Halloween has once again been ruined by a bunch of immature kids who have a fascination with fire and broken glass. As a result, the men and women of the Madison Police Department are going to come into the crosshairs of the people and the media for the way they handled things. Whether or not the top tier of the MPD was as ready as it could have been is still unanswered, but in either case no one should lose appreciation for the police.
On an ultra-politically-correct campus like UW-Madison, police officers are among the few that it is acceptable to slander. Were someone to say \All Jews are..."" or ""All blacks are...,"" their ignorance would be swiftly countered-with cops, though, such statements are often encouraged.
Police are far too often viewed in an unfavorable light. One video of some officers beating a criminal or one crackdown on underage drinking manages to turn people here and elsewhere against police in general. This however, is unjustified.
Police brutality is a serious issue, yes, and it may seem a little ridiculous to be written up for having a drink before your 21st birthday, but no one can or should make a mass generalization that all cops are bloodthirsty or anti-student based on such things. In any job there is a mix of good and bad employees, tough and lenient ones, smart and inept ones-why would it be any different in this field?
Maybe because they are the protectors of the law and should be the best and the brightest? In that case, how many students at the UW, which supposedly contains some of the best and brightest of our generation, are looking to become cops after graduation? The percentage is minuscule.
Would it also come as a surprise to learn that the yearly salary for a police officer in Madison is only $35,000-50,000, and that most officers earn from the bottom half of that range? Men and women from the working-to-middle class-many of whom cannot afford college-make up the majority of the police force, and perfection should not be expected.
This does not mean cops deserve any less respect. They are ordinary people, not the oppressive figures society routinely demonizes them into. They have taken on a job whose pay does not equal the responsibility that comes with it so they could support themselves and their families. This is a concept that may be lost on the privileged caste at UW-Madison, but it deserves our praise.
The jobs of police officers are not as glamorous as shown on TV, either. Madison cops spend less time tracking down serial killers with Dennis Franz and Jimmy Smits than writing out citations for underage drinking, handling fights that break out, and dealing with other issues like these that everyone else finds simply bothersome. While most of us prefer to avoid the vocal freshman girl on University Avenue who has just done 10 shots, it is the job of the police to address this type of situation.
In bigger cities, it is more dangerous for cops. A routine fight between a married couple can explode into one where guns are pulled and shots are fired. Though it may sound exciting, consider that the cops assigned to such a situation may have a young child who is counting on them to get home, which, depending on the shift, could be at any hour of the day. It should also be kept in mind that the base salaries in many of these major cities, like the columnist's Philadelphia, are as low as in Madison and not adjusted for the standard of living.
The cops who patrolled State Street this past weekend have a tough period of evaluation ahead of them. So next time you see a cop, send some thanks their way for putting a stop to the mess our peers started Sunday morning, or simply thank them for seeing to it that you live in a safe environment year-round. Just do not let a bad ending to an otherwise good night take away from their accomplishments.
