The Problem With The Police (and other civil servants for that matter)

When did Americans start deciding that the answer to every social ill lay in the power of the criminal justice system and officers who try to maintain peace? People expect too much from police officers. You’ve seen the videos or read about those incidents that get lots of media coverage on police whose actions are brought in to question. Often, in the end, the officers are found to have acted appropriately once the truth comes out, and other times they are prosecuted if they were wrong. That’s the way our justice system works and it works very well. Responsibility for social issues like homelessness, drug use, mental illness, and kids who are extremely troubled have now been handed over to men and women in blue who are trained to enforce compliance, not offer therapy!!!! Same thing goes for schools. Teachers are trained to educate and inspire learning; and even though many teachers take it upon themselves to go above and beyond their calling, they are not trained to analyze and administer treatment for troubled teens. (If they tried, they would most certainly be setting themselves up for a lawsuit) Schools do a great job of working to solve social problems, now it is time to help the police do the same.
Rather than lay the blame on those who try to maintain some sort of normalcy in society, why not look at ourselves? Why have we dumped the problems we are seeing onto the laps of officers and teachers? I read an article where an officer killed a robbery suspect with a history of mental illness. He was heavily criticized. I have sympathy for the man killed but why is it we think officers can solve social problems? Too many of us are of the victim mindset: we point fingers to blame, stay locked in the past, and expend an awful lot of energy on the bad news rather than the good.
The use of force is sometimes necessary, and an officers level of force needs to be at a higher lever than the person who is fighting them. How is that so hard to understand? Police put their lives on the line every single day, are exposed to more vulgar and darkness from society than we could ever imagine, and their jobs are getting more dangerous every day thanks to us.
We need to stop such a narrow-minded view and look at the bigger picture here people! Living in our communities we can do little about what we see in the news…but we can do something in our own little part of the world. We can support our officers, and teachers, become involved in helping at schools, and in watching our own neighborhoods. And we can be careful what we post on social media. If we post incidents like what happened with the young girl who disrupted an entire classroom and blame the cop…what kind of message do we send our young people? What can we do about that particular incident? Nothing…nothing at all. But we can use those stories to find a way to make our own neighborhoods better. We need to look at countries like Great Britain, where the best way to fight racism, help the troubled and mentally ill is to become more community oriented as a society. Reforms are needed for sure,we cannot expect them to be the only but only "thin blue line" between us and a problem. Rethink your mindset....then and only then, can real changes take place.