A year ago in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a man died in police custody. The event was captured on multiple cell phone cameras and body cameras and the four officers on scene are all either waiting trial or, in one case, have been tried and found guilty of multiple criminal charges. The suspected criminal who died in police custody was African-American. The four officers who were involved in the arrest were Caucasian, Asian, African-American and Hispanic. Following the event, and the viral spread of videos online and via the mainstream media after it occurred, protests and riots broke out across our nation. What followed was a political movement demanding that the entirety of the law enforcement profession be dissolved, restricted, receive reduced funding, removed from civil rights protections and more.
Interestingly, the event was so widely publicized and has continued to be mentioned so frequently in all mainstream media outlets and on virtually every social media platform, that everyone reading this knows exactly what’s being talked about even though not a single name has been used. The criminal suspect who died in police custody was given three funerals, at least two of them rivaling those usually reserved for honored statesmen and dignitaries. The event and those that followed further fed the political divide in our country and were leveraged anywhere such could be seen as a benefit. Sadly, all of the political posturing and virulent statements fed, rather than starved, the racial chasm in our country.
While racism has never been erased in our country, we – as a nation – have made great strides to insure that it is as limited as humanly possible. And there is one particular word in that sentence that makes it impossible to erase racism: “humanly.” We humans are imperfect creatures. We ALL carry prejudice of some sort in our heart. It may not be prejudice toward a race or gender or religion, but we all have prejudices. Those of us who are honest with ourselves recognize those prejudices and (hopefully) do our best to minimize their impact on our behaviors and statements. There are also those among us, unfortunately, who embrace their prejudices, flaunt them and get their jollies trying to shock people with them. These people intentionally behave in a prejudicial manner and they make statements that anyone with common sense would find shock the conscience.
Unfortunately, in our world, people take sides and they do so sometimes based on what seems the smallest of details. One of the biggest prejudices I carry, and I freely admit this, is that I assume law enforcement professionals did the right thing and acted within all legal/agency restrictions until it has been proven otherwise. As a man who has been in the profession for approaching forty years now, my experience with unprofessional officers has been extremely rare. That’s not to say that it’s been non-existent. Yes, I’ve seen unprofessional and criminal behavior with my own eyes. Yes, I’ve reported it and have witnessed how law enforcement can police itself. Yes, I’ve heard officers make unprofessional statements. Yes, I’ve distanced myself from those officers I was less than comfortable working around.
You know what the reality is? The officers I considered unprofessional considered me unprofessional. It was a matter of perspective until adjudicated otherwise. The officers I distanced myself from were more than happy to not have me around. Something a fellow officer told me in the late 1980s will stick with me forever and I argued with him about it at the time: Everything is a matter of perspective. Everything.
To the police officer or deputy who gets dispatched to the armed robbery in progress; who shows up to find the suspect, as described in the dispatch, armed and exiting the building; who draws his own weapon and confronts the suspect; who watches the suspect raise the gun in the direction of the officer; who fires at the suspect in response to the presented threat… To that officer, the criminal suspect is exactly that: a criminal suspect. The person’s gender, race, age, religion, height, weight, etc. don’t matter beyond whether or not it matched the description given of the suspect committing the crime.
To someone else, that criminal suspect was/is (depending on the outcome) a brother, sister, son, daughter, husband, wife, mother, father, cousin, nephew, niece, etc. We are all more than the description of our demographics. I am not just a Caucasian middle-class heterosexual Judeo-Christian male. I am not just a police officer. No matter what uniform I’m wearing, whether I’m on or off duty, whether I’m with my family or alone – I am never just one thing; nor are criminal suspects.
But here is what we have to remember, and I don’t have any reason to think it will ever change:
We will never all agree. Thankfully, life is such that we all have different genetic and cultural makeups. We all have different religious backgrounds. We come from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds. Our families incorporate a wide variety of education levels and have worked in often vastly different professions. Even twin siblings are radically different. So how do we humans, so universally different from each other, manage to come together over… anything? In this case, how do we bridge the gap between law enforcement and the communities we serve?
First, recognize that in some cases we can’t and never will. Perhaps our biggest challenge will always be the people who have no desire or willingness to meet in the middle and hold discussions. There will always be the people who simply want all law enforcement done away with – and some of them actually believe that without police officers, there would be no criminals. Those people don’t understand the human heart and although they are aware that evil exists, they somehow think it’s created by the existence of good. So if we get ride of 100% of the good, then all evil will go with it, right? No… it makes no sense, but there it is. There are those we will never be able to make happy unless we cease to exist. Set them aside.
Second, understand that we humans, in general, fear what we don’t know or don’t understand. For my almost four decades in law enforcement, I’ve seen plenty of policy, protocols and tactics that we like to “keep secret,” because if the criminals who target us have the information, then they can target us even easier. Too many law enforcement professionals die in the line of duty each year (about 160 on average, or one every other day) and we’ve worked hard to reduce that number for the length of my career. The unfortunate reality is that while we’d all like to see that number be zero deaths in the line of duty, we’ll never get there. Accidents happen. Evil does exist in the human heart. People do hate the police, even if unreasonably. We will never get to zero line of duty deaths in a year, but we have to continue to strive for it. Sometimes that does mean protecting operational protocols. That said, can we be more transparent in meaningful ways?
I’d love to teach a class to the general public about something as simple as a traffic stop. Why do we do all of the things we do? What do we do that protects us physically and what do we do that creates evidence for investigation after the fact if something goes sideways? Such a class would have to start out with helping those in attendance understand this one simple reality: We put on a uniform and go to work each day knowing full well that we might not go home that night. We kiss our spouses goodbye and THEY know it might be the last kiss from us they ever get. We hug our children knowing that, from that day forward, they might have to grow up with just a single parent.
We recognize these harsh realities. We accept them. We go do the job. We don’t understand why people don’t thank us for it. Reality is that a great many people do. We fall victim to the mainstream media just like everyone else if we’re not careful. Yes, when I worked patrol there were a few hoodlums that I knew had it out for me; that I knew would attack and kill me if they could find the opportunity. But they were far outnumbered by the number of good people in the community I served; the people who would smile and wave and thank me for being there; the people who would offer me a paper plate full of food when I had to work Thanksgiving or Christmas; the people who would offer me a cold soda and some fried chicken with a side of potato salad on Independence Day or Memorial Day.
Just as we say that less than 1/10th of 1% of all law enforcement professionals tarnish the badge, we have to remember that percentages apply to the communities we serve as well. Maybe two or three people out of the 3,000 person community I last policed were “bad guys.” That’s actually less than 1/10th of 1%. No, we don’t know who all the “bad guys” are (are we supposed to call them “bad actors” now?). We never know who is out to do us in or who will happily thank us as we do our jobs. Yes, we have to take certain actions to minimize and mitigate risk as we deal with the public we serve. No, they won’t always understand why and might get offended by our behavior.
And THAT is where we can act to minimize the void between us. We can explain to them why we do what we do. I can’t imagine that having a person with a good heart know why I take certain precautionary measures is going to make them suddenly turn evil and take advantage of that knowledge. The people with evil in their hearts are already looking for every way to get around our protective measures and their own behavior will give them away.
We HAVE to cross that void with communication. We HAVE to welcome citizen interaction and offer forums where we can discuss why we do what we do; the threats we face (as we perceive them); our policies and more. Yes, reform is required and no, it’s not defunding, disarming, etc. We reform every year and on an on-going basis. We reform in response to public outcry, insurance mandates, court decisions, lessons learned from critical incidents and more. We HAVE to take control of that message…
Or the next time a person dies in police custody and the event can be leveraged by the mainstream media / social media pundits, we’ll go through all of this same trouble, violence and challenge. It’s up to us as community leaders. So… what actions are you taking to open the discussion floor? Do you support the communication effort to reach out in your community?
Lt. Frank Borelli (ret), Editorial Director | Editorial Director
Lt. Frank Borelli is the Editorial Director for the Officer Media Group. Frank brings 20+ years of writing and editing experience in addition to 40 years of law enforcement operations, administration and training experience to the team.
Frank has had numerous books published which are available on Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, and other major retail outlets.
If you have any comments or questions, you can contact him via email at [email protected].