Our Men In Blue
Fellow Americans, it is happening again. We are getting to see an unbelievable disrespect of our police officers across the nation. Why? Is it time for our police officers to take a little needed paid vacation from law enforcement and let our country see what chaos it would descend into without law and order? Maybe that wouldn’t work. It would penalize the majority of us that have the utmost respect for our men and women in uniform.
What would work to restore a safer working environment for our men in blue? How about if we allow them to use deadly force when there are radicals smashing windows and setting businesses on fire? Maybe we do this rather than criticize them every time they make the ‘seldom made’ wrong decision. We are hamstringing our officers the same as we do with our armed forces. The only difference is that our police officers are allowed to have bullets in their guns, just don’t use them.
Our armed services, on the other hand, are allowed to have weapons for window dressing, but they can’t have bullets in theirs. I can see it all now. China takes overall service bases in the United States with minimal bloodshed while the military on all the bases is waiting to have weapons issued. The recent Pensacola Naval Base shootings are prime examples of this, three sailors killed and eight wounded in a classroom attack including two Escambia County Sheriff’s Deputies.
How is it that our service members and police officers are enlisted to protect the American people, but we limit them so much in what they can do? The end result is they cannot even protect themselves. To me, this seems shameful. It is time the penalties inflicted are so severe that if a police officer is injured or killed in the line of duty that the penalty to the offender perpetrating this crime should lose their dominant hand. That seems to work well in Saudi Arabia for stealing. Surely putting an officer’s life in danger is a much more egregious crime than stealing a loaf of bread, to make a point.
The United States must begin to care more about the people caring for us. We entrust the safety of our families to them. We entrust the wellbeing of our communities to them. We entrust our lives to them. How do we protect the officers that protect us? It is not hard to see why sometimes these protectors can become jaded. It is like a criminal attorney friend of mine said, “When all you see is criminals, you start to think everyone is.”
The United States safety? ranking of countries of the world puts our country among the least safe, and it is such that some foreigners do not travel here due to safety concerns. We rank 118th in the world in safety, yet we have more guns than any other country in the world. It may be time for us to rethink how we are doing things. Just some food for thought.
God bless America. Rick Redalen, MD, Maverick Doctor
Pick up a copy of my book “God’s Tiniest Angel and the Last Unicorn,” available on Amazon.
Dr. Rick is a retired American physician, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who has done mission work around the country and the world. He is now on a mission to improve healthcare in America. Visit maverickdoctor.com or email him at rickr@maverickdoctor.com.