To the Future President:

My name is Trisha Van Donselaar. I live in Iowa and am in eighth grade at Oskaloosa Christian School.

I am writing to tell you about one of my concerns in our country, respect. Respect for police officers and others in authority over us. That includes you. Police officers are the main problem that the people are hearing about. They are being killed way too much; it is all over the news. Police officers need to be viewed differently in society. They risk their lives every day for us and our safety. We owe them respect. Some might say that this is what they get themselves into, but it is much more than that. Many of them are for no reason at all; it is just out of the blue.

This issue matters to me because when you think about how many of those police officers have families at home that they are trying to take care of. Still they sacrifice so much of their time to keep us safe; we owe them a lot more than we give them. I think that even though I don't know them personally, it is important that we show how much we want to thank them by the way we act toward them. Most of them don't even deserve to get what they get. They don't deserve it at all, but they go on, because it is their job to keep us safe.

I want you to take this into consideration, because now that you are president there are many people looking out for your safety and making it their job to protect you. The men and women who put their lives in this job know full well what the outcome could be, but they are tough enough to go through with it. Many people don't understand how much they are putting in and I want you to care about this situation, because of all the awful treatment of police officers recently. You can do something about this problem in our world. Authority in the United States deserves more respect.

The first thing you need to do is take action and find a way to solve this problem. My suggestion to solving this problem is to have a camera on the police officer, and/or the car so that if a situation happens then the police can watch what happens and they can find a way to fix it.

In Hebrews 13:17 it says "Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you." This verse says it all in a nutshell. We need to submit to our authorities and that is that. We are what make their work good, or bad. We are the ones who decide what it is going to be like -- easy or hard?

I ask that you take my request into consideration and think about it long and hard and what improvements that you could make. We need more respect in our nation there is no doubt about that. The problem is how to make it happen. You have the power to make it happen, now it is your choice. Do you want respect in our world? Respect is the key.

Sincerely,

Trisha Van Donselaar