Soap Box

During a recent night in Nashville, Tennessee, someone wrote the following in huge letters on an abandoned truck trailer in a vacant lot.

�Save a life. Kill a cop.�

As of this writing, there have been 23 police officers gunned down in the line of duty this year, that is not even taking into account the ones killed in car accidents or injured while directing traffic or dealing with domestic violence, a hostage crisis or any of a myriad of dangerous situations they face every day.

Police go into neighborhoods where the streets are ruled by violent gangs and the next person they face could be some drug crazed junkie with a knife or some street hardened teenager who wants to make a mark in his upside down world by killing a cop.

Mayors of major cities have chosen political expedience over backing their police departments and created a "Damned if we do, damned if we don't" situation, leaving the cops afraid of enforcing the law for fear of being skewered by some headline-seeking city official with political aspirations who�s willing to sacrifice the efficiency of their police departments and the safety of their citizens for their own greedy purposes.

These self seeking politicians along with the Al Sharptons and other supposed "civil rights leaders" have done much to alienate citizens and police, even President Obama inserted himself in the Treyvon Martin situation, easily perceived as taking the side of those protesting before all the facts were even presented.

Such behavior legitimizes bad feelings toward the cops in the minds of those already incited to the point of ignoring facts and looking for trouble, a tacit approval of anarchy, and statements like "let them destroy" fans the flames and puts policemen in the impossible position of deciding between breaking their oath of enforcing the law and obeying a city official obviously in way over 
their head.

We place our police in impossible life threatening situations and on the rare occasion they make a mistake, or are perceived as making one, the activists come out in droves, politicians go into circus mode and the media goes viral.

Put yourself in the place of a police officer answering a call in a high crime neighborhood. You're walking into a dark alley, alone, and suddenly someone jumps up and points something at you.

Is it a gun?

Is it a knife?

Is it a broken bottle or a rock?

Or is it just a cell phone?

You have to make a split second decision and what you decide could well determine whether or not your children will be raised with a dad or without a dad.

I know there have been senseless police shootings, I know there have been woundings and killings that could have well been avoided, when there has been time to act and a policeman made a terrible decision.

But this is such an anomaly, and yet it is held up by activists and the media as standard operation. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Nobody hates a violent confrontation more than a police officer. Many serve their time and rarely, sometimes never, unholster their guns. And that's the way they like it.

Of course there are a few bad ones, but the overwhelming majority of our law enforcement officers are there to protect and serve, to enforce the laws our duly elected representatives pass, to find the missing child, to handle the riots, to take the drunk drivers off the road, to make sure you can walk down the street in safety, to keep the ever growing jungle away from our doors.

I deal with a lot of policemen in the course of a year and behind the badges and bullet proof vests they are people just like the rest of us; husbands, wives, mothers, fathers with kids in little league and starting college.

Ordinary citizens who have made the life changing decision to devote their lives to the service and the well being of their communities, the first call, �thin blue line� that separates civilization from chaos.

They deserve our respect and support.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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