore” — tweeted on Nov. 27, 2014.
“I mean, it’s easier to shoot cops when their backs are turned, no?” — tweeted on Dec. 27, 2014.
“People think that cops need to be reformed. They need to be killed.” — published in an interview on Jan. 31, 2016.
I wont argue if this is protected speech or not. Because it is protected speech.
It is in my opinion
totally despicable.
But it is protected. Being a police officer is not subject to being part of a protected class. Police officers are the protectors, defenders and examples to the populous.
Police officers hunt the things that go bump in the night. They protect the flock against the wolves. They protect the weak from societies bullies, cheats and other lower forms of life.
Police officers make decisions in 6 seconds, that take lawyers who "practice law" 6 months to figure out and later ratify in court. Police officers are medics, counselors, cheer leaders, educators, disciplinarians, novelists, arbitrators, parents and sometimes mechanics.
My point, law enforcement officers in whatever form you see, troopers, deputies, police officers, motor cops, detectives and even Fish & Game officers are vital to the balance of our society and way of life. The have a unique job.
I posted the Aggie article on my social media feeds. Here is a few of the responses:
Twitter feed Facebook feed
One poster "How does this so called professor still have a job? This disgusts me, This is outrageous. Does UC Davis Condone this type of rhetoric? Have they acknowledged it, or made a statements"
UC Davis response is contained in this article -
Sacramento Bee
Another posted response was "Unfreaken believable"
Another posted response was "Freedom of speech? Really? UC Davis - its never acceptable to encourage murder of ANY human being. The fact that it's a Professor"teaching" students is appalling! Parents of these students should rethink where their children attend school"
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Do we live in a perfect world? Are our public safety officers infallible? No and of course no. There are example of police officers failing. Like here for example - "
Police officer charged with illegally making, selling guns" or this "
Former police officer arrested on child sex charges". There are other examples of course of police officers acting like the rules do not apply to them. Unfortunate, but that same small percentage of wayward officers can of course be applied to a small percentage of the general public as a whole, but that is not a really great headline, so I get why crimes with the police officer involvement get the limelight. We should be the example of how to be great contributing citizens and these are examples of utter failure.
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We have work to do still. We must press on and stick with our mission. We must constantly work to improve ourselves, be innovative. We must embrace transparency. We must admit when we make mistakes and learn from them.
There will always be folks that do not agree with our mission and job function. That shouldn't deter us in anyway at all. They can have their opinions and of course say whatever words they want. The silent majority in this country gets it and supports our daily mission.
That is all I have for now. Be good to each other.
Dave
