Samantha Horsfield

New York is said to be one of the best places in the World. My entire life I believed that too. I am a proud Yankee and Giants fan who spends 60 percent of their time in New York City. I have a strong connection with the state, and I will consider myself a New Yorker for the rest of my life. I was always so proud to tell people that my amazing parents were NYPD when someone would ask about their profession. I always got compliments on how awesome and bad ass my parents must be. The last couple years of my life, that changed drastically.

I am now asked by my parents to not mention their profession to people when they ask or try and stay away from the topic because of the amount of hate and backlash my family has received for being Police Officers. The world view on cops has changed from being heroes to villains. Yes, the social justice system is flawed and there is fixing that needs to be done. But I have always considered my parents to be the strongest most awesome people in my life.

In my senior and junior year of high school the kids in my school who knew nothing about my family and I and suddenly hated everything about us. It irked me more than I ever thought it could. I constantly saw things on social media about hating all cops and it takes everything out of me to keep calm in situations where I am so hated. Even though I consider this piece of my life to be a hassle and inconvenient to not be proud of what my parents do I take it as a lesson to earn about true composure. Now that it has been affecting my life for years at this point it has completely changed who I am. I always hear every point of view and using that to form my own opinions, but it is sad that others don’t have that skill.

I ignored the hate in every way and have an amazing support group of friends who always supported me and knew my family was good people. I will always consider this one of the most important factors in my life and remember what it has taught me about treating others and respect, something that is forgotten.