STEVE SEBELIUS: Police reform? Yes. But don’t forget the voices of cops

The New York Times headline says it all: “Police culture Is on Trial in Floyd Killing Case.”

The story foreshadows the trial of three former Minneapolis police officers who stood by and did nothing while ex-officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of George Floyd for nearly nine minutes, killing him.

What Chauvin did wasn’t policing, it was murder, and so a jury found. And inasmuch as police officers are supposed to prevent murder — no matter who the perpetrator — the trial of officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao is appropriate.

But is police culture really on trial in St. Paul, where the trial is being held? Or are three people who radically departed from their sworn duty on trial?

Because if police culture is on trial, there’s a lot more evidence that needs to be presented.

Even as prosecutors prepare their case in St. Paul, the New York City Police Department is mourning two of its own. Officers Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora died after being shot while responding to a domestic violence call, felled as they stood between potential victims and an obviously disturbed person with a gun.

Fidelis ad mortem, or faithful unto death, is the motto of the NYPD. And for two mourning families and thousands of officers whose badges are shrouded by black bands, those are more than just words.

That’s also true for the 4,360 officers who have died in the line of duty between 2000 and 2022, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page.

Twenty-eight of those officers died in Nevada.

Floyd’s murder sparked plenty of outrage and protest at police nationwide, as members of communities who have too often felt a heavier hand in policing rose up to say “enough is enough.” Those voices are important, and we should listen to the reforms they are pleading us to enact.

But we shouldn’t stop hearing other voices, voices of men and women who do an almost impossible job, encountering people on the worst days of their lives, placing themselves between the violent and the innocent. They’re the ones who rush toward the sound of trouble, who put themselves in the line of fire and who sometimes don’t come home at the end of watch.

We should listen to the voices of people such as U.S. Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, who singlehandedly led riotous insurrectionists away from the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6 riot. Or the U.S. Secret Service special agents who whisked Vice President Mike Pence to a secure location, while rioters hunted for him as chants for his hanging echoed throughout the building.

Goodman later praised the restraint of officers defending the Capitol that day, saying the situation could have been much worse had they used greater force. (Only one officer fired his sidearm that day, shooting and killing rioter Ashli Babbitt as she tried to gain entry to a lobby off the floor of the House chamber while members were still inside. In a pathetic bit of moral idiocy, that cop has been called a murderer and threatened, all by people who would ordinarily “back the blue.”)

We should listen to the voice of San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department Detective Jorge Lozano, who told frightened Christmas partygoers fleeing an active shooter in 2015, “I’ll take a bullet before you do, that’s for damn sure,” as he escorted them to safety. Lozano later said, “It was nothing short of what any other person in law enforcement would do.”

Or the voice of Las Vegas police officer Chance McClish, who hunted for a would-be killer in an apartment complex as fellow officers Alexis Hodler and Charles Brotherson applied lifesaving first aid to a victim. “It’s one of those moments where you realize if I worked 21 years just to be there for this one moment, then my entire career was worth it,” he said in a video prepared for the 2021 Best of the Badge awards.

Or the voices of the highway patrol officers who take drunken drivers off the streets, the cold-case detectives who never forget a victim, the men and women from minority communities who pin on the badge to make meaningful change from within, often at personal cost.

They — and thousands more like them around the world — do a job where danger is constant threat.

At the very least, we owe them a fair hearing if we’re to put police culture on trial.

Contact Steve Sebelius at SSebelius@reviewjournal.com. Follow @SteveSebelius on Twitter.