Why Dislike You ?

I was on walking patrol with another officer early one evening walking along one of the downtown side streets when a car drove up onto the sidewalk trying to intentionly hit us. We could only assume his intention was to hurt us.

After he drove off the sidewalk onto the street and drove away we got on our portable radios and advised the dispatcher and other officers in the area of the vehicle description and direction of travel.  The vehicle matching the description was observed and stopped. The subject driving had no explanation for why he tried to hurt us other than the two of us were cops, and he hated cops. He really could never supply a specific reason he hated cops and specifically the other officer and me.

Another example was when I was working one night and one of my fellow officers asked me to stop by where he had a vehicle stopped.  I got to his location and he asked me to talk to the passenger of the stopped vehicle because she was acting really strange toward him and he thought it might have been because he was a male. I walked over towards the woman who was cowering and said something to the affect “go ahead and do what you are going to do” I told her I didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about. She explained she was a black person and I was a white cop and she assumed I was going to beat her.  I told her I did not beat on people. I told her I only used any physical force when needed and I had any reason to cause her harm. I definitely understand why she felt that way, but it actually hurt to know I was being judged by a few narrow minded, prejudicial, and ignorant police officers.

This incident brings to mind ideas that have always been dear to me. I studied a lot about predejudical behaviors in my social pyscology and sociology classes in college. I also have personal experience as a police officer in that area as two of the above incidents depict.

Worse  yet is when we have bad feelings for a group and if asked point blank why, no one from that group have caused us harm, yet we dislike that group.

I ‘ve encountered persons who didn’t like a particular segment of the population and I’ve asked them why.  I often got the response “just because”.  Then if I ask, can they name a member of that group that ever hurt them they can’t name any specific incident or can name only a few, yet they dislike or even hate thousands if not millions of members of that group because of the actions of one or maybe none.

We all need to check ourselves on a regular basis to remind ourselves not to judge and dislike all persons of a particular group, subculture, race, heritage, profession etc.  There is the reason in the first place to judge and dislike, much less when the judgment and dislike has no legitimate reason except maybe because of the actions of a very few members of that group.

Until Next Time,

Sally S