In late 2013, I was investigated for child abuse by the police. I doubt anybody expects to find themselves in this position, but my surprise was magnified by my history. I had previously spent ten years employed as a child abuse investigator for the state and I’m married to a police officer, and so being investigated by those same entities was the last thing I anticipated.  The initial crime was a spiral fracture in the arm of a young child I was babysitting for, but a subsequent offense was how the investigation was conducted by law enforcement.

My case followed the same formula as others that go off the rails. The lead investigator decided that I caused the injury in the very beginning and then ignored all the information pointing to my innocence so completely that it could be a case study in confirmation bias. The officer didn’t follow leads even when they were spoon fed to him and was badgering and accusatory in my interviews. 

This was bad, of course, but even more devastating was his police reports. Instead of accurately portraying what was said in recorded interviews, he wrote only facts that made me look guilty, omitted every statement that indicated I might be innocent, and misrepresented critical information.

After he was done, he gave the reports to the people who would eventually decide my fate. When I reported him to Internal Affairs, the IA officer acknowledged that everything I said about the lead detective was true, and then the director of the agency sent me a form letter telling me they weren’t going to do anything about it.

Before this happened, I was a case worker with a healthy understanding of the ethical limitations of the system because my spouse and I both worked in it. Afterwards, I became a professional who has more in common with suspects than other professionals. It likely won’t come as a surprise that the lead investigator’s actions changed the way I feel about my husband’s profession. I don’t hate the police, but I don’t trust the police—at least not entirely.  Not anymore.

I read a post on Facebook written by the wife of an officer who was defending the police at the height of anti-police backlash. She listed all the terrible things that officers had dealt with that day in her area, and they were all hard, dangerous things. My heart went out to her because I’m on her side. I love my husband like she loves hers, and I see the private side of law enforcement that she also sees. I felt the same frustration she felt as people seemed to disregard the danger officers choose to put themselves in daily so that others can be safe. 

The resentment against law enforcement stings more when you live with an officer, but I also see the other side of the argument because I’ve been saddled with the repercussions of an investigation gone wrong. The wife of a cop conjures up a list of all the things law enforcement does right.  Someone who has interacted with the police in a negative way will evoke everything they have done wrong. It’s a matter of perspective, and it’s a unique vantage point when you’re in both camps—which is where I’m at.  It’s hard to find someone more objective than the wife of a police officer who almost went to prison because of the actions of a police officer.

At the end of the Facebook post, the officer’s wife wrote, “I don’t have ears for your cop hate today.  In fact, not today or any day.”  When I criticize the actions of the lead detective on my case, is that considered “cop hate”? How can it be that if I don’t hate cops?  I’m not voicing valid concerns about a professional who misused his immense power because I hate him.  I’m talking about it because I want someone to fix what went wrong so that it can stop happening to other people.

The vilification of the police gets tiresome when it begins to feel unrelenting and unjustified. Defensiveness is the next logical step, but where does the responsibility lie? Should someone be mad at me for not trusting the police, or should they be mad at the lead detective on my case for acting in a way that made me distrustful of all police officers? 

It’s painful when the people we love are criticized, but if you never pause to explore the validity of these complaints, I would be willing to wager that you’ve never been on the wrong side of an officer who is behaving badly. If you ever find yourself there, the whole thing starts to look different. The superhero cape comes off and the flawed human being underneath is revealed.

Civilized societies do not function without police officers, and somebody has to be the police officer.  I am grateful for the people who sign up for this job. Police officers deserve respect, but what police officers are not entitled to is fear—and I’m not talking about fear of a speeding ticket.  If you speed, you get a ticket. If you assault someone, you get arrested. If you drink and drive, you go to jail. All those outcomes are fair. 

What I’m referring to is fear that our actions will be misrepresented, that law enforcement will involve themselves in our lives unnecessarily, that we will be the recipient of sloppy work, that we will be accused of something we didn’t do, or that we will bear the brunt of an officer’s failure.  We didn’t sign up for any of that, and I don’t think we should have to suffer through it silently because officers serve us well in so many ways. 

A common refrain is, “You can’t blame an entire profession for the sins of one officer.” I recognize the unfairness of this approach, but also believe that it’s nearly unavoidable.  I’ve witnessed officers treat suspects with respect and compassion even as they were taking them to jail.  I stood in the middle of a trailer and watched an officer reach into his wallet and hand money to someone we were investigating so they could buy groceries. I met my husband on the job and worked cases alongside him before we started dating, and I observed him being a fair and objective officer. 

But when you run into one rotten apple, it’s human nature to become suspect of the whole orchard—especially when his department stands behind him instead of fixing what he broke.   Individual officers don’t come with a warning label, so you aren’t going to know who is good and who is bad until it’s too late.  The best strategy I can come up with is to be on guard against the whole profession until each individual officer proves otherwise. 

I will never participate in anti-police marches or antagonize the police. I sympathize with the frustration, but also recognize that my husband and his co-workers provide security during these marches while protestors look them in the eye and say, “I hope you die.” I’m unaware of any other profession tasked with making sure that large crowds of people who oppose them can do so safely. 

We don’t adequately provide social services to address mental health and then make law enforcement clean up the inevitable messes that result. When they fail, we blame them for failing at something they shouldn’t have been made to do in the first place. We use the police as the whipping boy for things far beyond their control without acknowledging our own culpability.

But still, I tell my own children not to trust the police even though their father is a police officer, and I will encourage them to tell their own children the same thing. When they do, I will have encouraged a suspicion of law enforcement that spans generations, and it will have started with the actions of one police officer. If enough people do the same thing, the end result is a community-wide distrust of law enforcement that stems from the actions of a few disreputable officers. 

Instances of people being wronged by the police do not negate the daily acts of selflessness and bravery performed by officers. Instances of the police running towards danger or being killed in the line of duty do not negate the wounds created by police officers who mishandle their responsibilities. Picking one side and refusing to see the validity of the other will only cause us to miss our shared humanity.