of which they know nothing

Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.

~James 3:5b

An unfortunate incident involving an Erie police officer has inflamed the local media with preposterous results.

I've never fallen under The Media's Biggest Fan category, but this article brought my opinion down to new lows. Ever since the Rodney King incident, America has loved to hate the law enforcement. And while a focus on justice is certainly necessary, the spin on cops is always negative, their motives always suspect. They are indicted, mocked, railed against and disrespected everywhere, and a gleeful media seizes upon each new opportunity to make the police look horrible.

If a responsible press's job is to inform the populace, that press should take carefully into account how little the average citizen knows of law enforcement life. Most people only see uniformed men with big sticks brutally beating the innocent ("innocent" -- ha), or the candy-coated crap idolized by serial dramas on popular television. In reality a cop's job ranks slightly below coal mining and waste management for environment and job material. Police officers have to clean up after all of the evils which human beings perpetrate against each other without any of the glory received by firemen and military officers.

The old days of standing at crosswalks directing traffic and finding lost puppies are gone. Instead, police have to patrol streets every day that hate them. They help people who feel no gratitude. They are yelled at, spit at, swung at and shot at by the people they have sworn to protect. No one lauds them as heroes. The everyday substance of their job is human misery and human hatred.

My dad has talked down criminals at gunpoint. My dad has been puked on by drunks. My dad has been attacked by a German shepherd whose owner was only angry that my dad, bleeding profusely from the leg, had to kill the dog.

My dad has also arrived first on the scene of a train track death to wrap his arms around the six-year-old girl who watched her brother die. My dad has shared the love of Christ with drug addicts who told him that cocaine was their savior. My dad has sat with the parents of a child who was raped and murdered and stored in a garbage bag by her uncles who only threw her in a dumpster when the smell of decomposition filled the house. My dad has stood guard all night over the body of a murdered woman whose throat was slit from ear to ear. My dad has knelt down beside a frightened little boy whose parents were being arrested for public intoxication at the bar where they had brought him for the evening and assured him that nothing was his fault, and that everything was going to be all right.

My dad has been thanked twice in his entire career for these things.

And my dad isn't the only police officer who has done countless acts of small and selfless heroism. My dad isn't the only police officer whose reward for his service is more grisliness to witness, more messes to clean up, more criminals released to the streets by juries of idiots, more insults from an ungrateful public, more silence to keep because no one will or wants to understand.

And yet we always expect the police to be there. We expect them to show up and save us when we want them. When it's our lives on the line, we expect that the cops will come and kick ass. But only when it's convenient for us.

We expect these men and women, who see the worst of humanity day after day, to be soldiers on duty (but sophisticated ones) and civilians off duty (but oh-so-very sophisticated ones). We expect them to put away the sorrow, the rage and the adrenaline in their lockers at the station before coming out as Joe Meek. We hold them to a standard not even attainable, largely, by the active military. Police officers don't live in barracks where they can blow off steam at the end of the day free from the scrutiny of the general public. They go home to their families. They rejoin society. They go out to bars with their friends -- friends who, for the most part, have no clue how horrific cops' jobs really are.

LEAVE THE COPS ALONE, people. Sure, this particular incident is unfortunate. The guy was indiscreet. (He was also in a nearly empty bar, so let's not act as though he were making an announcement from a stage.) BUT the average softy pudgy-fingered fatass who spends his or her day plopped down in front of a computer surfing articles doesn't know what coping with dangerous and sad situations involves. We love to quote trite old sayings like "laughter is the best medicine," but we don't know how true that IS. Sometimes the only way to emerge on the other side of something horrible is to make a macabre joke about it. You must laugh, or you go insane, or die. Maybe it looks like a severe and sickening lack of compassion; it's also a way of keeping the self intact in the face of overwhelming trauma.

The reaction to this article seems to me to be focusing more on the fact of what this officer said than where he said it -- as if his greatest offense is having said something offensive. Watch out, people -- Big Brother is obviously watching. Who among us makes tasteless jokes about his or her coworkers, customers, clients and bosses after a frustrating day at work, sitting around the bar at happy hour? The subject matter may be vastly different, but the framework is identical. Open the door to one precedent and more will follow.

We don't have to deal with the danger and the horror that cops do for two reasons: the right to bear arms, and the cops. They're fronting us. They're taking the full brutal impact of the weight of all the evil and recklessness and selfishness and meanness that humanity is capable of committing. They're standing around us with their shields locked together so that you and I can sit back and criticize how they do it.

And you know what? Even if this guy loses his job, the rest of the cops will continue to protect and serve. We treat them like crap, we hate them for writing us tickets, we don't want them around most of the time. And yes -- some of them are arrogant, some of them are power hungry, some of them are jerks and alcoholics and wife beaters and cheaters. They're still out there protecting our ungrateful persons.

That job of protecting us comes even harder to them because of the newspapers. A responsible press gives all sides to a story. A responsible press fosters understanding. A responsible press is concerned with justice -- but not a lopsided justice. Where police officers manage the effects of human misery, reporters traffic in it. No cop loves to bring bad news to a grieving parent or sibling or child. It doesn't grow easier with time. But somehow the members of the media thrive on watching a human being's reaction to pain. Case in point: This mother only saw the video because a reporter called her, brought her into the news station and showed it to her for the first time while taking notes on her reaction. As if this human woman were no more than fodder for a sick experiment in negative attention. Like a lab rat. And no member of the press is going to rush into a hostage situation to save you or me. They'll watch it happen and write about it.

The men and women who do the hardest work to keep our society safe and orderly for us never hear any praise for their work. They do, however, receive an absurdist backlash of shock and horror whenever, from time to time, an incident like this, a slipped story, reveals how difficult their jobs really are. And anyone who looks at a survivor of tragedy laughing about that tragedy (and yes, cops are survivors of tragedy -- more than you or I will ever face) and honestly believes that laughter comes from a source of humor and not profound sensitivity to suffering not only has no human compassion, but has no human intelligence.

We love our military, and we should. They're keeping us safe the world over. But the police are keeping us safe HERE. Let's cut them some slack, or at least make an effort to understand. And when incidents like this are all blown out of proportion, let's pin the blame where it actually belongs: not on the spark, but on the people standing by fanning the fire.