Sam Fowler

May 30th

D Period

Fear

Dear Diary,

I don’t think it’s occurred to my parents yet that kids have ears too. I hear a lot more than they

think, and notice it too. It’s difficult not to. I hear the clunk of a uniform on the floor in the

middle of the night as Mom comes home from work. I watch my father walk her out the door

each night, and I listen as they say the same words over and over again.

“Be safe.”

“I will.”

It took me too long to figure out why he said that. I’ve heard the tales Mom tells every night. A

shooting, a stabbing, crazy things done by crazy people. The stories she tells make me grateful

for the sound of a work belt hitting the floor at 2 am, because it lets me know that Mom’s home,

and none of that stuff happened to her.

Dear Diary,

3,251 officers lost their lives in the last 19 years. 3,251. I don’t know how to feel about that

number. It’s too many. Far too many.

The idea of the day it becomes 3,252 makes me sick inside.

Dear Diary,
“So in case somebody says something about it in school today…”

Whenever my mom says those words to me on the way to school, I know something really bad

happened. Today it was a shooting in New Haven. A Yale officer and a Hamden officer were

involved in a shooting, and a woman was shot in the hip. Mom stressed that fact to me, insisting

that she’d been shot once in the hip; not in the head, not five times, just once. My mind flashes

back to yesterday, when her phone was screaming with calls from her coworkers as she ranted

about how it was being blown all out of proportion and how the woman had only been shot once.

The officers thought the people in the car had been involved in a robbery, and that the man in the

car had a gun. That’s why they fired. That made sense to me. There are bad people on the streets,

and bad people do bad things. And sometimes, the good guys in blue need to take the bad guys

down. Sometimes, a police officer is forced to shoot someone. There is not always another

option, and while officers are trained to aim and fire non fatal shots, the stress and speed of the

situation does not always allow for that factor to be included. The downside to that is the media,

which spreads the shooting even further to overly opinionated people who choose to protest

something they don’t know anything about. The protestors don’t know how heavy that uniform

is to wear. The protestors only care about the person who was shot, the supposed ‘victim’. They

don’t care to see things from the officer’s point of view. No one ever shows a shooting aftermath

from an officer’s point of view. They don’t see how it impacts them. I bet they don’t know that

40% of officers experience anxiety after a shooting, and 18% experience a fear for their safety

(Klinger, NIJ Journal Issue No. 253). I wonder how much of that anxiety is related to a fear for

their safety. I know Mom is scared. She said she’s afraid to leave her cruiser, afraid to do her job.

She said that the Yale officer involved, Pollock, is on administrative leave. Apparently, after a
shooting, officers are often given paid administrative leave. “Paid administrative leave for

employees who are under investigation by their employers for policy, rule, or regulation

violations and even criminal acts is common practice… The employee continues to receive his or

her salary while the agency investigates to determine whether there are grounds to fire the

employee” (Larson, Porter, Kelso and Guffey). This leave is supposed to help the officer

psychologically recover while also investigating the incident to see if the officer can be

considered justified in their actions. It doesn’t seem fair that officers are trained to do their jobs

a certain way, and yet when they do that job, people fire them for it.

Dear Dairy,

The aftermath of the Yale-Hamden shooting is only getting worse. Things aren’t good. I

remember when Uncle Tommy was involved in a shooting in Massachusetts. He was placed on

administrative leave too, but he kept his job because he had been in the right to shoot a man

named Nicholas Foster. “Foster had stabbed his 28-year-old wife and another man inside an

apartment at 150 Cable Ave just before 1 p.m. on May 15. Attempting to flee the area, Foster

was confronted by local police officers, who were forced to shoot and kill him.” (Rogers,

Newburyport News).

I didn’t know he killed him.

I just remember Dad telling me that Foster had a machete.

I remember everyone talking in whispers about the incident, hugging my uncle, thankful he was

still alive.
I remember that he didn’t want to talk about the shooting. But at least my uncle was cleared from

it. “Foster posed an immediate threat of killing or seriously injuring them or others. The officers

therefore bear no criminal responsibility for shooting Foster,” Blodgett wrote” (Rogers,

Newburyport News). It is difficult for an officer to judge whether pulling the trigger is right in

the moment that it happens. I wonder if my uncle still thinks he was in the right, or if he wishes

Foster was still alive, just in jail.

Dear Diary,

My mom once had a close call with a man in New Haven, and she nearly pulled the trigger. It

had been a standoff, both of them staring at each other, guns in hand on a dark street. In my

mind, it looks like something right out of a movie. When I asked what she was thinking in the

moment they stared at each other, she was honest. “I’m going to kill you first.” Regardless of

how officers are trained, at the end of the day, it comes down to a standoff of who will be hurt

first, and the cop mindset is to stop the other person before anyone else is injured. Some days I

wonder how different my family’s lives would be if my mom had fired. Or worse; if the other

guy had.

Dear Diary,

A policeman, according to Paul Harvey,

“must make instant decisions which would require months for a lawyer. But if he hurries,

he’s careless; If he’s deliberate, he’s lazy. He must be first to an accident, infallible with

a diagnosis. He must be able to start breathing, stop bleeding, tie splints and above all, be
 sure the victim goes home without a limp. The police officer must know every gun, draw

on the run, and hit where it doesn’t hurt. He must be able to whip two men twice his size

and half his age without damaging his uniform and without being ‘brutal.’ If you hit him,

he’s a coward. If he hits you, he’s a bully.” (Harvey, Policeman).

Mom showed me that speech, and it’s entirely accurate. It is a lose-lose situation for a police

officer.

Dear Diary,

Students at Yale are protesting again. But this time they’re protesting their own officers. They’re

“calling for the firing of Pollock, who fired his gun in last week’s incident. They also want the

restriction of Yale patrol grounds to a more reasonable campus area, and the disarming of all

officers at the university” (Lambert, New Haven Register). Pollock, the Yale officer involved,

feared for his life, and shots were being fired at him. It is in his training to fire back, and for that,

they want him to be fired. Officers, including my mother, are now fearing for their lives. How is

that fair? I don’t think the Yale students realize what their officers do for them. Their protesting

made me angry, made me want to start a protest of my own, but Mom had a calmer, simpler

response.

“Fine,” She said. “Then when you get robbed or held at gunpoint, don’t call us.” She has

a point. If Yale students hate their officers so much, then why should the officers bother to help

them? But they still will, because that’s what police officers do. They help you, even when you

protest against them.

Dear Diary,

The YPD was vandalized. Somebody spray-painted the name Stephanie right on the sign of the

department. Stephanie was the girl who was shot in the Yale-Hamden shooting. Mom’s angry

about it, and so am I. I know that sign. I know that building and people that work inside it. How

would you like it if somebody vandalized your workplace like that? But it’s just another thing

they put up with. I hold my tongue and Mom bites hers. The officers bury it down and carry on.

I’ve seen the articles people have written against police officers before. The sad truth is that I

think the officers are used to it by now. It could’ve been worse.

They could’ve spray-painted the word pig.

Dear Diary,

Nothing is better, and I don’t know why I expected it to be. Yale officers, in addition to being

worried for their own sakes, are concerned for Officer Pollock, who is still on administrative

leave. It is a terrifying time to be a police officer. Even more terrifying than usual. Did you know

“more law enforcement officers were shot and killed in the line of duty in 2018 than last year,

driving a 12 percent overall increase in the number of officers who died on the job,” (Chappell,

NPR.org)? Just another fact that makes me sick.

Dear Diary,

1,165 were killed by police officers last year. 144 officers died themselves. That’s 1,309 people

killed in just one year. How many of those deaths were justified? That’s what I want to know.
Dear Diary,

It is not fair.

It is not fair that police officers have to be afraid to do their own jobs, and it not fair that these

heroes are shunned for doing what needed to be done.

Nor is it fair that people are afraid to call the police for fear that the officer will shoot them. A

police officer will not do that. It is not in their training and it is not how they work. Why can’t

both sides just stop putting fear in the other? The terrifying fact is that it is almost better for an

officer to be shot then for them to shoot someone else. It is almost easier to recover from a bullet

wound than to recover from the public backlash they face for firing, even if they were in the

right. The idea of what happens to an officer after they fire their weapon makes me grateful that

Mom has never had to. But now it just seems like the bad guys are getting closer and closer, and

now I’m afraid of every outcome. Part of me wishes I could go back to ignorance being bliss,

and the other part knows that being aware of what’s going on is better. Maybe that’s part of the

cop mindset that my parents have instilled in me. I know how heavy the brick of a police

uniform is to wear, and it’s a lot more than just 30 pounds.

 Works Cited

Klinger, David. "Police Responses to Officer-Involved Shootings." ​National

​Institute of Justice,​ no. 253, nij.gov/journals/253/pages/responses.aspx.

Accessed 11 May 2019.

Guffey, James E., et al. "Paid Administrative Leave for Officers Involved in

Shootings: Exploring the Purpose, Cost, and Efficacy." ​Professional Issues

​in Criminal Justice,​ PDF ed., vol. 3, no. 2, 2008.

Rogers, Dave. "Salisbury Officers Cleared in Shooting." ​Newburyport News

[Newburyport], 21 Oct. 2014. ​The Daily News,​ www.newburyportnews.com/news/

local_news/salisbury-officers-cleared-in-shooting/

article_e429fa63-c604-5773-b830-7474bddb71ad.html. Accessed 11 May 2019.

"Policeman - By. Paul Harvey (Tribute to Our Police Officers)." ​YouTube​,

uploaded by Crystal Cross, 12 July 2016, www.youtube.com/

watch?v=KQ1YsyZMaaU. Accessed 11 May 2019.

Lambert, Ben. "Hundreds Rally in New Haven to Protest Police Shooting." ​New

​Haven Register​ [New Haven], 19 Apr. 2019. ​New Haven Register.com​,

www.nhregister.com/news/article/

Yale-identifies-officer-involved-in-Dixwell-13777174.php. Accessed 11 May

2019.

Chappell, Bill. "More Police Officers Died From Gunfire Than Traffic Incidents

In 2018, Report Says." ​NPR.org​, 27 Dec. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/12/27/

680410169/
more-police-officers-died-from-gunfire-than-traffic-incidents-in-2018-report-say.

Accessed 11 May 2019.