Right to Remain Silent

I don’t think Officer Schoolcraft is a trouble-maker. He was standing up for what was right; he wanted people to realize and understand what the department was doing wrong, how they were breaking the law. He is a truth teller in that way. People were being punished for things that they weren’t doing. The police officers were forced to bring people in and then find something that they were doing wrong. They were arresting people for nothing. That is wrong and that should be stopped. Officer Schoolcraft was the only one who really wanted to stand up for what was right, he saw the reality of it all. It’s not about making money and arresting people; they were affecting people’s lives. I would have been nervous to step outside of my house in fear of getting a ticket for nothing.
Officer Schoolcraft was brave for doing this. He didn’t know exactly what the consequences would be for recording what was being said. He thought that his superiors would be the ones in trouble; someone would step in and stop it from going further. Instead he was the one punished. This does not make him stupid; this kind of act makes him brave. He was doing his job as an officer. He was trying to help the people, to protect them. He may have never thought that he would have to protect them from police officers, but he was willing to still do it. The police force he was working for only concentrated on making money and Officer Schoolcraft knew that is not what being a police offer was about. He ended up going above what a normal police officer would do, even if it was not seen that way because he was the one being punished.
To challenge the status quo means to challenge the norm or what people expect. He did this by challenging his boss and his coworkers. If I had been in the same situation I don’t know if I would have had the guts to do what he did. He was brave. Knowing that I might lose my job over it, I might have just stuck through it for my family and my career. I may have tried to transfer to a different police force but I don’t think I would have had the guts to stick up to them. I don’t know if Officer Schoolcraft could have handled it in a different way. He thought he was doing it a way that would get people’s attention, but instead it backfired. I don’t know how else he could have done it.