Don’t Make the Same Mistake with Police that we made with Vietnam-era Soldiers

I fully support the Black Lives Matter movement.  I also believe that our nation needs to take dramatic action to improve the lives of people of color and to reduce the inequality in our society.

The role of the police in our society needs to be carefully re-evaluated, along with our long-standing high rate of incarceration and the war on drugs.   But we must avoid vilifying the individuals that make up our police force.  The vast majority of police are good people who have a challenging job for relatively low pay.  They often risk their lives to perform their job.  They are not the authors of the system that currently exists, they are simply doing the task that we as a society have asked and trained them to do.

Are there bad actors in the police force?  Of course there are!  And the nature of our current approach to crime and law enforcement tends to encourage and excuse behavior that is often racist and overly authoritative.  But the blame for this should not lie on the police as people, but rather on the institutions that have dictated how they perform their jobs.

When soldiers returned from Vietnam in the late 60’s and early 70’s they were called baby-killers and spat upon.  It was a horrible mistake to blame the soldiers for the brutality, dishonesty and carnage of the Vietnam War.  They had suffered so much in the war, and then they returned home to criticism and pariah status.   We should have embraced them and thanked them for their sacrifice even amidst our resolve to learn from Vietnam’s mistakes (which, sadly we did not, as evidenced by our Iraq and Afghanistan wars).

The same is true for the police.  We must embrace them, call them our beloved brothers and sisters, and work together with them to re-define how policing should evolve.  Let’s be clear:  We will always need the police and we must appreciate the difficult task they have.  What needs to change is how they are instructed and trained to perform that task and how that task fits into the greater questions of justice and crime in our society.  We desperately need their input and expertise to make progress.

Again, there is no doubt that America needs a new way to look at justice, policing and incarceration.  But we will fail in addressing these needs if we blame the people who are the police.  They must be respected and incorporated in our search for a better society.