Our finest protect the vacuum from being filled by the lawless

This may seem like an obvious statement but honestly it is a appearing to be less than obvious to many in our society.

There is a plethora of police cam videos replayed on TV and the Internet and they continue to remind me of what is entailed in the job of our law men and women. It is not all Miami Vice or Adam 12. These people babysit daily the litany of humans who refuse to get along and refuse to obey the laws of a civil society.

I then came upon a website run by former and current criminals who honestly believe that they are doing their neighborhoods a service by "policing" the Police. Their objective is to videotape and post videos of cops being too rough with perps. While surfing their site I kept asking myself 'who do these guys want doing police work'? What do these guys ultimately want? I thing they want the police to not be so mean to their criminal buddies.

OK! Well what if the police agreed with these guys and they all resigned or they all agreed to leave the criminals alone and essentially neutered themselves? This has actually happened in varying degrees in recent history. Remember the riots in 1992 in LA? The Police chose to withdraw from south central LA. Well what then happened? The vacuum was filled by the gang members and they assumed the role of judge, jury and executioner. Immediately due process was withdrawn from all victims.

If there are no police then there will be a void and that void will be filled. By nature it does not go unfilled. For instance look at your typical lawless third world country. They are not really lawless. Yes there is no established law set forth in writing by a government but there is law established and carried out by those with the least to lose led by those with the most to gain. Albeit murderous and tyrannical but there is a law. Essentially "warlords" take a piece of land and their henchmen essentially "police" the territory. Do you think there is due process for the innocent in these areas? Me neither.

So what is the solution and what works? I believe the police forces work best for their communities when they have a stake in that community. I mean if members of the police force have a wife and kids or a mortgage or something else larger than they are that they are responsible for then they are more likely to honestly seek to do what is right to law abiding citizens while weeding out the criminals in the community.

Let's look at the opposite for a moment. In many major cities, gang members control neighborhoods. Who are these gang members? They are typically 15-25 year old males. They own no property and they have no family to support and create a safe environment for. Basically they have no stake in the neighborhood being civilized and livable. So what do they do? They terrorize law abiding neighbors and kill each other. If there were no Police on their block then they would be the ones to fill the void of neighborhood control and "security". Furthermore, look at any instance in any city in any country. When law and order are removed, gangs of youth assume that role and the city is no longer a safe place to be.

Yes police are imperfect. They are human. They deal with the worst people in our society on a daily basis. They get worn down. But they typically have mouths to feed at home and they desire a safe place for their families. In an imperfect world our trained police forces are more perfect than anything else on the planet and we owe them a debt of gratitude for risking their lives and their health so that the "police vacuum" can never be assumed by the lawless.