Over the course of the past couple years we have seen a growing number of videos and court cases appear online.  These instances are becoming more and more common with each growing day.  The reason for this? Technology. But not just technology. People that want to raise awareness of the mistreatment of others.  One of the biggest public issues right now is the methods used by police officers to confront or subdue their persons of interest. I do not like to write about this stuff because it is very opinionated and I respect anyone who is willing to put others before themselves, especially in life threatening situations. But, I feel as if I need to talk about this because I see people want change but go about it the wrong way.

I see friends and strangers on facebook and other social media sites talking about how racism plays a big role in situations, especially ones dealing with officers and blacks.  I see friends saying that cops are power hungry assholes that don’t deserve respect.  This bothers me a lot. These people are willing to put other peoples lives before their own. Some may make mistakes in critical moments, some may choose between their life or their suspects life but does that mean that they are bad cops? Does that make them racist? This kind of logic is upsetting to me because people let their emotions and hatred for a group and base their beliefs on that hatred. This is not to say that there are truly bad cops out there but it wouldn’t be fair to generalize. But that is the reality of it. There are bad people in this world and there are good people. Some of those bad people are cops but also some of those good people are as well.

Now you have to believe that people with that kind of resentment towards a particular group of people have good reasons to, right? But, whenever the issue is race those people are going to be biased. The most public instances have been black males killed by officers (majority of them being white). And that has been about three (the ones that got the most media attention)? Maybe there have been more but there has also been the same instances vice versa that you don’t hear anything about because the media wants to focus on what will get the most views.  An example would be the riots in Baltimore, plenty of footage on that, but not the protests that are peaceful.   I’m not saying the cops are correct in their decisions or that they weren’t in the wrong. But, they should be given benefit of the doubt until it is proven that they did something wrong. And if they did something wrong, then the rest of  the community should not be held responsible for the actions of a select few. Not every cop is a bad person and not every bad person should be killed.

This is where I think a lot of people differ from me. I believe that in order to make a change we need to come together as a group.  Not in a destructive way like what happened in Baltimore or anywhere else in the world because that won’t improve our circumstances and it won’t invoke positive change in the community.  We need to stand together and make the best choices possible for our country. Remember, we the people have the ability to make change. It won’t be politicians who are in it for themselves. We push change by electing the best officials, standing together in protests (peacefully), and by our actions.