George Carlin said that the reason why we have selfish, ignorant leaders is because society is made up of selfish, ignorant people. Two to four decades ago, I remember a college coach commenting on why the players then were getting trouble more often was because what we were seeing in the players is what we were seeing in society.
And so now, after the murder of Tyre Nichols, we see another renewed call for just law enforcement. It's a valid call after the unnecessary and brutal use of force by some police officers in responding to a traffic violation. This valid call is simply a repeat of many calls that been made after unnecessary and brutal force was responsible in the death of person, a black male again. What will it take to effectively answer the call for police reform?
There is no single answer to that question because there are many factors involved. One might be to make funds available to provide professional mental health help for all police officers. Such would not necessarily be a comment on the quality of people who are law enforcement officers. Instead, it would be a comment on the stresses and strains of what can be an extremely demanding job that could make many of us vulnerable to act as monsters on occasion.
But in looking for the parts of the solution that could reduce the number of times that police officers abuse the people they confront or have to apprehend, we, as a society, must look into a non-magic mirror. After, what provides the pool of people who apply to become police officers? It's society. Just as our politicians provide a reflection of society as well as our athletes, so to those from many other occupations. And one of them is law enforcement.
What negative actions have we seen in law enforcement that we have not seen in society? Is it racism? Is it violence? Is it a tribal response to accusations where one's own is protected from being held accountable? And if we add to that the tremendous stresses and strains that properly doing police work entails that our police officers come from our ranks in society, we can easily see plenty of problems both on the horizon and in the headlines. And thus as a society, the more selfish we are, the more racist we are, the less self-control we exercise, the more partiality we show, the more punitive we are, the more anger we have and violent we allow ourselves to be, the more corrupt we are, the more we see that in people many occupations including law enforcement. After all, our police officers are not aliens from another planet or galaxy or universe. Rather, they are people like ourselves or our family members or our neighbors, or our friends, or are people we don't know with whom we share society.
Drawing attention to the kind of society from which our police officers come is not to excuse the horrific brutality shown to Tyre Nichols. But drawing attention to society in this instance might just help us prevent and another brutal murder committed by the police. Certainly we can't excuse the actions or lack of actions of those involved in the murder of Tyre Nichols. But neither can we afford to stress individual responsibility and accountability to the point that we don't hold society accountable for the number of times this kind of violence has occurred. Unjust police violence occurs too many times to interpret by saying that there are just a few bad apples in the law enforcement barrel. On the other hand, when one considers the state of American society along with the stresses and strains of enforcing the law, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that unjust police violence does not appear in the headlines more often.
If we want better politicians, police officers, athletes, business people, and so forth, our society has to improve. On the one hand, we want to hold individuals accountable for their actions instead of scapegoating society. But on the other hand, we can't ignore how society contributes to the moral failures of each individual.
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