Word: Fire and polie departments

Djelloul Marbrook -  The cops are getting a lot of attention these days, good and bad, but their lives are not nearly as perilous as firemen’s. Police unions are vociferous and political, and yet their memberships never enjoy the public support or pure popularity that firemen, volunteer and salaried, do. The public accepts that firemen serve and protect them, but it no longer unreservedly accepts that police do. 

Police departments should contemplate this and not just complain that they’re misunderstood and unappreciated. We should be as glad to see a cop as we are to see a fireman. We should be able to assume that when they arrive at a scene things will get better, not worse.

In New York City for several years after 9/11 ordinary people waved and smiled in gratitude and appreciation at the police and firemen; today only the firemen enjoy that response. There is a reason, and the police should contemplate it. They haven’t just lost the full support of the citizenry, they’ve been betrayed by political leaders who use them to suppress instead of protecting the public’s right to assemble and protest.

They have been betrayed by the MIchael Bloombergs and Rahm Emanuels and Jean Quans of the country who stomp on civil liberties at the behest of business interests. The police themselves may believe that citizens do not have the right to gather and dissent, but that is only because their political leadership has failed to properly administer and instead uses them as a weapon to impose civil order at the expense of inalienable rights. Just as demonstrators have a civil duty not to riot, so the police have a civil duty to protect and serve their right to assemble and express themselves. That balance, that precious equation, has been corrupted by wrongdoing politicians.