Protest

A friend of mine got caught in a traffic jam in down town Atlanta the other day. It was caused by people lying in the street protesting the Michael Brown case. She put a post on facebook about the incident and asked my personal opinion as a Law Enforcement Officer. She wanted to know if I felt whether these people were helping or hurting their cause by inconveniencing others. She was also curious if there was a way to have cooperation between police and the local citizenry. After I typed a quick response, I felt it would make a good blog entry. Here is my response to her questions:

“ This does absolutely nothing for their cause. In many cities there are meetings between community leaders and law enforcement. One of the problems is that people in a lot of the inner cities are raised to believe the police are the enemy, not a force that is there to help protect them. There are proper legal ways to protest, lying down in the street disrupting the lives of other law abiding citizens is not proper or legal. I go back to the philosophy that we are a nation of laws. These cases were heard in a court of law. Whether you agree with the outcome is irrelevant. A decision was made by 12 people that heard all the evidence. Just like elections. You may not like the person that won, but they are still in office. I will add one other thing (while I am on my soap box). Not everything in this country is about race. If you break a law, assault a police officer (or anyone else) you take the chance of getting arrested, harmed or even shot. Does not matter what color your skin is. If Michael Brown was a white or Hispanic kid in the exact same circumstances, he would be just as dead. It just would not be on the national news”.