Opinion: An eye- and heart-opening Citizens’ Police Academy experience
Last fall, I spent every Monday evening with local police-people at the Centre County Citizens’ Police Academy, trying to understand, to feel, what their life is like, what motivates them, why they choose to do something that you couldn’t pay me enough to do.
The experience was a blessing — eye-opening, heart-opening, thought-provoking. Breaking down my boxes of pre-conceived, simplified notions. Funny, sad and painful at times, forcing me to look at my ideas of how things “should be” vs. the reality of holed-up gunmen in Philipsburg, saving Nicole Abrino’s life at the Ramada Inn, pulling an elderly woman from a burning house, 30% of calls involving people with mental health issues or suicidal ideation. Opinions and things they cannot say in public, much as when I was a corporate manager and had to keep quiet and take lumps in the court of public opinion. And the highest job rate of death by suicide in the nation.
Perhaps in the end, it boils down to concerns I have about all of our biases, for all of our mental health, and for our spiritual grounding.
Life is complex and paradoxical, not simple or easy. I deeply believe that we all want to be loved and respected, that none of us is the worst thing we’ve ever said or done, that we are all doing the best we can with what we have. And what we do has impact, regardless of our intent. These truths are evident in what’s going on in myself, in the world, and at the police academy.
There are pages more things I could say and so many questions I still have. And the poem below is my best shot at the essence of it all:
“Logs and Specks: Reflections on Citizens’ Police Academy”
It’s over. / Eight weeks putting myself in someone else’s shoes, / the shoes of those who feel a calling / to risk their lives while the rest of us flee to safety, / who rescue dogs and go towards gun-men / yet are oft’ maligned these days, / damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t, / usually but / not always.
“Tell your friends that we are people, too!” / they said. / Painful, poignant, sad that this is all they want, / so obvious a truth when we’re together. / Yet they can be objects of our negative bias, / which we denounce in them / when the tides / are turned.
I feel grateful to and pained for them, / grief for innocence and trust they’ve lost / in dealing with the worst of what we / do to each other / as we act out our greed or pain or fear, our anger / or have accidents. / Would you / choose that?
Things are complicated, life complex, / not simple as our lazy minds would have them be. / None of us has perfect foresight, / hindsight alone is 20-20. / To be judged for what you did / preparing for a violent Proud Boys / that could have happened / but did not, / is to be caught / between a rock / and a / hard place.
Not everyone should be police, / that’s for sure. / Yet imagine the life we’d have / without the best of them / because the worst can be in each of us / as / our shadow.
“Us-them-us-them-us-them-US!” / The tragic refrain of people bereft of / spiritual vision, / who’ve lost our hearts / and / our honest self-reflection.
When the log is burnt within my eye and turned to ash / I once blind can truly see /
my neighbor’s eye contains no speck
for the Light that shines from within the Void of the Cross is
Love / without / condition /
Compassion without end.
Namaste