Don't Shoot The Police You Jackass!

I get it.

People are frustrated over recent events in the news.  People are frustrated at many decades of abuse, targeting, profiling and just general bad behavior from people who are paid to protect and serve.  People are angry at the apparent policy of non-accountability for the people in uniform who perpetrate these crimes.  People are resigned that discussions with their children have to include the acceptance that they will not be treated fairly or equally, but that they will endure it with a smile on their faces and a "yes, sir" on their breaths if they want to stay alive.

But you don't get to shoot the police you jackass!

Shooting the police is stupid.  And it's wrong.  For more reasons than just the normal "Thou shalt not kill" thing.  It's wrong because two police officers sitting in their car minding someone's business besides your's are not target practice.  They are fathers, sons, brothers and friends.  They are two men who got up, got dressed and went to work with the thought on their minds that they were protecting and serving today.  They have names and stories; families and histories.  They had futures that included having families, dancing at their daughter's wedding, and holding the hand of their mothers while they ended their long time on this earth and passed into the next life.

And they just might have been the only two people on that police force who were brave enough to fight the good fight, rail against the unjust, and stand in the way of those "other" officers mentioned above who are not walking the correct side of the line.  The fact is that you don't know.  You will never know.  The world will now never know.  You jackass.

I get it.

You had a target on your back.  You got pulled over just about every week just because of the color of your skin.  You got followed when you walked into the store because someone assumed that, because you were black, you were there to loot the place instead of buy a tube of toothpaste to brush the stench of last night's spaghetti and meatballs from your breath.  You got offended when the lady walking by you in the parking lot shifted her purse to her other shoulder - just in case.  And you snapped.  You jackass.

You thought you would be hailed a hero.  You thought you would right the imbalance of social justice.  You thought you, in your almighty wisdom, would set right the wrongs of decades by your one cowardly act.  You jackass.

Instead, you caused a bigger divide.  You caused people, who have already had to do so much justifying, to explain away your sorry self.  You caused people who were standing strong behind you to abandon the fight as a hopeless waste.  You took the hard work of so many who were working for change and flushed it down the toilet so you could "be the man".  You stopped progress.

I get it.

You mother-fucking jackass.