OK, this comes from a place of frustration after seeing countless law enforcement officers (LEOs) and civilians reply to complaints about I.C.E. murders, police brutality, racial profiling in law enforcement, etc. with “But there are good (insert your LEO here) too.
It’s hard to stand against a member of your community. It takes strength. It takes commitment to better values. It take courage. But, a truly good LEO will:
1. Live up, through their actions, not just their words, to the best values of their agency, our society, and, above all, common decency and humanity.
2. Protect those that can’t protect themselves, even and especially from members of law enforcement agencies.
3. Speak up, loud and proud, against corruption and abuse in their agency, even at the risk of their job or worse. This includes speaking truth to power, be it their superiors in their agency or further up in the structures of government.
4. When in a position of leadership, use it to support the “good apples” and weed out the “bad apples” in a manner both ethical and efficient.
5. Accept and admit their mistakes, no matter how grave, instead of lying and using the power of their agency to cover them up.
If you are not able, for lack of morals or lack of courage, to do all these things, law enforcement is not the profession for you.
Ultimately, LEOs that do not make an active choice to stand against corrupt and/or abusive members of the law enforcement community are equally culpable as the actively bad actors for the loss of trust we as a society now have in law enforcement agencies. Edmund Burke (or at least a paraphrasing of some of his thoughts) said it best: “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.”
Leave a Reply