IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
By Ed Hoffman
Last week, a 12-year-veteran of the San Bernardino Police Department was fatally struck by a drunk driver while driving his police vehicle. Officer Bryce Hanes was a 1993 graduate of San Bernardino High School, devoted husband, father of three and active member of a Redlands LDS church.
Officer Hanes contributed to his community positively by every possible standard, and now it’s up to his loved ones here in the Inland Empire to continue doing that for him. And they have to – not just for Bryce’s memory, but for every police officer who has been maligned, slandered and even threatened in recent days.
It’s not quite time for year-end reflections, but let me offer one anyway: Despite the countless number of outstanding police officers in this country who fulfill their duties admirably, 2015 will be remembered as the year of the anti-cop. Accusations, threats and slanderous generalizations against police officers have been woven throughout this entire year. I don’t have to recap them; you know them, I know them. In a relatively short period of time, lies about law enforcement have penetrated so deeply into American culture that it almost feels like there’s no going back. But we have to keep fighting to go back, for the sake of people like Officer Hanes and his family. We can’t let the lies win.
As you may know, there are also lies being told about presidential candidates right now (should we be surprised? Not if they’re Republican candidates). Dr. Ben Carson is being accused of lying about a variety of things: being offered a scholarship to West Point, attempting to stab a friend as a teenager, and protecting white students in a Yale biology lab during a riot after the assassination of Martin Luther King. As of this week, we now have the facts about each one of Dr. Carson’s accounts:
As the top ROTC student in Detroit, Carson was told by supervisors he would be eligible for an appointment to West Point based on his grades and ROTC performance. He considered it but opted to pursue medicine instead. There are no “scholarships” to West Point, only appointments – and since an appointment was at least suggested, if not offered – it seems Carson’s only mistake was using the wrong word in his autobiography. (Has Barack Obama ever done that? Let me think…)
Carson’s mother told Parade magazine in 1997 that the knifing incident did happen. His autobiography uses the pseudonym “Bob” to protect the person’s identity, and last week Carson clarified that the person was actually a relative. “I never use the true names of people in books, you know, to protect the innocent,” he said. “That’s something that people have done for decades, for centuries. That’s something that’s commonly done.” And he’s right. Furthermore, Carson told Megyn Kelly, he asked this relative if he wanted to be revealed and the person said no. What else can he do?
Carson’s reply to the assertion that he never protected white students in a Yale biology lab during a school riot is that, “Perhaps one of the students will come forward,” and perhaps they don’t know about the controversy yet. “Maybe they’re not spending all of their time reading The Wall Street Journal,” he said. Maybe he’s right. Would you be surprised if people in 2015 weren’t paying attention to an election in the primary stages? I’m certainly not.
Like I said, I know it’s too early to do year-end reflections and next-year projections. Regardless, I’m starting things off with a challenge: Let’s make 2016 the year we stopped the lies.
Ed Hoffman is host of The Main Event on AM590, which airs Saturday 9:30 AM- 10:30 AM and Sunday 4:00 PM- 5:00 PM. Follow him on Twitter @EdHoffman, and like him on Facebook by searching The Main Event 590.
