Police Shootings: This is Personal

Tonight, I’m struggling.

In fact, I’ve been struggling for the past two nights.

For the past two nights, after the kids are in bed, the house is picked up and I allow myself to settle into the crook of his arm; I struggle.

I try not to cry. I try not to worry. I try not to yell. I try not to beg him “please don’t go to work tomorrow.”

I know better than to say those words, because I know it is of no use. Because as I sit and worry, letting my mind reel with ‘what-if’ scenarios, he seemingly watches Swamp People without a care in the world. Because that’s what he does. Despite the worry, the fear, the downright evil that may cross his path tomorrow, he will still go. He has to go. It’s who he is.

And so I will do the worrying for the both of us.

Did you see the news on Sunday evening? Did you read the articles on Monday morning? Did your heart break when you heard about those Las Vegas officers? The officers who were gunned down while eating lunch, simply because they wore a badge on their chest?

Don’t we have a word for that? When prejudice acts as the motive for a malicious crime? Is it accurate to classify this as a form of hate crime? When an officer is gunned down in cold blood simply because of the career he has chosen, how is this different than those crimes committed against someone for their religious beliefs, sexual practices or skin color?

What if we didn’t look at them as officers and ignored the fact that these men entered the profession knowing that the hours would be long, the dangers numerous and that most people they encounter will radiate hatred toward them? What if we looked at them for what they are when they take off the uniform, unstrap the bullet-proof vest and hang up their holster? What if we looked at them as the husbands, wives, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers and friends that they are?

Can you tell I’m angry?

Because I am. 

I am also petrified.

Every day I am afraid to send my husband to work. It’s part of the police wife curse.  Along with the lonely anniversaries, Christmases celebrated on the 28th and a gun holster on the nightstand, the fear is real. It’s part of “what we signed up for.”  The worrying, is relentless.  Everyday, I agonize over the possibility of high speed chases, threatening domestic calls and routine traffic stops gone awry.

And now I have to worry about his lunch breaks too?

Everyday, in the mist of my fear, I must trust. Trust in my husband’s training and his instincts that he will make the correct decisions and be able to return home to us. In most situations, the encounters with  drug dealers, the emotionally-charges domestics, the prison-transfers, I can squelch the fear with my trust in him. But in ambush, the game changes. Suddenly, trusting in his instincts and training is not enough. In these situations, I can only trust in God.

And while my faith usually stands steady, I can’t help but feel it wavering when two young officers are killed in this way.  And I hate that.  I hate them for making me question my faith that God will help keep my hero safe and bring him home each night.

It’s no secret that officers are hated by many. Hate, in and of itself, is not a crime but the action that follows it, is.

Seeing the faces of Officer Beck and Officer Soldo, reading about that tragedy and watching that news coverage; to some it may have been “another police shooting.”

But to me, it feels personal.

And it leaves me angry, frightened and a little bit broken.