Parenting Reform

"Check it out. I've got your book on my iPad! I thought you might be around here. A few minutes ago, some old guy reported that some guy was trying to take his picture for some website."

Through the series of unfortunate, tragic events that have unfolded in the past few months, the nation has plunged itself in deep distrust of its law enforcement. With the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the fatal chokehold of Eric Garner in New York, and the very recent shooting of Walker Scott in South Carolina for a broken brake light, the public is no longer convinced that the high number of black men killed by white officers is merely a coincidence. When society fears and distrusts its own justice system, there will always be social unrest. While there is no question that those who enforce the law must obey it themselves, the highly covered stories of abuse of power by the media has made us forget that the vast majority of officers are not out for trouble.

It seems like even the most innocent citizen grows up with an innate fear of the police. We automatically slow down when driving past a cop even if we are well within the range of the speed limit as the sight of the uniform and mere possibility of being chased down by flashing blue and red lights cause us extreme anxiety. But fear is not an innate emotion because it is a reaction taught by society. So where does this fear of law enforcement come from?

You don’t have to be a parent to know the age-old parenting trick of threatening misbehavior with a call to the police department. “Put on your seatbelt or else the police will come and take you away” and “Eat your vegetables or else the police will lock you up” may seem like innocent, obviously exaggerated phrases to use to get quick results but what they really do is create the unintended consequence of a child who grows up in fear of the police.

As we grow up and move to college, the role of the police shifts from scary enforcers of seatbelts and vegetable eating to the party-poopers who are always out to ruin the fun. In our hurry to avoid detection, we forget that cops do not exist to punish and that in fact, they take no pleasure from arresting criminals as shown in this video. The problem is that we’re always taught that “the police are out to get the bad guys” as opposed to “the police are here to help”.

In an encounter with a burglar at their home, mother of three-year-old Hamish Neil, Suzanne Bosanquet, found that “Hamish was more scared when the police turned up” than his face-to-face encounter with the thief. When the uniform scares you more than a criminal, it may be time to drop the seemingly innocent parenting threats.

In this time of social unrest, children who grow up with stories of the shooting of innocent victims by law enforcement will inevitably have their own misgivings with the police so as the country seeks to reform its justice system, it is also time to some parenting reform. Because let's face it, at the end of the day, officers are just regular people, reading Human's of New York, and out looking for a man trying to take pictures of people for "some website".

"This is NYPD reporting for a white male photographing bystanders and conducting very instrusive interviews. Over."