Thirty-four. Thirty-four is the number of police officers killed in the US in the line of duty this year alone. Thirty-four mothers and fathers will never again get to go home to their children and never get to kiss their spouses goodnight. Thirty-four families lives are changed forever.

When you think of police violence, you usually think of the police inflicting said violence, right? Lately that has not been the case. Most police stops could be non-violent if the person being apprehended would cooperate. However, most people have a negative connotation of police officers and become disobedient when stopped; in the cases of these thirty-four police officers, the citizens become violent.

The latest of these acts of violence against police officers is that of Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder, who died at the hands of 25-year-old Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks. The brave trooper was conducting a traffic stop when Johnson-Shanks drove off. After a brief chase, the driver came back around and shot Ponder several times. He later died from his injuries. The suspect fled on foot, but was later killed by police when he refused to surrender his weapon.

As a law-abiding high school student, I don’t have many encounters with police officers. I’ve never been pulled over. My parents taught me to trust police officers and to call them if I ever needed anything. It is disappointing to see others who were not taught the same as I was. In the case of Trooper Ponder, a simple lesson in respect would have saved his life.

On a brighter note, a police officer in Houston was recently pouring gas when a teenager by the name of Mckinley Zoellner offered to stand guard while she was there to keep her safe, because of the high number of police killings in the past few weeks.

The men and women who risk their lives to protect us every day are being targeted. What are we going to do to stop it?