Fight fire with fire. Give them a taste of their own medicine. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
These are all idioms that seem to be irrational in practice and hardly ever remedy an issue. They are usually reserved for angry victims of childhood bullies who have been pushed to the edge, not for adults out for the blood of hardworking, innocent police officers.
Black Lives Matter activists were heard chanting “pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon” at a Minnesota state fair. These so-called activists sound more like a hate group than people calling for change. Pigs in a blanket may sound like a lighthearted play on words to some, but others might take it literally as a call for war on police.
The prominence of social media and the ease at which confrontations with police can be filmed and uploaded has made it seem as though homicides by police have increased drastically.
According to data compiled by the FBI from 2009 through 2013 there has been only a slight increase of justifiable homicides by police. 461 in 2013 compared to 426 in 2012. The average over those five years was 420.
Does this slight increase justify targeting violence toward police? Of course not. However, people are obviously not as concerned with justifiable homicides as they are with police brutality, excessive force, and general homicide by police officers. Unfortunately, these things happen. The issue is that they are happening under the spotlight of national news and social media.
Social media has given anyone the ability to upload an encounter with a police officer. Unless by some chance this person was already filming, these videos generally start after the encounter has already begun, leaving the initiation of the arrest under speculation and unreliable eyewitness accounts.
How can people decide almost instantly after a video of a confrontation with police surfaced on the internet that it was police brutality? Are the people protesting all over the country eyewitnesses of these events themselves? No. Are they experts on police protocol? Chances are the answer is no again.
Recently the number of ambush style assassinations of cops have increased in light of the black lives matter movement that has spawned because of the so called increase in police brutality. Some people have been taking this idea of black lives matter, and seemingly acting as if white lives, or the lives of cops don’t matter.
The truth is, all lives matter— black, white, and the lives of police officers. Color or occupation shouldn’t even matter. This movement is not a promotion of equality, it is not to spread awareness of police brutality, it is a movement that is quite frankly promoting violence and racism.
To say that the killing of Michael Brown, is equivalent to the ambush-style execution of police in recent days is ridiculous. Darren Goforth was a sheriff’s deputy who spent 10 years in law enforcement trying to do the right thing. He was executed while pumping gas in his patrol car. The gunman walked up behind him and fired shots into his back and then stood over his body and fired several more shots into him.
This unprovoked attack is seemingly an answer to the protests around the country against police brutality. These protests are spreading the wrong message, which is hatred for all police officers.
There is no doubt that there are some police out there who abuse their power, but the truth is the vast majority of them always try to do the right thing. The right thing isn’t always easy in the heat of the moment and frankly when an officer does the right thing it doesn’t make the news.
We are blind to the good cops out there. The media doesn’t often cover police doing the right thing, making a kids day, or saving the lives of others. More often we see the mistakes of cops in the media, which just adds fuel to the fire.
There may indeed be a problem with law enforcement officers using too much force or being too quick on the trigger. It could be just an increase in media coverage that makes these instances seem more atrocious and more prominent. However, whatever the case may be, it does not justify the cold blooded murder of police officers.
An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
Image Sources
- news.black lives matter: Jeff Siner/Charlotte Observer/TNS | Used With Permission