In the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln declared:
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
He was referring, of course, to the rending of the nation during the Civil War.
I read a story on the Reason blog today that made me recall part of that sentence – the phrase “of the people.” The story was about a police officer’s interaction with a Chinese woman during a raid of a massage parlor in Chicago. It’s one of a depressingly long list of stories that show a trend of alienation between police in this nation and the people they’re supposed “To Protect and to Serve,” as noted by the LAPD motto. Sure, there’s always been the “blue wall” and the brotherhood among police officers, but as police grow increasingly separated from citizens, as military garb increasingly replaces traditional uniforms, and as we witness more and more of these sorts of incidents, where people who assert their rights are treated with suspicion, disrespect and contempt, the arm of government that’s meant to protect the people seems less and less “of” the people.
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