On Monday night, radio host Jason Rantz of KTTH in Seattle shared an open letter reportedly from an anonymous Seattle police officer in which the officer poignantly described himself as “broken” because the citizens of the city have abandoned their police department.
The letter began, “I am a police officer in your city. I say your city because I don’t live in the geographic boundaries that make up ‘Seattle.’ My kids were fully entrenched in school in a neighboring city when I decided to become an officer and I didn’t want to uproot them. My experiences are my own but I believe other officers will have had similar experiences and may be nodding their heads when they read portions of this letter.”
After recalling winning awards for their service and suffering significant injuries on the job, the officer continued, “The criminals who I have interacted with trust me because I always treated them as human beings first, while still holding them accountable for their illegal behavior. Police officers are very mission oriented problem solvers by nature and I am definitely that type of person. So I work in this career trying to serve you, performing THE MISSION, and solving problems along the way … During that time I have had a mayor get angry and throw papers at me, several chiefs angry enough to try to get me to quit for being a truth teller, friends kill themselves when proper leadership could have saved them, [and] agitator lawyers go on TV and demand I be fired for a lie they were told.”
The officer noted surviving attacks on his life that included using a vehicle, by fire, and a “few times by firearms and knives.” – READ MORE
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