(ThyBlackMan.com) It has been a few weeks since the incident involving a former McKinney police officer and African American teenagers at a community pool violently unfolded. The events of that day made national headlines, sparked days of marches and rallies, and subsequently, led the officer involved to submit his resignation.
The city’s police chief, Greg Conley, stated “Our policies, our training, our practice, do not support his actions. He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows, was out of control during the incident.”
We commend the McKinney police department’s acceptance of accountability for its employee’s wrongs. Hopefully, their actions to reprimand and stand for the moral rights of its citizens will ignite other police departments around this country to enforce these same practices.
Although, this police incident with our young people settled with no shots fired, and the charges were eventually dropped against the one young man who was arrested, it could have ended, as we all know too well, much differently. Yet, there is a lesson to be learned from this incident that will include our community accepting accountability for our wrong, and our community standing for moral rights by instilling discipline into our youth.
Many of us recall our parents speaking words familiar to these, 
“Don’t leave out of this house embarrassing us” or “what you do is a reflection on us.” The point is we understood the necessity of respecting authority, whether it was our teacher, our neighbor, our church member, our coach, or a police officer. Moreover, we understood if we were disrespectful, we could expect to be disciplined.
However, if we truly delve into the meaning of our parents instilling disciplines of respecting authority, respecting our home and respecting ourselves, we will conclude that our parents were teaching us how to survive and counter some of the evils they knew we would have to face. They protected us with powerful knowledge to survive.
As we reflect on the McKinney pool incident, it’s evident we must, as parents and as a community, stand up and begin protect our youth by instilling these same disciplines. Not only was the officer out of control, but as we witnessed in the same video, some of our youth were also out of control by refusing to obey authority. In light of this, it’s imperative we also take accountability as parents and as a community to improve relations with our police officers.
This brings us to the shameful incident of rapper mogul P Diddy’s arrest this week, and with it, a valuable life lesson we need to heed. Brothers and sisters, it is impossible to teach anything you don’t practice. We need to take pause with some of our actions as parents and recognize our children are watching and are mirroring what they witness.
How can we expect, or even ask, our youth to remain level headed and focus on countering their emotions with the power of knowledge, when we have role models, which in many cases are parents themselves, disrespecting authority?
Granted there are several accounts of what transpired in the UCLA coaching facility between P Diddy and Coach Sal Alosi. However, the common fact reported which incited the incident, is P Diddy was asked to leave the facility, but he refused to do so. He exercised no respect for authority.
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