Apparently, Bellingham police are unhappy with criticism stemming from the ongoing wave of cops killing black people. 

One Bellingham officer, Michael de Ruiter, penned an op-ed for The Bellingham Herald last month that expressed his displeasure. He said he spoke for himself, not the department, but added that his colleagues shared his thoughts.

After 24 years in a job he took in order to make a difference, Officer de Ruiter wrote, "I sometimes wonder if I would make the choice again. It seems easier not to care when we’re understaffed, overworked, vilified by many media sources, and targeted."

(The piece appeared in the newspaper on July 24 but was newer than that to me. I first saw it last week, when the police posted it on the Nextdoor social media site for my neighborhood. Police use Nextdoor to expand their presence in neighborhoods.)

De Ruiter's op-ed appeared in the Herald less than three weeks after five Dallas police officers were slain by a man many observers connected with the Black Lives Matter movement, so it's easy to see why de Ruiter said he has felt "targeted" lately.

It's important to emphasize that the cop killer, Micah Johnson, did not share the Black Lives Matter movement's values. The picture emerging of Johnson is not of an activist turned violent but an Iraq War veteran who suffered symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder but didn't get the diagnosis or the help he needed.

“Black Lives Matter has never, ever called for the murder of police officers,” Alicia Garza told MSNBC the day after the Dallas police slayings. “We are not anti-police. We are anti our people being murdered in the streets. What happened to Alton Sterling (Baton Rouge, July 5, 2016), what happened to Philando [Castile] (Minnesota, July 6, 2016), what happens to so many black people in our communities is absolutely unacceptable, and I think that’s something that we can all agree on.”

It was disappointing to glean from de Ruiter's piece that police feel victimized in this epidemic of black people dying at their hands. The victim tag doesn't sit well on the police, who always have the upper hand in interactions with the public. There is ample evidence that police can and do abuse that advantage, often with fatal results. De Ruiter would have painted a more sympathetic picture if he would have admitted the Bellingham Police Department and other departments around the U.S. need to look at themselves with a cold, rational eye and fix the systemic problems that cause the pointless deaths of so many black people.

“What we have said over and over again is that it is time in this country for policing to be accountable, transparent and responsible," Garza told MSNBC. "That’s not rhetoric. That is what communities in the United States want to see from the people who protect and serve them. And so quite frankly, we can, at the same time as we grieve the loss of life of several officers who were killed last night, we can also push to demand that there be accountable, responsive, transparent policing that has oversight from communities and that is accountable to the communities they are supposed to protect and serve.”