by Jimmy Hall
I’m driving down I-15 and catch
a glimpse of a police vehicle parked on the side of the road. My heart rate
goes up. I check my speed. I involuntarily push the brakes out of pure
instinct. I then realize I was on cruise control at exactly the speed limit.
So, what am I so afraid of?
Besides not wanting to pay the
couple hundred dollar ticket or the hassle of being late to my destination,
most of it comes from the fear of the boys in blue: the police.
“To Protect and To Serve” is
the LAPD’s motto that has applied to all other police forces around the
country. Yet, in the past few years, there has been a growing and frightening
trend involving those who are sworn to do the protecting and the serving.
YouTube is a major factor that
brings this issue to light. Recently James Boyd, a homeless man “had held off
officers for four hours at an illegal camp site with a small knife, threatening
to kill them, before agreeing to exit the Sandia foothills with the police,”
according to Examiner.com.
Boyd wasn’t armed with anything
that could reasonably be called deadly, yet the policemen took upon themselves
to sick their K-9 on him, pelt him with bean bags, tasered and shot six live rounds
killing him.
Although we can’t fully know
the extent of what happened, the camera footage only shows a few minutes of
their confrontation, it is safe to say that this would be considered excessive
and deadly force.
On our own campus a UVU staff
member was aggressively handled by campus police for writing on a campus map.
If this isn’t excessive, then I don’t know what is.
These are different types of
situations, but both should raise serious concerns about whom we are giving
authority to and how are they using it.
The men and women in uniform
have a job to do. I understand this. And not all people are compliant or
respect authority as they should. These type of people are usually found in
mass protests and have the crowd mentality. In these situations, the
authorities need to use force to control the crowd. It’s unfortunate, but
that’s what we have in this ugly world.
Not all the men and women in
uniform who police our streets are the power-hungry ones who we see on YouTube
or the news. There are kind and respected ones as well and that needs to be
appreciated.
What this all comes down to is
knowledge and accountability. The police need to know the rights of the people
and their own stretch of authority. Without this we will just have police
officers thinking they can do whatever they want to whomever they want and
whenever they want.
“The only thing that the
Sheriff’s Office gives us is a Policy and Procedures to follow,” Austin
McDonald, of the Provo Police Department, said. “When it comes to training there
is none that we have to take. Policy and Procedures may vary between agencies.”
Also, citizens are carrying
around cameras to capture these kinds of hot-headed police officers as they are
in the real world. But this isn’t the only thing that should deter officers.
Departments everywhere, our campus included, need to take the initiative to
properly train and educate their officers to know what is and isn’t acceptable
in any given situation.
Not only that, they need to be
held accountable for abusing that given authority. This can only come from the
powers-that-be to discipline those officers and not give into a public apology
letter or, even worse, a false rationalization.
The old and extremely troubling
adage, “If you have nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear” doesn’t have any
grounds in this discussion.
We shouldn’t have to fear the
ones who are responsibility for protecting us. Our society is slowly becoming a
police state and one I don’t want to live in.