St. Petersburg Division: Attack of the Police

Increasingly we are seeing reports of people attacking the police. The level of frustration is breaking the normal social norm of restraint against individual police officers but this appears to be cracking. Yesterday we saw in New York, police officers attacked with a meat cleaver. This is outrageous!! The extraordinary aspect of this is that it is no longer exceptional. We saw police being attacked in Dallas, Baltimore and New York among other cities large and small. The outrage has finally overflowed. The danger other than the obvious danger to the individual officers who have been attacked is that if this becomes the norm; no one is safe. We are seeing a continuation of the breakdown of social norms. We see political protests on our football fields, we see a judge fighting a lawyer in a courtroom in Florida, we see men protesting on the TV show Dancing with the Stars. Our society has said anything goes as long as its not illegal. Unfortunately the acceptable level of norm has slipped below that low mark. If we don’t clean up our act this kind of protest will escalate and has the ability to destabilize our society.