In the past ten years the police force has taken many hits from social media outcries about professional athletes calling them out for their actions. Unfortunately, it has lead to all of them getting a bad rep for the actions of a few. Many officers won’t justify the actions of some who have been considered abusive, excessive and unnecessary.
The Hemet Police Department and the San Jacinto Sheriff’s Department have been trying to make changes to their departments in the last couple of years to make sure that they are keeping the safety of the civilians as a top priority.
Their job isn’t easy, they go out everyday not knowing what to expect. In a blink of an eye a situation can arise that they weren’t trained for and they are forced to make a decision or their life could be over. That is stressful, but they do the best they can. Their jobs aren’t just driving around to give fix it tickets, and registration citations. That would be too easy.
Their job description isn’t to make your life harder and make sure that you are afraid of them. Literally, their job is to make sure the people in these cities are as safe as possible without showing biases.
That’s why you can get a ticket for driving on a suspended license and two days later find out that someone is breaking into your house, give them a call and they will show up and make sure your family is okay. If they were biased they wouldn’t show up to help you, they would let you figure it out on your own.
The officers that serve our valley have been very busy the last few months helping get drugs off the street, finding kids who have been kidnapped for sex traffiking, closing off roads after scary accidents, and many other things. They want our city to be safer for the law abiding citizen and they are working hard to do that.
Crime rates in the local area have been slowly declining and continue the downward slope, this is all because of our officers and the work they put in. If it wasn’t for them our streets would look like the scourge.
The next time you see an officer standing around, go up to them and thank them for everything they are doing for our two cities, it’s not easy, but every day they wake up, lace up their boots, and try to make sure the city is safe for our kids to live in and that’s something we should all get behind.
As for me, there’s a local officer (since retired) who made a huge change in my life; I was going down a very scary path and he straightened me out, not by using “scared straight” tactics, but by being available for me to talk to and accepting me into his family.
That’s the kind of effect officers can have on our local youth, if we encourage them to be difference makers in our community and not hate them for doing their job.