Peace Officers

We have already had three law enforcement officers slain in Colorado this year. The latest casualty resulted from an incident roughly half a mile up the road from my home. A total of four officers were shot, one of them fatally, plus the suspect (also a fatality) and an innocent bystander. What I learned is that we cannot properly grieve for these tragedies any more.

© KKTV News 11

What does it say about our current culture that one of my first thoughts was that I hoped the deceased suspect wasn't Black? That was not a likely scenario, if only because we do not have a high population of African Americans here in Colorado Springs. I think our community suffers from that, a lack of visible diversity and the cultural richness and vibrancy that comes with it. I digress. The line between the good guys and the bad guys is not as readily defined in this day and age as it once was. We trust no one, like we are living in an episode of The X-files or something. Authority has lost our respect, and too often there is a corpse unable to prove its innocence.

Maybe it never really was clear cut. Back in the nineteen sixties and seventies, when I was just a kid, activists used epithets to refer to policemen: Pig. The Fuzz. Copper. Cop. The consensus seemed to be that the police force worked for "The Man," not for average, ordinary citizens. Moreover they were agents of oppression of both ethnic minorities and minority viewpoints that disagreed with "the establishment." Sound familiar? Today, Whites are more likely to consider abuses of lethal force against minority suspects as isolated instances instead of rampant racism and oppression, but Black Lives Matter and other movements would beg to differ.

Alas, the shootout up the street appears to have no such controversy. El Paso County Sheriff's Department and Colorado Springs Police Department were conducting an investigation of an auto theft when things turned violent. A stolen car. That was worth killing for? The shooter was a 19-year old male. He had his whole life ahead of him, even if he had been arrested. The slain officer who died, to the day, on the eleventh anniversary of his hiring, had his two twin children's lives to look forward to.

We are appalled, disgusted, and struggling to come to terms with this as a neighborhood and city and county. We need to have a short memory, yet are told to never forget. I have walked that stretch of street countless times, and now it will never be the same. It has never crossed my mind that but for the grace of God I could take an errant bullet. No one should be living with that fear. Anywhere.

The public trust in law enforcement at street level here seems relatively healthy, for now, but one gets the uneasy feeling that it could all come apart with one incident of questionable use of force, someone's phone video, or a peaceful demonstration met with officers in riot gear. I think the bottom line in any given scenario is that the one who is the aggressor will always be the bad guy. Most of the time that will be a criminal, but once in a while it will be someone in uniform.

There are no easy answers, but maybe we can start with language. We can choose to continue throwing around derogatory slang terms for the police, or we can look at a thesaurus, as I did just now, and see that the first synonym listed for police officer is peace officer. Say it with me. Say it out loud. It has a calming quality, does it not? When was the last time you heard the word peace at all? Have we given up on the notion, even in our daily lives, let alone in regards to world conflicts? Maybe we need hope officers, too.

It takes a special breed of human being to comprehend the potential confrontation of their own mortality on a daily basis, and still want to serve the public good in the name of peace and justice, with the goal of saving lives and preventing violence and crime. You and I may not be that kind of person, but we can lead by example, be peace officers of a different caliber. We can go beyond mere racial "tolerance" and accept everyone as equal. We can walk the streets confidently, unarmed, unafraid, and eager to help others in need. Be not the aggressor. Be like Micah Flick.

Trust Issues

© Lovethispic.com

I find it ironic, but sadly so, that both sides of the gun control debate share one thing in common: We don't trust anybody. At all. Answer me this, though. If you shoot first, how are you ever going to know the true character of someone? As I write this we have not only a recent mass shooting event in our collective consciousness, but an entire population of people in fear for their lives from authority figures we were once taught were our friends and protectors.

I am reminded of one of the tag lines from the television show The X-files: "Trust No One." Well, we're there, folks. Not only that, but we now assume the worst about each other until proven otherwise. The problem is, you cannot prove yourself if you are wounded or dead.

Many will point to the National Rifle Association as the villain in promoting gun ownership and the proliferation of those weapons. Are they not merely capitalizing on our growing distrust of our neighbors, the government, law enforcement, immigrants, other races, and those with different lifestyles? The media may be the catalyst in all of this. How many times can you hear about crime after violent crime, night after night on the evening news, before you start getting paranoid? Heck, we have entire television networks now devoted to covering crime twenty-four seven, three sixty-five.

Nothing like this kind of violent epidemic happens in a vacuum, or even from a single incident. We have the "military-industrial complex" which would be better called the "military-technology" complex today; but we've since added the "industrial-prison complex" with privatization of prisons and a larger incarcerated population than history has ever known....anywhere. Is it any wonder the powers-that-be have no interest in stopping crime? They cannot actively promote it, so the next best thing is to just ignore it, or kill two birds with one stone and throw up their collective hands and gesture to the gun lobby. We're all on our own and that suits the suits just fine. More gun sales, more inmates, more money.

Fear of terrorists is icing on the cake. They are actually more convenient scapegoats than they are a real domestic threat because yeah, Homeland Security has to do something to justify its bureaucratic existence. They do seem to be increasingly efficient at thwarting plots, but still at the cost of liquid-free airline flights, and pat-downs beforehand. The greatest price we pay, though, remains an eroding trust of our fellow man and woman. We are driven to, and oppressed by, suspicion, constantly reminded to assume the worst about a lonely bag in the terminal, or the passenger in a turban.

The propaganda is not limited to the airport of course, and the incessant refrain is to depend on "product" as the solution. Build a wall. Install the alarms and surveillance cameras. Take up arms. Prepare to defend yourself because everyone is out to get you. The only people out to get you are those in charge of the marketplace. They fleece you daily, and legally, feasting on your desire for comfort and security, and your weaknesses that stem from fear and loathing.

As long as profit is to be made from pitting average citizens against one another, the tyrants of the economy will continue to undermine our social, cultural, and institutional fabric. They may pull strings politically, but they are still at our mercy as consumers. We can still refuse to buy into their "logic," their merchandise, their system.

It is probably going to take a "Berlin Wall moment" to force change. An act of defiance, that is what we need now. Someone will think of something that goes beyond an ordinary protest, and the dominoes will fall. It won't be our government "leaders" who do anything. They have proven themselves incapable time and time again.

For our part, we have become too lazy, too distracted, and far too willing to "go with the flow" as dictated by authority figures. It is John Carpenter's film They Live, come to life. There is not even anything subliminal anymore in the commands to consume, obey, submit, conform, stay asleep, and shut up. We are wearing blinders of our own making and it is time to take them off, take up love guns, chew gum, and kick booty. I, for one, am all out of gum.

Good Guys Without Guns (or Lawyers)

The police came knocking on our door the other day. Turns out that another neighbor had called in a disturbing the peace report on our next-door neighbors who routinely argue if not worse. As I answered the policeman's questions, I began to feel guilty that I hadn't been the one to make the call myself. Then it occurred to me that my behavior had changed over recent history in part because personal intervention in neighborhood incidents is a lot more risky now. This is one of the unspoken consequences of the proliferation of guns in our American society: Unarmed good guys won't help you now.

I lived in a very ugly neighborhood in Cincinnati in the 1990s, and domestic violence and youth gangs were essentially weekly problems I faced in my apartment building. I had zero tolerance for either, and regularly spoke my mind to those doing the offending. Granted, now I have a spouse who's welfare I must consider as a higher priority than even my own, but there are plenty of reasons I rarely intervene in loud squabbles anymore. The biggest one is that I don't know what weapons they may bring to the fight. Logic and a good vocabulary don't seem to go very far these days.

Even aside from the potential for lethal force is the potential of legal force. Everyone is armed and litigation-happy. I better make sure that if I confront someone now, that it is on neutral territory. We have a homeowner's association here in our townhouse complex, so I'm not even sure where the boundaries are. I can't afford to open us up to a lawsuit from anybody.

This is why neighbors don't know each other anymore. We don't trust each other, we assume the worst, we value "privacy" above all else, and we don't participate in neighborhood events. This is certainly true of younger people for the most part. We have an annual neighborhood association meeting and it is attended by less than one dozen people.

Our neighborhood is also largely "minority." We don't know how to talk to each other even if we did want to. I am not saying ethnic diversity is a bad thing. Far from it, but everyone sticks with their own kind and it is at the least awkward to try and change that. The last time I spoke to any neighbor was because the postman had delivered their mail to our address.

I have no idea how to change any of this, and frankly my will to try has become mired in the inertia of the status quo. I would sooner run for public office than a leadership role in my own HOA. There is something more appealing about serving anonymous citizens than dealing with the pot-head across the walkway.

The bottom line is that I am embarrassed by the person I have become. I have maintained empathy and respect for the vulnerable among us, but have ceased to intervene out of fear and the "hassle" that often comes from doing so. Still, I will not give in to the point of purchasing a gun myself, or putting a lawyer on retainer. What to do instead of that remains the challenge.