At a time when people across our county and our nation have aspirations to bring forth positive change in institutional practices, it is important to emphasize that as members of public safety, we must fight the right fight.
In order for public safety organizations to operate with elevated ethical standards, we have to ensure that as leaders of these agencies we model those standards ourselves.
As if the unfortunate death of George Floyd is not an uphill course for law enforcement in re-establishing and upholding fair justice for all; we have in our county a disciplinary action take place, that halts the efforts of law enforcement whose objective is working towards ending unequal treatment.
Recently, a BSO employee was suspended for simply telling people to exercise their right by essentially getting out to vote and encouraging people to take positive action in their community. In this post on the employees personal Facebook page, the employee also provided information regarding the current agency’s positional staffing of minorities (because this employee is a minority as well).
The employee did not incite or encourage violence, the employee did not bring forth negativity to the hard-working men and women of BSO, nor did the employee use names. In fact, this employee is a current union representative with the same union whose president was suspended for telling the truth and its membership delivering a vote of no confidence for the appointee. This is a problem.
I have great respect for the men and women who serve in all capacities as first responders and support staff, but how can we expect unjust treatment of people to cease when the employees are treated unjustly. It would be hypocrisy if Jesus was able to stand for things that were at the heart of the matter, but an employee is not able to.
Action such as this was not even political, this was personal and created despair within the public safety agency. Martin Luther King said, “we need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity.” If you are a leader, exercise decency with straightforwardness and a sense of genuineness and not having ulterior motives to hurt those that work for you or those you serve.
Recently a demonstrator held up a sign that said good cops hold bad cops accountable. The question is, who holds the appointee accountable?
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