A few months ago, #CopChat made its debut on Twitter. Every Wednesday night at 9pm Eastern Time, since the inaugural Twitter chat, there has been a steady growth of community and police taking part with Christa Miller and myself. The entire aim of #CopChat is to bring the community and police together to discuss challenges, triumphs and differences with one goal… building a better online relationship between the two groups which will transfer over to the physical world.
We’ve discussed things like:
- The best ways to talk to each other for maximum understanding
- The art of actually listening to each other
- The manner in which police talk at the public instead of with the public
- The similarities we share
Wednesday, August 29th ushered in a new chapter of #CopChat… haters came out of the woodwork like never before and attempted to hijack the conversation. (Transcript of the chat).
As much as I wanted to ignore these people, I owed it to the purity of the conversations to at least try to engage some of these people who really had nothing but foul and disgusting things to say. There was no intention by many of these people to talk and build bridges. Their intent was to bully, berate and insult the people who have been working together.
That was the signal to me that #CopChat is working. It’s been noticed by some that the public and police can work together to bring about change in a positive and constructive manner.
What the haters did was It prove that some people are so afraid of peace and understanding that they had to try anything to kill the conversation. All they know is disruption, fear tactics and hatred, that the simple thought of relationship building terrifies them.
These people were not just insulting to the police and our way of life, but also to members of the public who defended the police, who support the ideal of #CopChat and didn’t take up the hue and cry of the haters.
To each and every person who has been striving to build these relationships, I say THANK YOU!!!
To each and every person who is defending everyone’s choice to voice their opinion and listen respectfully to the opinions of others, I say THANK YOU!!
To each and every police officer that had the guts to take a stand and defend our profession, way of life and values, I say THANK YOU!!
To each and every member of the public who stands for your beliefs and has the guts to listen and work with the police for a better level of understanding of cooperation, I say THANK YOU!!
To all of you who took abuse from the likes of the people we saw on Wednesday night but stood your ground, tried to talk and showed incredible patience and respect, I say THANK YOU!!
To the members and supporters of the Occupy and Anonymous movements that understand hatred and accusations will not further your efforts and instead are trying to find a better, peaceful and effective way to move your respective causes forward, I say THANK YOU!!
To those who are trying to destroy our efforts with your pew of hatred and hostility, I say GOOD LUCK. Everyone knows you’re scared and you’re failing… your desperation is self-evident of that.
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No one can argue the value of video in almost everything around us nowadays. You can’t turn around it seems without seeing an advisory that you are in the vicinity of surveillance cameras, see someone with a camera, emailed a video from YouTube, etc, etc, etc.
