It was 1957, and I was working at a gas station in Morrisville, NY, helping the owner when he went to tuneup school. That evening Trooper David L. came in and was upset because he said he had to buy a new five-cell flashlight to replace his that was broken. He had been called to a migrant labor camp to break up a fight, and when he arrived one of the men fighting came at him with a knife. He said he did not have time to drop the flashlight and get his night stick, so he hit the man over the head with the flashlight. It stopped the attack and broke his flashlight. I was in my late teens, and at that moment was in awe of what the trooper had done but soon forgot about it.
A few years after the flashlight event, I was taking a sociology course because the university said that I had to take something other than math and science. As the course started and I was at the first lecture, my dislike for non-science courses changed. We were going to be discussing the law and how it affected society. I worked at a pharmaceutical company, and one of the topics was the relationship of the FDA and drug companies. Later we discussed the relationship between different parts of society and policemen. For instance, the cop and prostitute have a love-hate relationship. The cop protects the prostitute when she is on the street but will arrest her if he sees unlawful sexual activity. The policeman and society have a relationship based upon trust and respect. His or her badge and uniform give them the authority to carry out their duties and the protection they need during that process. When a potential perpetrator does not respect that badge and uniform, the policeman becomes an ordinary citizen and suddenly it is a mano-a-mano situation. If the disrespect becomes physical, as in resisting arrest, the policeman is now in a dangerous position and their reaction may lead to violence. Should the cop have anger management problems, the altercation can be deadly as we have seen with the killing of men during arrests. I remembered Trooper David and thought about the courage it took for him to enter that camp with twenty or more families to break up a fight with no backup of help available should things have gone wrong. Lucky for him only one of the men there showed disrespect, and David was able to handle it. He did not think about shooting the man but just stopping him and the altercation. He became more of a hero to me after this class.
We have had too many incidents where the police have responded violently when they might have used lesser means to stop or contain a situation where they felt threatened because of resisting arrest or an order to stop and be confronted. Most of the men killed were either running or resisting, and one was attacking the policemen. One of the big problems that keeps us from having more Trooper Davids on our police forces is their unions, which prevent the small number of cops with anger management problems from being fired, and even after many reports of bad behavior they remain on the force as we saw in the Mr. Floyd case. But in this case, if Mr. Floyd had followed the commands of the policeman and got into the car, he would be alive today. I don’t believe the claustrophobia claims since he was driving his own car moments before the arrest. His disrespect for the badge and uniform caused his death even if the policemen are prosecuted and jailed. It’s enough to make a grown man cry when such a small issue can cause a man’s death and then the violence of the protests after that caused many more deaths and destruction.
Now to the kneelers at pro sports events. Kneeling during our national anthem and when the US flag is presented is total disrespect for our country and the men and women who fought for it and died. The kneelers are disrespecting 6,800 American Revolution soldiers, 650,000 Civil War soldiers, 117,000 WWI soldiers, and 420,000 WWII soldiers who died for this country, and then add in the ones who died during the War of 1812, the Spanish–American War, Panama, Grenada, Iraq twice and Afghanistan. To disrespect these men and women who gave the kneelers the right to protest is the ultimate slap in their face after they gave their lives to allow us the freedom to protest. Kneeling is not protesting but giving the same disrespect that caused most of the police killings, and it is not going to further any future relationships between policemen and Black men who fail to follow the directions and orders given to them. In fact, disrespect by one to another will cause the same disrespect to be returned. It is being done by men who are paid millions of dollars to play a child’s sport and are too lazy to spend some of their riches and time to help educate young Black men in areas that present little opportunity to them. The pros could be in the inner cities helping to upgrade the schools, starting after-school activities, mentoring young people, and working to rid them of gang membership as the only way to be a part of something. Kneeling has only one outcome, other than the kneelers’ feeling good about doing something, and that is pissing off a lot of people who could join them in trying to make life better for a group of people who are in a disadvantaged position. They are actually making matters worse, and their actions will hurt a lot of people because of it. Trying to get society to respect one group of people by disrespecting another group is stupid and only done by knuckleheads.
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