Predawn soapbox

For some reason I suddenly found myself wide awake at 4 a.m. this morning so I took my grumpy self upstairs and got online. I went to Yahoo to check the latest local headlines and saw this article:


http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/03/crowd_gathers_at_se_precinct_t.html

Now those of you who don't live nearby probably have not heard of the officer-involved shootings that have occurred in the Portland area of late. I've been searching on Google for a while and have yet to be able to find any concrete reports on the number of officer-involved shootings in Portland over the last, say, ten years or so, so I can't really form an opinion on whether the number seems excessive or not, but there have been several highly publicized cases that have drawn quite a bit of attention and controversy.

I feel like the protesters in the above article may have been a bit hasty. The shooting only occurred yesterday afternoon and is still being investigated, so I'm not sure whether these people were protesting known facts or just assuming that the officer who was involved had to have been in the wrong. I'm not saying that shooting someone is a god thing, but there seems to be an attitude developing in the city that worries me.

All of this really centers around my own experiences with law enforcement and how my views have changed over the years. Yeah, I was once a little hippie who thought cops were storm troopers who liked to push people around and pick on the little guy. And then I became very close to someone who worked in law enforcement and my perspective shifted radically.

If you've never been a cop, or been related to or close friends with a cop, you probably don't know, and maybe haven't stopped to think about, what their lives are like. I think many of us forget that police officers, like everyone else, are just human beings. They get specialized training, but that doesn't make them superhuman. It doesn't make them immune to sadness, rage, fear, depression, stress, panic, emotional exhaustion. Think about it.

Imagine yourself in a job where you are routinely cursed at, screamed at, insulted, spit on, peed on, and vomited on. At any moment you might be confronted with someone who wants to punch you, stab you, shoot you, beat you to death. On any given day you might see women beaten so badly they're unrecognizable, children beaten, burned, sexually abused, murdered. Drug addicts dead under bushes, in parks, under bridges.....people who were once someone's baby, and now they're just a lump of flesh that, likely as not, no one will come to claim.

Imagine yourself in a job where you're surrounded by people who might need you at any moment. If you don't arrive fast enough someone might die, or kill. Or you might race through traffic, siren blaring and heart racing, to find that an elderly person thought they heard a burglar outside for the 11th time this week, or someone doesn't want to pay for their dinner because the cole slaw wasn't to their liking. You think people don't call the cops for things like that? Oh I assure you they do.

I have no idea what exactly happened today that resulted in a man being shot dead. All the news reports have said so far is that there was a man with a knife. There are two reason why I'm not forming any opinion on the rightness or wrongness of the actions taken by police today: One, I don't know what happened. I didn't see it myself and I haven't a yet seen any media reports giving much detail. Two, I know that there are times when taking someone down by force is the only option. I can't even speculate on why the officer chose to fire, but I accept that there are some very legitimate reason why he or she could have decided that there was no other option.

I guess the basic thought behind all this is that it is very easy to judge the correctness of someone's actions in a situation that you yourself were not in. It is very easy, not in small part thank to what information the media chooses to present to us, to see police officers as trigger-happy, violent, racist. And there are probably a number of cops who are. Just like there are some doctors who should not be doctors, some teachers who should not be teachers. In every profession there are those who are clearly not suited to their position, who may be downright criminal, and these folks often gain the most attention, which unfortunately tends to draw attention away from all the others who do their jobs wonderfully, skillfully, carefully.

I just wish more people would take more time to consider what the world looks like through other people's eyes, how it might feel to walk in their shoes. I wish more people did not see the evening news as complete and ultimate truth, and took the time to try to see what's really going on. It's so easy to judge, but what are we basing those judgements on? No, really, what exactly are we basing those judgements on? I think that there might be a police officer who is going to remember this day forever, and get no joy from that memory, and until you're in a similar situation, whatever that may have been, maybe just take a minute to consider what you might have done. What you really might have done. We like to think of ourselves always doing the "right thing" in various scary situations, but when we finally find ourselves in one of those situations we sometimes don't live up to our own expectations.

Ugh, I can't tell if I'm expressing myself clearly or not. I really shouldn't attempt to be coherent at this time of the morning. Well anyway, here's another article I found that was interesting. Not posting it as truth, just another perspective. Make up your own minds. Just try to do it wisely.

http://wweek.com/editorial/3616/13730/