The Thin Blue Line

The thin blue line is described as a symbol that represents our law enforcement that stand between good and evil.  It is the line of integrity that officers keep that separates them from the masses.  They are held to a much higher standard than most.

As police families, it’s a beacon.  It’s how we can identify each other as ‘safe’.  Like a hidden language that we can understand.  It feels like home.

In the last couple of years, and the onslaught of ugliness on social media – many people seem to think that the thin blue line is one of corruption and a secret boys club.  That somehow this line is something to be abused and to hide behind.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Because our officers are held to such an incredibly high standard by society, they also feel it necessary to hold themselves to a high standard.  Without their integrity, they are nothing.  It can remove their ability to testify in court or save people from devastating situations.

Officers will definitely have each other’s backs.  They are a team that fights together.  They have to have that camaraderie or they can’t feel safe in battle.  But when that battle turns into a question of integrity, that thin blue line will turn its back on the offending officer quicker than you can imagine.  It’s like throwing a rock into an open sewer – nobody is going to stand close enough to get splashed.  Nobody is willing to scar their own integrity over the loss of another officer’s integrity. 

The other things that officers will typically do is investigate.  They work on facts and evidence, not emotion.  They will wait to see what really happened, not someone’s tilted version of the facts.  They log off of social media and wait for the findings, not subscribe to the hysteria of each side shouting their own brand of hatred.

Society will scream that ‘blue’ shouldn’t investigate ‘blue’. I can tell you that they will be harder than most on their own.  Again, their integrity can’t ever be called into question.  And many departments are turning their bigger officer-involved investigations over to other departments so they can get a fresh set of eyes on the situation.

Do they ever get it wrong?  Sure.  They’re human.  Officers do things wrong.  Their investigations sometimes don’t net what we thought they would.  And sometimes punishments are too harsh.  Or not harsh enough.  And sometimes they never fully get recovered from.  It’s the nature of the beast of humanity.  But the worst possible scenario is when the department has what they need from the investigation, yet cave under the pressure of society.  That’s when real crime has occurred – the murder of a good man’s career and the death of his integrity.