Cop and activist life: mutual feedback loops
And just like that, it was all quiet again.
What silence am I referring to? Why the sound of the drumbeats of cops getting in trouble.
The cycle has run its course and we’ve gone from firing four minority officers and suspending a fifth during February’s Black History Month at just one agency to news in March of the same agency now hosting a Minority Recruiting Drive. The universe definitely speaks when you’re listening.
So it begs the question: If the coppers are getting back to replenishing their forces during such lulls in the storm, what do the anti-law enforcement activists do at times like these? Is anyone really thinking of them for a change?
These people deserve some acknowledgement, and I’m proud to be their equal opportunity champion if no one else is going to step up.
Imagine how exhausting that life is. Standing around outside, sometime walking, sometimes shouting, and occasionally both at the same time. Those carrying-signs that do not paint themselves. Constantly having to forego baths and the basic sanitation members non-activists take for granted each day. There’s no Purell or foam soap wash stations out there in the field there, people—and don’t even get me started on restroom access as a whole!
Good God, last fall the police themselves were handing out water to the protestors protesting them at the moment on Market Street (which required police to also protect them while being protested by them). That level of confusion can’t just be separated by a mental knife, folks.
And that’s only half of it. Think—I mean really think—of the focus it takes to selectively strip out the facts from an event when it potentially destroys your narrative. When police take action, it’s not about them being right or wrong. It’s about them being wrong, and how is that story going to be told? Exactly: By those willing to only acknowledge the parts they want to acknowledge.
I shudder to think of going back to a time when the police involved killing of a Southside resident three and a half years ago attracted the attention of national civil rights leaders, one of whom actually flew into Chattanooga to participate hands-on, only to leave immediately after seeing the video of the victim’s friends and family beg him repeatedly to drop the gun he had already fired. And when his little girl fled from him and into the arms of a police officer who had the audacity to then turn and use his body armor to shield the little girl from her own father’s gun?
It is a testament to these local activists’ determination and obtuseness for them to have forged on with protest marches anyway, and standing outside of courtroom after courtroom from which the civil suits were dismissed.
Did they pick the wrong battle? That’s not possible. And shame on you for thinking of it, because there’s no point in having an army if you don’t have a battle to fight with it—even if it means manufacturing one against all odds.
This country was founded by men and women seeking a life free from oppression, amongst other things. And oppression that does not exist is an affront to the senses of people that thrive on its existence. Just think about that, my likely privileged friend. And then SHAME on you.
Don’t worry. The local constabularies’ numbers will be back up, people in my experience haven’t gotten smarter on a large scale, and so the odds will be with someone on one side of that equation or the other making a dumb choice, and you will be back in business, signs in hand and unhygienic as ever.
That’s the beauty of the Post-2016 America: It hasn’t gotten dumb enough for some of us yet. Let’s keep trying, people.
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.