The following post is from Cop In The Hood, a blog written by an ex-police officer and an associate professor in the Department of Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. His experience has given him a unique perspective on the ambush of police officers in Dallas this past week.
You can find the original post here.
Tone It Down
Words have the power to inspire, inflame, provoke. Or else we wouldn’t say them. When words inspire others to kill, however deranged those others might be, we must see the consequences.
When those on the political right speak against immigrants, Muslims or abortion, those on the left are quick and correct to observe that words inspire crimes of hate and violence. Similarly, when those on the left speak against police officers — not just bad ones, but all police officers — this, too, can have consequences.
No matter one’s beliefs, we all need to call out extremism and hate, especially given American’s absurdly easy access to guns. No matter how many good people have guns, they cannot always stop a bad person with a gun. An armed society is clearly not always a polite society, so we need to tone it down.
Police need to realize that some in their ranks make mistakes, both honestly and maliciously. This needs to be better acknowledged by those in law enforcement. But just as decent society does not hold every black, Muslim, or white Christian responsible for the murderous acts of a deranged few, it is a mistake to blame hundreds of thousands of police officers for the bad deeds of a few.
In my call for common ground and more civility, I received nasty emails or tweets from some A) protesters, B) cops, C) blacks, D) whites, and E) gun nuts. So I must be doing something right.
By: Peter Moskos
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