If you ask the common individual how they feel about law enforcement in recent years, you will probably receive a lot of negative responses. In fact, the majority of people would say that law enforcement in the United States takes advantage of power and uses force unnecessarily too often. A large portion of media in the United States today portrays police to be racist, uneducated, and filled with hate. This picture shows us the other side of the story that the media many times misconstrues mainly through its color, line, organization, and direction. 

It is difficult for us as a society to truly gauge how often police officers are corrupt. People who have never had an interaction with a police officer claim to hate the entire law enforcement. It is important to understand the majority of cops are good, hardworking people. On the contrary, there is a small portion of police officers that practice bigotry and racism on a regular day basis. Just a few examples in the past several years include Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott. Michael Brown, a South Carolina citizen, was stopped at a traffic light by a South Carolina Law Enforcement officer and shortly after was shot by that officer. The officer claimed Michael Brown reached for his weapon, however the video that was released proves otherwise. The officer shot Michael Brown for no reason other than the color of his skin. This is an especially terrifying case due to it being right here in South Carolina. It is pleasing to know that this officer was charged with murder and sent straight to jail (McLaughlin). All three of these victims were gunned down in a savage manner that the United States society does not tolerate. It is easy to let these tragic events think negatively about the United States law enforcement as a whole, however we must understand that the media does not show us the good cops. 

There is a pretty obvious color theme of black in this picture. The police officer's entire outfit is black along with the children around him. While the children around him are a different tone of black and may look more brown, it is important to understand society refers to African Americans as black and that is what is important.  It is portrayed through many parts of the media that most police officers are racist and this is a great example of how the majority of cops do not care about the color of our skin. The majority of cops like the man in the picture will protect us regardless of if we are black, white, hispanic, or any other race. It is almost as if the black girl in the purple and white shirt is surprised to even see the police officer be so kind. It shows how most people are shown that police officers are bad through the media so they assume they will not be kind to others. The skin color of the police officer is white and that is important because that is the race that fits most people's stereotype of a racist cop. The color of the baby the police officer is holding is black which shows the coming together of the two races in a moment of crisis. The police officer is even kissing the baby showing love and trying to keep him from looking in the direction of a possible threat even though it is clearly not his own kid. 

The direction of all of the children's faces on the right are pointed left as if they were to be looking at something that is scaring them that the police officer might be protecting these children from. The police officer is facing towards the children in an attempt to calm them down and assure that they are safe. The children are looking in different directions while the police officer is looking only in the direction of the children showing concern for them and nothing else around him. Many people have the idea that good cops don't exist anymore in today's society. It is important to show people the main intention of police officers is to protect the people we all know and love in our communities and in this picture the police officer is attending to a group of students organized by the side of what is most likely their school. 

The children are all organized near each other which could mean that the children were in a group with friends walking during school hours. The presence of law enforcement suggests that the school may have had a shooting. It is unlikely that a police officer would be on his knees helping to assure the safety of children in an organized fashion unless there were some sort of a dangerous threat to the children’s safety. Since the organization of the kids are grouped together it could mean that the police or a teacher made the students get together in a certain spot so they could keep count of everyone and make certain of all of their safety. The police officer's position indicates that he is there getting the job done himself and making sure each individual child is okay. He is not just quickly checking in during an emergency then leaving and going about his day, he is doing whatever he has to make the kids feel safe even if it is just simply get down and hold a crying baby. 

The Police officer is getting on the level of the children to make them feel he is a safe to talk to and be in the presence of. Children are frequently afraid of adults and it helps for the police officer to get down on his knees to not seem so big and tall to the small children. The line of the people is pretty consistent throughout the entire picture. Their heads match up with the police officers head since he is down on his knees. This is a great representation of how they are all similar at the end of the day. Regardless of how big either the children or the police officer’s role in society are they all come together in times of panic. This police officer is staying on the line of the other children and makes him not seem as if he is the superior or leader, he is just another person who has a kind heart like the children. If the news and other forms of media showed more police officers like this that have hands on training and the willingness to help others there would be a lesser paranoia of the general population of law enforcement. Many people suffer from the false perception that the majority of police officers are corrupt since the ones they see on the television are corrupt. This is actually not true and these people suffer from availability heuristic. This is the process by which we take the things we have seen on a daily basis and compare how likely they are based on how many times we have seen them in our life. It is important for people to understand that at the end of the day under the uniform is just a man trying his best to carry out his duty in society.

Police officer's main duty is to protect us and make us feel safer in our everyday lives. While there are tragic instances of police officers that do not do this and instead actually make our society a more dangerous place, the larger portion of police officers are strong, caring people who do a good job at protecting our community. It is easy to see that the baby in this picture is extremely sad and frightened. It is important to know that not only does no parent ever want to see one of their own children frightened, there really is no good person who doesn’t instinctively want to take away a child’s fear. The baby clearly does not have his parents around and it is great to know that we live in a society where in a situation like this police officers will step up and take care of a crying child when that child's parents are not there to do so. This picture shows us the good cops, and we as a society a lot of times forget about these guys. As it turns out the majority of cops are just like the police officer in this image, we cannot let the few bad cops ruin our trust of law enforcement as a whole. If we as a country believe in the stereotype for a police officer to be abusive of power and racist, we practice the same idea of letting the few speak for many that is looked down upon in today's society. 
