Jai Hanson sat in his Bloomington squad car and focused on the police radio. A police precinct was burning. Rioters were looting. Looking north from his quiet suburb, he saw black clouds pluming from the city where he'd grown up.
Hanson felt his profession was under assault. He worried about police officer friends in Minneapolis, tasked with restoring peace in the days after George Floyd died under the knee of one of their own. Hanson was disgusted by the video of officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck, and he was disgusted at the destruction.
One moment that night felt most surreal. Between chaotic reports on the police radio, Hanson heard the emotion-tinged voice of a supervisor. "We took an oath to serve," the supervisor said. "Just remember there are more people who support you than who don't."
The next day, Hanson and some police friends laid flowers at Floyd's memorial. He wrote an emotional post on Facebook about officers dedicated to fighting injustice. "To the people that spent a few days protesting and judging me for not being there: Spare me your lecture," he wrote.
Later, he drove to his parents' house, and in their front window he saw a big sign. "SAY THEIR NAMES," it read, listing people killed by police. Anti-police sentiment was everywhere. Now it felt like it was in his childhood home.
And Jai Hanson was furious.
The fault line that cracked open last summer between Jai Hanson and his father, retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Sam Hanson, is not a unique story in this divisive era. Disagreements lead to fractures — in politics, certainly, but in more intimate spaces as well: between neighbors, among friends, inside families. In the face of discord, people shut one another out. They unfriend. Mute. Ignore. Cancel.
This father and son had a disagreement. A big one. But they also had love and respect and an ethic of service — and a lifelong bond between a child from an orphanage in India and a big family in Minnesota. So amid their fracture, they decided to find common ground.