“This is About All the Cops You Don’t Read About”
Ed. Note: The following is a transcript of Bob Schieffer’s weekly commentary from the April 19 broadcast of CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“The best training to be a reporter or anything else is to work the police beat, because every story you cover is the worst moment in someone’s life. If you can learn to get the right information under those circumstances, you won’t be fazed by the high and mighty and certainly not by the on-the-make politicians and spin doctors.
“Which is why I want to add a paragraph or two to the rash of stories lately about cops gone wrong. This is not about them. This is about all the cops you don’t read about. They deal much of the time with the dregs of our society. The schemers, the murderers, those who prey on the weak. And most of the time, the police deal with them humanely, and as they should.
“What we overlook is just how difficult that can be sometimes. It’s not easy to remain passive when a child-beater looks you in the eye and tells you—you have to understand, the kid was keeping him awake. It takes a lot of professional training and strong character not to respond in anger. I know, because I spent my early years listening to some of these awful people. Sometimes I wanted to hit them myself. I didn’t, but it helped me understand how hard it is to do a cop’s job right. As hard as it is, the great majority of our cops still do just that.”
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Thank you, Bob, for this. It’s sad that if this was an article about bad cops there would be lots of comments. Most cops are just trying to do their job and make a small difference. They definitely don’t do this job for the money. Thank you to all the good cops out there.
Thank you so much for your comments about good cops. My son is a police officer with 2 small children. There isn’t a morning I don’t wake up and pray he has a good day and isn’t killed because of all the press only telling the story about the bad guys injustice. Can anyone imagine when you go to work you may never see your family again or someone could spit in your face, I don’t think so. If any of us were recorded doing our jobs would we be the perfect employee? Granted we don’t carry guns or other weapons but neither do the people we encounter in our work place. Just take a minute and think and don’t hate a cop for trying to protect you and your loved ones. Everyone hates cops until you need them.
From a Mom who loves her son
Well said Bob! Thank you for speaking up for our law enforcement officers when no one else will. They risk their lives daily to keep our communities safer. On their “days off”, they may have to go to court to make sure a criminal is prosecuted for child abuse, rape, murder, etc. All this for, in a lot of cases, less than the $15 per hour that these fast food workers want per hour. So, they don’t do it for the money, they do it because they feel it is what they were called to do. Say thank you to a law enforcement officer next time you see him, just as you do military men, as they are doing the same job, just on the home front. They will appreciate it.