“I’ll take a bullet before you”

Video footage of the police response to yesterday’s mass shooting in San Bernardino shows officers arriving within about five minutes of the first call for help, and running toward the scene of the crime.

They didn’t have, couldn’t have had, any very clear idea of what they were running toward.  Yet they ran.

A video has surfaced of a police officer leading to safety some of those caught in the building where the massacre has just occurred a few minutes earlier.  None of them, not even the officer, knows how many shooters there are, nor whether they’re still in or near the building:

http://www.vocativ.com/news/257129/san-bernardino-shooting-hero/

He tells them to be calm, gives them quick instructions, and leads the way.

He reassures them that they’re going to be okay.  They’ll be safe.

“I’ll take a bullet before you,” he says them.  “That’s for damn sure.”

And yet he leads them out.

At a time when the police are under heavy fire, both literally and from critics, such scenes must not be forgotten.

Most of the allegations of racist police violence that I’ve seen over the past year or so have turned out upon investigation to be dubious, if not altogether baseless.  A few cases, sadly, have shown individual policemen acting very poorly, and these misbehaving officers have been, or are being, prosecuted — as they very much should be.

But there are many thousands of police officers in the United States, and the vast majority of them are good, decent men and women, doing their best and sometimes putting their lives at risk — often for relatively low pay and in the face of at least some community hostility — to preserve order and keep us safe.

Some of them are genuine heroes.  Several showed themselves to be such heroes yesterday.

I want to publicly express my admiration for them, and my gratitude to them.