Honor in Policing Gangs: This block of instruction is the final course that wraps up the end of all of our presentations.
This class focuses on one challenging question: How can we be okay, rather than be right?
The purpose of this portion is that it benefits us all to hear the role that law enforcement plays in a gang member’s personal story. And how those individual contacts that you have with gang suspects, can add up, and become as significant to them as any other life contacts that they have. It can be eye-opening to view the gang members’ perception of us, through the lens of our own actions. And it can be career-ending when one negative interaction is able to eclipse a lifetime of honor and hard work.
We are aware that we face the challenges of the ubiquitous camera lenses and an often unsympathetic media, however, we can often lose sight of the purpose behind these over-zealous judgments upon the police. We have to accept the reality that perception IS reality; even when it’s not. And we have to work within the confines of this new reality to continue to provide the necessary services that are expected of us; while making sure that we aren’t just “right,” but that we are also “okay.”
Ask yourself a question,.. “If the gang member you arrested today, were to turn their life around, and then write a book in 20 years… What kind of character would you be in that book?” Were you the animal who arrested them? Or were you the good cop who caught them? And can you be proud of your actions during your history of encounters with them?