BLACK LIVES MATTER, BLUE LIVES MATTER, ALL LIVES MATTER

…The official insignia of the Blue Lives Media Operation

 

The police killings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana has now brought new attention to fatal police shootings.

 

I don’t know about you, but I personally had never heard the term, “Blue Lives Matter”, until President Obama used the term when he interrupted his trip at the NATO summit in Europe to comment on the 5 police officers killed in Dallas.

 

In doing some Googling, I learned that going back to December, 2014, in the wake of the killings of police officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, in Brooklyn, New York, a group of law enforcement officers formed Blue Lives Matter as a media company to counter those anti-police media reports.

 

Today, the Blue Lives Matter movement is made up of active and retired law enforcement officers.  The problem for the Blue Lives Matters movement group is that the Black Lives Matter movement sees the Blue Lives movement as a way to suppress their movement.

 

Of course, the Black Lives Matter groups were originally formed for finding a way to end the growing police brutality against the nation’s African American community.

 

Since the forming of the Blue Lives group, there has been a lot of criticism back and forth between the two groups with the idea that Blue Lives Matter is actually mocking the idea of Black Lives Matter.  It’s been a real mess and lots of finger-pointing between them.

 

Some Americans are now feeling that the Blue Lives group is saying that police officers are more important than the public, especially the black public, and this is leading to one controversy over another, and then another.  The Black Lives Matter movement sometimes sees the Blue Lives movement as a way to suppress their movement for ending police brutality against African Americans. 

 

After the horrifying videos of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling dying at the hands of police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana, this has now brought new attention to fatal police shootings and the movements of both groups.  But the terrifying ambush that took the lives of the five Dallas police officers and wounded seven others, this has brought new attention to attacks on the police.  And this latest attack in Dallas was the worst attack on a single US police force since the 9/11 terrorist attack.

 

The latest concern is that both of these recent events will put even more strain on the already severely strained relationship between police forces and the American communities they serve.

 

The participants in both movements have had the same concern: a concern that American society does not value the members of either of these two communities.  Many political leaders outside of the two organizations, including President Obama, have attempted to discredit that perception.  But as usual, when this kind of issue materializes, perception sometimes becomes the reality.

 

As a result, both of these communities feel embattled and totally victimized and both are very angry. The truth is that there are a number of reasons for both groups to feel the way they do.  Meanwhile, the consequences of this serious mistrust is having a harmful effect.

 

Whether they like it or not, the safety of police officers and of civilians alike, depends largely on the strength of the relationship between the police and the public.  And that means, ALL of the public, regardless of their race, creed, color or religion.  We already know that the public distrust of the police decreases cooperation with all of law enforcement.  That in turn, can lead to an increase in violent crime and civilian resistance.

 

But on the other hand, when the police distrusts the public, that will undoubtedly lead to an increase in officer misconduct and the misuse use of undue force.  " It many times makes the police become too aggressive and to have a 'zero tolerance' attitude that further increases the tensions on both sides.  This can send any difficult situation into a virtual death spiral."

 

But that is not the only negative effects of this distrust.

 

You will recall that after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., many local blacks across the country rejected the “official version of events”.  That being, that Brown was shot while aggressively moving toward an officer he had already assaulted. Instead, they believed that Brown was shot while surrendering with his hands up.

 

This is the key to the problem between the Black Lives and the Blue Lives groups.  The answer to the problem has very little to do with the shooting itself, and everything to do with one important word: “trust”.

 

The official Ferguson story was rejected, even after an extensive Justice Department investigation had supported it.  But the American people, not just the locals, the others that had watched the events on cable news stations, these people did not trust the local police.

 

So why, in the face of two conflicting stories, didn’t they give credit to the official version?  It’s because of that lack of trust and the fractured relationship between the Ferguson police and their local community.

 

Based on statistics, half of the 10 most violent and destructive riots in US history were responses to perceived police abuses.  This distrust of the police has ultimately endangered hundreds of officers and thousands of civilians, and it has resulted in millions of dollars of property damage and personal injury.

 

And today, with social networks on the Internet, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others, while policing is a local affair, police-community relationships are not local.  Police shootings, especially in the age of the Internet with viral videos, those shootings are echoed far beyond the communities at which they take place.

 

Just look at the death of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota.  Their deaths just reinforced the perception that law enforcement too often views black men as presumptively dangerous and black lives as being cheap.  Seeing how these men were killed caused major protests across the country in just hours, not days or weeks.

 

But this issue is a two way street.  The same issue is true when officers are shot. The attack that took the lives of those five Dallas police officers, also gave the impression that the police are being surrounded by a hostile community.

 

As an optimist, I believe that these relationships that have had a long history of distrust and anger, they can be repaired.  There have been some serious issues in some police departments in cities such as in Richmond, Calif., and Camden, N.J. where we have seen some remarkable progress between the police and their communities.  Yes, these miracles can happen.

There is hope, but with today’s technology advances, what makes things faster, can also make things appear different from what they really are.  It is a major challenge that will require major efforts from both sides of the aisle.

 

It won’t be easy, but yes, it is possible.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016