‘To protect and serve’ means accountability for all

Photo by Isaiah Teeny

“To Protect and Serve.” These powerful words were originally adopted by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1955. Since then, they have been adopted by police organizations around the world. For perhaps a majority of people, when they think of the police, feelings of safety, security and helpfulness flood their mind. However, others are wracked by feelings of terror, peril and unease. The reason for this is that people have lost faith in what was once a given – police accountability.

Now, any rational person will tell you that the police have a difficult and dangerous job, and their lives are on the line every day. The majority of these men and women do a fantastic job making their communities and this country a better place.

Lately, though, there seems to be a trend of police shootings involving unarmed suspects –sometimes, people who simply do things like reach for their wallet, or don’t lower the hood on their sweater. This has made people genuinely afraid of the very officers they are supposed to be able to count on for protection. But the worst of it is that there doesn’t seem to be any real consequences for the police.   

According to CNN, since 2005, 77 officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter in the U.S., and only 26 have actually been convicted.

This is out of the thousands of officer-involved shootings per year, and just last year 90 of the people who were killed by police were unarmed. That is 90 people who lost their lives because they were killed by the police, with no weapon. Now, I am not saying that every case is the same and that there aren’t circumstances in which deadly force might be justified. But, if we use last year as a benchmark, since 2005 that’s roughly 1,000 unarmed deaths with only 26 police convictions. Personally, I’m no math whiz, but that seems like a pretty small number for the amount of unarmed people who have lost their lives.

The issue affects all of the U.S., the Portland area included. In 2010, a group of Portland Police officers, including Ron Frashour, responded to reports of an armed man holed up in his apartment and threatening suicide. Despite crisis negotiators on the scene, Aaron Campbell was eventually shot once by Frashour – in the back – after which it was determined Campbell had been unarmed at the time.

The case drew sharp criticism and inspired activism in Portland. And yet, Frashour’s firing was later overturned by a court ruling and a grand jury declined to indict him.

It looks to me like the police need to have more strict rules on their own behavior. At times, it seems like they aren’t governed by the same laws as the rest of us, and that’s not a group that some of us can support.

I want to end this by saying I have the utmost respect for the officers that follow their oath to keep us safe. No one wants to be afraid of the police; we want them to be our protectors, and we just want to be safe from them as well.

Advocate Staff