In the early morning hours of June 29th, I woke up to my alarm to get up for work, to get ready (as much as I can… working from home and all) for the day. I had an alert about an officer involved shooting nearby. It was actually where two police officers were shot during a traffic stop. Both had been sent to the hospital with unknown injuries at the time. Suspect is on the run, armed and dangerous.

Reading on the police and alert pages I follow, people like me who listen to the police scanner, they heard it go down and heard an officer scream as they heard them radio into dispatch. As much as I love listening to the action on the police scanner, I don’t think I could handle just hearing that. It would stay with me and haunt me. The same thing would happen if I worked as dispatch. I just couldn’t. It’s like being on a phone call and not being able to help someone when something goes bad.

My next thought was, do I know those cops? It’s not like I know the whole force, but I know a few in different departments so there’s always a chance.

Even not knowing them, they’re part of our community, just as if it had been a bystander that was shot or a domestic incident. Shootings and the brutality of people’s minds that justify killing each other, and never over anything worthy of it, is heart wrenching.

I couldn’t be a police officer for many reasons.

• I’ve never shot a gun – not that I’m against guns, I’m just always like… I don’t know 👀
• I’m the opposite of aggressive (depends on who you ask I guess 😅) but I definitely couldn’t wrestle somebody if need be. I would definitely get myself hurt every day on the job. I actually wouldn’t make it through the academy.
• Blood is not my friend and the chances of me seeing that on the job would be huge (so would the chances of me passing out!)
• I would probably cry a lot. Not that crying is forbidden as an officer, but maybe there would be limits and self control to not get too emotionally involved and that’s just not me. I’m always emotionally involved.
• I wouldn’t feel like I’d be taken seriously, as a woman or a cop in general.
• Citizens can shoot an officer and people rejoice as if officer lives don’t matter, as if all officers are corrupt. I couldn’t do that. But I’m an accountant and people probably think accountants are corrupt but they’re not being targeted, police are because they carry guns and have been labeled across the board.

I don’t know what job I would do if I didn’t do what I do. I’ve always admired the hard work our local officers do. They’re highly trained and some of the best in the entire country. People are honored to be on our police force. I’m sure there is corruption, you can’t have that many people and not have someone corrupt in the mix, it’s just a fact of life, however unfortunate that is, yes.

It feels like people don’t see the brutality of the community and all they see are officers trying to shoot people.

It’s a shame that people have to live with fear, but just the other day we had officers on our street. We had no idea what was going on because they were like looking around one of our neighbor’s house and talking to another neighbor. I felt safe just by their presence and knew that if something was going on that would put me in danger, they would 1) tell my nosy butt to go back inside and 2) protect and serve. We soon found out it was the older lady’s house alarm that had gone off and she wasn’t responding (because she can’t hear) but she finally came to the door for them to check on her (before they were able to break down the door 😅).

The presence of cops should make people feel safe and I don’t know why they give the opposite effect to people. They’re highly approachable, so if you want to get to know an officer, just go talk to them. They’re citizens and part of this community too, they just wear a uniform. Something I just couldn’t do.