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Finding Faeries

~ My continuing mission to explore … magic

Finding Faeries

Tag Archives: police

Words are Powerful

19 Thursday May 2016

Posted by Kathleen Palm in Thoughts

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

opinions, police, teaching, thoughts, truth

A strange thing happened at my daughter’s softball game the other day…

Well, strange? Maybe. A bit terrible too.

Softball game. Awesome metal bleachers. A neon yellow ball flying through the air. Families and friends cheering, laughing, at times groaning. Fun at the ball field.

Two county officers approached our side of the diamond and asked a man to stand up please. The woman beside him put her arm around him and told them he didn’t do anything. I tried to focus on the game…this show was none of my business. Words continued to flow from the bottom seat of the bleachers, getting more and more impossible to ignore. But finally the guy stood and the officers cuffed him and escorted him across the park.

And the woman who was with him wasn’t happy.

Another man (a friend of theirs, I learned later) asked if they really had to do that in the middle of a ball game.

To which the woman replied that the cops don’t care and they are pieces of s*%&. The cops should have better things to do like catch drug dealers. That this man hadn’t done anything.

And I began to shake with anger. My own thoughts and opinions of this screaming in my head. If you don’t know, my husband is a police officer, has been for 20 years. So this whole episode hit close to home.

I bit my tongue. I set my gaze on the game and worked on breathing calmly. Because nothing I could have said to this woman would have been good. Nothing would have helped the situation. My opinions were left better unsaid…just as hers would have been better unsaid.

For the scariest part of the evening, when my anger turned to sadness, was when a kid, maybe 11, repeated what the woman had said. He believed what she had said to be the truth. It was her truth, I suppose.

But when it comes to truth, we need to be careful. Truth isn’t fact.

I wanted to share a different truth with the boy, one that would help him see both sides. One that wouldn’t blind him to all the other truths out there.

The facts? Who knows. Had this guy done something? Probably. The police don’t put someone in handcuffs and take them away because they feel like it. They have reasons. Usually pretty good reasons.

Did the officers have something better to do, like rid the county of drug dealers and murders? At that moment…no. They were doing their job to the best of their ability. They handled themselves professionally.

Unlike the woman, who spewed hateful words, out of anger…maybe out of fear.

The person who screams loudest is heard. The person who yells over all the other voices must be right.

Nope.

All the nope.

So much NOPE!

I can’t help but think about how this kid might grow up hating the police. Just what the world needs.

What else do we…adults, society…teach kids? Kids aren’t born with thoughts of hate, with thoughts of violence, with ideas of prejudice. Those are learned.

Though some would argue with me that there are people born evil…and maybe that’s so.

To me, it’s our lives that mold us into who we are. It’s our experiences that shape our opinions and values. It’s the way we can climb out of the darkness to find the light with help from others, with a kind word, with acceptance that makes humans truly special.

Be careful what you say, you never know who’s listening. In the heat of the moment, many of us have said things we shouldn’t have…that’s human.

Yet in quieter moments, so many have been a ray of hope, a light in the dark…that’s human.

 

When the Magic is Lost

18 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by Kathleen Palm in Thoughts

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

anti-police, Ferguson, hate, human, make our world better, mistakes, police, thoughts

There are bad people in the world. Terrible things happen.

I haven’t been following every moment of the tragic events in Ferguson. I don’t know every detail. Honestly, I don’t think anyone knows all the facts and we might never know. I do know that a lot of people have decided that they know what happened and are angry, more than that they’re enraged. Instead of grieving, of acknowledging mistakes, learning and moving on, they are acting on their rage.

They need someone to blame. But there is no one to blame.

The anti-police comments have brought me to tears. For those of you who don’t know, my hubs has been a cop for almost 19 years. People have pulled guns and shot at him, people have run from him, people have told him he should have better things to do than pull them over, people have tried to hit him. He’s seen people dead in their homes, been in the midst of angry crowds ready to riot, and sat out all night in the rain to catch people when they decided to break the law and steal. He has been trained to deal with all of this. He has put on riot gear and sprayed mace. He has drawn his gun, but never used it. He does his job to the best of his ability, like a lot of the police out there.

I’m not saying all police are good. Like all human beings everywhere, there are those who don’t follow the rules and sometimes they make mistakes. We all do.

Being a cop is a tough job. Before we blame those in uniform for everything that goes wrong, let’s remember that they are people. Just people, who make mistakes, who have problems, and who are doing their jobs. And they have families. So in my own little way, I am here to stand up for them. If you haven’t been in their shoes don’t judge.

What happened in Ferguson was terrible and I grieve for the loss of life, but this happens everywhere. People shoot people all the time and no one does anything, until it involves a cop, until it involves race.

Did a cop make a mistake? I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe he did what he needed to. No one will ever know because no one is listening. No one cares. But we should.

Are the events in Ferguson the fault of the police? No. People decided to react by standing and screaming for blood, for justice.

How is this making our world better?

It’s not.

We are Human. There will always be bad people. There will always be violence because someone can’t accept someone else. There will always be violence because no one cares to listen. Reacting to violence with violence only increases the hate and rage.

So take a step back. Before we decide who to blame for all the evil in the world, let’s look at ourselves. Are we doing everything we can to make our world better? Or are we just pointing fingers hoping no one looks back at us, at our mistakes, at our problems.

Don’t lose sight of the magic that is life.

And now I will climb down from my soapbox … carry on.

Sharing my search for magic in everything.

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Kathleen Palm, Author

Kathleen Palm, Author

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