Disrespect for law enforcement our worst look
Disdain of police officers is an unfortunate reality in 2020. Not everywhere, of course but in enough places to require us to call out those influential parties who have fostered this environment.
Sadly, there is a maxim out in civil servant circles which advises potential recruits to join the fire department instead of the police department because, when the fire department arrives people cheer and when the police arrive, people boo.
To the extent that it is true, we needn’t look any further than the political class in Massachusetts to see why.
Last week, in Reading, a town Select Board member named Andrew Friedmann addressed a group of police officers, who had attended the meeting to address the ongoing search for a police chief. They’d been without a chief for over a year.
“I’m feeling pretty intimidated by the police officers in this crowd,” Friedmann declared. “You laugh at that, and you think that’s funny, but I have to live in this town and all of you drive around town with guns.”
With that, insulted, police officers walked out of the room in protest.
The board later apologized, as did Friedmann who told WHDH TV in part, “I deeply regret my statement and recognize it was wrong. It was one of those comments, made in the heat of the moment, that I wish I could take back.”
It is fair to wonder how, in the heat of the moment, such a statement could be so top-of-mind for Friedmann.
Perhaps he is learning from his fellow elected leaders.
In 2018, Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for the expulsion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declaring that is should be replaced with “something that reflects our morality.” She shouted to a boisterous Boston City Hall Plaza crowd that, “This is about children held in cages. This is about babies scattered all across this country.”
That year, at a historically black college she told the audience, “the hard truth about our criminal justice system: It’s racist … I mean front to back.”
Last year, our own Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley signed on to a statement co-signed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the rest of the “squad” slamming ICE and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“These radicalized, criminal agencies are destroying families and killing innocent children,” it read.
Such statements are not unique to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or the rest of the nation. It is being interwoven into the culture that law enforcement is a force for evil and it must stop.
Our heroic law enforcement community must be treated with respect and those in elected office — most of whom have never put themselves in harm’s way — should be held accountable by voters.
We must not reward disdain for our protectors in our politics.