ST. LOUIS — Heather Taylor’s words packed a punch.
“I love the presidents of both unions. I would die for them. They would die for me,†Taylor said on last week. “(But) I disagree with them about the state taking over the police department.â€
Taylor is the deputy director of public safety in the city. It’s a job Mayor Tishaura O. Jones appointed her to after she retired from the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Metropolitan Police Department after 20 years of service. Sitting next to Taylor when she spoke those words — we were in a radio studio in Grand Center — it struck me how well they explain thin blue line, that concept that unites police officers.
“I would die for them.â€
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For many of us, outside of protecting our families, this is a foreign concept in the way police officers, or members of the military, use the phrase. I have a daughter who was a cop, and a son who is an officer in the Marines. They know instinctively what those words mean. They’ve probably spoken them, and taken those words to heart.
I never have. And that’s what makes discussion of policing issues so difficult, whether it’s in ºüÀêÊÓƵ or elsewhere. Too often, whether it’s police brutality, funding, racism, or, as in the current debate, who controls the department, there are only two camps in such debates: Us and Them. You are behind the thin blue line, or you are not.
That makes actual discussion of the issues difficult, and it’s one reason why, over the past decade or so, I’ve so often appreciated Taylor’s ability to speak to people on both sides of that line.
“They would die for me.â€
Taylor was speaking about ºüÀêÊÓƵ Police Officers Association President Jay Schroeder and Ethical Society of Police President Donny Walters when she spoke those words. The three of them served as police officers together. I have no doubt Taylor meant those words.
But she disagrees with the attempts by Schroeder and Walters to try to have the Missouri Legislature snatch control of the police department from the mayor and place it under the governor. While those pushing for state control blame “activists†for having too much of an effect on how the mayor has managed the police department, Taylor turns that argument on its head.
“Black people, we have rights because of activism,†Taylor said. “If it wasn’t for Selma, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t have rights.â€
Just as she did when she was a homicide detective and president of the Ethical Society of Police, Taylor continues to live on both sides of the thin blue line. She’s a Black woman who stands up for social justice. She’s a cop who believes in law and order.
It’s not an easy place to be. Just the week before we sat in that radio studio together, Taylor spent a week in a courtroom downtown, where she was awarded a $300,000 verdict from a jury that found she had been discriminated against by the department she used to work for, and now helps to manage. That’s the reality for cops who cross that thin blue line to criticize their department: It takes courage, and acting on that courage has consequences.
In a city that has long had a problem with violence — most of it related to guns, Taylor points out, a problem which the Missouri Legislature has made worse — discussing important issues of policing is made more difficult when too many people want to put everybody into a hashtag camp: #backtheblue or #defundthepolice.
The reality is more nuanced, and the debate is elevated when somebody like Taylor adds her sincere and courageous voice to the conversation.
Taylor would die for her former colleagues, leaders of the police unions, but she’s going to stand in their way as they try to pry power away from the citizens who waited 150 years to have an opportunity to mold the police department into the version of policing they can believe in.