Teacher of the Year says shootings ‘create more distrust’

The 2016 Washington Teacher of the Year says the fatal shooting of five Dallas police officers makes everyone less safe.

Nate Bowling told Seattle’s Morning News that police are going to be more on edge after people opened fire on police during a peaceful protest over the fatal shootings of two black men earlier this week.

“I’m at a loss,” Bowling said. “The events of [Thursday] night are really, really horrible and tragic. Honestly, they make everybody less safe. When a police officer uses his weapon it comes out of a place of fear, and police officers are rightfully more fearful today than they were yesterday.”

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Bowling, a teacher at Tacoma’s Lincoln High School, says he mourns the loss of the police officers just as much as the two black men killed by police earlier this week. He says he stands against police brutality, but he doesn’t stand against police. The attacks in Dallas were counterproductive, he says.

“This is going to make officers more on edge and create more distrust between the two communities,” he added. “What the suspects have done is counterproductive to the movement of justice.”

Bowling is no stranger to police interaction. On his blog, he points out that while he was growing up, he was “often stopped and harassed by law enforcement while riding bikes with my friends. It got to the point where I started to carry the receipt for the bike my parents gave me, because police stopped me and accused me of stealing it so often.”

Now in his 30s, Bowling still gets pulled over multiple times per year. However, he still supports the work of police and has an older brother who is an officer in Seattle.

The people killed this week — the black men shot by police and the officers shot in Dallas — were most likely parents, Bowling says. The most helpful thing people can do is express mourning and sympathy for all the people killed, he says.

Though he believes politicizing gun violence is wrong, it is important to point out that the United States is the only place in the industrialized world with this amount of gun violence.

“We need more trust,” he said. “Trust is not sown through riot gear. Trust is sown through relationships.”

Related: Should armed citizens be worried about confrontations with police?

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