‘You won’t need to abolish us – we won’t be around for it’: Why I and many of my colleagues are quitting as US police officers…”If you think Minneapolis will never turn into Mogadishu – it’s coming.”

RT.com
10 Jun, 2020

Travis Yates is a serving police commander in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is a doctoral student in Strategic Leadership, a graduate of the FBI National Academy, and the author of “The Courageous Police Leader: A Survival Guide for Combating Cowards, Chaos & Lies”. This article was first published on lawofficer.com

After more than 27 years in the force, I’ve had enough. These protests and riots are the final straw. The nasty words we get called all the time have now turned into rocks, bottles and gunfire. It’s over, America: we are leaving.
This is the hardest thing I have written.

I grew up in a law enforcement family. My father worked his way up to the rank of Captain at the Fort Smith, Arkansas, Police Department. As a kid I remember going with him on Friday to pick up his check and I was in awe of these super heroes he worked around.

My dad sacrificed a lot and so did my late mother. Whether it was the week-long surveillance or wiretap or chasing drug runners across the country, he gave it all for my family and worked plenty of extra details to never let our family be without. Some would call that privilege but where I grew up, it was called hard work.

The kids at school thought it was cool what my dad did and while he sometimes asked me if anyone gave me a hard time, they never did. There was respect among all… even the kids in shop class.

I didn’t grow up wanting to be a cop but one fateful night, as a freshman in college, that all changed.

I went on a ride along and my life’s journey would never be the same.

After four years of college my dad wanted me at an agency that respected that education so I moved to Tulsa (Oklahoma) at 21 years old and never looked back.

I didn’t know anyone and all I knew was what I saw my dad do, work hard and treat people with respect. I saw a lot of other cops working hard as well and doing all they could to keep the community safe.

27 years has passed and if you would have told me the condition of law enforcement today, I would have never believed you.

It’s not that law enforcement has changed for the worse but everything around it has.

The mentally ill used to get treatment and now they just send cops. Kids used to be taught respect and now it’s cool to be disrespectful.

Supervisors used to back you when you were right but now they accuse you of being wrong in order to appease crazy people.

Parents used to get mad at their kids for getting arrested and now they get mad at us.

The Rest…HERE

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2020 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Civil War II. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.