Archive for the ‘Whites’ tag
“Dear Mr. President” A Letter Written by the Wife of a Police Officer to Obama
Dear Mr. President,
As I was driving home from taking my three year old son to school this morning I overheard a conversation on the radio about a Harvard professor being arrested for breaking into his own home. There was a slight debate as to whether or not this was a form of racial profiling because Professor Gates happened to be a black man. In disgust I turned the volume down but a few moments later something made me turn it back up. That something was your voice and a particular description of the police force that I found to be quite shocking! I thought for a moment that perhaps I had heard wrong but lucky for me several radio stations were replaying your comments on the incident and so it was confirmed. You stated “the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody” and went on to mention “the long history within this country of African American and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement officers disproportionately….”
I am the wife of a police officer and have worked as a law enforcement dispatcher for the past three years. Needless to say my blood was boiling and as a matter of fact it still is. Because I myself was exposed to the level of crime that male and female law enforcements officers are faced with on a daily basis, I think I may have more of an idea than you. Because I had to listen to my husband over a radio 50 miles away become nervous on a traffic stop in the middle of the night – I think I may have more of an idea than you. I’ve had to listen to the sound of my husband’s voice after just being involved in a major accident because of a drunk driver and because of this I think I may have more of an idea than you. Every day that my husband goes to work he is putting his life on the line. He is putting the life that we have built together on the line to serve and protect innocent people from becoming innocent victims. Every night that he works I am unable to sleep and every morning he is expected to come home I pray that he does.
Powerful stuff.
