The Patriot Post® · Mass Police Resignations Ensure Societal Chaos
Travis Yates is a 27-year Tulsa, Oklahoma, policeman who published an editorial that ought to frighten and anger every decent American thoroughly disgusted with self-aggrandizing “revolutionaries” and their equally contemptible supporters in media, academia, “woke” corporations, and Hollywood — along with a Democrat Party content to see American burn to the ground as long as it gets to rule the anarchic carcass of a former constitutional republic. “We Are Leaving” will resonate with thousand of cops across the nation no longer interested in risking their careers and/or lives to keep America safe. And despite the satisfaction massive numbers of resignations will engender among the aforementioned accomplices to this catastrophe, the country will be substantially worse off.
Yates “grew up in a law enforcement family” he admired greatly. And though he had no desire to be a cop, “I went on a ride along and my life’s journey would never be the same,” he writes. “After four years of college my dad wanted me at an agency that respected that education so I moved to Tulsa (OK) at 21 years old and never looked back.”
Now Yates is looking back, and he is appalled. “It’s not that law enforcement has changed for the worse but everything around it has,” he writes, offering a series of examples to make his case:
“The mentally ill used to get treatment and now they just send cops.”
“Kids used to be taught respect and now it’s cool to be disrespectful.”
“Supervisors used to back you when you were right but now they accuse you of being wrong in order to appease crazy people.”
“Parents used to get mad at their kids for getting arrested and now they get mad at us.”
“The media used to highlight the positive contribution our profession gave to society and now they either ignore it or twist the truth for controversy to line their own pockets.”
“There used to be a common respect among criminals. If they got caught, they understood you had a job to do but now it’s our fault they sit in handcuffs rather than their own personal decisions.”
“If someone attacked a cop, they were seen as such. Now we martyr them and [they] sue for millions.”
“We used to be able to testify in court and we were believed. Now, unless there is video from three different angles, no one cares what you have to say.”
Even worse, Yates explains why he would no longer “send anyone I cared about into the hell that this profession has become”:
“It’s the only job you can do everything right and lose everything.”
“It’s the only job where the same citizens you risk your life for hate you for it.”
“It’s the only segment left in society where it’s cool to discriminate and judge, just because of the uniform you wear.”
“Cowards are all around us. From chiefs to sheriffs to politicians, no one has our back.”
Bottom line? “You aren’t going to have to abolish the police,” he declares. “We won’t be around for it.”
At the bottom of Yates’s column, an editor’s note reveals that since its publication, there has been an orchestrated media effort to destroy his reputation.
Something else has happened as well. Seven police officers have resigned from the Minneapolis police force due to lack of support from city leaders. The Star Tribune characterizes this as an “unusually large exodus,” but one suspects it is only the beginning. Retired Minneapolis police officer and use-of-force expert Mylan Masson, explains why: “They don’t feel appreciated. Everybody hates the police right now. I mean everybody.”
Not everybody. Millions of decent Americans of every ethnicity and political persuasion are appalled by those who would destroy the nation while calling that destruction “social justice.” They are disgusted as they watch cities get burned and looted and hear such orchestrated mayhem referred to as “peaceful protests.”
Moreover, they know those orchestrating the divisiveness are a contemptible combination of racial arsonists, disaffected and indoctrinated youths with bleak futures, useful idiots who assume the color of their skin automatically makes them “guilty” and “privileged,” and a cadre of elitist accomplices, organizers and/or cheerleaders with genuine wealth, power, and privilege — including private security forces and gated neighborhoods — who think being “down with the cause” has bought them absolution.
It hasn’t, any more than #MeToo exempted people of power and privilege from an absurd “believe all women” standard. Yet that cause officially crashed and burned when the same hypocritical zealots who imposed it on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh revealed their calculated incuriosity regarding Tara Reade’s sexual-assault allegations against Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The same dynamic is likely to apply here when a few “enlightened” elitists become as vulnerable to the mob as the most deplorable deplorable.
Nonetheless, pessimism abounds. “The left controls the institutions of our society,” columnist Frank Miele writes. “They control speech. They control schools. They control the media.”
Indeed, if there’s “systemic” or “institutional” racism in this country, just remember who controls those institutions.
Miele continues, “The Soviet Union suffered under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat for seven decades before enjoying a partial return to sanity in the late 1980s. There is no reason to think the United States will get off any easier.”
Oh yes, there is. Between now and November, the electorate will have been thoroughly marinated in leftist dogma and the ominous permutations that attend it. As problematic as Trump is, Americans will be forced to consider what it really means to vote for a Democrat Party that allows the same cities where officials first imposed draconian lockdowns to subsequently be looted and burned. A party that embraces a Cancel Culture that threatens the well-being of anyone who isn’t completely aligned with progressive ideology. A party that applauds the destruction of history, one toppled monument after another.
Americans will be forced to consider how one maintains the monetary value of one’s home or business in a riot zone, whether dialing 911 will lead to a response, or whether the burned-out supermarket or department store they frequented will ever be rebuilt. They will be forced to consider whether feckless Democrat Party leaders will abide more “autonomous zones” that subject them to the whims of the mob.
And they will have to decide if the purposeful evisceration of entire police forces for the sins of a precious few is the panacea leftists assert it to be — or the surrender of civilized society to the mob. Dennis Slocumb, who served 32 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, knows the answer. “The predators would devour the prey,” he states, “and when the prey are gone then they would devour each other.”
Will a majority of Americans willingly subjugate themselves? “Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources,” remarked Israeli politician Abba Eban in 1967.
In 2020, the bet here is a majority of Americans are thoroughly exhausted.