Dear Future President,

I’m a 13 year old daughter of a dedicated police officer, who works everyday to keep as many people safe as he possibly can. As his daughter, I hear a great deal of stories about his work, and it hurts tremendously when I hear that many of these stories source from disrespect towards police officers and lack of care for Blue Lives. My father puts his life out on the line everyday to protect everyone, including those who disrespect him, and all he receives is a small paycheck from the government and an occasional “thanks” from a random passerby. I personally believe that the “Blue Lives Matter” movement should be as much of a concern to the government as other movements aiming to protect the lives of minorities.

The government should be more insightful in this movement because of the massive number of deaths of police officers in the last 10 years. Over 1,400 blue lives have been taken from their families since 2006, and this number is only increasing. Representatives from the #BlackLivesMatter movement claim that of the 730 people killed by police during attacks in 2015, the majority were African American. This is a misconception spread by #BlackLivesMatter and it is shocking to hear that, in actuality, 494 of the killed people were white, rather than the majority being black. Added onto these eye-opening statistics, FBI analyses show that 40 percent of cop killers are black. Also, according to a previous study, a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black than a cop killing an unarmed black person. I believe that poor assumptions and violence coming from other movements cause a huge problem to go unnoticed by the government .

Many movements justify police killings because of police brutality. Police brutality is a real occurrence, but not every officer exercises it. People often generalize one bad characteristic from one person as a bad thing about a group as a whole, and this is no exception. There are many steps to prevention that are being taken to eliminate this occurrence, including dashboard cameras and legal action against officers. Unfortunately, these steps are not enough and a different approach needs to be taken. I think that a way that you could help with this problem is offering classes to officers that are still in training in order to eliminate the issue before it even happens. With the suggested advancement, police killings would go down tremendously.

Police killings don’t just take the lives of the individuals; they affects the officer’s whole family. Being a police officer often goes unnoticed and people don’t consider the amount of time and dedication that our officers put into their daily jobs. I think that it would be much appreciated by the police community if there was more of a communal respect for officers. One way we could do this is by having a police appreciation day in schools to promote gratitude for officers at a young age. Another way that we could increase awareness for our everyday heroes is by teaching our children to respect authority. You could sponsor campaigns to promote this, and I believe that if you did this, the whole country would benefit greatly.

Officers receive disrespect, yet they protect everyone. The Blue Lives Matter movement needs much more recognition and government concern than it is currently receiving. I think that in order for us as a country to change the view on officers as a group, we must work together to bring attention to the Blue Lives Matter movement and exercise the movement’s beliefs.

Thanks,

Gigi