IT’S NOT ABOUT THE THIN BLUE LINE, [T, 7-7-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE THIN BLUE LINE, IT’S ABOUT THE STRONG HIGH STANDARD [T, 7-7-20]

The current disconcerts over police misconduct remind me of the day our semi-son, Len, graduated from the IL State Police Academy. The speaker was an obscure IL state senator with the unlikely name of Barack Obama. I wondered why they had chosen him.

Well, it was clear that the top officers of the IL State Police liked him a lot. They were effusive in their praise of him in his introduction. He gave a serviceable speech, but it was nothing spectacular. I hoped he didn’t have designs on higher office, since he didn’t seem to have much going for him. Especially that name. And those ears. And that skin.

I asked Len at lunch why the top brass of the troopers gave him such praise.

“He’s our top advocate in the legislature,” he said. “He fights for more money for us. I guess we all like that. But the tradeoff is that we had to support his legislation that makes us keep records about the race of people we stop. The guys can’t hassle black people anymore and get away with it by just not reporting it. They don’t like that. They claim it’s just because they don’t like more paper work, and there’s a lot to that. Nobody wants more paper work. But for some, it’s really about not being able to get away with stopping people for DWB, driving while black.”

I’ve known troopers from three different states. Known them well. They are totally honorable men who would not intentionally do injustice to anyone. It pains me that they are being tarred with the same brush that their racist colleagues are wielding.

One of them said recently that it pains him, too, that all police are being judged by the actions of a few, and that in the past he had paid a price with his colleagues for reporting “dirty cops,” but that he would do it again.

That’s the only way you can go in any profession and have any respect, especially self-respect. Clergy and teachers and youth leaders and police are rightly held to a higher standard, because we are in positions of authority and power and trust.

The Roman Catholic church has proved very well that closing ranks and protecting the guilty creates ever-worsening circles of misery and mistrust. MSU and the gymnastics associations, and the Penn State football program have proved that, too. You must face the fact of misconduct head-on.

We can’t condone it with “Well, she has a hard job.” Of course, she does. But no one is required to be a teacher or preacher or cop. If you can’t do the job right, or if you are in the job in order to do it wrong—and there are always some of those—then either get out or get booted out.

No, as we chant Black Lives Matter, it is not a denigration of police. It indicates how highly we prize the police, precisely because we know that they can live by that higher standard.

John Robert McFarland