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OurBlueLives.com, established in August, 2020, is an extension of the ideas that I share in my book, “Blue Lives Matter – The Heart Behind the Badge.” In my blog, I review America’s political landscape and current events from a “Pro Cop” viewpoint.

I am Brian Whiddon, a former police officer, and now a professional publisher and author. Between 1989 and 2008, I served as an Army MP. Afterwards, I was employed by 3 different Florida agencies as a police officer. I worked as a patrolman, a motorcycle traffic officer, a firearms instructor, and an academy instructor.

I began writing my book in 2018 when I saw how politicians, the media, and radical leftist groups were beginning to, once again, target police officers as a way to sway public opinion, and push an anti-American, socialist agenda.

I left Law Enforcement very shortly after Barack Obama took office, The reasons why are explained in my book.

After the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016, I dared to imagine that the attacks on cops were over. Unfortunately, several Democrat congress members, governors, and mayors kept throwing gasoline on the fire that Obama lit when he first said, “The Cambridge Police acted stupidly.” Although we now had a president that supported cops, the attacks still came from multiple directions.

In 2018, I realized that, when Americans talk about cops, whether calling them “heroes,” or any number of vile, hateful names, they always tend to lump all cops together.

That’s where activists and feel-good politicians get it wrong when talking about making a police department look “more like the community.” Once you stop dehumanizing cops, and stop trying to organize them in to little boxes based on their race, skin color, and sexual orientation, you find that cops – like everyone else in a community – are individuals. Each cop has his or her own set of experiences, beliefs, moral alignments, strengths, weaknesses, triumphs, and fears. There is no monolithic model of a cop.

So, I decided to sit down, and put together a collection of my own stories from the street. But, I didn’t just stop at telling what happened. I wrote about the feelings – the emotions – that accompanied those experiences. I wrote about lessons that I learned.

You can watch “COPS” or any of the other “reality” police shows on TV. But, what you are watching is only what the police agencies that agree to be on those shows will allow to be shown. The administrators of those agencies have a say in what gets cut out.

So, you don’t get to hear a cop who swears too much. You won’t hear a cop discussing how bad he really wants to kick a suspect’s ass (whether he does or doesn’t actually do it). You won’t see a cop explaining about seeing something that was wrong, but not saying anything for fear of losing his career. You won’t hear the cop who did something wrong, and explain, “I shouldn’t have done it that way – but that ‘s the way it happened.”

My book breaks through that barrier. I don’t paint myself as a perfect cop. I tell some ugly truths. But , that’s what life is – a mix of good and bad. And, cops are individuals. Eventually, they all do something out of pure emotion.

In this time of uncertainty in our nation, we have to be willing to stand up, and be honest. When the media wants to tell us , “A black man was killed, and a white cop killed him, therefore the cop is a racist, as all cops are racist,” we need to be brave enough to push back, and say, “No – it was one human who killed another human, and we need to find out what all the facts are.”

My hope is that, from reading my book, more Americans will be willing to learn about the individual cops in their own communities, and support them.