Blue Lives Matter

Was sitting in the bank waiting to see one of the bank officers this morning, so like I always do pulled up my CNN app to look at breaking news...another officer shot dead in the line of duty. Enough of this violence and disrespect of our men and women in blue.  You want to march around and shout that "Black Lives Matter", that is fine as well as being your right.  What none of us have the right to do is disrespect our men and women in blue who put their lives at risk each and every day in the name of "Public Safety".  To get respect, you need to give respect, and this sudden targeting of Police Officers has to end immediately.

Are there some bad apples in the law enforcement basket?  Absolutely...there are bad apples in every basket, including the basket that is the "Black Lives Matter" basket as can be witnessed by their poster child for the movement, "Michael Brown" who in many ways invited death into his life.  At every step along the way to the shooting of this teenager it was Michael Brown himself who failed to deescalate his own dance with death...some are upset about his death, hold him up as the poster child for the "Black Lives Matter" movement...seriously, get a better poster child for the movement, and stop escalating your disrespect of police officers.  They have a job to do, and as the old saying goes, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."  There may be a few bad apples in the ranks of our police officers, but most of them are upstanding citizens doing a hard job, and giving their all to keep us all safe.

Police have a tough job to do,  they do it day in and day out.  No one is asking anyone to like the police, but give them the respect they are due in a civilized society.   If you are stopped, even if you think you are being stopped wrongfully, "DO THE RIGHT THING".   If you are asked for your license and registration, hand it over with a smile on your face, answering questions with a "Yes Sir" and a "No Ma'am" instead of showing attitude and belligerence. Be smart, be polite, and even if you were stopped unfairly, at least you will walk, drive away alive.   Refusing to answer basic questions, getting all uppity and in the face of a police officer who has a very tough job to do under the best of circumstances is just plain STUPID.   Even if you think you are in the right, why would you suddenly start giving attitude to a man or woman who is carrying a night stick, a stun gun, mace, and a weapon that shoots live ammunition?  Really?  

So far 2015 has seen police shoot and kill about 400 Americans...of that number, half were white people, 25 percent were black people, 12 percent were of Latino descent, and the remaining percentage were human beings of unknown ethnic origin...hmmm, shouldn't it be "Lives Matter" since it seems that not just blacks are being shot by our "Officers in Blue"   Let's look at these statistics a bit closer though before we start taking to the streets in protest.  Of these almost 400 deaths at the hands of police officers, some 80 percent of those killed were carrying some kind of a deadly weapon at the time they were shot, and without a doubt, the police use of deadly force was justified without so much as an investigation being necessary.

That only leaves about 20 deaths nationwide that were/are questionable.  Of these deaths where the suspect who was shot and killed did not have a weapon, 2/3rds were either black or Hispanic.  So, all this civil unrest and protest in the black community involves a total (NATIONWIDE) of say 13 deaths that deserve closer scrutiny.    Of those 12 questionable shootings, in most cases the officer is cleared as was the case with Michael Brown being shot dead in Ferguson where the "Black Lives Matter" movement started.

The young man robbed a convenience store and when the store owner attempted to confront him, he assaulted the store owner.   Right then and there the young man had stepped outside the law, in assaulting the store owner had committed a felony act...but that was not to be the end of his own bad decisions that fateful day.   If you want America to believe and embrace the concept that "Black Lives Matter", then don't each of you individually and collectively have a responsibility to live your own lives in a way that says, "My Life Matters"?   Stealing cigars, assaulting a store owner, being disrespectful to an officer of the law is not living your life as if it matters.

Protesters marching down a street chanting "Pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon!" is out of bounds, is in my opinion inciting a riot, escalating an already tense situation between Police and the Black Community, is not showing the rest of America that we should respect and embrace this supposedly new civil rights movement.   Lets be clear...all lives matter, and " Blue Lives Matter"...when the "Black Lives Matter" movement can embrace that simple societal truth, maybe their movement might actually go somewhere, when they can start affording our men and women in blue the SAME RESPECT that they are demanding for themselves, then and maybe then the two sides can find some common meeting ground on which to stand and effect positive change, but the senseless killing of our Police Officers needs to end.