All You Need to Know About Police is in this Photograph

If a picture is worth a thousand words…

Last week was a busy one. Between covering (photojournalism) the Black Lives Matter protests in Washington D.C. on the wake of the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery on the end of May 2020, An article came across my social media newsfeed.

Wow. The thumbnail of the article had this Chicago police officer flipping off his middle fingers into a crowd of protesters — protesters who only want basic human decency from a police officers.

Sadly, the uncontrollable rage of a police officer is something a lot of us are familiar with. This man’s gesture is precisely what the problem is with police in America. I don’t know about anyone else, but this photo here tells more than it probably intended.

I always marveled at the systemic racism in American police forces. It would make more sense if institutional racism in police, were tethered to one region. It would make sense if institutional racism in cops were tied to a small area. But this is not the case. Police racism: the brutality, corruption and lack of accountability concerning any slights on black lives ranging from over-policing to state-sanctioned lynchings — spans across the total United States, from the west edge of California (we can count Hawaii, that’s my own personal police terror story) to the eastern edges of Florida and Maine. From the southern edge of Texas to the highest point of Alaska. To a Black American, police brutality is a common practice and is nation wide. There is no escape. All cops function with the same measure of disrespect towards Afro-Americans. This is not conjecture. This is a fact; police function as if they can kill you in plain sight if your black. There’s been nothing done about it until recently.

There is a saying: a picture is worth a thousand words. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what are the thousands of words communicated by a uniformed professional, who is given the civic responsibility to possibly wield death, giving double middle fingers to unarmed, innocent civilians? To the world?

Low Standards Become the New Standard

There used to be an argument that exists within groups of people who seek of uphold standards of the said group.

These standards are a part of the group identity; it’s orthodoxy. If one breaks from said orthodox, it’s possible to be eliminated from said group identity.

In the Army we always said, “If you fail to uphold the standard, you create a new one.”

The standards (of professionalism) at which police exist as a uniformed force in America are incredibly low. As an U.S. Army vet, we all wouldn’t DARE be caught giving double middle fingers in uniform. The fact that this man does this should be astonishing, but it isn’t.

It would be great if we all can say that this man’s gesture is only tied to this man alone. It would be better if maybe, we can say that this problem with blatant disrespect for unarmed civilians is a regional one.

But it isn’t.

This man doing this only happens to be one man caught in the act. This is a mass, full-scale, national problem with police in America. Police all across American are a group of people — uniformed professionals — who are deadly, murderous control freaks, totally okay with quick tempers, bursts of violent rage, bullying behaviors. Keep in mind that they are all armed with deadly weapons and kill unarmed people. You have to walk on egg shells, especially as a black person, around police.

Never Disrespect the Uniform

One of the things we say in the military that keeps us all in line is the notion that something we can do can “disrespect the uniform.” Any action or behavior pointing to a loss of control, lack of self-discipline, or bad temperament is held from ever happening because actual military personnel don’t want to disrespect the uniform.

As a military vet, there’s no such thing as “not all Soldiers.” There’s no such thing as “not all Marines”. The uniform ties as all together.

The uniform in the military, is almost a whole other person, comparable to the symbiote in Marvel comics or any other living organism you can wear in fiction. The uniform in the Army for example, has it’s own storied past, has it’s own attitude. You become the uniform; you’re not some random person who can wield the full range of sheer lack of self-discipline while wearing it.

The uniform, will REJECT YOU if you do not have self-discipline in the military. Why doesn’t the police uniform work the same way? Is it not a uniform?

Military professionals are inculcated to totally understand that acts out of a loss of self-discipline will cheapen the uniform. So why do cops routinely cheapen theirs?

So it’s categorically baffling to see a uniformed professional who likes to imitate military professionals, so unprofessional. What does the uniform mean if you can bring your own dysfunctional behaviors onto it? What does the uniform mean if you can lose control in the face of the public while wearing it? Are you just thugs in pretty clothes? Or are you professionals? You can’t choose both.