Compassion for the Police

There’s been a lot of talk about police corruption recently, as well as the public’s reactions to it. A lot of foolish violence on both sides and a few murders too. Such an unpleasant situation for everyone involved, except of course, the news media, who’s practically been celebrating all the violence. They’ve been feeding into it, encouraging this growing divide between the police and the public they’re supposed to be protecting.

This is a very old dilemma, do the police serve the government, or do they serve the people? When the government is the people, there’s no issue, but that’s very clearly not the case right now. When the government stops serving the people, which side do the police choose? Do they enforce oppressive laws or actually help people?

The American people are very unhappy with their federal government, probably the least happy they’ve been since they were under British rule. People want change, they know their government is betraying them on a regular basis. I feel the government knows the people are right on the edge of open rebellion, so they do the bare minimum to appease the people.

The government, as well as the rich and powerful few the government represents, need the police to protect them. They need the police on their side. When a bank takes a home away from someone, who actually enforces that? It’s not the bank that ends up doing the dirty work, it’s the police that end up having to throw someone out if they refuse to leave.

It must be very difficult being a police officer, I don’t think I could do it. As human beings, our own happiness grows by spreading it to others. For a police officer, it often becomes their job to ruin someone’s day, to go take a parent away from their children, or sometimes the other way around. That has to be hard on a person, and I imagine it becomes common for police to suppress their feelings, to deny the very things that make them human.

I’m writing this because I feel it’s a mistake to get angry at the police, I don’t believe more hatred is the answer. The news media is feeding into this though, encouraging this growing divide between the police and the people. The mainstream media represents the interests of the elite, just like the government, and the elite need the police a whole lot more than the police need those parasites. The elite need to make sure the police are on their side, and what better way than to create this hostile relationship between the police and the general population?

Unfortunately, a whole lot of people are playing into this, unwittingly helping further this divide. The police, who could be a great ally in helping clean up the whole corrupt system we live under, are instead seen as the enemy. There are many kind, caring police officers, who became police because they want to help people. They’re not all corrupt, and treating them as such isn’t going to help fix the problem.

One thing that would help enormously would be a more compassionate approach to preventing crime. To take a proactive approach and target things like poverty and inequality, the very things that drive people to dishonest ways of living. Compassion isn’t just some airy-fairy thing for prophets and hippies, it’s a very practical and intelligent approach, far more so than our current revenge-based system of “justice”.

The Galactic Free Press
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