The last few years have proved a hard time to walk that thin blue line.

On May 24, 2022, at 11:27 a.m., a gunman walked in to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. At 11:35 a.m. three police officers followed. Shortly thereafter, four more officers, including a deputy sheriff arrived. Ten minutes later, at 11:37 a.m. the killing began with 16 shots being fired inside the classroom. Police were in the hallway, mere feet from the children, separated by a blocked door that apparently no one exactly knew how to, or were prepared to, open.

Fourteen minutes later, at 11:51 a.m. U.S. Border Patrol arrive; an estimated 19 officers were now milling around outside the classroom. Twenty four minutes later, at 12:15 p.m., a Border Patrol Tactical Team arrives with body shields and at 12:21 p.m., more shots erupt within the classroom.

Another 30 minutes pass before an elite Border Patrol Tactical Agent, using a janitor’s key, opens the door and dispatches the killer with extreme prejudice at approximately 12:51 p.m., 84 minutes after the killer first entered the school and 76 minutes after the police first arrived on the scene.

The 84 minutes the killer roamed among them was an eternity for those innocents witnessing evil in their midst. The aftermath: 19 fourth grade students and two teachers killed; 17 children wounded; a few children surviving physically unscathed but who now carry a lifetime of emotional trauma because the big people they have been taught to look up to cannot figure out how to protect the little people like them from a world gone utterly mad.

As soon as the shooting ended the finger pointing began with the Uvalde Police Department directly in the center of a media firestorm. Questions and accusations came fast and furious: Why didn’t officers engage the shooter immediately? Why did they wait? Why did some feel the shooting was over, and the event now simply a barricade situation with no children remaining in the cross hairs? Between 12:03 p.m. and 12:46 p.m., at least six separate 911 calls came from inside the classroom from students, including one who stated she could hear the police next door, asking the operator to send officers in.

Fair questions one and all and equally deserving of coherent, responsive answers from the Uvalde Sheriff’s Department.

I surmise, however, that the answers might be somewhat delayed, for in this era of “police reform,” such officers may face civil lawsuits and even criminal charges for making an error in judgment. Many lawyer up to protect themselves from the subsequent legal attack they know is coming for in this World of the Woke. Cops have to be right, all day, everyday, 100 percent of the time with no room for human error.

Just ask Mr. Scot Peterson, a former School Resource Officer from Broward County, Florida who is facing lengthy jail time for eleven different criminal charges, including child neglect for his alleged failure to confront an active shooter at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 where 17 people died.

Mr. Peterson didn’t kill a single child. He didn’t offer support, cooperate or conspire with the shooter to kill children. He made an alleged mistake and for that he faces losing his liberty, having already lost his reputation and condemned in the media as the “Coward of Broward”. I object to that characterization by those who have never donned the badge or walked that straight blue line; those that have never left the comforts of their easy chair behind the news desk and have never, not even once, faced the pressures of making life and death decisions in a single moment in time.

Doctors commit malpractice, make mistakes and sometimes patients die, but no one goes to jail. Lawyers screw up in the courtroom resulting in a client’s conviction, incarceration, even the death penalty, but the lawyer doesn’t face jail either.

It’s simply no longer the same game for law enforcement, and it’s wrong.

Being a cop is a thankless job; a tough job, a job where some paint you as Exhibit “A” for oppression and all that’s wrong with society; a job where you are second guessed at every turn by the misguided and institutions rooting for your downfall — your penance for centuries of perceived historical, systematic unjust treatment of the disempowered.

All of this is beginning to take its toll on officers who are now leaving the profession at historic rates. When good cops leave, we all are the lesser. In the past year, city police departments across the country have reported a dramatic drop in manpower, as cops retire, resign, or leave for the suburbs. As violent crime surged to a 14-year high in Seattle in 2021, Seattle P.D. suffered staffing shortage which strained its ability to protect the community. Since 2020, more than 300 officers, including many veteran, well-trained cops exited the force.

Your King County Sheriff’s Office (“KCSO”) is not exempt either, undergoing massive staffing challenges “amid low morale, lack of resources, and officer burnout… leaving many critical positions unfilled,” according to Councilman Reagan Dunn.

In 2020, KCSO saw a 42 percent increase in deputy resignations when 69 deputies resigned, and more than 50 resigned in 2021.

What’s behind this wave of resignations? Many feel that after 2020’s explosive protests, cops no longer feel that they have the support of the public or of civilian officials or as one now retired officer put it: “One day, the good guys became the bad guys and the bad guys became the good guys.”

The Seattle P.D. interviews officers who leave the department. Here is a sampling of the reasons given by them for their departure, as reported by KUOW in 2019:

• “Officers are feeling they are nothing more than a political punching bag; that they are they are the sacrificial lambs on the Alter of so called police reform”

• “It is extremely frustrating to constantly hear nothing but attacks and second guessing from Seattle City Council Members who frequently make accusations based on their own biases and with no regard to fact”

• “It seems like everything an officer does is scrutinized for any and all violations – such as no name tag or failure to activate something…We are human doing the best job we can. It seems like we are no longer afforded any benefit of the doubt”

• “I did not enjoy the hyper-aggressive nature of (Office of Police Accountability)…It felt like officers were guilty until proven otherwise, while our suspects were presumed innocent”

• “I have had enough. There is a severe lack of support from the leadership in our city…comments by city council calling us murderers and saying we are bad officers doesn’t sit well with those that put their lives on the line for them everyday…”

This is just a sampling of the reasons given for officer leaving the Seattle P.D. These exit interviews were conducted in 2019, a full year before Seattle’s “Summer of Love” debacle, SPD’s East Precinct destruction, the occupation of Capitol Hill and the retirement of Seattle Chief Carmen Best. Increased officer exodus and staffing vacancies were gas lit by those events leading to an even greater staffing crisis at the Seattle P.D.

Many feel this police reform bit has gone entirely too far, making the job of policing a potential minefield of litigation, communities less safe and only emboldening the lawless. Northwest News Network reports that between Jan. 1 and May 17 of this year, the WSP logged unprecedented 934 failure-to-yield instances which followed Olympia passing strict new rules on when police can engage in pursuits.

While crime is up, accountability is down, as illustrated by the fact that despite stealing tens of thousands of dollars of goods by 35 people in an organized looting of a Seattle Target in December 2021, only one person was actually booked into jail with the remainder walking without incarceration or posting bail.

Recently, the SPD noted the arrest of a dynamic duo of crime accused of nearly 60 such smash-and-grabs encompassing hundreds of thousands of stolen dollars and causing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to the businesses in the process. This is not unique to Seattle — smash and grabs are up all over the country which some attribute to the “Defund the Police” movement which has sapped law enforcement’s resources, causing theft cases to be put on the back burner. Others point to a lack of political will to prosecute people under our current climate where thieves face few consequences, thereby manipulating the criminal justice system.

And finally, there is the video of the fellow riding his bicycle into Walgreens, calmly filling his plastic garbage bag full of goodies and then slowly pedaling out. His greatest crime: Since the fellow brought his own bag to stuff his goodies he cheated the state out of 10 cent surcharge for the sack!

The next time you see an officer, thank them for their service. It’s an asphalt jungle out there.