With all that has been happening lately- ranging from police brutality to the murder of police officers, I feel that this article is long overdue. Now don't get me wrong here, as a black woman and as someone considering pursuing a career in law enforcement, I completely agree that black lives matter - just like blue lives and all other lives matter. But I am not taking a side here.

Being a police officer is an extremely difficult job, and I completely understand that at the end of the day, one of their main goals is to make it back home safely at the end of the night. But in light of all that has been happening lately, nothing is starting to make sense anymore.

Recently a Shelby, North Carolina, officer was killed in the line of duty. He was just simply doing his job and ended up being shot because of it. At least 12 officers

have also been injured due to the outrage of citizens.

Breaking glass, destroying property, and yelling out vulgar statements is not a protest, it's a riot. Until we respect ourselves how can we expect others to? You know why people such as Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were taken seriously - because they used a peaceful approach. As a result of the riot that is currently happening in Charlotte, innocent bystanders have been injured, a reporter was almost burned to death, and police officers have been injured. First of all, how can you even attempt to hurt the people that are out there trying to make sure that you don't end up hurt? What sense does that make? If they end up hurt, who's going to be there to help you? I get that there are some bad police officers out there. There's good and bad in everything. There's good cops, bad cops, good doctors, bad doctors, good teachers, bad teachers, etc. It's up to the good ones to make sure that the bad ones are held accountable for their actions. It's up to all of us, honestly. No matter who you are or what your profession is, it's important to speak up when you see someone doing something that goes against our certain standards.

All of these occurrences seem to stem from recent events involving police shootings of black men. Athletes such as Colin Kaepernick have taken a controversial stance against police brutality by refusing to stand for the national anthem. Due to this, Kaepernick has been receiving many different types of threats and has been called many names by "patriotic" Americans. We see it on our newsfeed constantly. Why aren't these same people just as outraged about unarmed citizens being killed as they are about someone not standing for the national anthem? If you truly believe in "liberty and justice for all", then you should be able to speak up when justice isn't being served. If people were as passionate about police brutality as they are about athletes not standing for the national anthem, we would begin to achieve some sort of progress.

At the end of the day it is up to us to be the change that we want to see. You can't go around saying "well maybe if they respected authority", because that doesn't always necessarily make a difference - i.e. the Charles Kinsey

incident. Just like you can't go around associating every police officer with being a bad guy because at the end of the day neither is true. It's time for us as nation to come together to figure out ways to bring unity instead of creating ways to further separate us. We're all the same color in the dark anyways.