The Fights

 Man it has been heartbreaking to hear what law enforcement is facing right now, and not only because my husband is an officer. Although I am grateful for the much broader perspective I've gained from living it second hand.

After one of his crew members was sent to the ER from getting beat up during a fight last week I got this Marco Polo from him:
"We don't get to fight to incapacitate. We don't get to try to fight to knock someone out. We have to try and put them in handcuffs. We have to try to fight fair while these guys are douche bags and then we are worried about every little thing we do is going to be wrong in the eyes of the public and we're going to lose our jobs or be arrested anyways. Everything kind of sucks right now, but people can keep yelling and screaming as we keep going out and making sure everyone is okay, that everyone is safe, while they are sitting there yelling and screaming that we are idiots and we suck. It's just frustrating. The hard thing is that people just do not understand. You will never understand unless you have done this job. You show me how you handle going up to deal with somebody. Everything sounds easy when all it is is words, but it's a different thing to actually have to do it."

Why should police have to fight fair when the people fighting them are not fighting fair?! These fights are not caged fights with referees making sure that everyone obeys the rules about where you can hit someone. Police aren't magically matched with someone of similar weight and size. Usually the people they fight are drunk or high on drugs, meaning that they are numb to pain and often have super strength. How do you use pain to control someone that can't feel pain? How do you subdue them enough to put handcuffs on? Some fights are impossible for them to win! Doesn't matter what race or gender you are, police will respond to your BEHAVIOR. It is 100% the civilian's choice to make it a fight or not. Where is their responsibility for their actions? If you don't want to get thrown to the ground, or possibly die, then don't fight. Simple as that.
So when is a police shooting justified? AFTER someone shoots them first and hopefully misses? A gun is the only weapon actually considered to be a weapon that could kill someone? I truly want to understand what it is that the public expects them to do.
In an instant police have to make decisions that take MONTHS for a lawyer. They can't please everyone and they'll never be perfect. They are still human. And they'll forever be hated for it.

And then society says police work is unjust?! What I think IS unjust is sharing versions of police shootings that leave out the most important details of why that shooting was justified. The weapon the person had, the fact that they swung it at officers, the criminal activities they were being confronted about, etc. It's super frustrating to see so many people sharing all that hate for our law enforcement without even including all the facts in order to propel the false narrative that police are murdering, racist, hunters of the innocent, when it was 89 police officers that were killed in the line of duty last year. Rayshard Brooks was killed for being asleep in his car?! Thinking that is the whole story is unjust and dishonest. "If you are trying to make these cops into racist killers, you're just a dishonest person."
And people who think the nation is safe enough to abolish police are living their own kind of privileged life, absent of the truth of crimes BECAUSE the police have been protecting you from them. They don't get to deem a call too dangerous to even enter, like firefighters do.
The kinds of things I get to think about as a police wife; how excited I am to give Kyle his Father's day present, but considering if he dies at work this week I won't get to give it to him, then being so happy that we made it to Wednesday when he doesn't have to go to work again before Father's day so that I know he'll be able to see his present. 
What if he gets hurt at work and I miss his call in the night and don't get there in time when all the time left might be to say goodbye?
And make sure I don't answer the door for anyone I don't know and to remember the code for the safe with the guns in case someone who has threatened his family decides to follow him home from work, even though he doesn't even wear a wedding ring BECAUSE he is a police officer. 

My husband's profession is not an unjust profession. There is not a "collective rot" in law enforcement because of a few bad apples. Most of them are out serving an protecting and deserve the right to protect themselves and others. Or else who would even sign up for the job? People demand more training or requiring a college degree; Do it, we all agree! BUT that will also require higher pay because very few people are going to be willing to invest the time and money it takes to get a college degree in order to make only 50K a year.

Police should get more education, society should educate themselves on what a LEO's job even is and those in poverty need access to better education, in order to get out of poverty. Police shootings follow crime and crime follows poverty. Not just race.
Out of 375 million contacts that police make with civilians each year, only NINE fatal police shootings were "unarmed" black victims last year.
"By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer."
So who is "hunting" whom?
https://www.dailywire.com/news/mac-donald-statistics-do-not-support-the-claim-of-systemic-police-racism?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=benshapiro