When police make headlines, let’s be sure it’s for good reasons.
For most of its existence, the Gainesville Police Department in Gainesville, Fla., has earned just a few dozen likes on many of its posts. Comments and shares, too, were about as common as Loch Ness Monster sightings.
Then, Thursday, the Gainesville police uploaded a video that has skyrocketed above 16 million views and 300,000 shares so far.Fuzzy dash cam footage and muffled audio told the story:
an officer arrived to deal with a noise complaint. There, he found several kids playing street basketball in Florida’s midwinter warmth.
The kids were making noise, but they were not breaking any laws.
The officer declined to punish the kids.
Instead, he joined their game. He started a conversation. His day didn’t include gunshots, only jump shots.
This should fill us with optimism. Friendly interactions between police and their communities already speckle American cities every day, but go unrecorded and unappreciated.
We should flip the script so kindness wins. Police, just like anyone, deserve respect; they are innocent until proven guilty.
If more police and communities embraced mutual compassion, we can cut down on the heartbreaking headlines of atrocities both by and against police.
It’s no secret that law enforcement agencies have been bombarded with fierce criticism in recent years. Accusations of racism, trigger-happiness and abuse of power come to mind.
Often a lone police officer violates public trust with a high-profile mistake that seizes the nation’s attention, but we must recognize that such mistakes will never become extinct.
Nearly one million officers have the authority to conduct arrests and use firearms in the United States. It’s actually incredible we don’t witness police overreach more often.
Similarly, with one million officers making split-second decisions, we can’t expect to eradicate all horror stories.
What we can do is create an uplifting environment. If you were a police officer, would others’ scorn motivate you to boost your job performance? Probably not, but appreciation might.
Positive reinforcement is more effective than positive punishment, so praising good policing will spark greater progress than rushing to condemn law enforcement agencies during times of controversy.
We can begin by appreciating those who wear the badge here in Bloomington.
On several nights, campus police have patrolled past my friends and me while we were wielding lightsabers. Rather than ignoring the officers, we handed them the red and blue swords, brightening their nightshift with the sparkling experience of a brief Jedi-versus-Sith battle on the IU campus.
Lightsaber duels are an extreme example. A simple “thank you” is the weapon of choice.
Ultimately, if we make police officers’ careers rewarding, they’ll be inspired to return the favor to the communities they serve.
This will lead to more happy occasions like the basketball game in Gainesville, Florida.
Amazingly, that blurry basketball footage has received about 100 times more views than the entire Florida city has residents.
This proves that the hunger for positivity is out there. We all just need to act on it.
