E21 Public Perception of Police

Ashlie: Welcome back to Tactical Living by Leo Worriers. I’m your host Ashlie Walton and I’m here with my co-host Clint Walton. 

Clint: how are you doing?

Ashlie: Today’s episode we’re going to dive into a topic we see on the news almost nightly. And that is police brutality. And baby I want to talk about police brutality. The connotation portrayed on the media. Be it truthful or be it biased, and a lot of the times fabricated. And how that affects community policing.

Clint: You know around the topic of community policing in itself it makes it really hard when we’re already we’re fighting that uphill battle when it comes to trying to repair and create new relationships involved around the police in whichever community you may work for. And especially when you’re in an environment where you already have a stigma about you where kids are raised to think that the police are bad. All they do is arrest you and just go around beating people for absolutely no reason.

 

Ashlie: So is it okay if we maybe start from the beginning a little bit. So let’s talk about when we were kids and our view of law enforcement. For me I remember the only time actually I can recall two times where we ever had to call the police for anything. One of them was an instance where my brother’s bike got stolen and I remember the officer coming to the house, he filed the report. He was very welcoming; we were really comfortable when he came there but also had a pretty high level of authority towards him. We knew that there was this respect boundary and I was probably 7 or 8 at the time. And another instance I can think of was when my mom and I were at the grocery store and she took me to the bathroom and I think I was probably 9 years old at the time and it was one of those ages where I wanted to be a big girl. And my mom let me go into the bathroom by myself. And it was just a single stall bathroom. So she was waiting out right outside the door. And I sat down to go pee and I looked on to the side of me and I saw something falling down and I look on the floor and it was like watered up toilet paper. And I’m like that was strange and I’m a little girl I’m like going pee midstream and I didn’t think of looking up. But it happened again, and I think this time it brushed my shoulder or maybe even my arm and that’s what caused me to look up and kind of behind me where the toilet was like all the plumbing and things like that I guess would be. And when I look up, I see there was a hole. And what I thought at the very naive age of eight or nine was a finger sticking out of the hole and I got so scared. It was probably my first time being allowed to go into the bathroom by myself. And I remember I was still like dribbling pee, but I had to like to pull my pants and go running out to my mom and she was right outside the door. She was really upset immediately and asking me what the matter and I had told her there was like somebody sticking their finger out of a hole from the bathroom that was adjacent to the one that I was in. And I guess the man’s and the woman’s restrooms were right next to each other separated by this wall. And I remember my mom getting so so upset and me not knowing at the time but now as an adult understanding that it wasn’t a finger. There was a man in the bathroom next to me and he had stuck his penis through this hole in the door or I’m sorry the wall. And that’s what I saw. And my brother worked there at the time. My mom only shopped at that grocery store, so she knew everybody there. And the manager came, they found the guy that was in the bathroom and they blocked him in. I guess he was a transient apparently. My dad got off work shortly after that. He got home from work and I remember my mom was like crying she was so upset we had gotten home and she’s like pleading with my dad to not go back to where the grocery store was because she didn’t want anything to happen. And apparently the manager and my brother had like held this guy there until my dad came and my dad went there. And the story I am told was that he beat the shit out of this guy for exposing himself to his daughter and the police were called and nothing ever happened to my dad. I think it was probably a father who could relate to what had happened and sure times are different now and maybe you know things would have been different in terms of any kind of charges that would have been filed against my dad for something like that happening. But as you sit there if you are a parent, I’m sure you can relate to a situation like that in how grateful you would have been for the officers understanding for a situation like that.

Clint: Yeah. Can you only imagine if that officer just immediately went and handcuffed your dad and started taking the approach of you know well you violated the law? So I’m going to have to take enforcement action on it compared to really looking at the bigger picture of it. Now like you said the times have changed recently, notions a reason over the years and things would be handled the different way but it doesn’t mean your dad would necessarily go to jail or anything. But that approach that that officer took was one of building a relationship with your family. And not only that but also the manager of the store. And I’m sure he appreciated knowing that law enforcement was there and present and understanding for the community as well as being a father and bringing yourself down to that level of being human which is something we try to voice as much as we can in our own coaching practice. You know as a police officer there is a human behind that badge. There is a real life that exists outside of putting on that uniform 

Clint: Oh absolutely. And there is a lot of us who you know we have huge hearts. And that’s why we do what we do. We want to help the community we work for. We want to build those bridges. We want to show that we’re more than just people who go out and arrest other people. 

Ashlie: So then let’s fast forward a little bit. I’m not this 9-year-old girl anymore. And things start to happen in the world. 9/11 happened when I was in ninth grade. Even going back to the point of eleven years ago when we got married, pone week, actually it wasn’t even a week. We got married on a Saturday and the Monday after we got married you started the police academy.

Clint: Happy honeymoon.

Ashlie: Yeah. That was three years later. But even at that place in time the perception of law enforcement to you as somebody who was not a police officer yet is so far from where we perceive law enforcement today. So talk to me about what transpired from your point of view during these last eleven years.

Clint: You know there’s so many instances that’s changed policing throughout just my career in law enforcement.whether it’s the localized terrorist attacks, whether it’s active shooters in schools or the severe incidents of protests against police brutality or just citizens and self not trusting the police. There’s a level of respect to that used to be there and like you’re saying is growing up there was a level of respect even if you’ve never had any contact with law enforcement. But that just comes from your being raised with having your parents instill in you, you know respect your elders and people of authority you need to, yes sir, no ma’am that mentality. You have to approach all situations. Those officers don’t necessarily deem that as necessary. But when that happens well that’s a really respectful kid or adult and we should be doing that not just with law enforcement and just with everybody.

Ashlie: Well for sure we absolutely should. And we see the repercussions in our daily life of not acting in a civil way.

Whether that is I mean in the American culture especially and we’ve been fortunate enough to travel to so many different countries to where we can compare that. But for the American culture its customary for us to say “hi good morning, how are you? Fine how are you.” it’s just a matter of okay now we’ve established this pleasant foundation to conduct business or place an order at a restaurant or I don’t know maybe you just waited two hours in line at the DMV like name something.

Clint: And you know I think even taking that a step further as a human being when you ask someone how are they, give them a second to respond and just allow them to tell you how they’re doing. That’s one way I’ve used every day just to build that bridge to ask people really what’s going on and let them start opening up within my normal life or as a police officer and every time I’ve done that I’ve built relationships throughout the whole community that is then life changing in so many ways.

Ashlie: And it’s important to touch on that because I remember as a kid in school, we would constantly have police presence. They would come to our assemblies. They would always be there you know just showcasing the positive imagery of call us if you need us, like we were taught how to dial 911. We were taught when we were never supposed to dial 911 and in my opinion, what’s happened incidentally between the time you became a police officer and the advances in technology coincidingly, you’re everywhere. You can’t hide from it.  And it’s not showcasing this positive let’s give an elementary school child a sticker and a pencil and then show them that police are good. Media can’t sell that. So in the advancement of technology you also have media capitalizing on that. And every single view, every single recording it’s always turned in. So if I record something, I mean you know somebody who took pictures actually essentially stole pictures of Britney spears and pawned them off to capitalize on them.  The photos don’t mean much nowadays. But having that raw material you know that real footage is what sells. So you not only have the media hiring people to go out and just capture all the stuff that will sell. It’s not going to sell if you help a little girl learn how to ride a bike when she’s getting her training wheels taken off. But if you catch the wrong view of a hostile situation to where there’s few instances of excessive use of force that are actually validated but they don’t follow up on that ever in the media. And having that one view that showed that one aspect you know with a car blocking what actually happened and then the viewer can just pay witness to this high action thing that they perceive as being truthful and being reality and then that random person that took the shot gets to turn it into you know TMC or whatever news source, whatever outlet will pay them the most for that  video. That’s all that they care about. It’s all that matters.

Clint: It’s the almighty dollar and that stigma around that eye-catching news story. 

Ashlie: And then I believe it creates this negative spiral whereas a citizen or as a very manipulee child with a mind that’s growing and developing, when they’re seeing this negative association with law enforcement could there be this hesitation when they actually need to call the police. Are they going to second guess whether or not they should call for help when they need help? And hey guess what if you don’t like the police in your area it’s not like you have a second choice and you can go and call a different nine one one line. It doesn’t work that way. 

Clint: Yeah you don’t get to pick what police officer you want to respond to your house unfortunately. And you know kids they’re intimidated to talk to police in general anymore just based off of that stigma that’s out there and they could have seen something horrible that they should have never seen but they’re scared to even tell us about it to where we can go out and take an action off of it.

Ashlie: And to be honest this is not just about community policing. This is with any type of industry. There are good and bad no matter where you work. But there is also like the factual hardcore this is the reality of things because we’re behind the scenes and we see the footage, we see the truth. We’re not just looking at this filtered subject that sells like media. And when you’re able to take a step back and start to analyze and really dig into the research and the validity of the facts behind whatever it is that you’re seeing that sparks interest/ you see a video expressing police brutality on social media. Okay wow! That triggered something in you. But instead of leaving it at that why don’t you go and do something of value like further investigating and reading and exploring even call to get more information about whatever it is that you’re seeking. Interview people if you want to if you were that concerned about it to where you want to go and make a fuss about it and repost it and then put your own spin and twist on things then at least have the decency as a human being to have some kind of education and facts to back that up. And I’ll be completely honest with you but also don’t be an idiot in the eyes of the people that actually know what happened by saying oh look it, I found this thing and can you believe that so-and-so did this based on a simple post that you decided to just press a button on to read posts. Like what is that? What does that mean? And when you have something and I don’t care if it’s something positive or negative related to law enforcement related to your industry, but anything that sparks that’s something it pings that you in some way so much so that you feel the ability to just have to share it with somebody take a second and do a little bit of research and then share that post. But back it from 0 and then check out this article that I read from so-and-so fill in the blank with a valid a publication that actually makes you look intelligent and worthy of what it is that you’re talking about. And when you’re able to share your feelings and share any of those things that ping at you by backing it up with a valid resource it’ll make people look at you in a completely different way. It will give you a new sense of actual knowledge and you’ll really be able to enjoy your tactical living.

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