During a past career, I often heard the question “Who is policing the police?” With several recent newsworthy incidents involving Spokane law enforcement, this question acquired a sort of rhetorical pop-culture status.

Authority figures’ involvement in controversial situations initially attracts media scrutiny, unavoidably results in public outrage and ultimately causes a demand for increased accountability. This cascade of events is logical, predictable and, yes, reasonable.

We all understand that for every officer having a problem, 100 other officers are out doing a sometimes thankless job with integrity, diligence and little newsworthy drama. Yet the fact that human weakness and failure are found in a few of those who are placed in positions of authority is somehow gratifying. Each of us is both sinner and saint, and now, we find, that includes cops. Over time, the casual attitude develops that cops are no different from the rest of us.

Why is it, when a shooting occurs, everybody runs away from the scene yet police run toward the gunfire? What type of courage is necessary to enter your home at 3 a.m. and search for the armed burglar inside? Who would go out every night to keep one more family alive by confronting another drunken driver before he causes a fatality? When is it ever acceptable to pick up the pieces of a dead teenager from a crash site or, worse yet, have to wake the parents up to tell them that their child is dead? How many police will be stabbed, shot, wounded or disabled through the course of a career?

Those cops who were “no different from the rest of us” at the beginning of a career, are different from us by the end of their career. Every police officer understands the challenges of the job and daily makes a choice to continue to accept the risk. Choosing to engage with a suspect or intervene in a situation is the nature of the job. Even if outnumbered, outsized or out-equipped, engaging in a situation is still a choice.

This past month has been a game changer.

Tim Brenton, Greg Richards, Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold and Mark Renninger are five officers who weren’t just killed in the line of duty, they were intentionally murdered.

These officers, as all officers do, aspired to the moral high ground. They saw themselves as the good guys who caught the bad guys. They operated under the expired belief that they were the protectors whom society had appointed hunters of criminals.

These five officers didn’t understand that they no longer had the choice whether or not to insert themselves into a potentially fatal situation. Rather than hunting criminals, these officers became the hunted because of what they represent. They were not prepared to operate within a military mindset, as society had yet to force police to assume this type of defensive posture.

The rules of engagement have changed. High-risk situations have always required tactically defensive measures, but now officers are being advised to maintain tactical advantage while completing the always present paperwork or even when doing something as quiet as eating lunch. So much for lowering that ambient stress level all officers habitually live with.

These five officers died because they represented you, me, our families, the rule of law, social conventions of behavior, respect for property, the rights of individuals, the ability to keep what one has earned and the existence of consequences for physical harm to another.

Public safety has always protected the structure of society. With the recent multiple assassinations of police officers, the old question of “who is policing the police” now becomes, “Who is protecting our protectors?”