Recently, the local media reported that a woman while walking her dog in Sugarhouse Park was thrown on the ground by a Salt Lake police officer, scraping her knees and arms. Such an act by a regular citizen would have been treated as assault, but the officer was reported to have not been given any kind of reprimand.
Are police officers somehow not bound to the same laws and code of moral ethics as the rest of us? Are they above the law? Should they be? Are we, as a predominantly Christian community of Christian values, going to stand for such unkind, un-Christian actions on the part of our public servants?
Another young woman was pulled by her hair in the front yard of her Salt Lake home, but she was the one who was very traumatically handcuffed by several Salt Lake officers. A young woman with a few simple scratches on her wrists was very traumatically handcuffed by several Provo officers in front of a co-worker in the Wilkinson Center at BYU, leaving her with much more trauma and much more pain than what led her to hurt herself in the first place. A very frightened young woman was recently pulled over by an Orem officer for accidentally running a red light. She was falsely accused of driving while under the influence, but then when the officer found that his assumptions were very obviously wrong, he left her trembling and severely shaking without so much as even an apology.
Again, are we as a "Christian" people going to stand for such heinous actions on the part of our public servants? Where is the kindness? Where is the gentleness? Where is the compassion? Where is the charity? Where is doing what is truly for the good of society?
It is time that we make our wishes known on police brutality to our state legislators so such absolutely abhorrent actions will not continue.
Linda A. Sheldon
Orem