Respect for the Law
A serious domestic threat is being ignored. Actually, it is not being ignored. It is being encouraged by some local, state, and national authorities.
This attitude of disrespect and disobedience is encouraged when members of Congress refer to the round up of over 700 illegal aliens working in plants in Mississippi as terrorist attacks.
Then, to add fuel to the fire, national media broadcasts over and over the clip of the little girl crying because ICE had just taken her Dad off to confinement.
Would the press reaction been the same if the girl’s father was being hauled off under a rape, assault, or robbery indictment?
Now add in several more morale busting practices, and the threat of declining police protection becomes obvious.
First is the open and applauded acts of public attacks on uniformed officers with water and other substances.
The scene of those two officers in New York being doused with buckets of water while they were outnumbered by a boisterous crowd is heartbreaking. If they had drawn their weapons and threatened the hoodlums, they probably would have been fired.
Second, is the unbelievable similar attacks on the officers under attack as they are negotiating with a criminal firing at them in Philadelphia.
Then we have the second guessing anytime an unarmed individual is shot. Invariably, rabble rousers will insist the shooting was unnecessary. They are never in the shoes of a policeman who thinks he is facing a life or death situation and must make a decision on what to do in a split second.
It is just a lot easier for someone who was not actively involved in the standoff to say something like, “He should have tried to talk him into calming down. Or he should have used a stun gun instead of a firearm.”
Combine all of this with relatively low pay, some cities reneging on pension plans, and the growing possibilities of being assaulted with various objects, including firearms, and the result is a declining number of law enforcement officers who are difficult to replace.
Reversing this trend toward ineffective and under staffed police forces will not be easy. There are too many underlying causes of this sad state of affairs.
Among the causes are Dr. Spock, feminism, latch-key kids, single parent homes, instant nationwide “news” coverage, home video games, and rabble rousers with the national TV megaphone.
All of these contributed in some way to the growing attitude of no respect for authority. This attitude has been simmering for decades.
In the 1980s, the late Clyde Thomas, Bill Tockhorn, and “Big Joe,” a newsman at KWHI Radio, told me separately that he had retired from teaching on the first possible date for the simple reason of the lack of authority to maintain discipline.
A decade before that, while living in Virginia, my children’s school was sued by the parents of a boy who had stabbed a teacher with a ball point pen.
The teacher had tried to control the unruly boy at an after school event and put his arms around him to get him out of the hall. The boy grabbed the teacher’s pen and stabbed him in the arm, but the parents were upset because the teacher had touched their previous prince.
That is a prime example of what happens when kids get no instruction or training on respecting authority and the importance of obeying or following instructions from the law officials who are there to protect us.
This is the environment in which younger generations have been and are being reared. It is the environment that leads the Sandra Bullocks of Prairie View fame to refuse to get out of the car when ordered to do so by a patrolman.
This is the environment in which Michael Brown, Jr., of Ferguson, Missouri, thinks it is OK to try to grab a policeman’s gun.
So here’s the perspective.
The United States is under threat. The threat is home made and home grown.
The media and a growing number of parents are fostering disrespect and disdain for law enforcement.
Some cities and states are openly refusing to obey the law when they establish sanctuaries for individuals who are violating the law every day they are in this country.
Members of Congress refer to ICE officials enforcing the law as terrorist attacks.
In an environment like that, why would anyone want to become a low paid police officer?
Who will protect us and our property when police forces dwindle to a few empty patrol cars?
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