The Unnecessary demonization of police officers in America
In the midst of all the left-wing mainstream media bias about police shootings, many Americans have forgotten that most police officers contribute a lot to society. This stereotype has become more accepted with the influence from the Black Lives Matter movement. Many BLM advocates do respect police officers and understand aren’t mostly cold-blooded killers, but there are still a lot of people not just in the BLM movement that still believe that police are evil racist murderers.
Many African-Americans will say that they are scared of walking down the street and getting arrested or shot by police simply because they are black, or something along those lines. That is a highly unreasonable fear, blacks have little to worry about as long as they follow the law and do as the police say.. 90% of any police shooting was the result of someone breaking the law and aren’t just shooting every minority they come across.
For example, Mario Woods allegedly stabbed someone. When the police found him, he had a knife and wouldn’t put it down when the police asked him to. Then they used every single non-lethal tool in their arsenal and he still wouldn’t go down. The police ended up shooting him for allegedly stabbing someone and resisting arrest.
One of the more well known and recent police killings is the death of Alton Sterling, a man who was a registered sex offender and had an arrest record. A homeless man called 911 claiming that a man threatened him with a gun that may have looked like him. Did the police use excessive force? Yes, but it could have easily been avoided if he wasn’t resisting arrest.
Another well known “police killing” is the death of Eric Garner, I say “police killing” in quotation because he didn’t even die from the police choking him. Eric garner died because he had a heart attack in the ambulance, not from the choking itself. Plus, the reason the police ganged up on him is because, believe it or not, big guys resisting arrest take more than one officer to take down.
A more recent police killing is Keith Richards in Charlotte. Richards had a lengthy criminal record and even threatened his family at one point. In the video of his death, you can clearly hear his wife yelling at him saying “Keith don’t let them break the window!” And “Don’t you do it Keith!” Now, if Richards was truly minding his own business and not resisting arrest, why would his wife shout those things at him?
There are a slew of other cases that involve African Americans getting killed because they resisted arrest, but you would be bored from the amount that there are. Were the police using excessive force? Yes, but those situations could have easily been avoided if they simply complied with law enforcement. As long as people of any race simply don’t resist the police or do anything illegal then they probably will not get shot.
African Americans should be more scared of being around someone of their own race than a white police officer. Because believe it or not, blacks kill each other more than police officers.
There are many people who also have brought up that “every 28 hours a black person is shot by police,” and/or “1250 blacks a year die from a police officer.” Firstly, the “every 28 hours” has been debunked numerous times. The study was informal and incredibly biased, it should never be used in a serious debate.
The “1250 deaths” statistic on the other hand, is also not very reliable. Sure, 1250 people dying is a lot. However, most of those blacks that were killed probably committed a serious crime and fired at a police officer. There’s no way of knowing for sure, and even if 90% of the blacks killed were unarmed, it’s still a very small portion of the black population.
The blacks paranoid of police officers shooting at them are exactly the same as the paranoid white christian conservatives that are worried about getting killed by Muslim terrorists. Both sides need to stop being overly paranoid and realize that the chances of getting shot by police or blown up by terrorists are very unlikely.
Unlike Muslim terrorists, police officers are capable of doing nice things to people. Like the time police officers helped a black disabled kid fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer by having him lead the 2013 Covington Christmas Parade as an honorary police office. It’s a little ironic considering that this happened in Georgia, the state with 8 KKK chapters.
Another example is the heartwarming, yet tragic story of Officer Henwood. He was buying a young African-American boy a cookie from McDonald's. Minutes later, Henwood was shot and killed. It’s a shame this is a less known story than the deaths of blacks that may or may not be committing a crime.
The third story is about when a police officer pulled over black man with his daughter in the back (sounds familiar). Instead of shooting him or give him a ticket, the officers asks him why doesn’t his daughter have a booster seat. The man told the officer that he’s going through some rough times, so the officer told the man to follow him to Wal-Mart and bought his daughter a booster seat.
Once again, there are still plenty more examples of police doing very kind things, but we’d be here all day. The point here is that police aren’t all evil demons that actively seek out minorities to kill. Although most will agree that there are police officers that really shouldn’t be police officers, but they are thankfully the minority.
Most police officers are genuinely kind people who have families to feed and regularly save lives. Unfortunately, the mainstream media loves focus on isolated incidents that make cops look like murderers. Everyone gets serious and mournful when an African American is shot, but very few bat an eye when police get shot and killed. The negative image of police portrayed by the media is revolting and needs to stop.
~Jake R.
