Hug a Cop

As you near the top of the escalators in Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, you'll notice two or three senior citizens donning red, white and blue and waving little flags. All arriving uniformed military personnel are met by these enthusiastic seniors with clapping, handshakes, and words of thanks. It's probably the same in many of our airports: veterans and average civilians personally thanking our enlisted men and women for "all that [they] do." It's a good thing. Whether or not you agree with our foreign policy the men and women who volunteer for military service do deserve our gratitude.

I find it sad that we don't extend the same gratitude to police officers. Clearly there are differences between the two, and I'm not equating patrolling the streets of Norcross, GA, with those of Kandahar or Kabul. Nonetheless, when you volunteer to become a police officer, to serve and protect, you, too, place your life at risk for the greater good. Many police officers have made the "supreme sacrifice" in their service to our country. How many of you knew that 1) 161 police officers were killed in the line of duty in 2010, and 2) that only 16 of those deaths were considered accidental or health-related? Take a look for yourself.

Why don't we give the police the same respect and adoration we give our soldiers? Two reasons come to mind. One is the common (mis)perception that the police can't be trusted, that all police officers are corrupt. "All cops," I've been told, "are bad cops." Unfortunately, there are police officers who engage in racial profiling, destroy evidence, use unnecessary force, commit sexual assaults, and participate in those criminal activities they're charged to stop. However, you can no more say that all police officers are bad because some of them are bad anymore than you can say that all soldiers humiliate and torture prisoners, rape and murder civilians, and throw puppies off of cliffs simply because some of them have done just those things. The Department of Defense contends that such actions on the part of our soldiers are isolated incidents and those soldiers are in no way representative of the majority of men and women serving in the military. And we believe that because we know it to be true; we need it to be true. Well, I contend the same for our police force: the illegal and immoral actions of some officers are not representative of all officers. If you are one of those who believe that all cops are bad based of the actions of a few, then by your own logic, you must also believe that all our soldiers are rapists, murderers and animal abusers.

The other reason people don't readily give hero status to police officers is that the police have the power to punish us for our bad behavior, and we don't like that. Police have the thankless job of keeping us in line. They stop us for speeding, tell us to keep the music down, ticket us for public drunkenness, arrest us for shoplifting. We bitch that a cop is never around when we need one but are just as quick to bitch when they bust us for breaking the law. We want the enforcement of laws to apply to everybody but ourselves. And while we hystericize about police states, we conveniently forget that if it wasn't for the police there would be a lot more wife beaters, child molesters, gang bangers, dog fighters, rapists, burglars, and murderers hanging around neighborhoods, schools, and parks. Why don't we thank them for that?

Soldiers aren't perfect and there are some who aren't worthy of hero status; still, we recognize that most of them do the best they can and we honor and thank them for trying. Your local police officer deserves no less.