Feel free to burn it all down.. (but at least have something to replace it with first, idiots!)

Minneapolis is Burning. 

The city on the lake is on fire, and not just with tension, racial and economic.   It's literally on fire, as police are forced to abandon their stations, and fires go untreated as the sheer press of bodies keeps firefighters and first responders from being able to respond to alarms. 

And for the first time, I have to think... maybe this time its' right. 

In Minneapolis, an officer committed murder, while wearing the shield and uniform that I've considered sacrosanct for the 40 years of my life.   Before I could pronounce the words to the oath, I considered the badge of an Officer something sacred.  It was up there with the uniform of an Army Officer or a Marine.  You took it, and the oath that came with it, and you bound yourself to a meaning larger than yourself.  Only God, and your brothers (and sisters) could judge what you had done, and be the final arbiter of whether you deserved to be called a good cop, or a disgrace to the badge. 

But lately... it's getting to be a lot harder to see that line so clearly.  

I want to support my Blue over the Black Lives Matter crowd, because I've seen the terrorist tactics used by BLM, and I know several of the leaders of Philly's BLM group...and they fit the textbook definition of narcissists and domestic terrorists.   I want to Back the Blue over Antifa, because Antifa isn't a cause, it's a religious cult of infantile rage-at-the-machine and "righteous"-anger-without-a-clue.  There isn't a doubt in my mind that where Antifa, and most of BLM are involved - there will be tactics that will be slimy, and will skirt the law where they don't out right break it and then rely on the media to make them look good.  

But then on May 20th, I get pulled over thirty minutes from my house, in Upper Montgomery county, by a local PD officer for what I can only describe as "Driving while Brown".   

Driving five under the speed limit on an empty road crossing suburb lines between highways, at 9am in the morning on a Friday morning.   Headed to pick up a Pikachu doll for my 5 year old's birthday, because the Walmart in Bechtelsville is the only one small enough not to have been overrun by human locusts yet.  

No reasonable suspicion that I (or any reasonable officer) could have defined.  Five miles under the speed limit.  No tinted windows (how could there have been?  They were all rolled down,).  He drove alongside me glancing at me for a little over a mile, then hit the lights and pulled in behind and pulled me over.   No polite "good morning," after pulling me over.   Hand already on his holster as he approached a plain four door '94 Jeep Cherokee.  No threatening bumper stickers on the back, no "Black Guns Matter" stickers, or "2nd Amendment" magnets.   Hell, even the inside of the car was clean - not a single suspicious thing in sight through the open windows, unless you count my son's toy dinosaur on the rear bench seat.  And sure I'm scruffy, and I'm colored - but I'm also unflinchingly polite.   Even to asshole lily white pricks who bark orders like "hands on the wheel!" and "eyes forward!", when I turn to them to greet them.  

The first non-threatening words out of the officer's mouth?   "You have a reason for being in this neighborhood at this time of day?"

I wish I was kidding.   

I wish it was some flashback to a bad 60's blaxploitation flick.  But I was pulled over for driving while scruffy, and the wrong color, in the wrong car, in a rich area, 15 miles and 30 minutes from my own home.  

And I have to tell you - the careful worded apology from his Lieutenant, after I badged the officer with my own law enforcement ID and PA State shield and sent him on his way (muttering under his breath about me, I'm sure)... and then called his home precinct to report his racist bullshit after he drove off...it didn't help the sting.  A lily white good old boy, less than half an hour from my house, had pulled me over, hand on his pistol, for being in the wrong kind of car in the wrong kind of neighborhood.  

How am I supposed to square that with a lifetime of believing in the sacred nature of the badge, when a racist asshole gets to keep his shield after pulling that?

How am I supposed to square the murder of George Floyd, by an officer who callously used techniques that were outlawed sixty years ago, with the values I try to uphold every time I put on my St. Michael's medal and my PA State badge?   

Every time I repeat the oath I took in the mirror, once every month, to remind me of why I do this crappy, underpaid, underappreciated job... how do I square that with three officers of the Minneapolis PD who stood there and watched a man die because...

Well.  That's just it.   I just don't know why.  I don't care how much you dislike a guy - if he's in cuffs, he's your responsibility.  His life is in your hands, and that's as sacred as the badge is.  There's a reason it's called "custody".  You have custody of them.  You're responsible for their well being.    

So. 

Rioters. 

You're looting and rioting in your own city, and you're doing it all because you think you're going to change the system.   You aren't.   All you are doing is causing permanent damage to a city that may never rebuild or recover.   Target and Pep Boys have already expressed doubt that they will rebuild the stores you've demolished... meaning jobs evaporating from your local economy, in a time when people need them more than anything.   

Meanwhile, those four officers have already been fired, and they still aren't going to be arrested any sooner just because you've burned down a Section 8 apartment complex (and left dozens of poor black families without homes) and destroyed two police stations (and if you weren't smart enough to destroy their internal computer systems, identified yourself by facial recognition to both of them). 

I'm with you, that things need to change.   The system has problems.  I'm at a cross roads myself right now ... trying to square a lifetime of belief, and over a decade of service, with my personal experiences and with the murder that I've just watched carried out in your city. 

But when you burn it all down, with nothing better to replace it with... 

All you're doing is proving to the world that you're as stupid as people think you are. 

If you want to honor the memory of a man who died, then put out the fires.  Rebuild what you can.  Answer for your thefts, or return stolen property.  

Let justice have its turn at those four officers, and if justice fails... then we can talk about burning it all down. 

But have some kind of plan on what to replace it with first, idiots.