By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D
If you’re like me, you might miss the day when you could read something in the newspaper and have to wait a few days to see if anyone wrote a letter to the editor about it. Now with immediate reactions affixed to online articles, it takes little effort and little thought to throw out an insult, a threat, or an affirmation.
A tweet from the New York City Police Benevolence Association referred to an article about assaults on police officers, including photos of an injured officer and statistics showing injuries to NYPD officers are up 32% this year, a commentator felt compelled to say “cops have been harassing young people forever.” A tweet by a police supporter decrying attacks on officers yielded commentary about “the corrupt weaponizing of police” and “using trained pitbulls against law abiding citizens.” When I wrote about police officers having to be alert while off-duty, one Twitter commentator snarked that it means cops can kill whenever they want to.
It is not unusual for me, since I am not difficult to find on social media, to get harassed, threatened, and slandered after an article or radio or television appearance. From depicting me as a farm animal defecating in a pigsty to being described as an ignoramus out of touch with reality (uhm, they didn’t read my biography) the particularized, personalized hate due to my defense of the policing profession has been a constant drumbeat since I began writing for online publications a long time ago. I’m not complaining. It is the cost of standing up for something.
What grieves me is not the criticism, but the irrational venomous hate. And it’s not a personal grievance because I don’t mind being David to any Goliath out there. What hurts is the embedded broad-brush disrespect that can be found among those clamoring for police reform. Let me be clear that I’m not, in turn, painting reformers with that same broad brush. Where policing needs to improve I’m all in. If we can ease racial tensions, we must. If we can improve performance, let’s do it. If we need to refocus, then refocus.
But if we need to cease to exist, as some would desire, that we cannot allow. If we are asked to do more and train more while being robbed of the resources to do so, no reform will come to pass. If we need to stop enforcing the laws that are established by democratic processes by the legislature, it is the legislature that must act. Unfortunately, legislatures have responded not based on crime data and a recognition of law and order, but to the loud and often hateful and violent voices that want policing to simply go away and let people behave themselves. And I’d consent to that if the history of humanity showed hope of that happening. Police-free zones have been tried to tragic result.
The celebrations of criminality and wholesale criticism of law enforcement are literally costing lives and livelihoods as those bent toward crime find favor over those whose task is to prevent and control it. The continued lie of “hands up, don’t shoot” remains a common mantra to those with no interest in Truth with a capital “T.” When a sitting President chooses to armchair quarterback police activity against a powerful friend of his and labels officers as “behaving stupidly,” then further insults the profession with a non-apology invitation for beer and nuts, the snarling anti-police crowd salivates and grins. When political figures invite survivors of justifiable police intervention to be treated as heroes, the police become, by default, the arch-enemy. When legislatures make stupid decisions (I’m talking to you, west coast) that penalize police officers for being police officers, this is not reform, it’s spite and persecution. Those interested in real change must reject the violent and extreme as allies in order to make progress where progress is needed.
If the profession of law enforcement, and the underpinning social contract for orderly co-existence need revision, there is no place for hate and disrespect on either side of an honest debate. In the words of one unlikely philosopher, “Can’t we all just get along?”
This article originally appeared at the National Police Association and was reprinted with permission.
