If you shoot at an officer, you become the enemy

How did the national discussion about law enforcement, individual rights and mutual respect get so screwed up?

Never mind, we know the answer: Politics.

People with personal and political agendas use microphones to broadcast diatribes that sound legitimate but are only loud. Deep down, I have to believe we know better. I have to believe we know that the discussion we’ve been having lately isn’t a matter of Blue Lives versus Black Lives.

It’s a matter of right and wrong.

For example, if you take a shot at a member of law enforcement you are wrong. You are, in fact, the enemy.

And not just the enemy of the police, but the enemy of anyone who believes in the rule of law, and the enemy of those who’ve been advocating for police reform.

A shooter’s violence allows politicians with a particular agenda to lump protesters expressing legitimate grievances with criminals.

In the past week there have been two shootings in Phoenix in which officers were targeted. A court security officer was shot during a drive-by shooting at the federal courthouse in downtown Phoenix and a Department of Public Safety Officer was fired at but not injured.

DPS Director Heston Silbert said, “I’m disgusted by the actions of people toward law enforcement that I’ve seen take place in this country over the past several months.”

He should be disgusted.

But ONLY at the people who’ve perpetrated the crimes.

Likewise, those who advocate for reform should be disgusted by law enforcement officers who cross the line. But ONLY at those officers.

’ve seen both sides.

In the 1990s a young Black man named Eddie Mallet was pulled over by Phoenix police officers for what he believed to be no good reason. He was angry and verbally combative.

Mallet was a one-time gangbanger, a part-time motivational speaker and a member in good standing of the Boulevard Knights Car Club. On the night he died he had no drugs, no gun and … no legs, having lost them to illness as a teenager. In other words, he was going nowhere. But rather than wait him out, Mallet wound up in a chokehold and died.

Eventually, his family collected a $5.3 million settlement and a statement from the city accepting liability.

Witnesses to Mallet’s last moments said he cried out, “I can’t breathe.” Sound familiar?

To have the same thing happening a quarter century later indicates a problem that should have been resolved long ago. Demanding the reforms to make that happen is a legitimate request

But the actions of a few bad officers

are no excuse for violence against the police. Just as the actions of a random shooter is no excuse for condemning all protesters.

Over the years I’ve been to a half dozen or more funerals for law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. Too many.

One of them, Leonard Kolodziej, patrolled my neighborhood in the late 1980s after threats were made against me and my family. He stopped at our house once to make sure my wife was OK.

In 1991, he answered a call of shots being fired in the neighborhood near 20th Street and Highland. The gunman opened up on his patrol car as he pulled up to the scene and killed him. He was a 19-year veteran of the force, within a year of retirement. He was 43 years old and the married father of three children.

Leonard Kolodziej’s life mattered. Just as Eddie Mallet’s life mattered.

Separating the political noise from what is right and what is wrong – that matters.