Posted on 11/26/2014 7:02:36 AM PST by shortstop
Every cop in America knows one thing – it could have been him.
Or her.
It could have been him or her, instead of Darren Wilson, who pulled that trigger on Michael Brown.
Or some such similar young man.
Every cop in America knows that, in return for choosing a career in law enforcement, the rules of the road are now that, at any minute, it all could be over and you could become hated and condemned all across the country.
No one would have your back, even the president could denounce you.
Because you defended yourself.
In a twist on biting the hand that feeds you, we are instead tying the hand that defends us. We are sending them out, and waiting for the first chance to gut them.
It is an incomprehensible act of ingratitude.
All across American law enforcement, officers know that the new reality facing them when they pull their guns is: By defending myself, I could be condemning myself.
Take Darren Wilson.
A good cop on routine patrol. He’s coming back from a call and has brief contact with two individuals. Nothing comes of it until he moves a ways down the block and gets a radio description of a wanted individual matching one of the young men he’s just seen.
Rolling back up on the two individuals, the larger of them – Michael Brown – lunges into the driver’s window of the squad car and begins assaulting Darren Wilson. Michael Brown then tries to take away the officer’s gun.
The officer gets off a round, Michael Brown attempts to flee, and then charges at the officer, twice, before being shot to death.
In the mind of witnesses and Darren Wilson, Michael Brown was set to attack and was an immediate threat to the life of Officer Wilson.
So Officer Wilson did what his training taught him to do. He did what instinct, morality and the laws of men command him to do – he defended himself.
And his life is ruined.
His career is over, his family is threatened, his name is destroyed, he has been vilified across the country and by the nation’s most prominent voices.
People have rioted demanding imprisonment for him, and there have been countless threats on his life.
His life, as he knew it, is over.
Because he was a cop and he defended himself.
An entire society has forgotten that Darren Wilson is not the perpetrator of a crime, he is the victim of a crime.
Likewise, it has been forgotten that Darren Wilson was an officer of the law with a duty to act, and that he was on patrol that day in the name and service of the people.
And it is dispiriting to see how instantly the people have turned on him and his profession.
You get up in the morning and put on a uniform that carries with it the obligation to potentially die in the service of your community, to put yourself between the good people and whatever species of hell pops up, and then, when you are literally fighting for your life and the community’s protection, nobody has your back.
Everybody curses your name.
Millions hate you.
Much of the nation turns against you.
In the matter of some 20 seconds.
Damned if you do, dead if you don't.Every cop in America wakes up every day knowing that that could be his fate. By the happenstance of random probability, the unpredictability of criminality, some wild hare seizing upon who knows what thug, and that could be you.
And it wouldn’t matter who you were, or what good you had done, or how many years you had served, or what you had made of your life and to what good cause you had dedicated it.
Al Sharpton would be yelling your name, mobs would be burning your effigy, and the president would be undercutting your profession.
And who wants that?
What kind of person, having seen on the nation’s newscasts the destruction of Darren Wilson, wants to risk that?
How many law enforcement officers will think of the danger associated with their thankless job, see the risk facing themselves and their family, recognize that it is completely unfair and wrong, and quit?
How many will lay down their badge and their career and walk away?
Probably none.
Because that’s the kind of people most of them are. They press on. They do their duty. They don’t quit.
That’s who they are.
More at issue is: Who are we?
Are we the kind of society that looks on and does nothing, or are we the kind of society that values law enforcement and what it does, and has its back?
Are we the kind of society that can look at the matter in Ferguson and push back the anti-cop prejudices and honestly consider the situation of Darren Wilson? Can we recognize the injustice of his situation?
Not that he wasn’t prosecuted, but that he was ever suspected. That an officer of the law, the victim of a violent and felonious attack, can be forced into a fight for his life, and then be condemned for winning.
Would society have preferred he die?
We all know that if the cop had died, instead of the guy who attacked him, that none of us would have ever heard of this. The president wouldn’t have commented, the nation wouldn’t have noticed, nobody would have given a damn.
Dead cop, no problem.
Dead thug, raise holy hell.
And every cop knows that.
And carries that sad realization 24 hours a day.
The president said we need to train our police better. Maybe we need to train our society better.
Maybe we should train the Michael Browns of the world to respect the law, and maybe we should train the rest of us to respect the law enforcers.
And have their backs.
Or at least understand the horrible risk and reality Ferguson creates for them.
Because every cop knows today could be his day.
Body cameras are a fine idea and I’m completely in favor of them.
However these savages don’t believe the findings of a Grand Jury and a literal mountain of physical forensic evidence. What makes you think they’d believe a video?
You can’t reason a person out of a position they weren’t reasoned into.
L
What Ferguson really means is that it is now illegal for a white person to defend themselves when attacked by a black person.
We have the thug Michael Brown on camera robbing a store. We have dozens of witnesses telling the grand jury that Wilson was only defending himself.
What difference did it make to ObaMao? Sharpton? The rioters in Ferguson? Their wannabe clones elsewhere in the country?
Actually, car and body cameras seem to have solved the problem for many a Southern police force. When the video is quickly broadcast on the nightly news after the incident, the rabble rousers often find the rabble isn’t interested any more.
Body cameras will not mean a damn thing. These animals are insane and the only thing in their brain is violence and the fun of destroying things they will never have. These are the sick and if most welfare is stopped you will see just how millions of Americans think of this Country that have given then the chance to be a real human. They are the animals like old Rome.
Is it just me, or is it time to impose the “Insurrection Act”? Just askin.
Great article.
They will simply only pay attention to the part they want to, just like during the rodney king thing.
Quit policing black communities. Drive around with blinders on if need be.
I think it is referred to as “drive and wave”.
What ever happened to the concept “self-defense”?
No more than anybody else, a law enforcement officer is not about to give up life for no reason. Or at least a sane reason.
It is one thing to walk into an ambush, another altogether to go in with the expectation the other parties involved are at least semi-rational. One does not deal with rattlesnakes or rabid animals by trying to reason with them. Sometimes the decision as to whether one is facing a sane and rational being, or a pit viper, comes down to fractions of a second.
Shoot first, ask questions later. Part of the cowboy code, if I recall correctly.
Dirty Harry, as played by Clint Eastwood, was some kind of hero of mine.
Thanks. This was very well written.
Hey, thugs and robbers are simply redistributing the wealth.
Woe to a cop who keeps them from doing it. The Darren Wilsons of the future will leave our self-proclaimed community organizers alone.
Having your career ended over it is not worth it.
Cams with live feeds.
This President and his AG are thugs... they identify with the criminals rather than the good guys. I don't think the American people are going to fall for that kind of person again.
Why just cops? Every American citizen has the unalienable right to defend their lives against violent attackers, regardless of the color of the attacker, and regardless of the uniform, or lack thereof, of the defending citizen.
Violent thugs come in all colors. Brown just happened to be brown, or some such. It wasn't his color that got him killed -- it was his violent behavior during the minutes before, and leading right up to the last twitch of muscle on his worthless carcass.
Thugs like this need to be stopped, by anyone, anywhere.
won’t work the idiots would say it was doctored you know how their twisted mind works.
It’s not nearly as straightforward as you like to think.
It will just open up a whole new area of interpretation and second guessing.
Harry Callahan, DCI Gene Hunt, and DI (?) Regan are on a similar list.
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