In Support of Our Police When I was young police officers were respected. I remember my mother telling me to behave or the police would arrest me. She was referring to something not taken very seriously today, it was the possession of fire works. I was a young teenager and didn’t listen. We lived across from a wooded park which was quite large. A stone wall formed the boundary between the park and the rest of the area on one side. The wall was about four feet high. I decided this would be a great place to set off some firecrackers. I placed one on the wall and lit it placing some sticks over it and just as my luck would have it a policeman came around from the other side and asked me what I was doing and while he asked that question, he leaned near the lit fireworks which went off. He proceeded to drag me home to my mother who by then thought I was going to become a convict in one of the city’s jails. He gave me a stern warning while my mother was hollering at me and he said not to do it again. I think he might have let me go except for the fact the explosion startled him. The point is we all had a lot of respect for the police. Today that is missing in many places. A report has come out which states a majority of police officers nationwide are complaining their jobs have become far more difficult. Police are committing suicide. In New York City alone five police have killed themselves in the month of June 2019. The pressure on them by their superiors is tremendous. All one has to do is watch how the police in New York City were treated when they wanted to turn off some fire hydrants. People chased then throwing water on them and shooting at them with water guns. Two poor police were drenched by buckets of water being poured over them. The two police never turned around and just kept walking, obviously they were told not to respond and just take the assaults and humiliation. These police are so afraid of losing their jobs they are forced to allow this to happen to them. This time it was water, what might it be next time? Police are scared of being charged with crimes in dealings with law breakers. In New York City the mayor hardly mentions what is happening to the police and certainly doesn’t seem to care. Can’t the same be said of many big cities across the country? One of the problems when crime rises is the statistics are fudged many times to either hide the fact crime is rising or show it is not as bad as it really is. Some cities have decided some former crimes are no longer crimes like jumping over a train turnstile and not paying. Public urination is either not a crime anymore in some places or just not enforced. This has gotten so bad there are cities with cleanup crews to clean up human urination and defecation which is in the streets and on the sidewalks. We are becoming a nation whose standards are as bad or worse than the worst third world countries. If people do not respect the law or even themselves how can we expect them not to commit crimes? When some people are arrested, they claim they are being picked on for various reasons thus trying to deflect why they were arrested in the first place and they tell a different story on social media and some people buy their story and start screaming about unfair arrests and such. The police are not perfect, but in most cases the arrests they make are warranted. The amount of police suicides in Chicago has also been increasing, is this also an indication police feel frustrated and unhappy and can’t take the pressure of not being able to do their jobs correctly without having to worry about being charged with some violation and possibly losing their jobs or even worse, going to jail? The pressure on police, especially in large cities, has increased dramatically and in many cases is caused by political pressure not pressure about doing the right thing. Did you ever wonder why 650 people were killed in Chicago in 2017? One of the reasons is they have at least 750 street gangs according to 2016 crime figures. Experts say they can’t figure out why the murder rate is so high, but it seems clear enough at least in one area. That area is turf wars. Unless the officials running the city decide to break up these gangs the number of murders will never go down consistently. So many people are being murdered in Chicago the murder rate is higher than the bigger cities in the United States such as New York and Los Angeles. Could it be the police are being restrained for some reason? Here is a sad fact, in 2018 the number of police officers killed in line of duty was 129 nationwide, but the number of police officers who committed suicide nationwide was 167. While I have not been able to find statistics for the amount of police suicides in Los Angeles, I presume it won’t be much different than the other big cities and also a problem. When people who serve the public and try and carry out their duties and want to do the right thing are thwarted it begins to depress them. They become afraid if they follow orders and do nothing and something bad happens, they will get into trouble and if they do something because they think something bad will happen because someone is breaking the law they will also get into trouble and in either case could lose their jobs. This preys on people’s minds and after a while they begin to break under the stress and this is directly related to those above them who give the orders. It is a lose, lose situation and sometimes people feel hopeless and it is in these times they are the most vulnerable and are no longer rational and feel hopeless and think there is no way out of this mess and they commit suicide. As things get worse in the big cities and the police become more despondent, things will just get worse. Humiliation and anger at police who are just trying to do their jobs takes its toll and as criminals are allowed more freedom from arrest and the homeless receive no help and are allowed to do whatever they want on public streets the situation just gets more dire.
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