Eric's blog - hey cops...you're doing it wrong

I rarely use the phrase ‘butthurt’, because it annoys me. In fact, I believe that there has been only one time I typed it. And that was two sentences ago. But it is the exact right word to use to describe the current behaviour of police officers the world over. It’s a terrifically evocative, if obnoxious word. And I will use it once more, to introduce my central point here – please, police! Stop acting so damn butthurt, all the time!

The main reason I ask this of you, is that it isn’t helping. In fact, it’s exacerbating a very real problem – the divide between the people who mistrust police, and the police who have to earn that trust. What you’re saying, cops, is ‘we don’t have to earn respect from anyone. We have a badge. And a uniform. And we expect carte blanche respect and trust based solely on those two things.’ To which many people, quite reasonably, might respond ‘f- you’. Because this is akin to saying ‘I may have screwed around on your mom for years, gambled away your college tuition and spent eighteen years drunk, unemployed and abusive. But you WILL respect me because I’m your dad.’ It shouldn’t work that way, should it?

Famously, NYPD cops have started turning their backs on New York mayor Bill De Blasio during funerals, among other things. Why? Because they are butthurt. Following the death of Eric Garner in that police chokehold, De Blasio had the temerity to suggest that the police were not all perfect. And the audacity not to crush the protests that arose in the wake of several questionable killings of black men at the hands of white police. And not supporting the police 100% in all things, at all times, is akin to treason. For some reason.

I came across a quote from an NYPD spokesperson, when he was asked about De Blasio’s surprise at the disrespect the police were showing him. This is direct – “What it comes down to is that most cops are ‘blue’ before they’re anything else. That’s what he failed to take into consideration. He doesn’t understand the police culture, which is an us vs. them mentality.” I think he may have missed the irony. THAT’S THE PROBLEM. When it’s ‘us vs. them’, it becomes quite easy for everyone not wearing a uniform to consider themselves part of the ‘them’.

When it comes to the NYPD and their turning their backs on the mayor, the problem isn’t that they don’t like the mayor. Fine. They seem to blame him for the death of two police officers who were shot in the wake of the protests. Which is debatable, but a (weak) case could be made that had De Blasio authorized police to crush the protests or something, then maybe that shooting might never have happened. So okay – you can cry about it in your changeroom and over your beer and beside the lockers. But once you make it a public statement, you’re doing something entirely different. And once you start working half-shifts and barely enforcing the law as a form of protest, you’ve gone way, way too far. What you’re saying is that your hurt feelings are going to affect the way you do your job. Like a child who says ‘oh, you want me to eat the broccoli? Fine then. I won’t eat at all, ever again. That’ll show you.’ You’re police. You’re supposed to be better than that!

You want the public to hold you, the police, in high esteem. Right? You want their respect and their trust. In fact, you expect that. But if you want that, it comes at a price – the price of the public also holding you to a higher standard than they do everyone else.

And it’s not just the NYPD – it’s the Cleveland Police, who demanded that Browns’ WR Andrew Hawkins be disciplined for wearing a shirt in support of shooting victims. This was the police statement: “It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law. They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology.” To which the Browns, to their credit, said ‘no’. What they should have said was ‘f- you’.

It’s also whatever asshat started the online funding campaign for the police officer who was filmed shooting Walter Scott in the back as he ran away on the weekend.

And there are myriad other examples of the police reacting like victims across the States. But I’m not writing this because of the misguided PR of so many American police departments. I’m not even doing this to weigh in on the epidemic of questionable shootings or the protests that have sprung up in their wake. I’m writing this because I’m starting to see it in Canada, where police shootings are (less of) an issue.

I have two very good friends who are local cops, like to post on social media, often in defense of cops who are accused of wrongdoing the world over, or to complain about the media treatment of those incidents. And that is, of course, their right. The way it is the right of those who want to protest those incidents to do so. But I fear this divisiveness, this ‘us vs. them’ mentality, is crossing borders and becoming more acute here in the North as a spillover from the tone-deaf response of police in the US.

I’ve seen police officers in this region post stuff like this:

I’m not going to go into all the reasons this poster is wrong and entirely missing the point – you can read here why ‘all lives matter’ and ‘black lives matter’ are NOT interchangeable or equal. What this does is simply one thing – it creates a false equivalency between police officers gunned down in the line of duty by the criminals they are trying to apprehend, and citizens being gunned down by the very people who are supposed to protect them from that violence. Both are certainly tragic. But they are not in any way the same thing.

And what it does is continue to promote the butthurt police hand-wringing. It attacks ‘the media’, for ‘promoting an agenda’. It attacks the masses of people who are voicing outrage based on years of mistrust of police and dozens if not hundreds of incidents that bred that mistrust. It also attacks people for simply thinking that the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Aiyana Jones, Walter Scott, or any number of others are tragedies. It says ‘how come you think that’s a tragedy, but not this?’ When most people would reasonably think all of it is tragic. But now you’re forcing us, regular people, to take sides by throwing up this straw man.

The worst thing about it is that by attacking people in this way, you’re making ‘us vs. them’ SO MUCH WORSE. You have now basically declared war on the whole media, politicians, lawmakers, and ALL OF THE PEOPLE. How can I trust you, the police officer with the badge and uniform, when you’re going to vilify me for simply believing #BlackLivesMatter? When my sympathy for Walter Scott and his family is taken as a personal insult by police officers somewhere across the continent who have nothing to do with that shooting?

I’ve never had an issue with any officer, ever. Actually – I was pulled over on my way to work Tuesday morning by an Ottawa cop who might have been the actual nicest person I’ve met in years. (Sticker violation.) But the more I read police officers putting this angry, divisive stuff out there, the more nervous I will get if and when I ever have to (really) deal with one. It’s time to turn that back around. Be better than the rest of us, cops. You’re supposed to be. So shut up with your butthurt.