Working with officers for 19 years, night after night in highly volatile situations, everything from:

Moscow, ID removing children alongside CPS

officers in the San Juan Islands teaming up with the crisis line

stabbings and prostitute cases in Everett

homeless elderly in downtown Seattle

Police from the reservation in drug overdose cases

suicide attempts on the ‘East Side’.

I know some departments hire thugs and angry officers, but I’ve never worked with one. I have seen officers with tears in their eyes, begging me to please do what it takes to not send the elderly woman found down among broken glass and cat feces back home. Officers who stay around long enough to know a child they rescued is out of harms way. Officers who have been roughed up by a delusional paranoid man, and who showed kindness toward him as it was understand how vulnerable the patient was. Officers both men and women who care deeply about the ones they had to bring in.

In every school district among caring teachers there are selfish, abusive ones here and there. Among every hard working pastor there are pastor perpetrators and porn addicts. Among every caring counselor are those who do damage.

Officers as a whole get my respect for the consistent kindness and regard they have show my very fragile wounded patients.

Locking up thugs, now that’s a different subject.  Lock them up whether they be wearing a uniform or wearing your shoes. Talk to me about solutions, not broad brush disregard. Talk to me about needed changes.  Don’t talk to me about race.  Good officers are all the colors of the rainbow.  They have to be to manage their job well.  Try living in a world without good officers.  I’d rather not.