Unfriendly Police

When I was a kid I was taught some things at school that I went home and reported and was promptly untaught.  The most famous of these was when I came home from school and told my mother that we had learned that we were never supposed to talk to strangers.  She looked at me a minute and then said, "You're five years old.  How many people do you know?"

She had an excellent point.  I've been talking to strangers ever since.

The conversation that seared mostly into my mind was with my Auntie Denese.  I was explaining to her that policemen are our friends.  She stopped what she was doing (very rare since she was the queen of multitasking), sat down so we were eye level, took me by the shoulders so she knew I was paying attention and said, "The police are NOT your friends."  I was stunned.  I was a little kid and I wanted to know why.  I was a little kid, so she didn't want to tell me.  She told me to just trust her on this one.

A little background on my auntie.  She was always involved in the League of Women Voters (often as president of her local chapter).  When she and mom were invited to join The Daughters of the American Revolution they vocally declined to be a part of the then very racist organization.  She and two nuns brought about some prison reform in Alabama.  She taught political science at Saddleback, here in Southern California.  Here's the important part: she would never lie to us about something important.

I asked my mother about policemen not being our friends.  She nodded sadly and told me that Denese was right and that I would understand it better as I got older.

Guess what.  I'm older.  This is what I learned in the last year (without even trying).  The police will beat homeless crazy people to death as they cry for their dads.  You don't ever want to be in their jails.  Pelican Bay solitary is arbitrary and cruel.  They shoot kids in the back because their hand went near their waistband.  And just recently 11 of them opened fire on a mom and grandma delivering newspapers because they "confused" the Latina ladies with a huge African American man in a different kind of truck.

I'm dedicating this post to my Auntie Denese.  Please don't tell your children that policemen are our friends.  Tell them that some good men and women become policemen, but you teach them to trust that uniform at their own peril.