The Dallas Police Department; Grieve For These Blue Angels

The Dallas Police Department; Grieve For These Blue Angels

My association with the Dallas Police Department lasted for six years.  Through my friendship with Karl and Daniel, I knew about thirty cops.  Friends of friends.  Ride alongs and rookies.  Street cops and traffic investigators.  No detectives, just uniformed guys over three different shifts, most of them working in Dallas's terrible areas.  Some were very experienced, having twenty years on the force.  Out of all of those people, I only knew one bad cop.  And he was an absolute jerk.  He just had personality disorders and should not have been a cop.

When I lived in Dallas in the early sixties, the PD had a nasty reputation.  If you think about the time period when John Kennedy was killed, those cops, associated with citizens who had mafia ties, hanging out at titty bars and disreputable places, were a dime a dozen.  Many were very abusive and would use excessive physical force at the drop of a hat.  My knowledge of that comes from my uncle, who grew up with many of them and had run-ins with them when he was a young adult.  I can remember more than one time when he was beaten almost beyond recognition by cops with nightsticks and pistol butts.  The only recognizable thing about him was his curly hair.  One time he was beaten so badly that he looked like a monster; I couldn't look at him without crying.  They would beat him severely, put him in a cop car, drive him to a different part of town, and dump him on the street.  It would take him months to recover from the beatings.

That was the way of the Dallas Police Department in those days.  Local, mostly uneducated, questionably educated yokels were the star performers.  In those days, there were no strict requirements for gaining employment with them.  Almost anybody could be a cop.  There were no female, black or Hispanic cops at that time.  It was all a club for white boys.

When I moved back to Dallas in 72, the PD was going through a lot of changes.  I remember one period of time when several were killed in different incidents.  There was still a lot of publicity revolving around them for brutality.  They were now just starting to recruit women and minorities, only because the government forced them to.  In 1974 an officer murdered a 12-year-old boy in the back of his patrol car.  The boy and his younger brother were accused of vandalizing a vending machine.  The oldest boy was handcuffed and forced in the backseat of the patrol car with the cop.  The cop, to "scare him" into submission, held a gun to his head and forced the concept of Russian Roulette on the child.  The boy was shot in the head, killed.  The cop was tried and only received a 5-year prison sentence for the murder of the young man.  That's how bad they were.  That was the death of the old police department.

After that incident, there was, of course, outrage but mostly by the Hispanic community.  White people just didn't seem to care so much.  His death forced changes in the department, and it was during that period that I became acquainted with some of them.  They were going through a rebirth process that was long overdue.  I was fortunate in that nearly all of the cops that I knew were good guys.

 There was a period in 1975 that I actually applied for a job with them.  I was qualified, and I wanted to do the work, but my family threw a hissy fit.  They flat out refused to help me with child care during the rotating shifts that would require me to work the swing shift and the graveyard shift.  I was told that I was a horrible mother for wanting to do that.  And so, I had to pass it up.

I have looked back at the history and development of their PD over the years since I left Dallas in 1988.  The trend has been progressively less violent, fewer incidents, and public opinion of them even before the incident last week has improved greatly.  They are now a modern police department instead of a somewhat hick, backwoods police department of the old south.   I am sure that the entire police department of the sixties did have some good guys.  My uncle, unfortunately, never seemed to run across them.

Tomorrow the officers killed protecting protesters last week will be buried.  They went to work and never returned home because that is what their job demands.  As cops, we forget that they do have a target on them any day, but normally that day ends well.  Sometimes it doesn't.  It's easy to judge cops after seeing some of the horrific things that have happened to people in the last two years.  But  99% of them are honest, hard-working, caring people who get little respect from us until we need them.  We needed them last week.  They never blinked; they protected the public to the ultimate degree, to the death of five of them.

As these officers are laid to rest tomorrow, let's try and keep the spirit of them in our hearts.  Try to remember that they offer us their lives every day in the form of protection to all of us when we are having a good day or a bad day.  That's their job.  Don't judge all of them by a few horribly bad apples.

Tomorrow, take a moment to thank them in a manner you are comfortable with.  Send them off with the respect that they earned and deserve.  The next time a bad cop commits some horrific act, try to remember these guys from Dallas on the day that they gave their lives to protect us.  They gave the ultimate sacrifice.

Sleep in peace now, brothers, keepers of the peace.  Peace be with you.  And thank you.


Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground
Written by Willie Nelson

If you had not have fallen
Then I would not have found you.
Angel flying too close to the ground
And I patched up your broken wing and hung around a while
Trying to keep your spirits up and your fever down.

I knew someday that you would fly away.
For love's the greatest healer to be found.
So leave me if you need to, I will still remember.
Angel flying too close to the ground

Fly on, fly on past, the speed of sound
I'd rather see you up than see you down.
So leave me if you need to, I will still remember.
Angel flying too close to the ground.

So leave me if you need to, I will still remember.
Angel flying too close to the ground.