An now a word from the good cops to the bad ones.

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I have to confess that whenever a story appears on the news about a teacher abusing  or molesting a student, I have two responses along with the correct one, the correct one being angry that a teacher, using their position of authority, harmed a student under their care and should be punished for that.

The other two responses are based on my having been a teacher, and being a Gay man.

I know that once the news about that teacher spreads, all teachers, based solely only on their being teachers, will be looked at and treated as if they too are that teacher. Generally, there is a time period when they will all be guilty by professional association, and there are changes in the attitude of students toward them with the worst example being a student warning them that he or she would report them for abuse for something as simple as a routine act of discipline such as telling the student to stop talking during a test. They know that as false as the accusation might be, it certainly would make life miserable for a while, and some students love this.

The second reaction is more personal than professional, although there is an overlap, hoping that regardless of the gender of the teacher, the victim is of the opposite sex. You can imagine the public outcry about a same-sex molestation. The lives of Gay teachers become hell.

So I can image, although not fully experience, what happens among good police officers when one of their own acts foolishly.

Considering the number of police, somewhere between 700,000 and 900,000 local, state, college, and sheriff, the places they patrol, and the number of citizens in their areas, the number of actions of rogue police officers  is minuscule, but they are usually very public and very sensational.

I was pulled over once and informed by the officer that I had a back light out. He acknowledged that unless someone told me that, there was no way I would have known, and he was the one telling me. Rather than give me a ticket, he gave me a written warning that I had 30 days to change the light and call a certain number and notify them it had been changed noting that if I did not call, the warning would become a ticket. He further suggested I buy more than one bulb in case it was more of an electrical problem than a single bulb one, which I did.

When I changed to bulb the light fixture was filled with water, it had been a real rainy season that year, so having extra bulbs was a good idea if some leakage had caused the problem and could cause a future one.

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Same problem; two different approaches.

Most of my interactions with police have been the former, but the latter stood out.

Not all police are bad. The problem is that those who are, need to be retrained, and new ones properly trained.

But if we lump all police, good and bad, into the same category, then we will not be looking for the specific signs that could help the problem get solved. We will not be looking for that common denominator with those cops who go bad.

And people who exacerbate the problem by posting memes that set up the you-either-love-all-police-or-you-hate-them-all, and that there are those who don’t love police officers as much as they do need to stop.

People who instantly bad mouth all police because of the actions of a demonstrably small few need to take a deep breath before acting, especially if they really don’t have a gripe, although some might.

And police need to be more self regulating and come up with programs that will assist their peers when they notice a pattern of behavior or a growing shift in attitudes from reasonable to less so.

Just as with people’s attitudes toward Gay people who are all perverts except the ones we know, we may notice that we could fall into the crowd who says all cops are bad except the ones we know.

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