Article by Jessica Conway | Owl Staff
In preschool, my classmates always played Cops and Robbers and the boys would fight over who should be who. I thought it was a silly argument; who would want to be a cop?
I was born in Baltimore in an area recognized as Loch Raven. There is little crime there and yet there was an overall sense of “us versus them”: African Americans versus the police.
No one had to tell me that the police couldn’t be trusted. I instinctively knew to be afraid of them. The police were the bogeyman of my childish imagination, and I don’t know why.
According to Police Officer First Class Kate Saltzer, the respect she held with the community has dimmed and it is mostly due to the media.
“The media has made all police ‘bad’,” says Saltzer, “TV shows…don’t always reflect the ‘real’ police/citizen world.”
I hear this sentiment often, but now that I’m older, I don’t believe the media is completely to blame. The larger problem is the lack of community contact with the police.
I hadn’t met a police officer until age ten and rarely saw one before that. With all that we hear and see on television, we need a healthy dose of reality to offset it.
I can’t claim that these cases are unfairly emphasized with so much proof otherwise. Multiple incidents have given me pause to think over my opinion of what we should do to find a solution.
On April 12, 2015, six police officers chased Freddie Gray and then arrested him for “illegal possession of a switchblade,” according to The New York Times. During the time he was arrested, Gray requested his inhaler, but never received it.
The police then proceeded to use force on Gray and ignored his need for a physician. He went into a coma and died a week later due to a spinal injury. With stories like this I wondered, when was it that I stopped seeing the police in a bad light?
“I hadn’t met a police officer until age ten and rarely saw one before that. With all that we hear and see on television, we need a healthy dose of reality to offset it.”
When I moved and had more interactions with police, my assumptions changed. I have never been treated with anything but respect from the police. My best friend’s mother is a retired policewoman, and she has taken care of me in more ways than one; whether it’s food or clothes, she always thought of me.
I empathize with the officers who have a dangerous job and go to it happily but have to face the anger of the community. We need to remember that these officers are people and when cops suffer, so do their families.
According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 117 Law Enforcement Officers were killed in 2014; that’s 117 families devastated by death and hearing people so against the police must hurt them as well.
The sooner that we remember that officers are human and will make mistakes, the sooner we can stop pointing fingers and find a solution.