Let’s “Defang” Not “Defund” the Police

The Daily Escape:

Great Falls, VA – photo by Zev Steinhardt Photography. These falls on the Potomac River are about 15 miles west of DC.

A few distressing stories about police and their relationship to our society came up in the past few days. First, the NYT reported on a claim that anti-police employees at a NYC Shake Shack restaurant had “intentionally poisoned” three officers who ordered milkshakes.

The story was initially broken by the Detectives’ Endowment Association in New York, who claimed on Twitter that the officers had been targets of an attack:

“Tonight, three of our fellow officers were intentionally poisoned by one or more workers at the Shake Shack…”

The NY Police Benevolent Association (PBA) chimed in, insisting that the attack was part of a larger, nefarious anti-police crusade:

“When NYC police officers cannot even take a meal without coming under attack, it is clear that [the] environment in which we work has deteriorated to a critical level. We cannot afford to let our guard down for even a moment.”

Numerous media outlets then reported that NYC officers had been poisoned on purpose.

But, the story was misleading. NYPD found that no crime had been committed. The problem may have been that the milkshake machine wasn’t properly cleaned. Eric Boehlert:

“The false story played right into a right-wing fantasy portrayal of police critics and the Black Lives Matter mindset — the idea that activists are plotting ways to poison and kill members of law enforcement….the mainstream media is too quick to buy into the false portrait and to embrace bogus stories that support that characterization.”

So much paranoia. Who knew police are such snowflakes?

Second, Atlanta police reacted to the murder charge against Garrett Rolfe, the policeman who was fired after he shot Rayshard Brooks twice in the back, killing him. Hours later, CNN reported that Atlanta police stopped responding to calls in three of the department’s six zones.

The WaPo reported that Vince Champion, the southeast regional director of the International Brother of Police Officers said:

“This is not an organized thing, it’s not a blue flu, it’s not a strike, it’s nothing like that…What it actually is, is officers protesting that they’ve had enough and they don’t want to deal with it any longer.”

The “blue flu” is a de facto police strike in which a large group of officers simultaneously call in sick. Essential state employees, like police and first responders, are legally forbidden from actually walking out on the job in many jurisdictions.

These police are protesting about no longer being automatically above the law in Atlanta. This is a form of extortion by some police who fail to perform their duty; it is another form of abuse that is being shown by elements of the police in our nation. Trump gave them air support on Fox News:

“I hope he [the former officer] gets a fair shake because police have not been treated fairly in our country…”

Once again, the myth that police are the real victims persists. The road to reform will be long and torturous. We will not succeed in reforming the police by calling it “defunding”, or “reimagining” them. We have to start by taking away their military style weapons and by holding them accountable for their actions.

In other words, we have to defang the police.

Law enforcement has simply been allowed by towns and cities to rot. The problem has lasted because people of color are the police’s primary targets. White people aren’t harassed by the police anywhere near as much as people of color. So if something doesn’t affect you, you tend to ignore the problem, or do nothing to eliminate it.

Cops and their supporters keep going on and on about the supposed “good apples”. Yet those supposed good cops seemingly keep protecting the “bad apples”. How is it possible for them to be “good cops” when they keep protecting the bad guys.

We have to start by DEFANGING the police, but it won’t be easy.

Let’s remember that the last person to successfully break up the police was Sting.

Monday Wake Up Call – June 15, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Bright Angel Trail, in the middle foreground, Grand Canyon NP – photo by glowrocks

The chickens are coming home to roost. Michael Flor was originally the longest-hospitalized COVID-19 patient. Somehow, he survived. He came close enough to death that a night-shift nurse held a phone to his ear while his wife and kids said their final goodbyes.

Today, he’s recovering at home in West Seattle, WA. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he just got the bill. From the Seattle Times:

“The total tab for his bout with the coronavirus:…$1,122,501.04, to be exact. All in one bill that’s more like a book because it runs to 181 pages.”

Defund the Police? Really?

The Daily Escape:

Looking Glass Rock, from Blue Ridge Parkway, NC – 2020 photo by 2paymentsof19_95

On Sunday afternoon, a veto-proof majority of Minneapolis City Council members announced their commitment to disbanding the city’s police department (MPD), which has endured harsh criticism in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd.

This step is considered part of the movement that is wrongly called “Defund the Police”. What Minneapolis is doing is reorganizing, re-imagining and redirecting their police. Calling this movement “defunding” is a misnomer that some in BLM, and others on the left have advocated, while the right has jumped on it to discredit Biden along with all Democrats.

Groups advocating defunding have put forward a variety of ideas. Some simply oppose police budget increases, others advocate mass personnel reductions, and some are fighting for actual defunding as a step toward abolishing police forces. Some initiatives are linked to the fight to close prisons. All are pushing for a reinvestment of any dollars saved into community services. Only the first two are mainstream ideas.

A reasonable question is what would the defunding advocates want on their streets instead of police?

Polling this month from Data for Progress indicates that 68% of voters answered that they would support: “Creating a new agency of first-responders, like emergency medical services or firefighters, to deal with issues related to addiction or mental illness that need to be remedied but do not need police.”

According to a study from the Treatment Advocacy Center, a person with an untreated mental health issue is 16 times more likely to be killed by police than other members of the community. Even though many US police departments’ duties include responding to non-violent, non-emergency calls, departments keep expanding their military-style arsenal.

The question by Data for Progress had broad support, including 62% of Republicans, and higher percentages of Democrats, whites and blacks. Versions of this concept are already in place in Eugene, Oregon; Austin, Texas; and Denver, Colorado.

It is also reasonable to ask, “Can’t we just fix what’s wrong”? The answer is yes, but efforts to do this have been underway for decades. If police and city officials in most cities had been serious about reform and policy change, we wouldn’t be hearing dumb ideas like “Defund the Police”, and people would not be this angry.

Newsweek reports that Camden, NJ had success in 2013 when it disbanded its 141-year-old police force. In its place, the surrounding county formed a new police department. This move had the result of busting the local police union. But the Camden County Police Department rehired most of the laid-off cops, along with 100 new officers, at much lower salaries and with fewer benefits than they had received from the city. From Bloomberg:

“The focus was on rebuilding trust between the city’s residents and officers. The remaking of Camden’s police department appears to have led to crime rates falling in the city. Camden recorded 67 homicides in 2012, while last year, there were 25.”

For Camden’s Black Lives Matter protest on May 30, officers left the riot gear at home, and brought an ice cream truck. The police department’s chief, Joseph Wysocki, who is white, brandished a “Standing in Solidarity” poster alongside residents holding “Black Lives Matter” signs.

And yes, the Camden police department is again unionized.

Disbanding police departments isn’t going to happen everywhere, but “reorganizing” local police departments is a necessity in most places, especially when the municipality’s police union management is not interested in reform.

The argument shouldn’t be to defund them, but to take away their military toys, and hold them to higher performance standards. With the right to exercise lethal force should come closer scrutiny for their behavior.

“Defund the Police” should mean: See what is happening in your town with clear eyes. See the original sin of placing property rights over human rights. See the original sin of racism in America and how it impacts the community.

Policing in America is deeply broken. Few departments are controlled effectively by their elected officials. America needs stronger mayors, town councils and district attorneys who can be for “law and order”, and also for protecting the rights of the people who are confronted by day-to-day policing. We will only have stronger public servants by voting them in.

It’s going to be a long struggle to rebuild our police departments into something that creates a peaceful community while valuing Constitutional rights.

That’s a struggle worth taking on.

Our Thin-Skinned Blue Line

When we see each other as enemies, we are the Middle East, and we can no longer work together for the common good. Consider what happened last week at a Minnesota WNBA basketball game:

Four off-duty Minneapolis police officers working the Minnesota Lynx game at Target Center on Saturday night walked off the job after the players held a news conference denouncing racial profiling, then wore Black Lives Matter pregame warm-up jerseys.

Lt. Bob Kroll, president of the Minneapolis Police Federation, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, praised the officers walk out:

I commend them for it… If [the WNBA players] are going to keep their stance, all officers may refuse to work there.

What is lost in the police union grandstanding was that the Lynx jerseys in question read “Change starts with us, justice and accountability” and on the back had Philando Castile’s and Alton Sterling’s names along with “Black Lives Matter” and the Dallas Police Department shield. How is that seen as anti-cop? This highlights how thin-skinned police forces around the US are whenever criticism emerges about bad policing.

But what can be done?

The most recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics quadrennial “Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2008” shows that there are 17,985 state and local law enforcement agencies with at least one full-time officer or the part-time equivalent in the US. All of them are managed by local, county or state governments, and the majority of police are members of a local union. Wrongo is not anti-union, but the social identity of being in law enforcement cultivates a code of unduly protecting members, hiding evidence, and blindly supporting the position of other officers simply because of their collective identity. The “Blue Wall of Silence” around cops is the excuse to cover up bad behavior in the face of investigation.

Creating an equivalency between #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter is wrong. Consider this thought from Jonathan Russell, Professor and Chaplain at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

A black life is a life under the threat of social death, a social life constituted by precarity and the potential of imminent death…Blue lives have no analogous history, no precarious location from which their collective lives need recovery…Blue lives are not…living under conditions similar to black life. It is the history of black lives not mattering that gives meaning to the hashtag. Blue lives have no such analogous history.

Russell goes on to say:

Blue lives have always mattered, present and past. Their experience of social space is (for the most part) one of…deferential treatment… It is profoundly misrepresentative and disrespectful to develop an analogous hashtag, as if blue lives have an analogous experience of social life in America as black lives have. This hashtag is wrong in so much as it connotes that the lives of law enforcement officers have failed to matter sufficiently in the broader public consciousness.

For the umbrage-takers out there, relax. Wrongo isn’t saying that cops don’t deserve respect, they do. He thinks that cops have a tough job, and that we must mourn any cop killed on the job. But, we can’t be blind to the power of this confrontation between #Blue and #Black to tear us apart.

Here is ginandtacos: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I keep holding out hope that we will learn something from this, that police can say to themselves “All those Dallas officers wanted was to do their job and go home alive at the end of the day” and have some moment of inspired transference wherein they realize that every black person they pull over in a traffic stop wants the same...

Monday Wake Up Call – October 26, 2015

From the NYT:

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said on Friday that the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers in the wake of highly publicized episodes of police brutality may have led to an increase in violent crime in some cities as officers have become less aggressive.

Comey is lending his support to a meme called the “Ferguson Effect”. As the “Ferguson Effect” theory goes, police have slowed down enforcement due to public scrutiny, which has led to more crime, including homicides. In the absence of tough policing, chaos reigns.

Ever since Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, MO last year, people across the country have taken to the streets to protest police brutality and the mistreatment of black men and women. At the same time, police officers and pundits began arguing that demonstrators are jeopardizing community safety, pointing to rising violent crime rates.

This theory for the uptick in violence in some cities is partly based on a cherry-picking of violent crime data, since some increases actually occurred BEFORE the Ferguson demonstrations, and in general, the data are unclear. We know that far more people are being killed in America’s cities this year than in many years. And to be clear, the increases are largely among people of color, and it’s not cops that are doing the killing.

Most of America’s 50 largest cities have seen an increase in homicides and shootings this year, and many of them have seen a huge increase. These are cities with little in common except being in America—places like Chicago, Tampa, Minneapolis, Sacramento, Orlando, Cleveland, and Dallas.

So something big is happening, but what? Comey thinks he knows, and in Chicago, he floated the same idea as Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently floated, that cops are not doing their job because people have started taking videos of police interactions with their smart phones.

Here is snippet of what Comey said:

I spoke to officers privately in one big city precinct who described being surrounded by young people with mobile phone cameras held high, taunting them the moment they get out of their cars. They told me, ‘we feel like we’re under siege and we don’t feel much like getting out of our cars.’…I’ve been told about a senior police leader who urged his force to remember that their political leadership has no tolerance for a viral video.

If Comey’s impression both of the Ferguson Effect, and the role of cameras is correct, cops have stopped doing the job we pay them to do because they’re under amateur surveillance.

If Comey’s right, what he’s describing is the chilling effect of surveillance, the way in which people change their behavior because they know they will be seen on camera. That the Director of the FBI is making this claim is more striking, since the surveillance cops are undergoing is targeted, and by the public. It is not the total government surveillance (such as the use of small planes and stingrays to surveil the Baltimore and Ferguson protests), which both the FBI and NSA use in inner cities.

Comey can’t have it both ways. Since he said in Chicago that surveillance has a “chilling effect”, that it makes cops feel under siege, maybe he should consider the implications of what he is saying about surveillance by his own agency and the NSA of all Americans.

If the targeted surveillance of cops is a problem, isn’t the far less targeted surveillance conducted on Americans a much larger problem?

And why can’t Americans hold two diametrically opposed ideas in their minds at the same time? We love the police, and want them safe. But, the real problems in US law enforcement have to be addressed.

And why does Comey imply that we need to accept a trade-off between a brutal police state and weakened policing? Why can’t we have civilized police who focus on getting the real bad guys, instead of choking a man to death for selling loose cigarettes?

So, wake up Mr. Comey! Show us data that support your feelings, or get in line with the data we have. To help you wake up, here is Humble Pie doing “30 days in the Hole”, from their 1972 album, “Smokin’”. The song was featured in “Grand Theft Auto V”:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Nothing to Hide?

Here are two interrelated ideas about privacy and personal freedom. We know that most Americans value privacy and oppose mass surveillance. Of the large minority who think spying is okay, they justify it by saying it is because they have “nothing to hide”. 49% % said keeping the details of the government’s programs secret is more important than justifying their legality. Edward Snowden spoke last week about “nothing to hide” in a Q&A on Reddit: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I think the central issue is to point out that regardless of the results, the ends (preventing a crime) do not justify the means (violating the rights of the millions whose private records are unconstitutionally seized and analyzed).
Some might say “I don’t care if they violate my privacy; I’ve got nothing to hide.” Help them understand that they are misunderstanding the fundamental nature of human rights. Nobody needs to justify why they “need” a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can’t give away the rights of others because they’re not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority.
But even if they could, help them think for a moment about what they’re saying. Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
A free press benefits more than just those who read the paper.

On the other hand, YouGov’s latest poll shows that many Americans support making it a criminal offense to make public statements which would stir up hatred against particular groups of people.

• Americans narrowly support (41%) criminalizing hate speech
• Most Democrats (51%) support criminalizing hate speech
• Independents (41% to 35%) and Republicans (47% to 37%) tend to oppose making it illegal to stir up hatred against particular groups

Support for banning hate speech is particularly strong among racial minorities. 62% of black Americans, and 50% of Hispanics support criminalizing comments which would stir up hatred. White Americans oppose a ban on hate speech 43% to 36%.

In both of these cases, loss of privacy, and the suppression of hate speech, the practical question is, what does more harm?

With mass surveillance, we give up a constitutional right to prevent the very tiny chance of being killed by a terrorist. Contrast that with the certain chance of being spied upon, and the certainty of losing your 4th Amendment rights in the name of protecting you from terrorists.

In the case of hate speech, think about it: It’s always easier to defend someone’s right to say something with which you agree. But in America, we defend free speech, even if you strongly object, because that is a right contained in the 1st Amendment.

Liberals are divided by these two ideas. They are against the Patriot Act’s attack on unreasonable search and seizure, as contained in the 4th Amendment. On the other hand they have a real problem with unfettered hate speech, which according to the YouGov survey, makes them want to limit free speech, putting them on the wrong side of the 1st Amendment.

There is no moral calculus that addresses either of these issues with certainty.

How Cleveland shoots. Links:

49 Shots And The Cop Goes Free. On May 23, Michael Brelo, one of the Cleveland police officers involved in the 2012 shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, was acquitted of manslaughter by an Ohio judge, who found that while Officer Brelo did fire lethal shots at the two people, testimony did not prove that his shots caused either death. 49 shots by Brelo, through the car’s windshield. While standing on the hood of the car. And reloading. You have to wonder what it takes to get a conviction. Black robes, white justice. NOTE: all cops involved fired 137 shots. However, only one cop, who fired 49 times, was charged.

It’s been 6 months since Tamir Rice died, and the cop who killed him still hasn’t been questioned. Tamir was killed because he was waving a toy gun. There is explicit surveillance video of the shooting, and the officer who shot him has a troubling record. So why is the investigation taking so long? And adult white men can carry weapons openly, in large groups, in public restaurants and stores, and have no fear of being shot.

Continuing our exploration of springtime at the House of Wrong, here is an Indigo Bunting. They are occasionally at our bird feeders:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Let’s Talk About Baltimore

Regarding Baltimore, the NYT says:

Hundreds of rifle-toting National Guard members began deploying here on Tuesday morning, lining one of the city’s main thoroughfares and taking up posts around a police station in western Baltimore that had been the scene of earlier protests.

From the start of the demonstration through Tuesday morning, 15 police officers were injured, 2 people were shot, both in the leg. And approximately 200 people were arrested. There is a night curfew. There are the predictable images of large groups of young black males, buildings on fire, up-armored cops and National Guard, and the shaking of jowls by media and politicians.

These stories are always depressingly similar: Police shoot a black guy. They obfuscate for several days. A protest turns violent, and some of those professing to be “victims” create victims of their own, mostly in their own neighborhoods. The police are happy to give them room to destroy property in black neighborhoods, but then draw the line when the crowd moves out of that prescribed area.

Something was bound to give in Baltimore. Check out this report from the Baltimore Sun, called “Undue Force“:

Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations [by the Baltimore police department].

According to state law, Baltimore cops cannot be sued for more than $200,000 for each “offense”. That statutory cap can be exceeded when there are multiple claims in a lawsuit, and if there is malice the cap may not apply. The largest settlement has been $500k. In total, the city has paid $5.7 million since January 2011, and that doesn’t count the $5.8 million spent by the city on legal fees to defend these claims against their police. Just a cost of doing business in Baltimore.

So, once the riot started the mayor and the governor called for calm. “Why can’t these people react non-violently?” Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic provides an answer:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con.

Here is a series of tweets by Billmon: (edited by the Wrongologist)

…but the cops did not destroy the black industrial working class, or finance the slumlords, or redline poor neighborhoods. Police brutality isn’t the only reason that #BlackLivesMatter.
… And not being unlawfully killed is a pretty minimal standard for “mattering.”
…And so the policy “debate” becomes limited to: “Black men: Should we let the cops kill them or not?” Which is fucking sick. Or: “Should America have an incarceration rate that’s 10 times higher than the rest of developed world? Or just 5 times higher.”

We are witnessing a continuing trend in US policing: Violence against inanimate property equals violence against “the people”. It brings a disproportionate response, whether it is the Occupy movement, Ferguson, or Baltimore.

“Urban riots” always conjure up bad images and bad responses, like the riots in 1964 in Harlem and Philadelphia, and in Newark in 1967, all of which were ignited by allegations of police brutality. In Newark, Governor Richard J. Hughes (R) called up the National Guard. When they arrived, reports were coming in of black snipers roaming the city, and terrorists with dynamite and arms heading towards Newark. The result was 26 deaths and 725 wounded in Newark, but no snipers or terrorists were found.

Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R), channeling his inner Spiro Agnew, vowed to quell rioting by sending in 1,000 National Guard troops. From the Baltimore Sun:

Hogan said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a political ally of the new Republican governor, would sent 150 troopers plus additional resources to Baltimore.

Christie will never let a good crisis go to waste.

The ultimate outcome of Baltimore will predictably be calls for more law and ordering by the right, and more calls for inconsequential band aids by the left. Perhaps the policy debate ought to be broader than: “what will it take for police to stop killing black guys?”, although that would be a good start.

Police need to remember that since they have the authority and the power, they also have the responsibility to use both properly. It’s not the responsibility of the person they pull over, the person they want to question, or the person who is standing nearby, it’s THEIR responsibility.

Let’s face it, Americans live in a soft police state. Whites may not sense its severity or doom like urban black males, since their threat is to privacy. But the freedoms of most Americans have never been more threatened and violated by governments at the federal, state and local levels.

Here is Randy Newman singing his composition, “Baltimore“:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 7, 2014

Still thinking about the string of police cases, their very similar nature and outcomes. It isn’t a secret that America has a broad, diverse population and a terrible past trying to deal with our diversity.

Our past isn’t going away. Our diverse population isn’t going away either. It’s who we are. We occasionally celebrate it, boasting that we are a melting pot. But, we might be more accurately described as a smorgasbord, not a one pot dinner. That means you can avoid the pickled herring if you don’t like it.

But it’s always rude to ridicule people who like pickled herring. And many of us have moved way beyond rude to outright hostile, and the whole buffet table could be pulled down right in front of our eyes.

The food fight is already in progress, except it has real casualties. We are many kinds of American, and this is our home. Can we find a way to keep it?

It is all about your perspective: