Police officers share feelings about brutality behind the badge
The black police officers were called “Uncle Tom mother-(expletives)” by angry black protesters at a Black Lives Matter demonstration.
“They were degraded 10 times worse than I was,” said a white police officer who worked alongside them. “It was disgraceful.”
This exchange took place Sunday afternoon near Southlake Mall in Hobart, Indiana, at a peaceful protest that later turned hostile, resulting in more than a dozen arrests. Multiple police departments eventually merged forces to secure a perimeter line and to control the crowd as it marched toward Interstate 65.
The protest was one of many in our region in response to the wrongful killing of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25. I’ve read comments from some of the protesters at that rally. I wanted to also hear from police officers. Not only about that rally but about their perspective regarding law enforcement officers across the country now in the crosshairs of public opinion and public outrage.
“I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to be a police officer right now,” one cop told me. “The hatred that was shown on Sunday is appalling.”
I spoke with several officers, all white, from different departments under the agreement of not revealing their identities in this column. Otherwise, they would not be allowed by their supervisors to speak with me.
“What happened to George Floyd sickens me and every other good, decent police officer,” one 30-year officer told me. “I refuse to refer to that employee of the city of Minneapolis as an officer. It’s a title he does not deserve. He disgraced all of us and should be prosecuted as any other person who breaks the law in our society.”
That officer, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with second-degree murder, upgraded Wednesday from third-degree murder. In addition, the three other officers involved in Floyd’s death have been charged with abetting. Critics insist a “Blue Wall of Silence” has allowed such chronic police brutality to continue for generations. And that too many officers within the Blue Lives Matter brotherhood refuse to report other cops for wrongdoing or criminal activity.
“There is not one officer in the United States who saw that officer on that man’s neck and didn’t think the officer should be charged,” another veteran officer told me. “Every officer I talk to would be more than happy to take the Minneapolis officer out back and take care of the issue. He caused the destruction of a nation. He disgusts me and every one of us.”
A reader has contacted me multiple times this week to complain about police brutality in our region, citing a photo in a previous Post-Tribune story. It shows a protester taken to the ground by a police dog at Sunday’s demonstration.
Another reader accused me of siding with police officers on this issue if I shared their opinions in this column space. I replied that I am siding with the police officers cited here, as well as with cops who do good work every day under extremely challenging circumstances. To condemn every cop because of abusive, heinous cops such as Chauvin is wrong and shortsighted.
“There are over 800,000 law enforcement officers in the U.S.,” said an officer for a Lake County municipality. “A small percentage, like these four (Minneapolis officers), disgrace every one of us who go out every day trying our best to enforce the law impartially. And to protect those who cannot protect themselves.”
“The other three Minneapolis employees who stood by and did nothing deserved to be fired and never have the right to wear a badge again,” he said.
As a cop, he has changed car tires for stranded motorists, fought people twice his size who were trying to harm their spouse. He has been spit on and removed neglected children from an unfit home, he said.
“These are the things that law enforcement officers do every day in this country,” he said. “Individuals like this guy in Minnesota
are never about any of that. He is a bully with a people problem. He never should have been in a position to victimize George Floyd in the first place.”
Another cop told me he gets a knot in his stomach the moment he notices during a traffic stop that the motorist is a person of color.
“The issue is no longer about their dangerous activities on the roadways,” he said. “It’s now all about the white cop the black person.”
It doesn’t matter if the traffic stop is for speeding, driving through a red stoplight, or long expired license plates, he noted.
“Too many of them turn their traffic stops into race issues instead of being responsible adults,” he said.
This doesn’t mitigate the fact that black motorists get racially profiled by police, and wrongly targeted by some cops. By too many cops. “Driving while black” is a dangerous reality for African Americans. A white driver’s normal nervousness doesn’t compare to a black driver’s pulsating fear when a police car pulls them over.
This racial dynamic on roadways is just another piece of a puzzle that will never be put together. At this moment in America, too many pieces have been looted and lit on fire. Or misplaced by politicians and pilfered by dirty cops.
“All of us, police and citizens, must work together to solve these issues,” the officer said. “This is a problem that transcends simple verbiage about police reform. Politicians and others point at police as the problem. This is too simple and will not work. The system must change.
“George Floyd’s death was tragic and disgusting. We all must work together to fix the dysfunction that allowed it to happen. It’s not just a police problem. It is a problem woven into a broken political system. We failed George Floyd. We have to do better.”