Dear Police

I am not a police officer. I realize it can be an incredibly stressful and dangerous job. But in light of the murder of George Floyd and the historic mistreatment of minority populations and economically disadvantaged communities, I do share some advice from my perch as just a regular American citizen.

Dear police,

You are not Oath Keepers. In fact, Oath Keepers has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist anti-government group. You can’t be anti-government if you work for the government.

You are not Three Percenters. The Revolutionary War was 240 years ago. Tricorn hats are now just for Halloween and cosplay.

Your flag is red, white, and blue, not black, white, and blue. And for officers in the south, your flag is definitely not the Confederate Flag, a flag for racist losers who committed treason in defense of slavery and got their butts royally and rightfully kicked by Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman.

You are not the Punisher. Sure, the Punisher is an enjoyable comic book character, with two mediocre movies starring Thomas Jane and the guy from Rome, respectively, followed by a decent Netflix series. It’s perfectly okay to enjoy Jon Bernthal’s portrayal of Frank Castle as a complex anti-hero, just like you can be fascinated by James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano or Bryan Cranston’s Walter White. But like Tony Soprano and Walter White, Frank Castle’s Punisher is a bad guy. He’s a vigilante who takes the law into his own hands, and is not to be emulated in real life. Putting the Punisher decal on your pickup truck exudes the message that you enforce your own brutal form of justice, and when that Punisher decal has the Thin Blue Line colors, you’re saying that you are your own version of the law, basically yet another comic book character, Judge Dredd.

You are not a sheepdog. The people you serve and protect are not helpless sheep to be condescendingly looked upon as ungrateful cretins. And the people you arrest are not wolves, they are citizens entitled to full justice under the law.

As Americans, it’s your right to support Donald Trump, I guess. After all, he is the current president, and he’s the standard bearer for one of the two major political parties our nation allows us to have. But Trump is also the most racist president since at least Woodrow Wilson, and if you choose to openly support him, members of the public, particularly minority communities, will understandably doubt your ability to treat them fairly and impartially.