LET: February - On Your Watch

Let’s not pretend that being a cop in this day and age is easy. It’s not. Take the recent case in Cleveland, where a police officer shot and killed a 12-year-old boy brandishing a toy gun that looked as good as real.

Critics calling for the police officer to be indicted have no idea what it’s like to be standing in front of someone you reasonably believe might shoot you or an innocent and have to make that split-second decision, the one no cop wants to make.

It’s easy to sit on one’s ample rear end in front of a television and make the decision for police officers who were on the scene. And I promise you, if that officer had failed to stop a suspect wielding a real gun and who had gone on to shoot other innocent people as a result of that failure, they’d be screaming just as loud.

So I am going to tell you what I was always told: don’t bother to argue with people like that. Just do your job. As an old friend of mine used to say, “Never mud wrestle with a pig; you’ll lose and the pig enjoys it.” Instead, do your job with the utmost integrity and recognize that this spate of anti-police bias shall pass.

In the meantime, police executives should continue to do everything they can to boost the morale of their officers. In my last column, I offered a few suggestions and promised to deliver a few more in my next column. Here they are, and I’d like to give credit for most of these ideas to my friend and frequent pen-pal, Kent Fletcher, deputy police chief of the Durham, N.C., police (retired). He has some great ideas.

• If your department doesn’t already have one, start a Citizen’s Academy. We have one in my area and they help stir awareness of what officers really face in their day-to-day jobs.
• Put a few reporters and community activists through shoot/don’t shoot firearms training. Let them see firsthand how difficult it is to make a split-second, life-defining decision.
• Give interdepartmental awards and publicize them.
• Use social media. Many departments are already doing so with great success. Good news, good deeds and the ability to show that police don’t always take themselves so seriously can go a long way toward changing public perceptions.
• Chiefs should stand by their officers and show them support. That doesn’t mean that wrongdoing by an officer should be overlooked. But it does mean that officers should expect the benefit of the doubt from their boss. (I recall one police chief whose department was under fire cozying up to the mayor — one of the department’s least stalwart defenders — at a press conference. A couple months later, he’d been given the boot.)
• Actively recruit support from service organizations, pastors, the Chamber of Commerce and those with the ability to help frame your department in a positive light.
• Consider extending your Community Watch program. And if you don’t have one, start one now. Community watches give officers the chance to personally interact with members of the community, some of whom will never have any other contact.
• Cultivate the media. Create opportunities for them to showcase the good things police do. The right media contacts can make or break a department.

The bad news is that it’s more difficult than ever to be an officer; the good news is that those who dislike cops are a small, vocal minority. This too, shall pass. (Next month, a look at what one former police trainer says is being neglected.)