Support your local law enforcement

By Bobby Horn Jr.

Sun Editor

It would be real easy to have negative opinion of law enforcement if one were to only believe what they see on television and read on-line. Mistakes and errors in judgment seem to become sensational headlines.

But just because it is on the air and on-line does not make it true.

In my experience, the majority of law enforcement officers are honorable people, with a servant’s heart, who are doing their best to protect their community from lawlessness and chaos.

Law enforcement officers are not a mindless machine created to cause fear and oppression. They are husbands and wives, sons and daughters, a brother or sister. They are ordinary people who take on an extraordinary task, to serve and protect their community from those who would use violence and deceit to take advantage of others.

It is sad, but it only seems that law enforcement is in the news is when something bad happens. What about the good they do, officers who go out of their way to help someone in need.

Years ago I had the privilege of working with a sheriff near the Texas Gulf Coast. Each of his deputies carried stuffed animals in the trunk of their patrol vehicles. Whenever they went on a call which involved a child they would give that child a toy. You see, most of the time law enforcement officers are only called out to a scene when someone is having the worse day of their life. For a child, seeing an officer in uniform might be scary but something as simple as a smile and a toy can help alleviate the fear for a small child.

When I was a child I learned law enforcement officers were friends and that if I ever got scared or in trouble all I had to do was find someone in uniform and I would be safe. Parents, grandparents, caregivers do their children, and law enforcement, a disservice when they teach them to fear or hate a person in uniform. Yes, it would be easy to say that I can feel this way because I am Caucasian and that if I was another ethnicity it would be fair for me to distrust someone in uniform.

That’s a load of hogwash. Respect should never be based on ethnicity. Respect is something that anyone can teach, by words and by actions. Train up a child in the way they should go and when they are old they will not depart from it.

Law enforcement officers are the “Thin Blue Line.” They are the ones who stand in the gap between the public and the criminals. They are the ones who say “on my watch, you will be safe.”

I encourage each and every reader to take the opportunity this week to thank a law enforcement officer for their service.