{"id":19590,"date":"2026-06-04T16:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T16:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=19590"},"modified":"2026-06-04T16:57:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T16:57:55","slug":"what-set-it-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/04\/what-set-it-off\/","title":{"rendered":"What Set It Off"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Donald Perryman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Truth Contributor<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being. \u2013 <\/em>Jackie Robinson<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I received an unexpected call from Chicago last week. That should tell you something.<\/p>\n

A source with law enforcement and criminal justice experience asked me what is going on with the Toledo Police Department (TPD). From Chicago \u2014 a city with its own well-documented drama.<\/p>\n

Here is what happened in Toledo that went viral. Two TPD officers were caught on video arguing profanely with a group of young people they had stopped on the street. One officer told the kids it was not his fault they lived in a neighborhood full of poverty \u2014 a diss delivered in uniform, to children. Chief Troendle called the language difficult to listen to and opened an internal investigation. That was the right first step, but not enough.<\/p>\n

The same week, a 28-year-old woman was arrested for felonious assault after adults brawled over seats at a kindergarten graduation at Queen of Apostles. Then another fight at the 8th grade ceremony at Pickett Academy \u2014 an 18-year-old assaulted an 11-year-old and sparked a wider family melee before fleeing.<\/p>\n

Kindergarten. Eighth grade. Graduation day.<\/p>\n

What in the world? What is the problem?<\/p>\n

Perhaps the better question is, what is the problem behind the problem or what set it off?<\/p>\n

What nobody wants to say out loud is this: When a parent throws hands at her kindergartner’s ceremony, it was never about the seat. They likely snapped under the accumulated weight of years of being unseen, dismissed and disrespected and the frustration came out sideways, on the wrong person, at the wrong time, in front of the children.<\/p>\n

In addition, we are living in the first era of human history where “a device in every pocket is intentionally engineered to keep the nervous system in a state of low-grade agitation.” Every scroll produces micro-doses of threat, comparison, indignation and, ultimately, conflict and division.<\/p>\n

That means that we are continuously operating at a threat level our ancestors only reached during genuine emergencies and there is no recovery period. It is what researchers call chronic dysregulation \u2014 causing loss of the ability to access patience, empathy or impulse control.<\/p>\n

Billie Holiday broke it down like this: \u201cYou’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon;\u201d<\/em> The parent at the graduation \u2013 like many of us- did not have enough of either. Neither did the officer cursing at children.<\/p>\n

The Dignity Deficit<\/p>\n

Here is the other thing that rarely gets named: much of the conflict we are witnessing is the behavior of those who feel their dignity has been chronically assaulted or disrespected and have no constructive channel to reclaim it.<\/p>\n

Dignity is not a luxury. It is a fundamental human need. When people feel consistently encountered or processed as problems rather than persons, the pressure builds and blows the lid off \u2014 because the triggering event is never really the point.<\/p>\n

The young people stopped by TPD officers were not just reacting to that street corner. They had carried years of being talked to as if they did not matter (at best) or as if they were a piece of excrement. That dehumanizing attitude has been piled high on the Black psyche for several generations. The officer in front of the children was receiving the accumulated discharge of all of it.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the police officer is also, in many cases, a person whose nervous system is dysregulated \u2014 trained to see certain communities as threats, unable to feel how his words land because that formation was never provided. Both are in the same trap.<\/p>\n

But one of them chose<\/em> this. A professional \u2014 who signed up, suited up, strapped on the weapon, and wore the badge. That choice has a price. You don’t get to come apart on a street corner in front of children and call it a bad day.<\/p>\n

I Am a Man!<\/p>\n

It was about dignity for which Martin Luther King, Jr. was standing up for when he was martyred in Memphis in 1968. Those sanitation workers he marched with did not carry those “I Am a Man” protest signs because they needed the city of Memphis to grant them something. They carried them because every human being possesses an inalienable dignity that no system, no epithet, no act of violence can ultimately strip away \u2014 and that is what this moment requires.<\/p>\n

What We Owe Each Other<\/p>\n

Chief Troendle’s statement was appropriate, but it is not enough. What we need to know is simple: what happened to those officers after the camera stopped rolling.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Because somebody in every room must be the one who doesn’t \u201close it.\u201d In a city under this kind of pressure, that someone has to be the one who took an oath \u2014 because when they don’t, everyone else gets permission to fall apart too.<\/p>\n

So, we must stop asking who set it off and begin asking what we\u2019ve been packing underneath this city for years \u2014 and who we keep expecting to just live on top of it.<\/p>\n

Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, PhD, at <\/em>drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D. The Truth Contributor \u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being. \u2013 Jackie Robinson   I received an unexpected call from Chicago last week. That should tell you something. A source with law enforcement and criminal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,252],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[350],"class_list":["post-19590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-opinion","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19591,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19590\/revisions\/19591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19590"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=19590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}