I need to take a break from social media for a bit, for at least 3 or 4 days, but I want to drop this as a log the hell off. I see so many of my police colleagues trying to write this off as just a problem of 'a few bad apples.’ No, my friends, that's not the problem…

The problem is that for every one bad apple we have, there's 10 cops who knew who that bad apple was and for one reason or another chose not to speak up.

Think of the Gun Trace Task Force in Baltimore. You think that happened in a vacuum? You think not one single person in that department knew what was going on? This 'thin blue line' bullshit needs to die a quick nasty death, because this culture of silence isn't killing us…

…it's killing men like George Floyd and so many others. And it has to stop. I guarantee when some of these events played out there were cops in those departments who were like “yup, I'm not surprised it happened,' and shame on them. And shame on all of us.

We've failed the communities we serve because we constantly circle our wagons when a criticism is hurled our way and fall back to the ‘not all cops…’ or ‘its just a bad apple.’

I've been stuck on this analogy: In the movie Platoon, there was Barnes, Elias, and Taylor. Barnes was the embodiment of cold pragmatism, and didn't care what means were used to get to the end. Elias knew the mission, but had compassion and lost it all to stop a man like Barnes.

Then there's Taylor. He was stuck in the middle, knew what he was seeing was wrong, and whether he felt powerless or was powerless, he was an idle bystander. And this is the problem. We may have only a few Barnes in our field, maybe .01%, but there's a sea of Taylors.

We have to stop acting like a bystander and waving our hands like ‘what can we do?’ and be an Elias. It'll probably make you unpopular in the department, but it's what is right. I only hope I can do the same.