PEOPLE ONLY care about us after we are dead, were the words a NY cop said to me over 20 years ago after helping me out in a difficult situation. As I expressed my gratitude to him, we somehow got into an extensive conversation about a cops duties.
Lately, with all the current tension, his words have been echoing in my ears.
After 9/11, America loved our cops. Heroically, they sacrificed their lives for us, and we as a nation authentically grieved for them and with them, as a community. In solidarity, navy blue NYPD baseball hats (as well as FDNY hats) were worn by many of us.
I suppose it is common to have issues with those who enforce authority and conformity, law and order. As police often cordon off areas with their yellow tape and wooden barricades, it seems sometimes that a true barricade is erected between authority and community, creating an us vs. them dynamic.
Like that cop said so many years ago, only after so many had been killed on 9/11 did the outpouring of love, appreciation and grief express itself. In their lifetimes, cops are often targeted and painted in one brush stroke as a community of law enforcement officers riddled with power and brutality issues.
Certainly, there is a minority of cops who abuse their power and who ought to be on probation or dismissed. Absolutely.
I havent had the guts to watch the chokehold Garner video because it sounds so horrifyingly graphic and painful and inhuman. I dont understand what happened there, and indeed, we must all stand up for justice, and immediately implement reforms that will prevent such abuses of police power. There will always be those rotten apples in a basket of fruit, and as rigid regulations as possible should be implemented in order to filter out those rotten ones.
But what about the rest of the police community?
Every single day they risk their lives for us.
Every morning when they leave home they know they are vulnerable there is a chance of something happening to them as they serve in the line of duty.
The daily, nice, feel-good stories of cops helping us out and being there for us in our times of need dont make the news.
The weekly, thousands of stories of kindness and duty that we rely on them for remain unknown and are taken for granted.
Naturally, only the conflicts, the mistakes, and controversies are spread across the media.
But the truth is, more than the isolated incidents of wrong are the abundance of incidents of cops doing right by us.
How often do we actually stop by our local precinct with that gesture of gratitude like a batch of cookies we keep saying we will drop off?
Now two of their own have been struck down in New York, and it is a deep wound to the entire community of law enforcement, as well as to all of us.
The tensions are running high. Because of the Garner tragedy, the hostility toward the police community as a whole has gotten out of hand, to the point of a senseless loss of lives. The murder of two innocents sitting in their police car just doing their job.
Even after this tragedy, protesters refused to pause or budge, continuing on with their protests, business as usual. No soul-searching. It is astounding.
We should all be up in arms about this.
And we should all show appreciation at our local precincts.
Its time to take our police force back.
Generally speaking, they are the ones who are there for us. They are the ones who make our society tick, preventing our country from falling to chaos.
I AM not naive about this. I get that there are some bad cops out there, and that racism is a real issue we must continue to devote our energies to combatting. In fact, the first (and thankfully only) time I experienced anti-Semitism in this country was, of all people, by a cop, in the dark of night, on a road in upstate New York. I was lost and stopped a cop to get directions. It turned out to be a very scary experience. The cop was extremely tall and strong, towering over myself and the short, thin, identifiable Yid I was with. It was a deserted dark road.
I try and put myself in a black persons shoes. To be sure, racism is painfully still an issue in our society. Its been difficult seeing the pain of the black community laid bare these past few weeks. Watching Eric Garners mother has been a true inspiration. Certainly, its not only a matter of mechanically respecting the authority of law enforcement, but of working hard to building and creating a just society and way of life that is worth protecting by that very law enforcement.
At the same time, this reflexive mantra of police brutality needs to be reexamined too. Unfortunately, its too late for these two NYPD officers who were brutally assassinated. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out the killers motive; in fact he wrote on his Instagram account of his intentions to kill police as retribution for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
Encouraging protesting in solidarity must be reexamined. It has been disturbing watching some of the leaderships style of encouragment. Protesting must be expressed responsibly, with leadership endeavoring to deescalate conflict and finger pointing, not escalating finger pointing at an entire community of law enforcement, when the vast majority are dedicated professionals working for our safety.
That cop from NY was right. Until one of them is killed, we dont appreciate them. We saw it after 9/11 and, on a different scale, we are experiencing these emotions again this week.
For once I will try and do something before it is too late. I will plan on stopping by my local precinct with some Chanukah cookies, latkes or sufganiyot, to express some Jewish gratitude while the cops are alive.
Maybe if we each do something small like that, in time and with hard work some of those perceived barricades between us and them, or between the black community and law enforcement, can be removed.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
