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In the wake of the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, there are calls from the angry. woke mob to defund the police. As Amanda wrote this morning, Republicans have tapped South Carolina Senator Tim Scott to offer reform ideas for law enforcement. Racism may be a problem, but certainly not the only problem. What are the biggest issues in police work today?
Although I have assiduously tried to avoid law enforcement interactions in my life, given my lead foot, that’s not possible. In these exchanges, I have met professional police, kind police, and power-mad, mental midgets. So far, knock wood and plead with the Sweet Baby Jesus, I have not been arrested or anymore than verbally abused. That’s probably the experience most Americans have. It was then with shock that I read a Market Watch article on the problems with police and the justice system today. Once again, we need to follow the money.
From the article:
Our current crisis stems in part from the 1981 Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which authorized and incentivized the U.S. armed forces to train police in military tactics. The 1990 National Defense Authorization Act authorized the military to donate excess military equipment — armored vehicles, grenade launchers, M16s, helicopters and weaponized vehicles — to local law enforcement. Police departments received federal and other subsidies for accepting and deploying military equipment. At least $5.1 billion in military equipment has been transferred since 1997.
As a result, more than 80% of small U.S. towns (with 20,000 to 25,000 residents) now have a SWAT team. In 1981, the U.S. deployed SWAT teams about 3000 times total in response to hostage and active shooter scenarios, or an average of 8 times a day; last year, they deployed SWAT raids about 100 times a day, mostly for drug warrants.
This made me think of the murder of Breonna Taylor. Executing a no-knock warrant, the officers used a battering ram to break down her apartment door. Miss Taylor’s boyfriend, a licensed gun owner, fired at the cops. That’s sure what I would do. Breonna Taylor was shot at least eight times. A woman sleeping in her own bed, in her own home, was murdered by militarized police. If that doesn’t scare you, think about Roger Stone and his FBI arrest.
Next, the “equitable sharing program” run through the Department of Justice means that law enforcement can confiscate “ill-gotten gains” for their own use. Again, from the article:
We authorize and pay police to steal from us for their own benefit. Police in Tehana, Texas, stole $3 million from innocent minority drivers between 2006 and 2008, until an ACLU lawsuit ended the practice.
Politicians happily enable this behavior. We voters reward politicians for being tough on crime, even when “tough on crime” in turn creates more crime. Although violent and non-violent crime have dropped greatly since 1994, surveys show voters continued to believe crime is increasing.
Think about anyone who is considered an undesirable or politically unpopular in your town. Yes, the police could confiscate money and possessions and that person would have to go through the court system to hope to get their possessions back.
I had heard about for-profit prisons, but, not knowing anything about the criminal justice system, I thought, “So what?”.
Again, from the Market Watch article:
Prisons are usually located in rural towns, where they serve as a source of employment for blighted white communities. These towns and their voters lobby states to build more prisons. The prison system is a workfare program employing poor, unskilled white people to guard poor black people.
The U.S. Census counts incarcerated persons as residents of town where they are imprisoned, not the town they lived in before incarceration. In Connecticut, this is responsible for creating nine (majority white) state representative districts that would not meet minimum population requirements but for their prison populations.
Today we have about 700 prisoners for every 100,000 people, a higher incarceration rate than even Russia. That is almost five times the rate of 1971, when it was about 150 per 100,000.
Thank you “War on Drugs”. The first private, for profit, prison was located in my home state of Tennessee. As of last year, Tennessee is rethinking the private prison, according to this article here. Plus, having one poor, marginalized group as overlords for another poor, marginalized group is a recipe for resentments and bigotry.
Areas not mentioned in the Market Watch article are candidate selection, psychological evaluation and training. The murderer of George Floyd may have known him from their club security work. The New York Post reports:
George Floyd and Derek Chauvin reportedly “bumped heads” while working security together at a nightclub years before their fatal encounter.
A one-time co-worker at El Nuevo Rodeo on Lake Street in south Minneapolis revealed the duo’s purported shaky history in an interview with CBS Evening News.
The tension, David Pinney told the outlet, “has a lot to do with Derek being extremely aggressive within the club with some of the patrons, which was an issue.”
Candidate selection and psychological evaluations may have saved George Floyd’s life, because his murderer clearly had issues. Ongoing training in deescalation techniques, avoiding different types of biases, and specific community issues is key. The police shouldn’t just be riding around in squad cars; they must be part of the community. Which leads me to Mike O’Meara, the New York State Police Benevolent Association President gave this off the cuff speech in defense of the police:
Most police officers are passionate professionals. They love their profession and see it as a calling. They want a safe community for their family and friends. Police come in every race, color and creed. Think about Corporal Ronal Signh, who was murdered just days after Christmas, 2018, by an illegal immigrant. Without the thin blue line, we will have chaos. We owe it to law enforcement to give them the best tools available to do their difficult jobs. We should not defund the police.
Featured Image: Oregon Department of Transportation/Flickr.com/Cropped/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
GWB says: I have not been arrested or anymore than verbally abused.
So, you have been verbally abused? DON’T TAKE IT!
I have had a couple of interactions with officers of the law that were arrogant and abusive, and I have plainly told them they were wrong and that I wasn’t going to take it. I have yet to be arrested (or cited) for it.
Our current crisis stems in part from the 1981 Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which authorized and incentivized the U.S. armed forces to train police in military tactics.
NO. This is NOT our problem. The problem is a citizenry that pushes everything off on the gov’t to take care of them, protect them, and ultimately provide for them. When you cede all authority and power to the gov’t, you’ve ceased to be free. In a free republic, the cops having military training wouldn’t be a problem. In a non-free country, it doesn’t really matter if the cops have military training or not. The attitude of the cops is allowed by the citizens.
M16s
I would love to see some actual data on police forces having actual M-16s that have not been “de-mil’ed”. Because every single person who handled that weapon – outside of range days – would be required to carry a Class III license. I don’t see that happening, given the costs involved.
last year, they deployed SWAT raids about 100 times a day, mostly for drug warrants
This isn’t because they have SWAT or military gear. This is because they’ve been made ultimate authorities.
Thought exercise: Why should the cops be able to do something NOT within the purview of any other citizen? If *I* came through your door in the middle of the night without announcing myself and without knocking, you’d be right to shoot me. Why should cops be any different?
murdered by militarized police
No. She was murdered by cops who don’t actually answer to the citizens, anymore. I haven’t seen anywhere that a military asset was what killed her – it was cops with regular old cop weapons that killed her.
the “equitable sharing program”
No, that’s just one part of it. The whole abomination is called “civil asset forfeiture.” It’s a violation of – at a minimum – the 5th Amendment. Anyone practicing it should be immediately hauled before a court for violation of rights under color of authority.
The prison system is a workfare program employing poor, unskilled white people to guard poor black people.
That’s quite simply, a crock of horse apples.
And, building more prisons? It’s not like they’re going out looking to arrest people because there’s still empty cells in the new hoosegow. This is an idiotic argument.
BTW, you put prisons in rural areas because the urban and suburban areas practice NIMBY and don’t want them. (I’m not saying whether they are right or wrong in their NIMBYism.) There’s also the fact that it’s harder to successfully escape for any length of time when your prison is in the middle of nowhere. Put it in, say, Chicago, and they blend immediately into the surroundings and are effectively GONE.
BTW, one of the most egregious rulings ever is the idea that the 13th AMendment prevents convicted prisoners from working if they don’t want to do so. I could type a long rant on how I would handle convicted felons, but this comment is too long, already.
The police shouldn’t just be riding around in squad cars; they must be part of the community.
^^THIS^^
But, not necessarily because they should be schmoozing the locals. They need to be connected at the level of a fellow citizen, not just that everybody knows Officer Krupke and Officer Krupke knows everyone. (E.g., they need to actually be locals in some sense of that word.)
Without the thin blue line, we will have chaos.
No. We have chaos with or without them. What causes the chaos is the electorate not actually participating in their own governance and passing it off to someone else – even the “thin blue line” – combined with other pathologies*. The problem is that it IS a thin blue line, instead of a deep, thick wall of citizens, who simply pay some people (those passionate professionals) to stand on the front edge of that deep, stout wall.
(* We wouldn’t need police – or even a gov’t – if humans could be made as angelic as some progressives believe we can.)
Ted says: I would prefer to see “alleged” or “charged with” murder until a jury has rendered a verdict. Repeating the premature conclusion, murder, IMO, empowers those who would damage our system of justice. Also, IMO, *justice is not what I or a mob wants, it is the end result of a fair charge before a fair jury and a fair judge.
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