Anti-Cop

The police are upset at the anti-cop sentiment that's recently come to boil over in some communities?

They're really oblivious to the role they've been playing in creating and sustaining that resentment too.

It wasn't a big role.

They're not solely, or even mostly responsible.

But their small portion is why the resentment has legs and is running.

Bad cops exist and department after department has been observed closing ranks and sheltering them once too often.  It was a topic of conversation before Ferguson.  A heated conversation.

If the bad apples had been expelled as quickly as they'd been discovered, the resentment we're seeing today would not have gotten the toehold it has.

But y'all listened to the union instead of the communities you're supposed to be serving.  You made the decision that your fellow officers deserved more consideration than the citizens you're supposed to be protecting.

In short you betrayed the trust put in you and are now shocked that such betrayals have consequences that affect you personally.

The worst part of this is now all police are the police because there are definitely departments that have actively culled their bad apples and are paragons of virtue.

It wasn't the citizenry that adopted an us versus them posture first; but they did recognize it and are now responding to it.

Congratulations on sowing the wind, Officer.  Congratulations for tarring what is almost definitely most cops and most departments with your filthy brush.

The lion's share of the blame is sitting in city council and county commission chambers, and that dumps it back at the feet of the people most affected by inaction in their police departments by not voting them out.

Full circle.

And we could focus a great deal more on how they've managed to do this to themselves if it weren't for the "Thin Blue Line®" and good officers compromising themselves to protect the bad ones.  But now that the avalanche has begun, the pebbles don't get to vote.