“If justice perishes, human life on earth has lost its meaning.” --Immanuel Kant

Way back a thousand years ago, I was a police officer. Not for very long but long enough to experience what I refer to as ‘the clash of the Titans.’

It’s a very uncomfortable place, where your personal values, the orders from your superiors, their orders from their superiors, and your oath of office collide. It only happened a few times to me, but bucking that lineage of power is something most officers don’t want to deal with especially if they are seen as the outlier. Outliers in law enforcement get labeled and the names aren’t pretty or kind. Or true. No matter what gender you claim, there’s a hateful word for the officer that refuses to go along with the pack even if you know injustice or illegality is being carried out and power used to harass and control others —-just because you can. And what we’re seeing on college campuses is just that: a dog pack, but a pack that is trained to use military tactics against the average American, with military weapons and riot gear.

The police are primed, set up, they are told that some of them are dissidents or trouble makers, that they are trespassing. That these people are dangerous.

In this shoot first and ask questions later society, if one or two officers start demanding folks move and they don’t, or someone looks at them angrily, or said something ugly to or about them, they will react from fear for their personal safety (while standing in riot gear) and then all hell breaks loose. It’s like a virus. It will spread up and down the line until cops are cracking heads and joining in creating chaos….where no chaos existed before. Like a pack of dogs.

I went into this profession back when I was in my 30’s for two reasons: first, I wanted to work in a profession where they had to pay me the same as the men. Yeah it was the 70’s and 80’s and we still don’t earn the same as men. Second, as a woman, I felt I could offer something from my experience working with domestic violence victims and as a volunteer for our local rape crisis organization.

I was hired as a university police officer and attended the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois.

After six weeks, during a brutal winter in the plains of eastern Illinois, I graduated, and with my supervisor and family in attendance, I recited the oath of office for the first time.

I don’t know about any of you law enforcement members, but that oath of office is still in me to this day. I felt the burden of it with each phrase I repeated. Little ole me- at 125 pounds— had been given the monumental task to preserve something so unique in the history of the world, so audacious, yet so threatening to monarchies and nationalism and despots and tyranny, despite its flaws and horrendous missteps along the way. That oath lives in me now decades after I put down my badge and holster. I will always carry the weight of that oath.

Now, as I watch the citizens of this country, MY country, OUR country, beaten, tear gassed, professors fired, thrown to the ground, arrested, a presidential candidate hit with a police bicycle, as the media lies about the safety of certain students while the world watches in horror at how the police are turning into a gestapo, I recite that pledge. I mouth the words into the computer or my phone hoping that somehow telepathically these men and women in uniform will awaken from their coma and come to their moral senses because they seem to have forgotten what they promised.

“I, (officer’s name) do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

No, officers, you did not promise you could be used as goons to serve the whims of frightened university presidents or their boards of trustees who kneel at the feet of their donors and AIPAC-controlled politicians; or, the corporations like DAPL where you formed long lines at Standing Rock in riot gear to intimidate and water cannon unarmed protesters trying to save our precious Mother Earth; or, kettling Black Lives Matter protesters at Charlotte and other places simply asking you to demilitarize your profession. We cannot forget the death of George Floyd and many others crying “I can’t breathe,” as you used a ghoulish IDF tactic on his neck.

The research indicates: “While the weapons, tactics and circumstances varied from city to city, what we saw in one instance after another was a willingness by police to escalate confrontations,” according to ProPublica. The article goes on to show that “officers are taught to view every situation as full of risk, full of potential violence. That framing, which stresses control to stave off ‘catastrophic’ outcomes, can often result in the rationalization of excessive force.”

As I watch what is happening and realize that over the course of 50 plus years since I protested against the Viet Nam war, the police are still used as domestic terrorizing units to squelch dissent, rather than as domestic peace keepers, it breaks my heart.

It is breaking the heart of America as well. It is showing the world the ugly hypocrisy of the very word ‘democracy’ when our rights are trampled and our own police chose violence over simply maintaining the safety of peaceful protests. A double standard is in play when white nationalists march down the street with guns waving American flags as if they own the country with not a cop in sight but others waving the flag of Palestine to demand the end to their suffering after 76 years through peaceful means of divestment and ceasefire, frightens the hell out of you.

We need you, my sisters and brothers in law enforcement. We need you desperately to stand down. To back away, to refuse to trample and zip tie and tear gas what is left of our rights in this country. Re-read your oath. Let that be your talisman against evil and those who would turn you into their slaves, to divide with slander and to tear this country asunder. Whatever your personal beliefs or religion or politics, they must be set aside at this moment.

What the world sees, is not these students and other protesters on the campuses who are destroying this country. Quite the opposite. They see it just may be you.

As an officer of the law, any order received that is contrary to the Constitution of the U.S. or of your State is illegal. Compliance with such an order is not required, but may be and probably is illegal, and the issuance of such an order may be a crime, which obligates a law enforcement officer to make an arrest of the person issuing it.

The protests and encampments are not the problem. The protesters are not pro-terrorist because they want a genocide to stop. The problem is that the monied interests in power have been unmasked for the entire world to see the corruption and collusion with a foreign nation, and those protesting —for you as well— want desperately to have their country, this United States of America—back! They want your tax dollars and their tax dollars back here, to take care of us, your family, too. They want peace in the world. For you as well. They don’t want you to lose your soul, your sense of self-worth, to become a bully pawn to a system that only uses you to do their dirty work.

That fading piece of parchment we are asked to defend when we take our oath as peace officers, has been trampled, burned, shot at, bloodied, pissed on, torn apart, time and again for centuries. And yet it renews itself each time, shaking off the assaults and so many attempts to destroy it, both from outside and inside our borders. Why are so many people compelled to come to our shores?

For what the Constitution promises: democracy. It’s not perfect because we are not perfect. But our Constitution holds all the elements of what’s possible, the mechanisms for change and growth, of what can be good and just and loving and compassionate for all people. We’re not there yet. But we can’t stop trying. Our kids are showing us what a true democracy looks like.

I’ve got nothing left to say here and I won’t stop reciting our oath. The one we all took. The one that asks us to be fearless in the face of corruption and a misuse of power. Against all enemies foreign and domestic. The kids are alright. They aren’t your enemies. Never were. The real enemy, the one you think you’re being so righteous about right now? To find them you need to look up from encampments, into the ivory towers of universities, in the halls of Congress where foreign lobbies use donations to buy support so one nation can continue to destroy and murder. And you need to take a good long look at every person who is sitting—in the Oval office. He’s the not first to quash dissent against those who dare to defy his horrific denial of and complicity with murder on a mass scale.

Yes, why don’t you just start there.

Please, for the love of this country and justice and for the tattered remnants that still remain of our sacred and beloved Constitution—-

Please.

Stand.

Down.

It doesn’t make you a coward. Quite the contrary. You have the power to change history. You have the ability to show the world what true courage in a real democracy looks like. You took an oath. Now live up to it.

(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune)