This is from a former teacher I had and respect. He posted this on Facebook.
'I Back the Blue and So Should You
Six months ago, I got a phone call from Prof. Lawrence Sherman, director of the Graduate Program in Applied Criminology at Cambridge University, UK. I was expecting a call. An interview with a professor is part of the application process. I wasn’t expecting to hear from the boss, however. The conversation went well. Happily, my bid for admittance was successful. I am now a student at Cambridge University, where I’m taking an advanced degree in Applied Criminology and Police Management.
The call with Dr. Lawrence came after I’d submitted a paper entitled: “The Proclivity Toward Legitimacy.” It’s an Ivy League sounding title, I know. “Proclivity” speaks of interior dispositions and impulses; and “legitimacy,” in the context its use in criminology at Cambridge, is akin to ethics, values and virtues. At issue in the paper I’d submitted, and of interest for the research I’ll conduct for my dissertation at Cambridge, is ethics, police officers and police training.
I’m not altogether sure that race was the issue in the unfortunate death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Of the four officers involved on scene, it is my understanding that one was White, another Black, another Hispanic and another Asian. Because I don’t believe in trial by news clips on CNN, I’m minded to hold back judgement till an autopsy comes back, and a Grand Jury and Jury sees and weighs all the evidence. Though I’m game to hold off till then, I do believe there are some poor training issues worth addressing.
Because I direct a police academy in the Dallas-area, I’m more naturally disposed to think of training. Training-related misjudgments include an officer applying pressure in vicinity of a man’s neck and throat while he is in custody. That other officers didn’t act to correct that, similarly, is a serious breach of judgement—and a training-related issue. Police are trained in the police academy to not do, participate in or allow this sort of thing. The values are enforced in field training after cadets finish in the academy. A man is now dead because the training evaporated. Tragic.
I personally believe those officers and their supervisors should be held appropriately accountable for their actions and inactions. Speaking of “believe,” in no uncertain terms, I do not believe that police are inherently racist, or that policing itself, as a vocation, is systemically racist. There are bad apples in every bunch. That said, I honestly believe police officers in the USA to be some of the finest people on planet earth. Every police officer I know is saddened by George Floyd’s death and the events in its aftermath. I believe that police will come out of it the better, and that policing, itself, will continue to make progressive strides forward, so officers can better serve the communities we protect with our very lives. I back the blue and so should you.'