They’re the good guys: KC-area police are facing down destructive rioters in the Plaza
Growing up, and for much of my adult years, the Country Club Plaza was my favorite place in the world. Even now, after traveling far and wide, it’s still right up there. The cosmopolitan atmosphere, the food, the memories of my youth.
It really is so — that a place can become part of your soul. This place is part of mine.
So, I absolutely hate what hate has done to it these past few days. The boarded up, broken-in storefronts, the atmosphere of dread rather than delight. The ghost-town feel of walking the streets still barricaded Monday afternoon after the weekend’s riots.
What’s infinitely worse, though, is the treatment of the law enforcement officers sent to protect the Plaza and environs and to keep the peace.
No one hates what happened to George Floyd more than I do. The tragic, abhorrent killing of a black man by a white officer — completely absent any threat to that officer — has the feel of a targeted terror attack, especially for a black community that feels under siege already.
But, as opposed to the righteous, peaceful, rainbow-faced demonstrations demanding reform in law enforcement, the rioters and looters who capitalize on such anguish can claim no such righteousness in their rage against civilized society.
And as central as a monstrous cop is to all of this, the Kansas City-area police and deputies deployed to quell the riots here the past few days are not him. They’re the good guys.
You wouldn’t know it from how they’re being treated in the trenches.
“These guys are very antagonistic,” Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden, who joined some 50 of his officers at the Plaza area in support of the Kansas City Police Department Sunday night, says of the worst protesters. “They call you every name in the world and get face to face with you. Anything they can, to provoke a violent response.”
These men and women sent to protect us and our property have been pelted with water bottles — sometimes frozen — along with rocks and bricks. Roving packs of sociopathic morons no doubt were behind the stockpiling of the rocks and bricks in strategic locations ahead of the assaults.
“It was an orchestrated move by whoever put this on. That’s not your average Joe who does that. That’s not an upset person that’s worried about the rights of people. They’re just there to create anarchy,” Hayden says. “They try to shove in on you. And our officers keep their composure, as hard as that is. And they’re professional about it.”
Not just Hayden’s officers, he’s quick to add. He’s talking about all of them, particularly those of the Kansas City Police Department, who took the lead on drawing the line between protest and pandemonium.
“They are consummate professionals. I am so impressed. They were measured. Their response was professional. And they did what they could do to keep the peace,” Hayden says.
I understand the hate for the occasional racist, reckless, murderous cop. So does Hayden, who promises that the first confirmed abuse of power in his department is shown the door forthwith. But the hate of civil society, of having nice things and yes, law and order — I just don’t get that. Never will. It’s a caustic contempt of the precious thing we have here in this country, which is a delicate dance between freedom and responsibility.
That little jig is always done on the precipice of anarchy. They would push the rest of us over that crag, these opportunistic ne’er-do-wells who clad themselves in amateur ninja garb and arm themselves with household and garden tools to terrorize society. To what end, if not the end of civil society and all its moorings?
I can’t stand what that cop did to George Floyd. But I sure as hell stand with the officers who stand between us, our Plaza, and these spineless jerks who by day scurry back to live among us and enjoy all the comforts and trappings they would destroy if they could.
If officers who stand in the way ever get a water bottle from me, it’s going to be handed to them. With much thanks.
