Saturday, April 18, 2015

What's a hero?

A columnist in one of the (free) weekly tabloids here was lamenting, as usual, how tragic policing is in the United States...and how "we" kill people at a rate which far exceeds any other (real) country. As most leftist columnists, he used what I now call "skew-tistics" to back up his claims, one such claim being that this country has killed more civilians in the last month than the UK has in the past 115 years. Wow...


He has been on this diatribe for numerous weeks, traversing between Trayvon, Michael, and now Walter...I haven't checked their on-line edition (yet) but I fear it's running a loop of the officer shooting Walter Scott in the back, oh probably going on 100,000 times now (and that's not counting the nightly news, which has run the video no fewer than 10,000 times themselves). Our neighborhood columnist even went so far as label the young man who videotaped the shooting as a hero. Double wow...


No doubt it took some bravery to film this incident...I mean, the cop just shot (and killed) an unarmed black man in the back and then tossed a taser at his feet so as to attempt some sort of justification for his criminal act. The young man was rightfully hesitant to pull out his phone and record this act because what's to stop this "thug" from turning his gun on the young man. I get it. Bad cop. Bad deed. He deserves the death penalty. I'll even pull the switch (or whatever). But then appearing on national television and saying he thought of erasing the tape to avoid harassment? I don't think so...avoid being a hero, maybe...


But I'll tell you MY definition of hero...my definition of a hero is a young woman I spoke to this morning. I travel to my local fitness center most mornings to attempt to give myself the impression that I haven't totally given up just yet...and as I was leaving, there was a young woman at the front desk and she had a copy of a police exam booklet. I couldn't help myself. I had to ask her what she could possibly be thinking, considering the bad press, etc.


She couldn't have been more charming...she told me she was a single mom and needed some security for herself and her 2-year old son. She said working as a personal trainer here in our small community wasn't quite as profitable as where she had lived most recently (Southern California). I again queried, "why law enforcement?" She revealed her father is a Sergeant in Riverside County which might be an indication...although she said her father won't talk very much about what he does (fearing as I do, I imagine, that his daughter much like my own might try to enter this most unappreciated line of work)...


During our discussion, she also mentioned attending college for several years and being a semester or two away from a Bachelor's Degree, but that she felt she needed to work hard toward a career in law enforcement for the betterment of (both) her family and society as well. We talked about what I had experienced during my 26-plus years with multiple agencies and what I felt were needed attributes for any entry level officer. I stayed away from the "thankless" aspects of the field although I would have probably done her a huge favor if I'd steered her away from ever attempting to wear a badge...


But after ALL the media ravings (and even painting all cops with the same scarlet paint brush they accuse officers of using every day)...and all the bemoaning and lamenting about bad cops and racist institutions and murdering poor black men under the color of authority, she is STILL studying during the wee hours of Saturday morning in order to attain of one of the most hated jobs in the history of this, ahem, Democracy? Just for her family and, oh yeah, society? THAT, my friends, is a hero...

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