When I was a child in school, one of the classes we were required to take was called “Social Studies”. I’m not sure it is among the few classes still taught in our diminishing educational system, but in my day it was where we learned how our government worked.
One of the things we were taught was that Policemen were godlike creatures of absolute authority, and that the thought of one of these people doing anything “wrong” was in the same vein as imagining the world coming to an end.
Of course, this was the 60’s and coming home from school to watch the 6’oclock news filled with riots and lines of policemen behind face v\shields, fending off the hippies who were dropping posies down their gun barrels caused no end of confusion in our developing minds.
An article in the NY Times the other day, and a subsequent opinion article bring to light the fact that policemen are just like anyone else who belongs to a group. They exhibit group mentality and this breeds on itself so that ultimately, many otherwise law-abiding policemen may say things in a courtroom that aren’t true, merely to protect the group.
While telling untruths to protect your “clan”, whether it be a fraternity or a boy scout troop is considered most of the time to be justified, telling anything other than the absolute truth when you are a policeman is simply abhorrent.
Our whole American system is built on trust. Trust in our Policemen is one of the bottom rungs of the ladder. We need to trust our local officials, the ones we hire to enforce our laws, or the system simply doesn’t work.
We are seeing signs of chaos intrude, government officials at all levels acting in a manner that may enrich their pockets or their private circle of friends, but harms the bigger “club” – our country.
Pay attention who you vote for – do some research, make sure the people you put into office aren’t there just to line their pockets, and we’ll all be better.