Football players around the National Football League and other athletes from all levels of sports continue to follow the lead of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick by taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem in protest to racial and social injustice. Most recently, the Miami Dolphins made headlines when players engaged in a similar protest at the start of Sunday’s game against the New England Patriots in Foxborough, MA. In response, a local Miami police union has asked the Broward County Sherriff’s Office to no longer provide police escorts for the team until the Miami Dolphins force all players to stand during the national anthem.
According to the Miami Herald, Jeffery Bell, president of the International Union of Police Associations, Local 6020 said, “We’ve asked the deputies and the Broward Sherriff’s Office not to do the details anymore.”
In a similar move earlier this month, the Santa Clara Police Officer’s Association sent a letter to the San Francisco 49ers management threatening to stop offering security at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California citing “a duty to protect its members and work to make all of their working environments free of harassing behavior.” The Santa Clara Police Chief Michael Sellers made a statement in USA Today rebuking the letter saying, “I will ensure we continue to provide a safe environment at Levi’s Stadium.”
This concept is not new and ironically, the response from these police unions is the exact reason why Kaepernick and other players are silently and peacefully protesting. Selective policing or selective enforcement is a result of government officials choosing to enforce laws and punish violators as they see fit. In most cases, this exercise of choice is based on racial prejudice and bias.
We saw in the recent rape case against Brock Turner how a sympathetic judge could allow a convicted rapist to serve only 3 months of a 6-month sentence. All the while, all-star high school football player, Brian Banks, who is black was sentenced to 5 years in prison and an additional five years of parole before his accuser admitting to falsifying the allegations and the charges were dropped.
The police unions in Santa Clara and in Miami are proving that police officers use bias in the performance of their duties, a claim that the black community has been making for years. This bias is the basis for the Black Lives Matter Movement. It stands to reason that if a police union can influence a department based on their disagreement with players exercising their constitutional rights, then preconceived notions about the black community as a whole most likely have a role to play in the rash of police brutality and shooting cases that have dominated the news lately.
According to the widely used Law Enforcement Oath of Honor recommended by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, police officers pledge to uphold both the constitution and the community they serve upon receiving their shields.
Since both professional and amateur athletes are exercising a constitutional right, police officers should have no conflict in carrying out the duties they swore they would perform. Otherwise, their insistence on selective enforcement continues to justify the need for further protest.