There are two kinds of police officers. I’ve met both kinds. I was privileged enough to grow up seeing law enforcement as friend, rather than foe. In fact, I may have gone my whole life thinking the bad was all on the news.
Until last year, that is. I saw it with my own eyes. I feared for the lives of others from a person who had sworn to serve and protect. I’ll never forget that and it’s probably a good thing. Sometimes things happen and give you a choice to continue on with preconceived ideas, or change. I changed.
For this column, I crept over to the journalistic side a bit to interview five different officers in five different areas. Four currently active, one retired. One is fairly young, another with 30 years experience. I wanted as much variety as I could get in terms of location and experience. All are people I would consider to be a friend, so this is hardly a scientific method research project, but it is a small window into their own world. I consider these 5 men to be “good cops.”
I asked each person the same two questions and noted the answers, which were very interesting to me. I found differences in one answer and many similarities in another.
The first question: What made you want to become a police officer? This had 5 completely different answers. One dreamt of doing exactly this his whole childhood, another wanted to make a difference, another was spurred to action after the tragic killing of his mother; he wanted to honor her in a positive way. One decided after doing an entirely different kind of work that he wanted to just give this a go. One isn’t sure exactly when he decided, but it was what he was meant to do. They all wanted to get involved to make a difference, even if the reasoning behind the choices were different.
The second question: What do you think makes a good police officer in 2020?
The resounding main answer from all questioned was empathy.
Empathy and police? That’s not at all what I expected, honestly. I wanted a clear definition for it, so I hit up Merriam Webster. The definition of empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner
also : the capacity for this
That’s a startling realization. I think it’s also the key that seems to be missing in many areas. I need us all to take a breath and look at this with empathy and even some rare nuance.
Good cops do not want to see bad cops, and lumping them together is brutal. They don’t want to see the profession and their image trashed by bad actors behind the badge. As one interviewer said “we are real, normal people at the end of the day.” When the Velcro rips at the end of a hard shift, these are real people struggling with not only what people see on the news, and what they see on the news themselves, but what they’ve seen at work.
Everything I’ve found in these conversations is that they believe Black lives matter. Police brutality is horrible. All they want is fair truth and justice and to help make a positive impact in their communities. They don’t want confrontation. It’s so much easier to talk for an hour with a person. That should make a lot of sense. One officer talked about the ways he can find out mental and financial issues, it’s like social work. Police want to help people in a positive way. Seeing someone find their way in life away from crime is a win for everyone.
I know there is much discussion about defunding police. The general idea is to use that money to better fund social worker and mental health care givers. That sounds good, and needed, but most police aren’t well funded anyway unless you’re in big cities. It’s much more like teachers, who are under paid and highly demanded. I think there is likely plenty of ways to find money to not only fund education, social, and mental care, but to support police in that as well. It’s a stressful job. One officer said “When it gets too much, it’s time to punch out.”
I thought about that a lot. My retired friend doesn’t envy the hard road today of those currently serving. This is a difficult time.
Policing has a pretty wild history, but like most things, it has evolved and continues to evolve. What we see now is not what once was. I think the years ahead will bring changes and adjustments that will attempt to benefit everyone. It won’t be perfect, because not much is, but we can start with empathy.
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