Dear Americans – It’s Time To Stand Behind Our Police
Kyle S. Reyes | September 8, 2017
All across America, yesterday was a normal day for many of you.
You went to work. Sipped your latte. Laughed with friends about pointless TV shows.
Because that’s what we do. We enjoy peace. Safety. Normalcy. We don’t think about the fact that people are out there ensuring that peace for us.
Let me tell you about the day my friend had.
He’s a police officer in Sacramento. Yesterday, while you enjoyed the sounds of everyday life … he was listening to the sounds of sobbing. Of pain. Of heartache.
He and his brothers and sisters were laying one of their own to rest.
And in the middle of THAT SERVICE … came the sounds of a call for help.
They had to rush off in the middle of that service. Why? Because two more of their own had been shot in the line of duty.
But you didn’t know about it. You never do. You’re busy. You’re upset because that latte didn’t have enough sugar and because your coworker said mean things.
After all, it’s easy to make a big deal out of those little things. You and your coworkers aren’t being shot. You aren’t being targeted. You aren’t being attacked.
At the end of that difficult day you had, you get to go home to your significant other. To your kids. Perhaps you kiss them and tell them you love them and spend as much time with them as possible.
Perhaps you don’t. Maybe you’re too busy being stressed about your day. Then you go home and the house is a mess and you’re frustrated that your kids aren’t doing their homework and your spouse is chewing your ear off.
You take that normalcy for granted. You don’t appreciate the safety and the security that you have every day.
That someone else earned for you.
Someone who may NOT be able to go home and kiss their spouse. Their kids.
Someone who risks – every single day – not being able to go home ever again.
Over the past year, my team at The Silent Partner Marketing has spent more time with cops than most people will in a lifetime.
We’ve gone on the road with them. We’ve been in their homes. At their BBQ’s. All across the country, joining them in their communities.
Every week, we welcome many of them into our studios and invite them to share a glass of whiskey at The Whiskey Wall and share stories on our new series called Behind The Uniforms.
Why do we do this? Because America desperately needs to see that they are just like you and me. The only difference is that while we are complaining about our latte … they are literally saving people’s lives.
While we are moaning about the traffic we’re sitting in on the way to work … they are working with firefighters and EMTs to pull mothers and fathers and children out of the car wrecks that caused that traffic.
While we are hating on our coworkers for not getting us reports in time, they are writing reports about their coworkers who were killed trying to hold The Thin Blue Line.
We’ve somehow lost perspective.
I spent some time in Miami last month with the folks who run Law Enforcement Today. And they shared with me a little about their mission. They spoke about the men and women who are underrepresented. Who feel that they don’t have a voice. Who don’t ask for recognition – but deserve it.
While we sat there chatting … other cops came in. Supporters dropped by.
And I quickly realized that the real problem is in the fact that we’re so focused on our normalcy that we don’t think about what it takes to protect that normalcy … and it has become a defense mechanism.
We don’t want to think about the bad in the world. The evil.
When we think about it … we get a pit in our stomach. Our mind goes to a bad place. And we don’t want to go there. So we don’t.
We want to think about the fact that the holidays are coming up. We don’t want to hear about the mother of two who was just widowed because her husband lost to the demons of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome and took his own life.
We want to think about how we’re going to get our kids to soccer practice. We don’t want to know about the kids who will never kiss their mom again, because she was assassinated while sitting in her police car thinking about her own kids and how she was going to get them to soccer practice while working overtime to support them.
We want to think about our kids’ art projects … not the suffering that a police officer went through because the officer held the hand of a child who was murdered as the child took take her last dying breath.
This isn’t comfortable. This doesn’t feel good. You don’t want to hear about this.
I get it. We’ve lost business BECAUSE of the work we are doing to support the police community.
But ask me if I care. This isn’t about money. This isn’t about business. This is about something much more important.
It’s time that we – as Americans – rise and stand behind the men and women who serve and protect our communities. I hope you’ll help me. I hope you’ll watch and SHARE the new Behind The Uniforms series that we’ve launched as part of our campaign with The Whiskey Patriots and Law Enforcement Today.
I hope you’ll shake a police officer’s hand and thank that officer. I hope you’ll buy the coffee when you’re in line with a cop in the morning. I hope you’ll pray for police officers. I hope you’ll pray for their families. I hope you’ll appreciate the safety and normalcy we have BECAUSE of them.
And I hope you’ll SHARE this article. The two seconds it will take you could just have a butterfly effect on the world around us. We owe it to those who hold The Thin Blue Line.
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Kyle S. Reyes is co-host of The Whiskey Patriots and the Chief Executive Officer of The Silent Partner Marketing. Reyes is also an acclaimed keynote speaker on entrepreneurship, leadership, marketing and social media. You can follow him on Facebook.
