That's unfortunate. Because each side has an important point that the other needs to hear and their views are not, in my view, as different as it may seem.
We pastors have a high view of the work of the police. We are pastors to police officers. We work with law enforcement closely, especially at times of death. We work together when tragedy strikes. Clergy often ride with police officers as chaplains to police departments and have seen the difficult job that our friends do, the risk they take on to serve us, the care and sensitivity nearly all police officers demonstrate in daily interactions with the public acting in their worst moments. Nearly all cops are good cops and good cops are some of the world's very best people.
At the same time, we are sensitive to all people being treated with compassion and dignity. We preach the Gospel from a Bible that warns us of the dangers of power being abused by those who are not held accountable. We have been tasked with speaking up for justice whenever anyone is mistreated, especially those who have a limited ability to speak up for themselves. The killing of unarmed young people is something we feel we must speak against.
The more I've thought about it, the clearer it has become to me that holding police accountable for the failures of the worst among them (whose actions are not typical) is in no way anti-law enforcement. To remind the law enforcement community of their calling is in their best interest.
Any self-regulating community called to serve a constituency is in constant danger of protecting its own at any cost. I see it among clergy. Especially in my Methodist system, we preachers are tempted to think that our self-regulating bodies exist to protect and nurture the preachers themselves. Sometimes they certainly should. When one of our pastors is struggling, we should support him or her and do what we can to restore him or her to fruitful service to the church. But we fail when we forget that we exist to serve the church, and the church is the people, not the clergy. If we shuffle ineffective or immoral pastors, we destroy our reason for existing and we diminish the high calling we share.
Practically speaking, we pastors need people to respect us not for ourselves, but because a certain degree of respect is necessary in order for us to accomplish our jobs. If people come to believe that the actions of the worst among us are characteristic of us all, then the best among us will become frustrated and leave, and the rest of us will be unable to garner the support we need to serve our congregations well. If we were wise, we would understand that we need to provide discipline among our own for our own sake, and certainly for the sake of our mission.
Law enforcement is in the same situation. The question is not whether or not most law enforcement are honorable, dedicated, and self-sacrificial public servants. They most certainly are.
But if law enforcement close ranks around those who fail to live up to the high calling and enormous responsibility placed in their hands, then they risk the respect of the public. Being a police officer is dangerous enough as it is. The last thing the police need is for a significant portion of the population to develop a sense that the police as a whole can act with impunity when they misuse their authority, or that if they break the law themselves they will not be held accountable for committing crimes in the exercise of their duties.
Police should support each other. But they should support each other because we need to be a society ordered by law and justice. Law enforcement are on the front lines of our justice system, on the front lines of seeing that laws are followed for the sake of public peace and order. If communities have reason to believe that standards are unfair, that police use a double standard based on race or anything else, then the good ones will have a much harder time doing their jobs well. Their lives will be in even greater risk in the performance of their duties.
I live in a community in which I have great confidence in the law enforcement officials I encounter every day. I feel very badly for them that their good work might be perceived to be diminished in any way by actions of officers in the other end of the country that were, at best, grossly negligent, and, at worst, criminal.
I know they would never say it, but I wonder if they feel anything of what I felt during the clergy sex abuse scandals several years ago. I remember being angry and hurt, of course, for the victims. But I was also angry because the sacred trust those few had violated diminished all good clergy who would never harm anyone in our work. And I was angry with superiors who refused to remove the bad apples and covered up their crimes, creating a culture in which further victimization was tolerated and indirectly encouraged. It took public outrage for church officials to recognize that it was in their best interest to put those it served ahead of protecting their own.
This is a painful time for our country. But my hope and prayer is that good things might come out of tragedy. If police departments become more likely to understand that removing bad apples is good for the law enforcement community, that would be a good thing. If law enforcement culture reaffirmed its brotherhood's mission to serve all the public (which includes all the people of Ferguson, inner-city Cleveland, and Staten Island) that would be a good thing. Such a culture shift would include the protection of whistle blowers, it would include police support of prosecution of wayward policemen, it would include police brass taking a harder line on removing officers with a history of bad behavior, for the sake of the honor of the badge and for the sake of the public they serve. That would be a good thing. That would mean that we would have all learned something and maybe all this heartache wouldn't have been for nothing.
