Police Beat Fleeing Bad Guy, Society Weeps – Boo Hoo

To which my response is: thank you police officers, and shut yer yap society.

Where’s the controversy? A suspicious individual leads police on a high-speed chase during early-morning school hours, rams into a police car (this is considered assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon) and then flees on foot. As though that wasn’t enough law-breaking for the morning, he then proceeded to resist arrest, which ultimately led to a subduing beatdown by St. Louis police officers.

I think the issue will end up being one of race, as the suspect was black, and there were three white, and one black, officers doing the subduing.

Honestly, I don’t believe it has anything to do with race, but rather police officers doing their jobs, with adrenaline rushing through their veins after being led on a chase from a suburb all the way into downtown St. Louis. Oh did I mention he rammed a police car during the chase? Cops don’t usually go for that sort of thing. Neither do they enjoy risking the lives of innocent people as they careen in and out of traffic after some idiot who is clearly up to no good.

I don’t see the problem here: just because it was caught on tape does not mean that the officers were acting improperly to subdue and apprehend the suspect. The suspect committed at least three felonies that I can think of, one of which subjected the general public to serious danger. High speed chases are no joke. Innocent people are killed all the time as they are caught in the crossfire of law enforcement attempting to apprehend criminals on kamikaze missions down busy highways. Imagine the outrage had this guy plowed through a crosswalk full of kindergarteners.

I personally would have driven to St. Louis to beat his ass myself, but seeing as I pay tax dollars so we can have a police force, I’d rather let the professionals handle the well-deserved chronic beatdowns.

This is a symptom of our society: we live in our little shelters of safety and comfort, a place where most of us law-abiding citizens never encounter police, except for the occasional speeding ticket. We have no idea how dangerous the world can be, or would be, without the sheepdogs guarding us from the wolves.

I will admit I am biased. I work around police officers and have an intimate knowledge of the kind of drudgery it is to deal with societies scumbags: wife beaters, child abusers, meth addicts, drunk drivers, petty shoplifters, rapists, child molesters and murderers. That’s on a busy day. Never mind the ungrateful jerks griping about going 50 in a school zone and the countless lockouts, accidents and general tedium of everyday police life. They live their days waiting to protect “us” from “them,” and then when they do, all we want to do is point the finger at how brutal they are.

Here’s some things police officers do that you don’t see on tape: they buy bikes for poor kids. They teach classes to women on how to protect themselves. They go shopping at Christmas with children who have no families. They teach your kids how to stay off of drugs and avoid peer-pressure. They protect our schools from predators. They teach kindergarteners how to be safe around buses and cars, how to cross the street, and to stay away from dangerous strangers. They also give us warnings instead of tickets, work long hours to find our stolen goods, call us and tell us someone found our wallet, smile and wave as they drive past our house, resuscitate those who aren’t breathing, deliver babies, plow into burning buildings that have been hit by airplanes so they can help us get out alive, while they stay behind.

This does not mean real police brutality doesn’t occur. This also doesn’t mean that there aren’t dirty, bad and jaded cops out there. Obviously no workforce is without some level of malfeasance. But by and large, we are a lucky nation with a good police force whose families and loved ones sometimes pay the ultimate sacrifice when duty calls.

Just once I would like society to say, “Look at those guys, they prevented an innocent person from being hurt. They put themselves in harm’s way for me. Thanks guys, thanks a lot for getting the bad guy.”

It’s a thankless job, thank God they are willing to do it.