Since the events surrounding Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, there has been a notable increase in brutality against police. Multiple officers nationwide have been shot, attacked and even killed. Most recently in New York City, two officers nearing the end of their shift on Jan. 6 went to respond to an armed robbery and left the scene in ambulances with gunshot wounds.

The recent increase in resentment toward police officers in this post-Ferguson society is causing many once-peaceful movements to become violent, and instilling fear in many innocent men and women just trying to protect their communities.

The majority of the protests seemed to start off peacefully. But the release of the Ferguson verdict appeared to be the tipping point for those who had been brewing anger toward law enforcement for some time. Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, expressed the concerns many people are feeling in this statement: “Right now, it’s a hate crime if you attack someone solely because of the color of their skin, but it ought to be a hate crime if you attack someone solely because of the color of their uniform as well.”

When people hear about a shooting of an innocent police officer just trying to do their job, they do not feel inspired to join the perpetrators’ movement. If anything, they only feel as if they should speak out against it.

Leaders and prominent members of these movements need to speak out against violence and make a conscious effort to enforce non-violent protesting as well as discourage misdirected hatred towards the police force.

When someone outside of a movement sees people joining together in response to these attacks on police, they are much more likely to listen.

Not all police officers are perfect and not all protesters are violent, but what is happening here is that those stereotypes are beginning to take shape.

Now officers need to consider that they could be attacked by an anti-police protester just for being in uniform. They may be taken by surprise with out any warning. Just as in the case of the tragic deaths of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.

Police, to some extent, have always expected possible violence when responding to a call. However, having to continually look over their shoulders for ambush attacks is a whole new development.

Using violence to protest violence is not really a sensible solution to the problem in the first place. The whole issue that started these anti-police sentiments is that many began to feel that police officers are racist. In Ferguson, Missouri, 92.7 percent of the people arrested in 2013 were African Americans and according to the 2010 census, 67.4 percent of the city’s population was African American. However, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

While it may be a cliche, that does not mean it is not true. All the protesters are proving is that the people who had been making assumptions about the protesters being violent are not wrong. Peaceful protests are much more effective ways of not only spreading messages, but also of gaining respect for a movement. The fact that these violent dissenters are the ones deciding how the public views a group is not favorable for anyone.

Victoria Razzi is a freshman magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at vcrazzi@syr.edu and followed on twitter at @vrazzi

Published on January 12, 2015 at 12:15 am