Us, them, we.

In one of my earlier blog posts, you saw that I had a rather unpleasant interaction with a law enforcement official. This was hardly my first such exchange but it did prompt me to write down my thoughts on the subject that I’ve been formulating for a long time.

I wonder how much time these people spend around regular people. I suspect their days are spent interacting with suspected criminals. They probably get lied to often. I imagine that they see untold amounts of brutality and cruelty committed by one person on another. Thus, when they meet someone initially, their first instinct is to think everyone is a criminal and go into aggressive and protective mode. In essence, they have lost their ability to see themselves as a part of “us”. By “us” I mean people who aren’t criminals nor those out to catch criminals. Just everyday people. I’ve seen this before in people who spend all day working around children. They get so used to talking to children and interacting with developing minds that they carry it into adult interactions and the results can be disastrous. After all, who wants to be talked to like they are a five year old.

For some reason, some of us have put these law enforcement types up on a pedestal which reinforces the “us” versus “them” mindset. The way I see it, there is a distribution among all people. Think of a Bell curve or a normal distribution. Most of us are in the mushy middle. Some are on the extreme left and right tails. I believe law enforcement officials come from “us” thus, some are extremely capable and are true “heros”. Some are dishonest and probably more criminal than Al Capone. And then there’s the mushy middle where most are competent but rather unspectacular. Somehow, we’ve told them all that they don’t come from us but are a special breed of human. We’ve told them that they are so much above the rest of us who only want to have fulfilling lives and provide for our families that they don’t see themselves as being of the same stock as the rest of us.

I think that telling these folks that they are a cut above is dangerous. They are as good as we are good and as bad as we are bad. If ten percent of the general population is bad then ten percent of law enforcement is also. Why? They are us. We (and they) would be better served to think that way.

It must also be hard to be a person of color on any sort of law enforcement team. Show compassion (or even understanding) to people of different racial/ethnic groups and you’re considered an outcast or a disloyal interloper. Reminds me of the Imposter Syndrome. However, people from those same communities will look at you as a traitor or sell-out for simply doing a difficult job regardless of race/ethnicity. And then there are those (I’ve encountered these people) who hate being from a certain demographic group so much so that they are the cruelest of them all. Much more violent or racist or homophobic than any of their peers. In the end, they really hate themselves because neither group really accepts them. Sad, indeed.

What I’ve come to know is that people are people. Some excel. Some fail miserably. Most of us just make our way from one day to the next. Our interactions could be so much more satisfying if we just lost all the labels and treated each other as human.