Why we ‘ Believe in the Blue’

Why we ‘ Believe in the Blue’

Evening Times Editor Law enforcement is our first line of defense against criminals, terrorists and anarchy. Each day they risk their lives. Many have died in the line of duty.

Living in a free society — a free country — is a birthright we as Americans may often take for granted, but it is something that would not be possible without our law enforcement agencies, at the local, county, state and federal level, each playing a role in protecting and serving the citizenry.

It’s easy to complain when we get a speeding ticket, when we see some injustice go un-punished, when we hear stories about police allegedly abusing power. But the protection we enjoy under the watchful eye of our policemen and policewomen is part of the Social Contract. We readily accept their protection and readily accept that protection with the caveat that we must be cooperative in order for them to do their jobs.

At least we should.

In the past year — perhaps the past several years — the relationship between average police officer and the average citizen has eroded significantly. At least that is what some would have you believe, based on how law enforcement has been portrayed in some circles.

In an age where even the most biased and uninformed among us has instant access to the mass dissemination of “information” at their fingertips, it can be difficult to sort through all the subterfuge and see the real nature of the policeman/citizen relationship.

Yes, there are bad people in the world. Some of them carry a badge and a gun. That’s just the way we as humans are made. But with thousands and thousands of local cops, county deputies, state policemen, federal agents, marshals, sheriffs, detectives, patrolmen, investigators and task force members working untold man-hours to keep us safe, those “bad seeds” are certainly a minimum representation of the entire law enforcement community.

That community? According to 2010 data, state and local law enforcement agencies employed more than 1.3 million men and women on a full-time basis, including about 765,000 duly sworn officers of the law — those trained and certified to uphold the law and granted general arrest powers. Those agencies also employed approximately 150,000 part-time employees, including 54,000 additional sworn officers. That is about 1 1/2 men and women who have answered the call of taking up the badge and gun (and camera, and pen & paper, and laptop computer, and dispatch radio, and lab-coat, and comforting blanket) to serve their fellow Americans (and Arkansans, and Crittenden County residents, and neighbors, and friends, and loved ones) with a career in law enforcement.

Nowadays, nearly incident in which a police officer uses his or her weapon in the line of duty becomes a front-page story, the lead on the nightly news, the featured link on the top of the web page, or the trending article in our Facebook feed. Is this “news?” Sure, but what about the other “news?” The news story about the policeman who helped a lost child find a parent at the park, who got a homeless man to the shelter before a cold winter’s night, who “simply” worked a 12-hour shift and then worked security at the football game to make a little extra money? How many of those stories were splashed across the Yahoo! news feed recently? But those stories surely outnumber the bad ones, right? 10-to-1, 100-to-1? Probably more like 1,000to-1. But there’s little in the way of TV ratings, or newspaper sales, or mouse clicks for those stories.

It’s often a thankless task Most often, an encounter with an agent of the law comes during a negative or stressful time in our lives. Whether it be during a traffic stop, an accident, an emergency call, or even during the commission of a crime or questioning about an incident in which a law was broken or a loved one was hurt or killed, the police often see us at our worst — when we are angry, or distraught, or nervous… or guilty.

Yes, guilty. Something that is seldom discussed in stories about police shootings or Op-ed pieces about corruption or abuse in the police system is the fact that our law enforcement men and women are very, very often dealing with criminals — criminals of both a violent and non-violent nature (and often that nature is apt to change from one to the other with little to no warning). These individuals may be murderers, rapists, thugs, drug dealers, junkies, mentally imbalanced, radical sociopaths, or maybe just bad people with a point to prove or a vendetta against the common good.

And there’s no way of knowing until it may be a life-or-death situation.

More than one police officer, often after a tragedy, has said, “There is no such thing as a ‘routine’ traffic stop.” And there is no such thing as a “normal” day on the job for a police officer.

It may be considered cliché in the world of TV cop shows for the protagonist’s spouse to say, “You just come back home at the end of the day,” as the star of the show heads out for a day on the job, but in the real world, it’s a real dayto- day for real police officers, because the threats out there are, indeed, real.

The difference between making it home at the end of the shift and not making it home at the end of the shift can often come down to making a very, very hard decision — and making it in less than a second. Is this person a threat? Is it safe to enter this building? Is that a gun? What is the right choice?

Not everyone can make that decision. And even those that can, sometimes get it wrong. We are only human. They are only human. But they are out there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. They are “out there,” while we enjoy the relative safety of “in here.”

And that’s why we “believe in the blue.”

By Ralph Hardin