As More Protest The National Anthem, It’s Time To Offer A Solution

I was trying to research a story about a kid from Midland-Odessa who took a knew during the playing of the national anthem.  What came up was more and more stories of athletes and others joining in the protest.

The problem with this protest, as I've said from the beginning, is there is no end game. No resolution. It's just a call for things to get better or point out things that are wrong with no real call to action. I've even called for the protests to stop completely, then another person was shot (sigh).

The answer is simple. We need state and/or federal training programs and requirements put into place.  According to The Chron, the average police training program is 19 weeks. Here in Lubbock, where we haven't really had any problems, the training program is 24 weeks (I guess that extra month helps). That's just the training to put a rookie out there. There should be continuous education and training. As we're finding out, some cops apparently get a little frazzled or lose their focus and make tragic mistakes. My friends who are nurses constantly get re-trained with the latest techniques and practices and so should police. In fact, I'm betting the police do receive some additional training, but obviously some standards need to be put in place.

Now, we need some legislators strong enough to say that for the protection of the citizens AND for the protection of the police, minimum standards and regular testing need to be put in place. I think this will alleviate the situation a bit and I hope every police officer who got into the profession to make a difference would agree.  If we get this done, I'll bet we can get everybody back on their feet for the national anthem.

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