I am the son of a Pennsylvania State Police Officer who served for 35 years. I volunteer with the PSP in a project that records the oral histories of retired troopers. State Police Officers were often guests in our home while I was growing up.
Every retired officer we have interviewed has spoken of his disgust with members of the force who have become corrupt or brutal and therefore have been removed from the job. One officer, speaking for all the others, said, ”They soiled the badge.”
I know more stories than most about how good police work and morally good police officers protect citizens from criminal actions and also serve to arrest men and women who have committed heinous crimes. I know better than most how police officers’ lives are at risk each time they go to work, each time they stop an automobile, each time they answer a domestic violence call, each time they answer a “Shots Fired” call.
But the collective actions of many police forces in many cities since the murder of George Floyd make it crystal clear that a deep rethinking of policing needs to be done across the board from the purpose and role of police to how they are hired and trained.
I will not list links to any of the hundreds of videos of police misconduct and brutality linked to the nationwide protests sparked by George Floyd’s death. I am not sure where I would begin. If you are reading this, you can see for yourself. Spend 15 minutes doing your own open minded research and what you will see will appall you. Thank you to whomever invented the cell phone camera and video.
What I will do is provide a link to a story about Newark, NJ, one among many, where police cooperation with the community kept the peace without abuse, without brutality, without rubber bullets, without unprovoked beatings.
My heart rate does nor accelerate in fear when I am stopped by a police officer. I know I will receive the benefit of the doubt. I am white. I am 67 years old. I do not believe I am in danger of being shot or dragged from my car and beaten or arrested for absurd violations. My skin color is a shield, it is a kind of superpower.
A mother of a black student I taught, a black man with whom I work, a retired black State Police officer all have related stories of incidents where their lives were threatened or insulted because they were black. Now think geometrically. Think of the millions and millions of similar stories out there I do not know, that you do not know and have not heard.
White America has cultivated a persistent failure of imagination regarding the daily lives of those outside their own color. One question can begin (only begin) to encourage an opening of this imagination: What is it like to live as a black man, woman or child in this country? Do not retreat from what you discover. Then ask yourself this question: How can my vote and voice help to remedy this injustice?
I am the son of a police officer*. I volunteer with police. I love what my father and men and women like him did and do each day to keep the peace, but I hate seeing the badge soiled, and I hate watching the menace and swagger and brute, warrior tactics of police in video after video, police who too often have become their own lawless militias.
*The Search (#7): Riot At Donaldson; Train Disaster At Myerstown: Post 84
A great book on the way to do one kind of policing — homicide investigations — is Ghettoside by Jill Leovy.
