Maj. Kelvin Dingle — operation commander at the Morehouse School of Medicine Department of Public Safety in Atlanta — made a video that has quickly gone viral.
“I wake up every morning and kiss my family goodbye, knowing that there’s a possibility I won’t come home,” Dingle says as he sits behind the wheel of his car. “I am tired of every time I wake up in the morning there’s someone else polarizing the fact that maybe law enforcement is just not a good thing! All of us are not bad! I am not as they are! Most of us are not! There are bad people in every career! I’m so goddamn tired! Tired! Tired!”
He ends the clip in a near whisper: “I’m so tired. I give everything. I give everything! I’m tired.”
The TikTok video has been viewed 1.6 million times as of Wednesday morning and seems to be striking a chord. Newsweek reported that one user wrote, “This absolutely breaks my heart. I am SO grateful for you and appreciate all you have sacrificed. I feel so blessed to have men like you.”
‘It wasn’t always that way’
Dingle told “Fox & Friends” Tuesday that when he created the video, he was simply riding home and thinking about how badly police officers have been treated recently. “And that day, I just, honestly, had enough. My heart was broken because of the things that I saw in just traveling home to my family, and it wasn’t always that way.”
He noted that often when other motorists see him in uniform on the road, they’re “frowning at me. People are purposely doing things to get my attention. They’re flipping me off.”
“This is something new,” he added to the program. “It’s a new attitude.”
Dingle confessed that “it’s really heartbreaking to me. When I got in law enforcement 20 years ago, it was not that way. In the last two years or so, law enforcement has really, really been just put out there as something negative. And we’re not. We actually took an oath to protect and serve.”
While he understands the anger over isolated instances where police officers “make bad decisions,” Dingle told “Fox & Friends” that “the majority of us that put this badge on every day, the majority of us want to protect and serve. … We’re generally good-hearted people that want to make a difference.”
Dingle added on the program that there was a time when other drivers waved hello and smiled at him on the road — and some even saluted him, which he said meant a lot due to his background as a Marine.
What can we do?
Dingle added to “Fox & Friends” that it’s possible a renewed positive attitude toward law enforcement in America can return — but not without communication and listening.
“The truth of the matter is, we have two sides, and two sides need to be heard,” he told the program. “But people need to listen — not to respond — but listen to understand. That’s the difference … if you can do that, I promise you there’s a solution out there. We just have to communicate … to find it.”
*story by The Blaze