I recently attended the Heroes Banquet organized by the New Mexico Business Coalition.
The Heroes Banquet honors law enforcement officers who were martyred in the line of duty – EOW, if you prefer the law enforcement term – as well as officers who are still alive. The Heroes Banquet also honors active, reserve, and retired military personnel. The families of those who were martyred in the line of duty received a $2000 donation, which will be invested for the education of the young children of the fallen officers.
For the record, I was never a sworn law enforcement officer. Nor did I serve in the military, thanks to having a few seizures when I was a toddler.
My experience in law enforcement was non-sworn. Details are here and here. I have no great deeds of valor to report, unlike those who were honored at the Heroes Banquet. Yet my non-sworn service was a formative experience for me. I learned about showing up on time and knowing what to do. I learned about looking sharp and professional in a uniform (“command presence”). I learned how to work with difficult people. Most of all, I miss the camaraderie of uniformed service. There was a clear chain of command. There was discipline and respect.
Now I work in IT. I work for a manager services provider (MSP) which is a subcontractor to a larger MSP for a large health insurance corporation. Thanks to all the outsourcing and subcontracting, there is no chain of command; there’s a spaghetti mess. It’s hard to know who is in charge of what. Stuff falls through the cracks. User experience isn’t always what it should be.
It's inappropriate to expect a civilian corporation, or a civilian government agency, to have uniforms and ranks like the military or a law enforcement agency. Nor should our Nation, founded on liberty and limited constitutional government, be turned into a garrison state. But I miss the clarity of a law enforcement command structure. Furthermore, military and law enforcement virtues such as living a clean and honest life, being physically fit, showing up on time, and being competent, are good things. Away with pop culture, which promotes whining, laziness, ignorance, drug and alcohol abuse, and the notion that life can be a 24-7 party with no consequences of any kind.
Law enforcement is never above criticism. The day we cannot criticize the actions of law enforcement agencies, or individual officers, is the day we live in a dictatorship. Yet law enforcement is utterly necessary to a functioning society. Yes, this means that law enforcement officers sometimes must use force to enforce the law. Persuasion and de-escalation don’t always work. We cannot simply #DefundThePolice, as the naïve would have us believe. Eliminating law enforcement will not usher in a hippie kumbaya era. The world is not a tame university campus. Eliminating law enforcement will result in “the warre [war] of every man against every man”, as the scholar Thomas Hobbes wrote centuries ago. Robert Heinlein also had a lot to say about law and order and good government in his most famous work, Starship Troopers. (Read the book; don’t watch the trashy movie.)
While I do not agree with every single law and regulation on the books, whether federal, state, or local, I have no patience with those who preach hatred of law enforcement officers. It pains me to hear about the EOW of law enforcement officers, and I dread the day when I will hear about the EOW of someone I served with personally in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.
Cynicism is a normal and natural response to our modern times of corruption, violence, and incompetence. A steady diet of such news is bad for the human spirit, as Ray Bradbury warned in his short story “The Toynbee Convector”, which can be found in the collection with the same title.
The Heroes’ Banquet was a badly needed antidote to cynicism, fatigue, and anger. It was greatly inspirational. It helped to renew my civic faith, which is worn as thin as an old T-shirt. It reminded me that there are dedicated people out there doing their best to make civilized life possible for the rest of us. It reminded me that courage and nobility still exist. It was as refreshing as a tall glass of cold water on a hot New Mexico summer day.
If you live in New Mexico, come to next year’s Heroes Banquet! You can also come to the BASH gatherings, which are held a few times per year. I love going to these events to meet and network with people who work hard and do interesting things and have their heads screwed on straight. Consider donating to the New Mexico Business Coalition, or its sister organizations Better Together New Mexico and Rebound New Mexico.