2020 will forever be known as not just the year that COVID-19 stole away, but also as the year many people across the US began hating the police.
It all really began on May 25th, when George Floyd died in Minneapolis Minnesota, and expanded on August 23rd when Jacob Blake was shot in Kenosha. Both men were black and were killed/shot by white police officers. Both situations resulted in massive riots, looting, and violence toward police masquerading as protests.
We recently spoke with retired Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Deputy, Malia Prange, who spoke about her take on the situation.
“Officers are out there to protect, they’re not out there to hurt,” she stated. “People that want to bash them or look down on them, I’d like to see them one time get in an officer’s uniform. One time do what an officer will do.”
She recounted a situation where a fellow Deputy was forced to discharge their weapon. She said, “I’m good friends with someone that, because of a bank robbery, he did have to shoot someone, he did kill that person, and going back and looking at the video, he is lucky to be alive because a bullet just missed him. This officer still lives with this, he’s going to live with this until the day he dies, and he’s an incredible man. He wishes he didn’t have to shoot someone, but he honestly saved others’ lives and himself.”
Racism is a two-way street, however.
The Merriam-Webster definition of racism is “A belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” Nowhere in the definition does it specify which race is the oppressor, and which race is the victim. Just that there are oppressors and victims.
In fact, Prange told us that she was the subject of a racist attack in her youth. She said, “I, as a child, actually got jumped going home from school because I was a white girl, and I just made the basketball team.”
Prange also spoke about how she feels we can solve the problem. “Racism has been going on forever,” she said. “We cannot control what other people think, we can only control what we think. I love everyone. I know I’m not a racist, but I can’t control what my neighbor thinks. All we can do is keep working, and loving others, and hoping we can get past it.”
To quote Martin Luther King Jr, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
