In today’s society, we
have come to highly dislike police officers. Stories that have been released in
the media lately about cops haven’t exactly painted them in a positive light.
Citizens across the United States have even been protesting the police in their
respective cities. Riots against the police broke out in Ferguson when a
teenager was shot by a police officer (don’t worry, I’m not going to argue who
was right or wrong in that situation). The point is, it’s been a while since a
lot of us have seen anything positive about policemen in the news, because cops
doing good things isn’t prevalent in the media.
FINALLY, there is an
awesome story about a policeman making a difference in his community: the story
of Officer Bobby White. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the story, I’ll
give a short explanation of what happened. A couple months ago, in January,
Officer White received a dispatch telling him that in a certain neighborhood,
kids were out in the street playing basketball too loudly. When the officer
arrived to find the kids playing a game, just as kids do, instead of scolding
the boys, he shot a few hoops with them. After a little while, he told them he
had to get back on duty, but he would come back in a few days with “backup” to
play some more basketball. A few days later, he came back to play with the kids
with a few officers, as well as NBA fame Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq, along with the
officers, played with the kids as well as gave them some life advice. As a special
treat, Shaq even gave them $100 each.
Through doing more
research, I’ve discovered that there’s even more to this incredible story.
After everything happened with Shaq, Officer Bobby White did even more for
those kids. According to NBC 4, he asked the mother of one of the kids for
permission to build a basketball court in her backyard. He then began
fundraising and was able to receive enough donations from the community to
build the group a permanent commercial sized hoop and court.
So, what does a story like
this tell us? Well, first of all, it’s awesome seeing a man like Officer White
do so many great things for the youth in his community. I’m so happy to finally
see a video that has gone viral that is actually uplifting and doesn’t have any
negative connotations. Second, to me, it proves that people need to stop
stereotyping cops as being dirty and terrible people. Let’s be honest with
ourselves, the amount of good cops FAR out way the bad. FAR. In a Rolling Stone
article, it said “it’s too bad there isn’t an Officer White patrolling every
neighborhood in America.” You’re kidding me, right? That sentence actually
ruined the rest of the entire article for me. There actually are a lot of cops
that are truly amazing people; do we not remember all of the policemen that ran
into the burning buildings during 9/11? Not anymore, because the problem is
that all of America doesn’t see good deeds being done by cops because there
usually aren’t videos about it that go viral like the negative videos do.
Something that I find
wrong about today’s society is how positive news stories are often overshadowed
by negative news. Quite honestly, I had actually never heard of Officer White
and his incredible story before getting assigned to read it in my social media
class. Why? Well probably because my newsfeed is way too busy being flooded
with terrible things that have happened. Based on research done by PR News,
negative superlatives work 30 percent better at getting our attention than
positive ones. That’s sick (and I don’t mean that in the cool way). Media
companies base their content on the preferences of the audience. If there was a
majority of people that actually
hated negative news content, then the media would be completely different.
I truly hope that stories
like what happened with Officer White start becoming more popular in the news. I’m
sure that if we were being told positive stories every day, it would restore
our faith in humanity. As of right now, everyone is just way too focused on
negative things that occur. And to all those out there that don’t respect policemen
anymore, I promise you that there are a lot out there that care for our safety
and rights. Please stop letting the FEW negative stories impact how you feel about ALL cops.
Sources:
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