Today is marking yet another example of people protesting yet another spotlighted apparent injustice by the national media. This has in turn caused intense anger and frustration, with apparent just anger at the apparent injustice that has transpired.

Nobody, for any reason, should ever be treated as anything less than a human being treated in the image of God, and any violation of that is not just an injustice of human laws, but of supernatural laws and makes both humans and our Father weep.

So what are you going to do about it?

Well, for most people, they feel relatively helpless as where the injustice occurred is unreasonably far to travel to to protest. In other cases, people feel like there is nothing they can do because what effect is one person going to have on a nationwide problem?

Some people take to the streets and protest with signs and loud voices. There are those among them that choose violence, and anarchy to (supposedly) increase their voice, but that just lands them in jail. But they have a valid concern – what is yelling a bunch actually going to change?

Simply yelling and rallying that there is a problem, that just about everyone can see exists, isn’t going to fix anything. Many would argue that the “other side” doesn’t see the problem. There are three critical flaws with this view, the first is that the people that hold this view often have rarely if ever had an in-depth conversation with the “other side” and secondly, I have found that both sides of the coin often see the same problem, they differ in their stance on the implementation at a national level. Lastly, your efforts in a crowd will be generalized by something foolish that has nothing to do with why you are there, thus widening the apparent gap between you and “the other side”

What exactly would you like to have happen by your protesting?

This is a critical question, what would make you go home happy, like you accomplished your goal?

The end of racism? Try loving on others different than you like Jesus did, especially if their racist. During Jesus’ time there was plenty of injustice, in fact he bore the ultimate injustice himself. I have never heard about Jesus writing any signs, and the only rallies were against Him.

Are you looking for the offender to be “brought to justice”? Well this isn’t the 1700s and we aren’t going to lynch anyone – this is a murder trial in 2020, it’s going to take months and years to process and get all the data. Moreover, it’s a weekend during COVID-19, the court’s aren’t even open, the dashcam video hasn’t even been loaded (let alone the local staff trying to ignore out how to access the footage), nobody been questioned, we don’t even actually know how the guy died as there hasn’t even been an autopsy!

Are you looking to mourn with others at the injustice? Do it with all your might, and tell everyone there about the one who bore all our injustices. That one person who you talk to may spend the rest of their eternity in a different place.

What, however, if there was something you could do to actually make things better functionally? In order to do that, you would first need to…

Understand the problem

If one is so passionate as to take to the streets, perhaps one might take some time to consider:

“What are the steps that need to be taken to go from this current problem, to an environment where this problem ceases to exist”?

A truly scientific effort of this would involve studies and statistics, but as they say “figures don’t lie but liars can figure” so often this isn’t even helpful. Since in this case, and recent events have all pointed to police, let’s take a quick peek at that as a subject.

Before I say ANY of this, I want to be clear that this is NOT every city, and some cities do a great job while others don’t. This is a generalization but demonstrates the complexity of the problem, but also how it can be addressed.

How it Starts

1. You must ask the question, would you want to be a police officer? Why not?
2. If you don’t want to be, what kind of person would?
3. Well it turns out there are two popular types of people that become police officers, the first is retired soldiers, and the second is kids from highschool that go into criminal justice, many of whom come from difficult backgrounds, often times with predispositions towards people groups, and because it is a job that is available and nobody else wants.
4. Once hired, these individuals become hired with minimal training, with less than adequate staffing, antiquated equipment and technology but backed by powerful unions that protect them from just about any real repercussions
5. While working, these officers begin to feel the real challenge with law enforcement which is often that the good guys get unknowingly trapped by local laws and the bad guys use the laws to take advantage of good people. Since nobody is watching their local communities, nobody notices, and so the cycle continues to nauseum on a daily basis with these people who joined a profession to uphold the law and justice often finding that those two items that should be one and the same, can mean opposite actions.
6. This, at some point, forces an officer to decide either to mentally check out and get their check (since often there isn’t any other work) OR to continue to get up and fight another day to help to make justice happen
7. Since these people are protected by powerful unions, and since it is very difficult to measure “mental check-out” often these officers not only don’t get fired, they get promoted, and thus demeaning those that actually care. Administration’s hands are tied, but facing the need to get re-elected have to make things look tidy, but frustrating the officers even more knowing that hings are a disaster, and nobody can do anything about it.

How it Unravels

Now you have a nice toxic stew brewing in your backyard waiting for one of the “checked out” officers to do something stupid. Let’s unravel what that looks like.

1. An officer begins to arrest someone (which is inconvenient and a lot of paperwork) and starts off annoyed
2. The subject begins to flee, talk back, or just is being a pain (note to reader, if you want to make sure your interaction with an officer is positive, be respectful and courteous start to finish, Proverbs says it will turn away wrath, but that doesn’t happen here)
3. The already irritated officer decides to be tough and give them the extra “head bump” on the way into the car (or some other unprofessional move) which escillates and turns out to seriously injure or kill that person.
4. Now there are videos, people are outraged, it’s all over the news, and people are going crazy independent of what actually happened. In many cases, there was some serious injustice, where in others there was more than met the eye, but it doesn’t matter at this point, the spotlight is enclosing onto this new event
   5. During this, police staff, and the city have to figure out what actually happened. What it justified, what is the actual story? For the sake of this, let’s say this was injustice.
5. People not begin to generalize ALL police, the checked-out ones and the ones that actually care, making all the police the enemy
6. Regardless of what actually happened, powerful union forces are at play to protect this officers job and salary, while the politicians are busy trying to figure out how to get re-elected and how to say that they can’t really do anything about this because of the unions without inciting yet another riot about union labor.
7. Now the inadequately staffed and now scarred colleges of this checked-out officer are having to deal with the aftermath, perhaps not even realizing the injustice, but seeing riots coming towards them begin to think about coming home to their families and protecting their lives and become even more defensive, making a tense situation even more tense. Often under staffed, and under-trained these humans are colliding, failing to realize the humanity of the other and waiting for disaster
8. Eventually the situation dissipates in some fashion, but the stigma remains even greater, more laws are made creating more traps for good people, and making it more difficult for good people to enter the police car as a law enforcement officer.
9. And now we are back to square 1, except even worse than before.

So let’s take a look at a couple problems identified:

1. We have the wrong kind of people applying to be law enforcement officers (bad PR)
2. When the wrong people get hired, nothing can be done about it (unions)
3. Officers are given inadequate training and equipment
   4. This stems from some combination of inadequate funding, poor spending choices, and/or people that sell services to cities grossly overpricing and under-innovating.
4. Laws are ensnaring good people and aiding the bad (poorly written laws)
5. Nobody is watching their local communities instead watching national media

How effective is your sign?

So taking a look at these complexities, I have to wonder, how effective is simply protesting? For this one case, it may bring some attention to one specific case, but makes no difference at a greater scale ant at the cost of gross amounts of time and effort.

Lets go through each of the people that may see you yelling with a sign, and consider what they may think.

• The Cop: Wow, these people are crazy, don’t they know there is nothing I can do about this? I am under staffed doing a job nobody wants, and people are yelling at me for something I didn’t do in a city hundreds of miles from here. Moreover even if I wanted to, I have no voice, I am hidden behind a union and can’t even talk because that is the job of the politicians. What do thse people want me to do? Talk to the chief and the politicians!
• The Police Chief: Crap, now I am in a jam. I want to fire some of these bad cops, but I can’t because of the unions, but if I call out the unions I will have an even bigger mess, and even worse probably loose my job because my mayor will fire me because it will risk his re-election which is now under fire! What am I suppose to do? Talk to the politicans and the officers!
• The Politician: I wish people paid attention to their communities and saw how good their local police are! The chief is really trying, and while there are a few bad eggs that we can’t do much about (in the police and other areas of the city due to unions), this city has problems but it isn’t what is being shown on TV. If these people want to fix the police then talk to the police!

Notice how every member of that government flow not only doesn’t believe they have any control, but has a voice that is unheard. So each person seeing it and hearing it thinks people are talking to the wrong group.

So you want justice?

So then, you may ask, what can I do? I am just a [insert your profession here]. I am glad you asked, because if you did just one of these, you can make a huge difference far greater than any sign you may hold.

Appreciate

Go down to your police station, and give your local police and fire staff a big plate of cookies and tell them how much you appreciate them. Maybe even get a group of people together, and just clap for them, and tell them how much they are appreciated. They work all day cleaning up the worse of the garbage of our society every day, generally unthanked.

If more police knew they mattered more than being avoided for traffic citations (which you will find a plate of cookies and a smile does wonders for citation protection ;), it would make the good ones inspired, and the bad ones think twice.

In my experience most of the law enforcement officers are good people looking to do good to people (especially night shift which is all the new guys who have not yet been as jaded by daily injustice).

Shine the light of the Jesus into your city, and love on people

Consider the Unions

I am not going to engage in a debate here about unions in your city or mine, but I would encourage you to consider their effectiveness with your local city and state representatives. Be sure to consider their need to protect the lives of the people behind the uniform and the citizens whom they serve.

Sadly in their current state, it is a reality that many people that should not be in uniform often remain. How to fix that is something bigger than this post, but is a very real and serious conversation at the core of this entire conversation.

Have some real conversations

Talk to your local public safety forces and leaders, ask them what the need. You can find them at local public meetings and events, often with plenty of availability and are happy to talk!

You may find it means higher taxes in your community. Is that worth solving your local issues? You may want to look at your local cities budget and compare it to others in the area to see if some areas are bloated or poorly spent. In fact, if you do things that can help your city, offer those services at the same rates you give your regular customers, maybe even at a discount instead of grossly overpricing like is so pervasive today. This is one of the ways myself and my company Addo Solutions get’s to make a real big difference.

Consider some innovative solutions to how you can help your community become something better. You will likely find that there are huge areas of improvement avaialble without a ton of effort.

Look for injustice you can do something about

Find the injustices in your commnuity and do something about it, here are some practical places to look:

• Look at the local courtroom cases and listen to you community for injustice there. You can’t do much about something 500 miles away, but you can do something to help someone 5 miles away.
• Ask your local law enforcement for the areas in your city that are in need. Bring yourself, your friends and/or your church to those areas and do whatever you can to
• Talk to your local business owners and see their take, often disenfranchised by massive international organizations putting local businesses under their thumb, but you and your city may be able to fight them back on.

Move into your city

With all of these, consider turning off [insert your news outlet] and worry less about [inset current president] and worry more about [insert your city name] and Mayor [insert your mayor’s name] with his Chief [insert your police chief’s name], because [insert current president’s name] won’t have nearly the influence on your local police like [inert your local police chief’s name here].

Visit your local city council, and actually meet our council people before you randomly vote for their name on a ballot. Ask their opinions not just their party, how they expect to make a difference, and actually verify it. Often while national issues and political parties are too large to get real solutions, often having nothing to do with local issues which are much easier to identify.

Seek Justice

Find injustice where you live, and make things right. It won’t change anyone 500 miles away, but

if people 500 miles away cared about their local city like you do, you wouldn’t have to.