And it'll make you feel good, too. Showing someone that you love her or him with your actions is great and gestures are nice, but for a lot of people there's nothing that beats the actual words. But I also know that being a police officer tends to make people cynical, and that cynicism combined with the power that officers have is a dangerous, and sometimes deadly, blend. Police officers spend their time trying to catch the people who have shot, stabbed, choked, broken, burned, impaled, thrown or otherwise abused another human being. After a while, they learn that people are capable of committing terrible offenses and that the guilty tend to lie.
Cops have an even tougher job.
There are no signs to tell them which people are the bad ones. Since an officer's first priority is to go home to his family at the end of the day, it's safer for him to look at everyone as a potential offender. Our courts compound the problem. Just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is OK for a police officer to arrest someone for a minor traffic offense. Our municipal leaders compound the problem when they fail to deal with abuses when they occur.