First Responder

FIRST RESPONDING

I love writing my blog.  Keeping it going has been a challenge not only of my creative abilities but to my priorities as well.  I’m constantly lamenting my beyond-rigid schedule and the fact that my publishing is so far behind.  But if writing is anything, it is a work in progress, so I take it in stride and enjoy the experience as it unfolds.

I’m glad my readers do too and I am reminded of this all the time with your messages and emails.  The thoughtful feedback has been invaluable as I work to flesh out my upcoming book The Con Game: A Memoir of Trust, Betrayal, and Redemption. The wackadoodles have been fun too. I’ll have do a piece about their colorful commentary sometime. (See! Here I go again!) 

Then there are those comments I receive by people who ordinarily have both oars in the water, until I strike a nerve prompting them to act like they have an elevated status which enables them to exert more influence over what I write.  For the record, that is called a publisher-we’ll go into that unusual animal another day.  But some without that particular distinction some still feel the need to reach out and chastise me for sharing my opinions.  

Like this guy:

“Your defunding story was very disappointing,” a reader replied. “It is the responsibility of all citizens to support law enforcement.  Accusing the police of racism only provokes more violence.  I thought you were more educated than that.”

Yeah, it was a guy.  As far as I can tell, he isn’t employed or directly affiliated with any law enforcement department-at least I certainly hope not.  I have had a couple law enforcement officers contact me in the past, one an active duty officer with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol who cited prison statistics in order to justify George Floyd being executed without trial or conviction.  But most of them offer their arguments in a more cohesive (and less authoritarian) voice.  We don’t agree on the subject of police brutality, but we don’t discuss endorsements for a police state either.  I can’t help but think that is just a couple bullets down on that fan’s talking points!

But I really thought my argument for re-funding other services to allow the police to get back to protecting and serving was pretty self-explanatory and it kind of gets me down that there are people out there that read what I had to say and found offense.  Did you just read it until you found something disagreeable? The criticism definitely lacked substance.

But that doesn’t mean my argument or the kinds of atrocities that inspired it did.  And that kind of systematic slaughter shouldn’t be ignored, discounted or normalized.  So for those in the back of the room just waking up to the conversation, let me give you a brief recap of what you have missed-namely the constitutionally protected rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It amazes me how so many mindless opine-ers happily cite the constitution when justifying gun violence or police malpractice but forget those three tenants are granted to the entire citizenry-not just the ones you relate to the most. I certainly don’t dispute the Second Amendment, merely point out when its observation is a bit myopic.  I’m a big fan of the First Amendment, myself.

To swallow the fan’s charges, you have to assume my point was a generalized as his-which is just a pile of crap.  As a word artist, I spend a great deal of time crafting just the right statement or message to tolerate some idiot pigeon-holing my work.  It’s just lazy.  Then complaining to me about offending really takes the cake!  Perhaps you would be better off looking into the issue itself before you find fault?

Such as the fact that to this day, NO police, sheriff or highway departments give their officers a license to kill-even though the unions, blue-backers and even the law treats them like they do.  Nor are their state-sanctioned executioners.  Yes, their job involves sometimes being thrust into incredibly dangerous situations, but that job involves working with the same people the rest of us encounter every day.  No one else experiences the body counts they do, ever wonder why?

Because countless parents, neighbors and child care workers are used to dealing with children playing with toy guns.  Wham-O and Nerf have made entire industries out of arming them.  No one would presume the appropriate method of disarming a twelve year old boy would be to initiate a gun fight but that was the fate of Tamir Rice.  Given the number of kids that survive imaginary gun play every day, there are countless ways the police could have better handled the situation given their training.  Rice is rarely given the same courtesy even though he was six years too young to take a gun-carry class.

And because many of us don’t go hysterical at the sight of a black man.  We remember we live in a society that expects more from us than a sequel of Terminator.  Botham Shem Jean did that, its just a shame the off duty police officer that killed him didn’t hold herself to the same standard.  

Because store clerks and bank tellers deal with people trying to pass of counterfeit bills all the time.  They don’t throw those people on the ground and slowly choke them to death.  That’s probably the last thing that liquor store employee thought would happen when he called the police on George Floyd too, but then again that probably goes for most people.

And I cannot and will not accept an ass bag pressing me to be silent about it and I cannot and will not mindlessly throw my backing behind the force that refuses to publicly denounce and correct these atrocities.  

I save my respect, sympathy and prayers for the victims and their families.

My name is Jennifer Beck and I’m Jenuinely Jennifer.

Writer, Researcher and first responder!