14 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • AUGUST 2020
DON’T DEFUND BACK THE BLUE
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POINT OF VIEW
BY SHELLY FEUER DOMASH
Investigative journalist
A cop will see more devastation, more
violence, and more emotional heartbreak
in a week than most people will
in a lifetime.
I first learned about this more than 25
years ago while writing crime stories
for The New York Times. I became
fascinated by the “blue wall” that cops
put up.
With much reluctance, my Times editor
approved my attending the Nassau
County Police Academy with a new class
and writing a series of articles on what it
was like to become a police officer.
The days at the academy were long ones,
the training draining and hard. Then
there were weeks of field training. What
these cops dealt with horrified me. Even
as a journalist I was not prepared to see
the worst part of life.
When field training ended, the class that
was once a loosely tied group of recruits
morphed into a family as part of the
Nassau County Police Department. They
were expected to be physically and mentally
alert and to make instantaneous
life-and-death decisions that would
later be scrutinized. They had to be no
less than perfect because that is what is
expected from cops.
Not all cops are saints, or even come
close. As a direct result of an investigative
story I wrote in the Long Island
Press, the district attorney indicted
three top cops. Two pled guilty. One
went to trial and was convicted. Some
cops felt I betrayed their trust. But at
that time, what no one knew was that the
story could not have been written without
the help of literally dozens of cops
who wanted these bad apples exposed.
Cops need our vocal support. In the
past few weeks hundreds of them were
injured and some even gave their lives.
What about their families? When a
1-year-old baby was killed, where were
the protests, the angry people? Do babies’
lives matter? Do the lives of cops
matter?
How long will cops tolerate having deadly
things being thrown at them, or being
spit on or having death threats shouted
at them? While gun stores are selling record
numbers of guns and ammunition,
does that make the rest of us safer?
We do not need more guns on the
streets: We need our cops.
One monster cop who killed George
Floyd is part of an exceedingly small
group of rogue cops. They must and will
be dealt with, but we cannot let violence
become the initiator of change.
The police are our country’s true heroes.
Without them we have only chaos.
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