Our Police Need Our Support — and Reinforcements
Policing has been negatively portrayed in the media, particularly over the past 10 months. Like every subject, the ability of the media to pick and choose what incidents to report on really drives public opinion, and public perception. But contrary to the popular quotation, perception is not always reality.
Example: In Wheeling, over the past two weeks, the police saved at least two lives in difficult situations. One officer pulled a boy out of 12-feet of water. Another talked a man down from the Suspension Bridge when he might have jumped. These events received only modest local coverage, and no attention from the round-the-clock cable TV channels.
It’s unlikely those were the only such incidents in this one city. It’s certain that across the country there were hundreds of dangerous situations, with human life at stake, where police officers, sheriffs, and state troopers intervened to save lives. But those events do not fit into the popular narrative — the stories that someone, somewhere, decided we should be seeing and hearing.
Our state and our country should come to grips with what we are asking of law enforcement. For over 30 years, we have asked them to police consensual crime — drug crime — as a top priority. As epidemics of cocaine, crack, methamphetamine, heroin, and today, prescription drugs, have swept across the country, our law enforcement system has repeatedly been asked to save us — from ourselves.
As the substances grow more potent and addictive, and the criminal networks grow more sophisticated and ruthless, our police forces are stretched thinner and thinner. We ask more and more from law enforcement, and they respond to a steady drumbeat of domestic violence incidents, shootings, and suicides, often fueled by alcohol and/or drugs. But we give them less and less in the way of resources to do the incredibly difficult job we've assigned them.
On top of it all, when the shifts finally end, our LEOs come home and find their profession being tarred and feathered on TV. Instead of hundreds and thousands of positive incidents every week that define their service to our communities, five or six events plucked out of a entire nation are chosen by producers and TV executives to define American policing.
This isn’t fair. Of course there are incidents of police misconduct in a nation of our size. They should be investigated and addressed and their causes should be explored to make sure our forces are always improving their techniques and procedures. But the facts need to be fully developed in every case — no more trial by YouTube.
Example: Much of the nation was outraged, and virtually everyone cringed, watching the video of Eric Casebolt responding to a Texas pool party with some very aggressive behavior under the circumstances. But the video was not the whole story, as we soon learned. Casebolt had responded to two suicide calls that same day — one of them extremely graphic. Hearing what he had been through at work that day put his language and behavior in a different perspective.
Our police forces simply don’t have the manpower they need. In many cases, they are underpaid, given what we are asking them to do for us. Law enforcement doesn’t always get listened to in Charleston, or out in the county seats, even when they need better (or just replacement) equipment. West Virginia has some sparsely-populated rural counties that rely heavily on the State Police to cover all the territory. But with only one Trooper in a vehicle, help could be a long way off if even one thing goes wrong on a call.
Our law enforcement agencies statewide deserve our respect and thanks for the job they do. But more than just words and gestures, we need to give them reinforcements. If we want to combat the prescription drug and heroin epidemics, we need a surge of LEOs in the most-affected areas. We need to back them up with specialists who can keep offenders from turning into recidivists. We need expanded and improved drug court structures that make our system work smarter.
Respect the police, replenish their equipment, and reinforce their ranks — the lives they save may be your own.
