Peace Officers

Depending on your age, you might call them cops, police, the fuzz, or pigs; but I call them peace officers and I think that we ask more of them today than ever before. I grew up in a County Attorney's home and one of the places I played as a child was the county jail.  When there were people around my kitchen table in the evening, there was a better than even chance that at least one of them was a peace officer.  When it was time for me to learn to drive, my mother didn't handle the duty.  She asked our Sheriff, J. "Bud" Wallerich if he would take care of it.  Bud taught me to drive by showing up at my grandparent's home one Saturday morning.  He loaded me in the driver's seat of the squad car, took me out driving for about three hours and when we returned he announced to a relatively panicked Betty, "Don't worry, he can drive."  This was the kind of relationship I had with the peace officers in my community.

The interesting thing for me is that when I was a youth, and did something wrong, our local officers reprimanded me personally, in private, rather than using the law. I thought that it was because of who my parents were.  With time and distance, I've come to think of it very differently.  I believe that it was because they knew me as a person, a relatively responsible young person. Because of that, if I found myself in a bit of a jam, they helped me out.  Now (and remember I am a child of the 60s and 70s), if I had been out marching, protesting and throwing rocks, and these same people knew that, I am pretty sure their treatment would have been different.  Aren't we all like that? If someone treats us with disrespect, it jaundices the way we think about them.

So, you may ask me what led me to these thoughts today.  There have been a couple of things that I heard lately.  First, a story about a little girl, who when asked what she was going to be when she grew up, her answer was, "In jail."  Wow. She's only known the dark side of life. The second thing was a plea to tell our children that police were to be trusted and were our friends.  I was blown away by both of these, thinking that this really is the way we are training our children.  When I grew up, you always knew that if you were in trouble, you could find a peace officer and they would help make things better.

Not so very long ago, when soldiers returned from overseas, they were jeered at and even spit upon.  Fortunately those days are behind us.  Now, generally, if someone sees a soldier they look at them with respect.  It is not uncommon to be in a plane and see someone in first class offer their seat to a traveling military person.  I've seen this twice in my own travels over the last year or so.  During the same time, the way that we treat our peace officers seems to have gone the other way.  We don't treat these people with the respect they deserve and then wonder why they don't live up to the standards we want to hold them to.  One activity feeds the other and we need to break out of the cycle we have begun.  In an emergency, one of the first people who will rush into it to are your local peace officers and we need to appreciate that now ... when they do it ... and afterwards.  

The next time you are at HyVee and one of the members of the local force is eating lunch, smile and say hello.  Talk to your kids about them being the "good guys" and people you can count on. Show your kids what respect looks like. It will be amazing how that will actually help to make it even truer than it is today.  It only takes a little change to start making a big difference.

In honor of TBT, I am including a picture of Bud Wallerich.  He is in the middle.  He is the man who taught me to drive, and when I was laid up with a really bad leg injury, he came to my house and taught me leather craft so I would have something to do.  Our peace officers still have this kind of passion for the people they serve today. We just have to help release it by giving them the respect they deserve ... as humans and as peace officers.