Who are the good cops and where are they?
“The blue wall of silence, also blue code and blue shield, are terms used in the United States to denote the alleged informal code of silence among police officers not to report on a colleague’s errors, misconducts, or crimes, including police brutality.” Wikipedia
“Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”
From “I Have A Dream”, MLK
In the wake of each of the numerous instances of police misconduct which resulted in the deaths of unarmed black people, we see and hear the arguments and assertions that the cops who have been ‘caught on tape’ engaging in questionable behavior, which is violative of the reasonable expectations regarding their legal and moral obligation to ‘protect and serve’, as not being representative of the law enforcement profession.
The essence of the assertions and such argumentation is that what we see in the videos is not representative of the “vast majority” of the police officers who “go to work every day and risk their lives for the public good”.
The videos of cops choking and shooting unarmed black people to death are not representative of the ‘good cops’ who outnumber the ‘bad cops’ by an overwhelming margin.
“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there “is” such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”
—–Martin Luther King Jr.
It doesn’t seem feasible or possible that the “good cops” can go through entire careers and not witness, or be privy to, at least some of the on duty misconduct and misbehavior of colleagues and associates that is in clear violation of police policies, procedures, practices, and protocols.
Silence in the face of injustice is complicity in the perpetuation and perpetration of injustice…
“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.”
So here’s the question:
In the struggle for reforms in policing and social justice, who are the “good cops” and where are they?
1,092 total views, 1 views today
09/04/2020 @ 8:52 am
To begin with, most won’t make the news.”Cops don’t shoot unarmed Black man” isn’t exactly a headline. Have you looked for that evidence? Did you, for example, read about the case during the protests following George Floyd’s murder about the Sheriff who joined the protest in a small town he was policing?
Actually, you have seen it, courtesy of the NYPD. You saw it in the Amy Cooper case in Central Park. She called the cops to get a Black male birdwatcher who complained about her unleashed dog arrested and she got herself arrested instead. The cops didn’t buy it. You know how you would have expected that to go.
09/04/2020 @ 9:14 am
We’ve seen and heard precious little from the so called ‘good cops’ across the board…
Your post condemns the Kenosha police department because of the actions of the few who turned a blind eye and deaf ear re the Rittenhouse kid…
In my view the outcry and direct response from the ‘good cops’ would be a significant deterrent to the so called ‘bad apples’…
My post is about. “The Blue Wall of Silence” that “good cops” encourage and allow “bad cops” to hide behind.
09/04/2020 @ 9:23 am
This notion about the “blue wall of silence” is poorly related in this post…if at all.
Look, Ron, you pose this as if it is a legitimate, sincere question. I doubt it, but I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. If your question is about cops informing on other cops who have done something wrong, what is it that you expect? How exactly do you expect this to be observed? Have you given this idea much thought? Flesh this out a bit. I can tell you right now, it makes little to no sense. Prove me wrong. What exactly do you mean. Step up. Man up. Don’t evade with some bullshit dodge.
09/04/2020 @ 9:33 am
@Bitey;
For some reason BindleSnitch isn’t giving me the paragraph separations I employ to make for easier reading…
Also, the first paragraph re the blue wall of silence didn’t transfer from my draft so I had to go back and insert it…
No dodge:
Why don’t the so called ‘good cops’ step up, stand up, speak up and speak out?
That’s what I mean…
09/04/2020 @ 9:46 am
Ron, you’re making a general accusation. What is there to say that they don’t? What case(s) are you referring to? Can you not imagine that the reasons may vary all the way to being unaware? You’re assuming that they have the knowledge to “step up” and testify with. Give examples. Give them to such an extent that it shows that it is representative of the majority, and not just a stereotype.
09/04/2020 @ 9:42 am
Sylvester Oliver allegedly raped a student at Rust college. He was allowed to resign after his first offense, and then rehired later and offended again. Why didn’t you prevent this from happening? What is with this (what color shall this one be) Brown(?) wall of silence regarding this incident.
https://www.courthousenews.com/student-calls-professor-a-rapist-predator/
In the wake of each of the numerous instances of [educator] misconduct which resulted in the [sexual assault] of unarmed black people, we see and hear the arguments and assertions that the [educators] who have been ‘caught on tape’ engaging in questionable behavior, which is violative of the reasonable expectations regarding their legal and moral obligation to ‘[educate] and serve’, as not being representative of the teaching profession…
09/04/2020 @ 9:59 am
Let me tell you about stepping up, Ron. And I don’t say this to compliment myself. I only say this as a testimony about what others may do BECAUSE I did.
Once as a young cop, less than a year on, I was working with a guy who had 18 years in service. He was my trainer. I use his name often as one of the worst people I ever knew because, for me, that is stepping up. I dare him to come find me. Anyway, one night (just one of his shitty nights) he tried to talk a rape victim out of giving a report because they took 6 to 7 hours to complete, and we had 15 minutes left on our shift.
Now, I could not order him to stay and take the report. I also could not tell our boss that he refused to take a report. I would have zero credibility among veteran officers. So, what I did was tell him, “go ahead and go back to the station. I’ll stay and take the report. I’ll figure out how to get back to the station when I am done.”
Now, taking the report involved getting a translator since she spoke only Korean…and I did not, and it involved getting her to a hospital. Also, walking back to the station in uniform, at night, was a suicide mission. I knew he could not leave me there. So, he stayed and took allowed me to take the report. Again, I don’t say that as a compliment to myself. I say that because, if I did it, someone else has. Also, that never made the news. Stuff like that tends not to. If it had, it would be entirely different, like, cops gets shot walking back to the station. And finally, your assumption about how social and professional politics work is profoundly naive or uninformed. Chances are acts of bravery and principle happen behind the scenes, not on the cable news. For every incident you see of someone choking someone out, there are thousands where someone stops someone from choking someone out. And it is the fact that the choking is stopped that it does not make the news. Your methodology is bad, Ron.
09/04/2020 @ 10:01 am
Nobody has suggested that YOU say or do anything re the misbehavior or misconduct of police in departments to which you have absolutely no connection…
The matter should and must be about the “good cops” coming forward on a department by department basis…
For example:
Koshersalaami’s post condemns the Kenosha police department because of the actions of the few who turned a blind eye and deaf ear re the Rittenhouse kid…
Where are the “good cops” in this clear manifestation of racism in the culture of policing in Kenosha, Wisconsin?
09/04/2020 @ 10:27 am
To the degree that Kosher’s post did condemn the many based upon the acts of a few, Kosher’s post is flawed. Kosher lacks the perspective regarding the professional specifically that I do. Therefore, Kosher’s example, if that were an accurate way to read it, would be trumped…for lack of a better word, by mine.
Frankly, regarding the “waving off” of Rittenhouse, we don’t know if that decision was made by the person in charge in that vehicle, the watch commander on that particular night, a department policy, or a state policy regarding open carry. None of those listed are extreme or rare possibilities. They may even all be in effect. The fact of the matter is, we do not know. To assume specifically about the principles held by individual officers just can’t be done. What we do know is that to wave off Rittenhouse was wrong. It was absurd. That’s about all we know. We dont even know for certain that it is based on race, although I do suspect that race played a significant role. The important point though is suspicion and knowledge are two different things.
Your question does not ask where do we suspect the good cops. Your question asks about knowledge. Based upon what we have and can observe, you are likely surrounded by good cops. If they were bad to the extent that your post implies…there would be no one left alive.
I am telling you actual personal experience. Why are you dodging with what Kosher has written? That’s not even logical, Ron.
Also, goddamnit, Ron… “…The blue wall of silence, also blue code and blue shield, are terms used in the United States to denote the alleged informal code of silence among police officers…“
You referenced in your piece the UNITED STATES. You did not specify Kenosha. You do not mean for it to be limited to Kenosha. Let’s drop the bullshit for once. I apologize for the terse tone, but you fucking make me irate. I assume you’re being dishonest when it is probably just a lack of discernment. It appears that you’re slithering to and fro. You probably wouldn’t do that. You actually meant who are the good KENOSHA cops…and where are they. Right? Typing “United States” was just a slip. Come to think of it, I make that mistake sometimes too. May I have a scoop of UNITED STATES on a waffle cone. Oops, sorry. I meant strawberry.
09/05/2020 @ 7:12 am
This response has an analog in the subject of religion. You made certain accusations about “the religious”, but when confronted by KS, you said…’I don’t mean you…’
I think these arguments are actually intended to irritate, and when confronted, you use this as a dodge. When the subject is turned on you, you say it does not apply. It’s rather transparent, Ron.
09/04/2020 @ 10:38 am
Incidentally, I asked you about the rape at Rust college. Why didn’t you and your profession stop that from happening? That wasn’t a rhetorical exercise. I want to know why all teachers are rapists? This guy was rehired and caught. Here are the god teachers? You changed the subject on me. Answer it.
09/04/2020 @ 11:33 am
@Bitey;
Another false equivalency…
However, I can assure you that, in my limited experiences, there has been no professorial wall or code of silence…
There is, instead, a CYA culture that seems to be alive and well on many, if not most, college/university campuses…
I too can report on one of many cases of personal “stepping up”.
This case involved going against that CYA culture in order to save the athletic scholarship and academic career of a black student who was wrongfully accused of participating in an off campus gang fight which involved guns…
The administration wanted to make an example of him…
They were ready to expel him…
I took it upon myself to invoke the requirement that he be given a hearing…
No other faculty member or administrator would provide him any assistance…
When it was over he was vindicated and absolved….
The original incident made local headlines…
Other than the campus newspaper, the result of his hearing got no mention at all….
09/04/2020 @ 1:04 pm
Ron, respectfully, you should forget the term “false equivalency.” You keep using it incorrectly. The idea is to compare the relationship of at least 3 things. Teachers with respect to their professional conduct and police with respect to theirs is a valid comparison. But, with respect to my question, what was false about it? Oliver was caught and “allowed to resign.” Then he was rehired. The institution allowing him to resign was “complicit”, to use your term, in covering for Oliver. Teachers get fired or caught doing this nationwide, and then get jobs elsewhere. SO…rather than insisting that you’re holier than thou, and trying to slip from the valid comparison, why can’t you grasp that you are as responsible for what another professional does outside of your ability to observe as any other professional is outside of theirs. They are analogous.
Finally, when I used the driving analogy in whatever we had been discussing, control of the vehicle or whatever, the result of the failure need not be equivalent to the failure in the compared case in order to examine how the equivalency applies. 4/2 is the same as 4,000,000/2,000,000. You get caught up in the size of the separate elements in your attempts to dodge. That is not the relationship to focus on. And IF it is false…show it, don’t just say it over your shoulder as you run away. That’s bullshit.
09/04/2020 @ 1:21 pm
Oh, by the way, there is no literal “blue wall of silence”. It is a metaphor and a myth. Do people cover for one another…from time to time…when they have something in common? Certainly. Teachers do it too. Plumbers do it. Surgeons do it. Athletes do it. Priests do it. It is not about the profession necessarily, Ron. It is about the human. If it can be found, or even stopped in one does not mean it does not exist elsewhere. The way you are using the term implies a greater significance than actually exists.
I almost missed this. In your example of “going against CYA culture”, how did suggesting that a student get a hearing go against CYA culture? Who stood to lose anything if the student lost his scholarship? Also, you said that you, “took it upon yourself to invoke the requirement…”. That sounds like a whole lot of chest puffing, but what does it actually mean? How did you “invoke”? Under what circumstances? What did that mean to you? Secondly, you said that it is a requirement. That sounds like invoking a requirement that water run downhill. If the kid wasn’t in a gang fight with a gun (also a bit messy), couldn’t he just get a lawyer? Yes. To whom did you “invoke”? ‘You know kid…you’re entitled to a hearing.’ Talk about false equivalencies. Your example needs to involve a professional colleague of yours who was in the wrong, and you placed him or her in jeopardy by demonstrating it for the principle of what is right. Simply telling the kid, while decent, is not the same as going against some code of silence to cover injustice. If that is involved in your story, you sure didn’t mention it.
09/04/2020 @ 1:26 pm
Ah, still another part I forgot to mention. How about using your position to help a White person. All of your stories involve a Black victim, and justice being achieved by protecting him/her. While generally, culturally, Black people, and the other people listed as protected are more vulnerable with respect to civil rights, justice is broader than just civil rights. Threats to justice can occur where white men are victimized. Are your examples all directed toward Black people? Is that justice?
09/04/2020 @ 2:32 pm
@Bitey;
The administration was about to summarily expel the student without the ‘ ‘required’ hearing…
The hearng was ‘required’ if the student requested a hearing…
I represented the young man at his request….
Re providing assistance or going to bat for white folks:
The instances are too numerous to mention…
I’ve done work pro bono for white tenants, wrongfully discharged employees, white folks who were improperly denied SSI benefits, and the many white kids who needed help with financial aid and navigation of the law school admissions process…and on and on…
09/04/2020 @ 3:09 pm
If the hearing was indeed required rather than just permissible, wouldn’t he have a cause of action had they dismissed him? Are such hearings actually required, or just allowed upon request? Isn’t it up to the kid to arrange for his defense? If I understand this correctly, this student was an adult. He was suspected of being involved in an incident that was against the rules of the university. He stood to be expelled. Given that our system is adversarial, how exactly is that an injustice? He was just required to do his part, which involved presenting his case and possibly getting representation. That is not the same as someone observing a crime and stepping in as a witness to the truth. I think you’re giving yourself more credit than you deserve and making accusations that exceed the responsibility of others. They’re not similar…if you think about it.
09/04/2020 @ 7:00 pm
@Bitey;
“That is not the same as someone observing a crime and stepping in as a witness to the truth.”
When did you observe a cop commiting a crime and step in as a witness to the truth?
Why don’t “good cops” do that routinely and as a matter of course?
09/05/2020 @ 6:07 am
“…When did you observe a cop commiting a crime and step in as a witness to the truth?
Why don’t “good cops” do that routinely and as a matter of course?…”
Ron, this is my point. I believe this happened ALL THE TIME…and it does not make the news. I can give you an example from personal experience.
One night, and I forget who my partner was, we received a call to pull over a particular car which was spotted at a particular location. It was on one of the main boulevards in Hollywood, and it was in motion. We were only seconds away, we located the car and pulled it over. We got the driver out of the car and put him up against a wall and I cuffed him up. Seconds after getting cuffs on the suspect, a team of undercover detectives parked behind us and rushed toward us. One of them grabbed the suspect, spun him around and drew back to hit him. Since he was my arrestee, he was my responsibility, like my baby. My serial number was on the cuffs, on him, his welfare was mine. Whatever he was accused of was not relevant. he was in my care. So, when this detective tried to strike the arrestee, I grabbed the detective and put him up against the wall. I explained to him that if he laid a hand on the arrestee, he’d have to go through me. That stopped the assault on the cuffed suspect.
The arrestee had been sought for some time, and on that day was being followed by undercover detectives. He had been murdering prostitutes. Be that as it may, he was in my personal care until I delivered him to a jailer. I was not going to be legally on the hook for some detective’s righteous indignation. I was responsible to protect him, and I did.
Now, the details may change, but that sort of drama plays out all the time in big cities. From time to time, some may handle parts differently, but I handled mine by the book. This is how we are trained, and presumably my conduct was in the fat part of the bell-curve regarding that conduct. Part of the danger in perception about the professional conduct of cops, or anyone, is to either underestimate their principles, or overestimate their malice. Cops, like other humans, vary in their capacities, but mainly do what is right…like other humans. The presence of a “badge and gun” does not change that. It only gives them certain powers within the law to protect the peace.
There are abuses from time to time, but the vast majority stay within the lines and accomplish the ordinary holding things together which is not newsworthy. Here is an analogy. Try to understand this. Millions of cars pass one another at high speeds on roads that are only divided by yellow lines. The vast majority of them stay on the proper sides, and they get where they are going without incident. There is nothing to prevent them from colliding except responsible operation. It works just like that.
This is where you typically say, “false equivalency”…and this is where you are wrong. You seem to think that since the analogy is about car collisions, or the absence of them, this dynamic can not be compared to police work. Again, the point of comparison is to moving on opposite sides of the yellow line with out incident. From past experience with you, I have noticed that you can’t comprehend that comparison. I am curious as to why, but it is a valid comparison. The size of the result is not the important and necessary element. The relationship between the opposed elements is the point of comparison.
09/04/2020 @ 9:04 pm
@Bitey;
Re false equivalency:
College professors don’t wear badges and carry guns…
If I disagree with a teacher or administrator, there’s little or no possibility that I could end up dead because of it…
09/05/2020 @ 7:14 am
“…Going back over the last 20 years, professors have been killed by students or former students at the Appalachian School of Law, California State University at Los Angeles, San Diego State University and the Universities of Arizona and Arkansas at Fayetteville. The victims of the 2007 mass killings at Virginia Tech — perpetrated by a student — included students and faculty members. A professor was among those killed last year in the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College…” https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/05/southern-california-professor-stabbed-death-student
“Little or no possibility”? Wrong. You’re not dealing with reality.
09/06/2020 @ 8:47 am
I wrote little or no possibility re disagreeing with professors or colleagues…
Deranged students or campus interlopers is another matter entirely…
I could argue that I am at a statistically greater risk of bodily harm when pulled over by a cop than I am when driving on the same road divided only by the yellow line…
My problem with some of your comparisons is that they make sense to you but they are often not contextual or even relevant…
Just because you say they are doesn’t make them so…
Re making a stink about racism…We can stop doing that when white folks stop holding their noses in denial….
There’s a difference between an unsubstantiated “vast majority” and a statistically or empirically provable assertion re that motion has a causal relationship to ‘most’ automobile accidents…
09/06/2020 @ 11:52 am
“I could argue that I am at a statistically greater risk of bodily harm when pulled over by a cop than I am when driving on the same road divided only by the yellow line…“
Indeed you could argue that. That is almost certainly so. The problem is, that is NOT the type of question that you posed. You title asks, “who are the good cops and where are they”? Your question is QUALITATIVE. Your question is about a MORAL aspect. CONVERSELY, the statement about PROBABILITIES regarding being pulled over by a cop, or crossing a yellow line are QUANTITATIVE analyses. They are not moral questions. They are mere probability issues. Let me break that down a bit, since you have some difficulty with the words. You asked “who” and “where”. Now, take those questions and remove the moral aspect…”good.” Apply it some something like…where is Phoenix, and who lives there? These is no moral grade to the answer. On the other hand, if you ask, who are the good people in Phoenix, and where are they, the question is quite different. Depending on the context, and the answer, you question implies that those not named are not good. YOUR question, which stacked a number of unrelated incidents in American policing, with the question inserted into that context, implies that NO cops are good, and the most recent event is further evidence of that assertion. You conflate a probability question with a moral essence question.
Now, using your most recent dodge, one can argue that STATISTICALLY, it is not possible for 700,000 officers nationally to be of the same moral character as you imply. That is, in fact, too large of a generalization to hold true coast to coast. It’s is an absurdity in any world of perception that is not exclusively bigoted. Humans do not conduct themselves with that sort of uniformity anywhere. If you believe that they do, there is an issue with your ability to reason. If you do not believe that they do, yet you assert such a thing conflating statistical appearance in the human population with psychological motivations, then there is an issue with your sincerity. And whether you are willing to concede or not the logical weakness of that assertion, you should take as advice that that ham-handed attack on racism, or whatever weakens ALL attacks by demonstrating an example of weak reasoning, or dubious intent. It is self defeating in the grand scheme, for no discernible benefit in this small, specific case.
09/04/2020 @ 2:06 pm
I was wrong about the specific event but I doubt I was wrong about the police supporting the other vigilantes armed with semiautomatic rifles. Rittenhouse was not alone. The announcement from a cop in the armored vehicle saying “we appreciate you guys, we really do” was probably not a one-off. There were a lot of guys on the streets with rifles. None of them were Black. All the White ones were allowed to walk. It’s just that one of them killed two people.
Ron, I’m not Bitey and he’s not me.
As to people at universities not covering for each other, I’d say that’s not the case at all. Let’s start with Joe Paterno. One of the things we do know about colleges and universities is that they don’t like bad publicity – it’s costly. They don’t want problems with applicants and they don’t want problems with donors. How hard do you think we’d have to look to find administrators trying to talk students out of pressing charges?
09/04/2020 @ 2:49 pm
@Koshersalaami;
I don’t disagree in the main…
However, Paterno’s status and the huge suns of money involved make the matter somewhat unusual…
My point here is that systemic or institutional racism ought to be addressed with a well structured systemic and institutional response…
The “good cops” organized and out spoken against the destructive and poisonous racist behavior of the “bad cops”…
Which may include an openly expressed willingness to blow the whistle or testify against manifestations of racism and racist misconduct…
Seems to me that there should be an answer somewhere.
However, parsing the semantics of my question isn’t going to produce one…
Understanding what and why my question is what it is isn’t rocket science….
College professors don’t wear badges and carry guns…
If I disagree with a teacher, there’s little or no possibility that I could end up dead because of it…
09/05/2020 @ 8:16 am
Systemic and institutional responses are tried all the time. There have been all sorts of attempts at racial sensitivity training.
As to cops doing the right thing all the time, I told you In my first comment that cops doing the right thing doesn’t make the news. It isn’t newsworthy
09/05/2020 @ 8:22 am
Paterno’s status made the matter visible. He covered for a colleague. I very much doubt money drove that decision.
09/05/2020 @ 9:24 am
Ron, do you have any idea how many police officers there are in the U.S.? A 2018 survey revealed that there are just under 700,000 police officers in the U.S. Police officer is defined by them as badge wearing, gun carrying, with the power to arrest. Now, that said, if your question is where are the good cops, and you have a notion for how large the number 700,000 is, and you also realize that they are spread across every state and territory, you have to be able to discern that your assumptions about goodness and badness are not in line with the size and scope of the question. Have you given any thought, or cared to investigate how many cops ever fire their weapon while on duty? There are estimates. Do you know how many interactions officers have with suspects in situations that may or may not become violent? Have you investigated how many dangerous suspects are arrested without incident? Have you done any sort of research to assess the size and scope of your question? I’ll guarantee that you have not. Seeing news accounts of arrests, justifiable shootings, and even murders does not give you an accurate picture. It is a sensationalized picture. Reason should tell you that the cases are rare. They are certainly not as rare as they should be, but they are not common enough to make the entire profession “bad”. That is not remotely rational.
09/05/2020 @ 11:19 am
In this context it’s worse than that, because this is precisely the logic of racism. We see Black crime on television or read about it in the paper, we see riots on TV, ergo…….
It’s also the logic of, for example, criticism of Rev. Sharpton. “He’s in Ferguson, MO, talking about police on Black violence. Why doesn’t he ever talk about Black on Black violence in Chicago?” The answer is, of course, that he does, but that the questioner never bothered to find that out. The sensational is the visible. The good is not sensational.
09/05/2020 @ 11:22 am
This is not to say there aren’t systemic problems with police departments, There are. If you want to get into it, look at what kinds of solutions have been tried and why the ones that haven’t worked haven’t worked, at least not universally enough. A lot of that has to do not with the police per se but with the unwillingness of prosecutors to hold police accountable.
09/05/2020 @ 3:05 pm
Right. And regarding the systemic problems with police departments, it is only to the extent that it is a reflection or core sample of society itself. You can’t go to a forest fire, put out a select number of specific trees, and manage to contain the fire. Police departments are not the generator of racism.
That said, are there problems with policing which need to be addressed? ABSOLUTELY. But, if your accusation is irrational, and then you apply an irrational, poorly targeted attempt at a solution, you’re doing nothing but turning over turds in a field, and increasing the stink. Saying “where are the good cops” is built upon a moronic implication that helps nothing. Saying that the shooting of Blake is definitely racism…within minutes of getting the news…is moronic. There are issues with the use of excessive force against Black people in America. It’s a serious issue. If you charge everything that way, some of it wont hold up. And when it doesn’t, it weakens the broader argument, and the very important purpose. The case doesn’t need to be made that racism exists. Hasty, unfounded accusations lead to Tawana Brawley type mistakes. Right or wrong, it is ultimately not helpful to categorize Floyd and Blake similarly.
09/06/2020 @ 8:58 am
@Koshersalaami;
“…the unwillingness of prosecutors to hold police accountable….”
An excellent observation that you’ve articulated many times…
Perhaps this is A, if not ‘THE” starting point for this discussion…
09/06/2020 @ 10:34 am
Of course. The problem is not police abuse, the problem is police abuse without consequences, and those consequences are often not police functions. If Officer Pantaleo after choking Eric Garner had been charged that day with manslaughter there would be no reason to talk about the case, unless he was acquitted when clearly guilty like happened with Zimmerman in Florida. Crimes are committed, punishment is expected, it was an individual issue. But when that happens with impunity we have a systemic problem. If cops know that if they do that they’ll be charged, that is completely different than thinking they won’t be.
09/06/2020 @ 11:50 am
@Koshersalaami;
“But when that happens with impunity we have a systemic problem. If cops know that if they do that they’ll be charged, that is completely different than thinking they won’t be.”
If this goes to the heart of the matter, why haven’t the “good cops” undertaken to organize a systemic and/or structural approach toward finding a remedy beginning with policing themselves?
Is it culturally impossible for police to simply say that there is zero tolerance for the kind of action that is little more than a police execution?
Or, are civilian police review boards the only or the ‘real’ answer?
09/06/2020 @ 1:48 pm
“…If this goes to the heart of the matter, why haven’t the “good cops” undertaken to organize a system and structural approach toward finding a remedy beginning with policing themselves?…”
Acknowledge this, and salvage some credibility.
Let me tell you how Internal Affairs works on the LAPD. Internal Affairs employs undercover officers to entrap regular officers in violations of law and policy. Violations of policy do not need to be violations of law. I’ll give you one commons example. There is a policy on the department called “on duty contact.” This policy forbids any officer from turning a professional contact into a personal contact when the first contact was professional. That means, when you encounter a woman (in my case), and you want to date her later, and the initial contact was on duty, you are forever forbidden from dating her, as long as you are still employed by the department. Internal Affairs used to send attractive detectives to flirt with, and get a date from officers, and then fire them. That is one example of what can happen. The violations, as I said, can be violations of law, or any other department policy. To my knowledge, no such thing exists anywhere else. You are judging professionals who must function at a higher level of professional and personal conduct than you have ever contemplated. That is an “organized systematic approach toward finding remedies which begin with the police themselves…”. The weird thing is…you are NOT EVEN AWARE it exists. This is not rare or obscure. This is an everyday thing. Even the prohibitions against entrapment do not apply in defense of an officer to be terminated because that is not criminal jeopardy.
09/06/2020 @ 11:34 am
@Bitey; When was the last time a police union ” stepped up and spoke out” in favor of the victim of a law enforcement miscreant?
When did a police department standup and call out the officers in blue who sully the reputations and standings of cops in their communities?
You give a commendable example of your taking responsibility personally for the prevention of a miscarriage of justice. But, what if you weren’t on hand?
What might the outcome have been if you weren’t the arresting officer?
Would you have been willing to testify and bear witness to the truth then?
09/06/2020 @ 12:18 pm
Ron, a police union is not a police officer. I don’t believe that you were a lawyer if you can’t discern the difference between the two. It is not the police union’s role to stand up and point out an offender. Police unions do not serve the public. Police unions serve their members as advocates. You have to be KIDDING ME to even pose that question.
Should Johnny Cochran have stood up and said, I think O.J. did it? Of course not. The defense does not represent the truth. The defense represents the defendant.
That said, the way such a question was handled on the LAPD was by the following. In all of our training, whether it was California Penal Code, or uses of force, or whatever, we went through some set amount of instruction, then upon passing the examination for that curriculum, we had to sign documents that acknowledged that course of instruction, and the instructor signed saying that the student was bound by the understanding taught, and that any transgression would involve prosecution and testimony by the instructor as to what the officer learned, how they tested in that certification, and the officer’s acknowledgement of the sophistication acquired within the course. Unions don’t owe YOU or SOCIETY anything, other than lawful defense of their member. That would be like the case you cited of the student that you helped, and someone asking you to defend the person he shot, and referring to him as a “miscreant”…etc. No one would ask you to do that. How can you POSSIBLY not get that?
09/06/2020 @ 2:28 pm
“…a police union is not a police officer….”
Of course not, but in many if not most jurisdictions the police union is the closest entity there is to a commonly recognized entity that represents the rank and file cops who do their work with honor, integrity, respect, and dignity….
The internal affairs investigations you speak of don’t seem to be of any concern to cops who get ‘caught on tape’ committing atrocities as Kosh. puts it “with impunity”…
Seems to me that cops who wish to
“bear witness to the truth” should be encouraged to come forward and do so and be protected in the process….
09/06/2020 @ 6:33 pm
“The internal affairs investigations you speak of don’t seem to be of any concern to cops who get ‘caught on tape’ committing atrocities as Kosh. puts it “with impunity”…”
Let’s see if I can help you with this. FIrst of all, an observation like this is full of holes like Swiss
09/06/2020 @ 6:53 pm
*GLITCH
“The internal affairs investigations you speak of don’t seem to be of any concern to cops who get ‘caught on tape’ committing atrocities as Kosh. puts it “with impunity”…”
I’ll try again.
This observation is like Swiss cheese…although it is more holes than cheese. The internal affairs “{I} speak of”…? Internal Affairs is an actual department having all of the characteristics contained within your previous question. It is not a theory. It is not a mythical creature. It is a department within my old department, and as I understand them, most if not all police departments. This is a matter of fact, not opinion. Your manner of expressing that implies some question. As such, the question would be your ability to perceive, and not reality itself. I think part of your problem is that you set an emotional buffer between hard facts, and your poor theories obligation to accept them. It is real, Ron. Absorb that.
Secondly, unions, like I said before, are advocates for workers. Unionism is the most recent structure of representation and political power among working professionals and laborers. Unionism came into being in the 19th or late 18th century. Unionism was preceded by the guilds, which predate them by several centuries. Guilds were organizations of craftsman associations, which was essentially a level above labor…and beneath the capitalists. Guilds represent industries, not individuals. Unions represent individuals at the lowest level of political power. Sometimes in the American system unionism can seem or be said to represent industries, but they actually represent groups of workers. The last 40 years or so of collapse of unionism has contributed to the collapse of the middle class. Too many ways to list here. But to ask a union to work against its member in the way that you describe…LIKE I SAID BEFORE…would be like you working against the student that you claimed to help when he was going in front of an expulsion board. Your role, or his representative’s, whoever that was, is not to testify against him. That is someone else’s job. The student’s representative’s job is to represent him. That means to defend him. Everyone is entitled to a defense in our system when it comes to things like you describe as “atrocities.” How you don’t understand that confounds me. The prosecutor’s office handles that part. That is controlled by the executive in government, and that is controlled by the voter. That is our system as it is set up. Different mechanisms are designed for different purposes. You should not, for example, use your car exhaust to heat your home. You’ll kill everyone…even though the car exhaust COULD heat your home. Similarly, a defendant’s representative COULD testify against him as a matter of course. That would destroy the criminal justice system and be EXTREMELY destructive of people with the least power facing the system. Accusations would be the same as convictions, and massive corruption would result.
09/06/2020 @ 11:51 pm
@Bitey;
“Humans do not conduct themselves with that sort of uniformity anywhere.”
If that were true there would be no uniform codes of professional ethics in force in any profession anywhere…
09/07/2020 @ 5:45 am
Ron, you’re looking at it exactly backwards. If they did conduct themselves with such uniformity, there would be no need for uniform codes of professional ethics. Codes are not conduct, Ron. Codes exist for the purpose of affecting uniformity within an acceptable range, where it does not naturally exist.
I get it now.
09/07/2020 @ 10:09 am
Ron,
That code of conduct argument is not one I’d try to support. Just say you blew it in the heat of the moment and move on. A code of conduct is one step milder than a set of laws and we know that the existence of laws doesn’t guarantee general adherence to those laws. If it did, there would be no police departments nor a legal profession, so the past occupations of both of you would be null and void.
09/06/2020 @ 5:38 pm
Ron, you’re expecting conduct of a union that you’d never expect of a prosecutor. Like attorneys, unions have advocacy jobs.
09/06/2020 @ 11:34 pm
@Koshersalaami;
I don’t think advocacy of, or silent complicity in, racism is a prosecutor’s job or the job of a union…
09/07/2020 @ 10:46 am
Ron, “silent complicity”, and “racism” would be what we call accusations. It doesn’t matter what a plaintiff accuses. It is not the job of the representative of the accused to concede the accusation, or to accuse. Furthermore, you cite your feeble accusation as if it is established fact. It isn’t. Your impression of a system on a broad scale does not translate to wrongdoing on an individual scale. In other words, you may hear, and believe, “all Cretans are liars.” That does not translate to any particular Cretan to being a liar without proof. You’re attempting to go from the theoretical to the real without evidence. You may think that all cops are “miscreants”. You may think “all religious people…”, whatever it is you seem to think, but without evidence and a logical argument, no single person is subject to that theoretical notion that exists only in your head.
09/07/2020 @ 1:41 pm
“The solution to racist attitudes and actions among police officers across the country is to replace the officers in every police department’s internal affairs division with local citizens.”
The Mercury News:
Letters To The Editor
June 11, 2020
“Police will not “police” their own. Allow the local citizens’ groups the same power and authority as internal affairs officers currently have. Not only will bad police officers be more likely to be terminated or arrested before committing a second illegal abuse act, but some police officers who may have become abusive may never do so knowing it will not be swept under the rug. They will change for the better.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/letter-why-police-not-whistle-blow-inform-or-rat-out-their-partners
Here’s a sample of some additional reading on the matter of cops self-policing re the issues of racism and racist behavior in law enforcement:
https://www.thedoe.com/narratives/racism-in-police-departments
https://www.courthousenews.com/five-states-investigate-racist-violent-posts-by-police/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201703/internal-affairs
From personal anecdotes to psychological analysis the narratives appear to be similar if not the same.
Self- policing, re matters of racism and racist behavior, through police department internal affairs is ineffective. For a variety of reasons it not only doesn’t work, it can’t….
09/07/2020 @ 1:47 pm
The unions and prosecutors are different. Unions’ job is to advocate for officers. The one way in which this gets dicey, and I don’t know if Bitey will be able to shed light on this, is that protecting an officer or two can translate into harming the rest of the officers in the Department. I don’t know if there’s a mechanism to balance this or if they automatically defend the individual officer.
Prosecutors don’t have that kind of ambiguity. Their job is to Prosecute like it is the job of Internal Affairs to investigate. It is not to convene a Grand Jury in order to talk it Out Of indicting. That is a misuse of the office by definition – if you don’t want to indict, don’t convene the Grand Jury. This principle was violated by both the prosecutor in Ferguson, MO (Michael Brown case) and the one in Staten Island, NY (Eric Garner case). As I’ve said for a while, prosecutors bear a heavy responsibility in this issue because if they were all seriously investigating and prosecuting, we wouldn’t have this kind of a national issue. The problem is that the law is not being equally applied but at two stages. Part of the role of the people in the second stage – prosecution – is to punish unequal application by the first stage – police. It’s analogous to Washington, where the most dangerous man is not Donald Trump but Mitch McConnell because he’s the guy who should be applying the checks and balances that are being ignored.
09/07/2020 @ 5:11 pm
You know what’s funny about the links you present here? A day ago, you didn’t know that Internal Affairs existed. You stated that there should be an organized…blah, blah. Then, you go and find some articles about affairs generally, and some that mention internal affairs specifically, but you are still applying concepts from 186,000 miles away while barely understanding them…if at all.
One NY Times article claims that complaints wont change conduct…or some shit. You’re introducing the concept of essentially personnel complaints to regulating the way that officers do the job. There is a great deal wrong with it.
Let me put it this way. The job is a complex job to do. Within it, there are complex activities which are rarely understood outside of the group of those who do it. Even the public who experience the incidents on an individual basis tend not to experience them to the same degree that cops do on an hourly basis. As such, knowledge about how these things happen tends to be quite rare. Now, often personnel complaints are “respectfully submitted”…to borrow one phrase taken from someone with more attitude than reason, and the ‘submissions’ tend to be nonsense. Departments get flooded with bullshit, and the sheer number of them gives them all less credence…even ones that should be heeded. THAT is the bad thing about making bullshit arguments about important issues. It weakens or obscures the good arguments.
Now, when I educated you about the existence of IA, I was referring to cops regulating cops pre-emptively. These are regulatory practices that all cops (on my department) must contend with BEFORE anything happens. Your article mentioned George Floyd and the concept of IA as not making a difference in that incident…with the aspect of personnel complaints. That is a very, very different issue. The article that you posted from the Times has about the same lack of sophistication on the issue that you have. Slightly more, but your use of it in response to my statement shows that you probably did not comprehend either one.
To wind back to your title, it asked, who are the good ones and where are they. The article is more about one who was already known to be bad, and why IA did not stop him. It is a different question.
Now, regarding Chauvin in particular, I was shocked by what I saw. I recall seeing his hands on his hips as he knelt on Floyd, and I questioned what he was doing. It looked like his hands were in his pockets, but I can’t be sure. I observed it before I heard it mentioned. It would be an odd thing to do, even for his own safety. I have never seen a close-up that shows it clearly. It may be that Chauvin had gloves on. Either way, much has been reported about it, but no one knows yet. Much has been said about what it means…but no one knows yet. Even I refer to it as a murder…but Chauvin has not had a trial yet. Now, I am certain that a trial will result in Chauvin’s guilt, but it is significant…even just for him…that that has not been determined yet. Further, what it can say about police broadly, even if it could be determined based upon Chauvin, has still not gone through a trial yet. Now, I have seen you mention an opinion of whether or not something would hold up in court. Well, this will go to court, barring a confession. And that has not happened. So, satisfy yourself with the notion that sometimes you can just decide for yourself. About something you are all knowing. Due process does not matter. You can even judge how Chauvin’s guilt applies to anyone in uniform. The degree to which you do that yourself is the degree to which you divorce yourself from a free society. Be careful what you assume your omniscience covers.
09/07/2020 @ 2:24 pm
@Koshersalaami;
“A code of conduct is one step milder than a set of laws and we know that the existence of laws doesn’t guarantee general adherence to those laws.”
Criminal law sets the societal parameters of conduct within which each citizen is expected to function….
In other words, criminal codes are codes of conduct without which civil society would be impossible…
09/07/2020 @ 3:31 pm
True but sideways to the argument. Laws exist because those standards are not already being adhered to. Laws don’t prove that we behave uniformly, they prove that we don’t.
09/07/2020 @ 11:39 am
“…In my view the outcry and direct response from the ‘good cops’ would be a significant deterrent to the so called ‘bad apples’…
My post is about. “The Blue Wall of Silence” that “good cops” encourage and allow “bad cops” to hide behind…”
This is a fascinating couple of sentences. Give them some thought. Imagine real people taking the actions that you have concepts of people doing. Flesh out an instance where this should happen. It appears that you want cops to be your Jesus…and you’re not even religious. Cops do not need to sacrifice themselves for you. Some situations may actually cause that to come to pass, but that is not a requirement. AND WHO would ask someone to be a martyr for them? HOW do YOU ask that of someone?
Imagine a cop. He’s married. He has a child, maybe two. His wife has a career. He has a hobby of restoring old lake runabout boats. He’s learning Russian because his grandparents immigrated from there. He works from time to time with a person who is not as ethically pure as you seem to see yourself. Maybe that partner is homophobic, or a racist. And then, let’s say that “bad” cop does something that reflects badly on the profession, and seems connected to his racist notions, or homophobic ones. What exactly do or did you expect the “good” cop to do? Do you think he would have some premonition about what the other guy was going to do, stop it, and thereby render the world free of racism and homophobia? How exactly do you see that happening? You are the arbiter of goodness and badness so clearly you must know how this is done. And since you are the arbiter, why didn’t you free the world of the thing that you seem to think some “good cop” should?
09/07/2020 @ 1:54 pm
@Bitey;
I respectfully submit that any cop who goes to work every day thinking:
“It’s kill or be killed.”
OR
“It’s either me or them.”
Can’t be expected to ‘protect and serve’ honorably and with integrity…
Such an individual’ should quit the force before he/she needlessly hurts or kills someone….
09/07/2020 @ 4:31 pm
Ron, here’s the perfectly idiotic thing about that. A completely moronic notion has ahold of you, and you’re letting it run away with you. Consider, you’re talking to a former police officer, and you quote an absurd notion that was said to you days ago in this thread. It’s like something said in a game of telephone. It is not remotely accurate, but it is something that someone with no experience says to someone else with no experience…ABOUT the experience. It is wrong. It is far from accurate. And you don’t have the good sense to ask. You state it to someone with the experience to confirm or deny that.
That doesn’t describe anything in the entire process of doing the job. It doesn’t describe how an officer feels about what you call “them”, it does not describe how officers feel about what you call “us”, or other officers…and most importantly, it does not describe how things unfold in the course of doing the job. It is a completely misunderstood, bizarre notion of how the job actually unfolds.
There is an aspect of doing the job that bears resemblance to what you said, but it is still LIGHT YEARS from what you said. I’ll describe it for you. Partners working together, particularly when a senior officer is training a junior one, it has been said, it was said to me, “whatever happens, make a promise to yourself to go home alive.” Say that over to yourself and get a grasp of it. “Whatever happens, make a promise to yourself that we go home alive.”
Now, that is the closest thing in my experience that resembles your grotesque misunderstanding, telephone game piece of nonsense, told by one without the experience to another. But, it is not what making a promise to yourself to go home alive means. That promise to survive is not in the warlike dynamic that you describe. It does not need to be. Many things are threatening to a cop’s life while on duty that are not all someone actively trying to kill you. Officers can be killed by others NOT trying to kill them in numerous ways. Officers can die by their own actions, and all down the continuum of predictability. The job is not a pitched battle against the public. That’s bullshit, and any description of it, “them or us” in particular, is utter bullshit.
There are a number of ways that you could test that absurd notion that cops are waging war with the public. Cops are of the public, Ron. They are in the public when not on the job. They are married to and parents of and children of members of the public. If they dont live in the cities where they work, I can ASSURE you they live in cities where there are cops or deputies patrolling. The notion that cops would live, or any members of the public would live in places where their own government is waging war against them, assuming they have any choice at all, would never happen. You don’t take your kids swimming at the aquarium, and most especially not in the shark exhibit. “Them or us” makes about that much sense.
The Earth is not flat. There be no monsters off the edge of the Earth. There is no Kraken. Stepping on a crack wont break your mother’s back. Pop rocks and Pepsi wont kill you. Paul Bunyan wasn’t 50 feet tall, and there is no Blue Ox. Your idea…(I should say THE idea) that public servants are or could take a “its them or us” approach to doing that job is nonsensical. If you give it a moment of thought, just a moment, you’d realize that if that were the approach, that war would end on the first night. Even war can’t be waged with that notion, and I don’t want to introduce another foreign concept to confuse you further, but it simply is not accurate to say that them or us is the approach.
And you know, the nonsense cherry on the bullshit sundae is saying, “I respectfully submit that any cop…”. There is not a word in that phrase that should be uttered. “I”…who are you to say, PARTICULARLY to a former cop. Absurd on its face. “Respectfully”…respect would dictate asking rather than…”SUBMIT”[ing]. What are you submitting, a myth from a game of telephone? “That any cop”…absolute in your assessment, again, with no experience. When written together, what is respectful about a nonsense notion by someone with no reason to know, about something which would amount to a demeaning character evaluation? Respectfully submitted? That’s bullshit, Ron.
The sad fact of the matter is that racism, and death, and violence, and even heavy falling object…exist in life. Shit happens. Just because they happen does not mean that cops are out to get you. In the course of a year, you may find whatever number of cops to ‘got’ someone. Choose whatever number you like. Whatever that number is, it wont be ALL of them. And the ones that you cite will not all be with the intent of killing them. And finally, it is not the aspect of being a cop that does it. It is some other aspect of them being human that did it. All of those negative things that happen between people that lead to the death of one of them happen between people where NONE of them are cops. The aspect of being a police officer is not determinant. Being a cop wont be causal. If you stopped the public office of being a police officer, killing would not stop. Your analysis implies it. The “them” is other people…and they don’t have uniforms. You’re applying a superstitious understanding to assuage your fear. It isn’t real.
09/07/2020 @ 4:34 pm
Christ on a cracker, Ron, you could just ask me, did you go to work everyday thinking, “its kill or be killed”? I would have told you, not only did I not think that everyday, I never thought it once. That all by itself explodes that bullshit theory.
09/07/2020 @ 5:53 pm
You and I once had an exchange about plastic versus paper money. I mentioned that I had the same $17 dollars in my wallet since January, and that was because I essentially never use cash anymore. It was a perfectly innocuous statement. Your reaction, which must still exist somewhere, was about poor people being not included in the digital economy, implying that my use of things other than cash was to their detriment.
That’s no big deal. That is clearly not the case. But the interesting thing is that you had a strong reaction to a statement about not using cash. Your concern was for those without the means to avoid cash. It’s a noble focus. The thing of it is, if you apply that thinking to the support or abolition of public police departments, you’re on the other side. Lately, discussion of policing goes from limiting their activities to abolishing the agencies altogether. You must understand that the people hurt most if public departments are abolished will be those with the least. Policing would default to an older model where the wealthy paid for private security.
There are already scores of social forces which are pulling the social strata apart. The current pandemic is one of those forces. The economy, although we can’t be certain yet, may be restructuring in such a way that does not benefit middle or lower middle classes. As it is right now, people are either restructuring their debt with cheap money, or buying new homes, or remodeling existing homes…on one side of the divide, and others are being evicted because they can;t work, or their jobs have been abolished, and government wont figure out if it wants to assist them. That much is already happening. Eliminating departments which function as a public service, like police departments and the USPS, will hurt people. It will hurt more than using plastic money.
It strikes me that you see things as polemical. I don’t see you offering language that involves problem solving, or improvement. It is all about “miscreants”, “them or us”, etc. Pushing rhetoric in that direction wont benefit the poor. History prior to the 20th century was almost exclusively that. That is how we got here. If there is no workable middle, “compromise”, to use a word you seem to disagree with, if that can not exist, then a modern free civilization can not exist.
09/07/2020 @ 7:38 pm
@Bitey;
So you acknowledge or accept the notion that systemic or institutional racism exists, but no one is guilty of perpetrating or perpetuating it….
Racist shit just ‘happens’…
BTW
I was well aware of the function of ‘Internal Affairs’ in police departments. Inasmuch as I could find no IA reports or findings that are in support of the idea that police officers should be encouraged and protected in bearing witness to the truth, I concluded that as cops themselves, IA units may be deemed part of the problem…
In my view, your example of IA investigation of no contact policies isn’t quite the same as the no investigation at all of “no racism” policies…
Re ‘respectful submission’…
Very tongue-in-cheek sarcasm on my part…
Your disrespect and condescension are so palpable, you can cut it with a knife…
No reason for me to take any of this personally….I just chalk it up to your cop mentality…And the fact that this is just social media…
However, you should know that my experience includes having been selected by two Connecticut municipalities to provide Diversity Training to their police departments and boards of education pursuant to court orders and consent decrees handed down by state and federal judges…
In both instances my credentials and seminar materials had to be vetted and approved by the respective courts…
In both cases I was invited to return for follow-up presentations and sessions…
09/07/2020 @ 8:34 pm
No, Ron. I believe I said, cops are not the source of racism. Eliminating cops wont eliminate racism. I said the racism that cops express, they bring to the job. The job does not create racism within them. There is nothing inherent in policing that makes a racist. Do you understand? There is racism in education. Becoming an educator does not make you racist. Get it? Racism is practiced by, and even taught by racists to non-racist children…but it is not the profession of education that is the generator of racism. Josef Mengele was a physician who practiced racist experiments on prisoners. That does not make science or medicine a racist practice. Being a scientist or a physician does not make racism. The racist took his racism into the function of being a physician. Get it? The US Constitution had racism written into it by racists. The Constitution itself, or constitutional law, or the profession of law are not inherently racist. The racism in the law was brought to it by the racists. The law did not make THEM racists. Get it? Realtors and bankers sometimes steer minorities away from White areas and toward others of their race. That is a racist practice. That does not make being a realtor, or being a banker a racist. Bankers and realtors who behave as racists take their racism into the profession. The profession does not engender racism within them. Get it? Cristoforo Colombo was a sea captain. His travels expanded colonialism, racism, and genocide. The measure of Colombo’s activities were racist. Colombo brought his racism to the profession of world explorer. Exploring the world did not make Colombo a racist. Get it? Henry Ford was a racist. Henry Ford created the assembly line. Henry Ford created Ford motorcars. Owning a Ford, or making a Ford, or making an assembly line did not make Ford a racist. Ford brought his racism to the several things that he did. Owning a Ford doesn’t make you a racist. Get it? (Btw, you haven’t ever owned a Ford, have you?). Thomas Jefferson attended college in Virginia and William and Mary. Thomas Jefferson enslaved humans. The American practice of slavery for plantation labor was profoundly racist. Jefferson became a lawyer. It wasn’t Virginia, William and Mary, or the practice of Law that made Jefferson a racist. Jefferson took his racism into college, into his home, and into the practice of Law. Those things did not make him a racist. Get it?
Is any of this catching on yet? It is possible to do any of the listed things and not be a racist. In fact, the majority of those doing all of them are likely not to be racist. I don’t understand how you can not grasp this. You don’t strike me as someone too afraid to admit that you’re wrong.
09/07/2020 @ 8:59 pm
@Bitey;
I never said that policing causes an individual to become a racist any more than lawyering or doctoring or teaching does…
However, the systemic or institutional racism that is manifest and extant in police departments has consequences that are significantly different from, if not greater than, the systemic or institutional racism in other areas of endeavor…
In too many black communities, the police function like an oppressive military force of occupation not as uniformed public servants…
By the way…
The Constitution is reflective of the racism that undergirded slavery through the Colonial and Revolutionary periods in American History…
The three- fifths clause and the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms are examples of the manifestations of racism in the founding document….
Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence also contains allusions to the racist fears and concerns of the Colonials…
09/07/2020 @ 9:22 pm
“Your disrespect and condescension are so palpable, you can cut it with a knife…
No reason for me to take any of this personally….I just chalk it up to your cop mentality…And the fact that this is just social media…
However, you should know that my experience includes having been selected by two Connecticut municipalities to provide Diversity Training to their police departments and boards of education pursuant to court orders and consent decrees handed down by state and federal judges…
In both instances my credentials and seminar materials had to be vetted and approved by the respective courts…“
Ron, my condescension is the response, the cuffing that your disrespectful title deserves. Your premise of this post is disrespectful. The null hypothesis of this post is that all cops are bad. The only inference is that you operate on the theory that all cops are bad. That hypothesis is not only moronic, but it is also disrespectful. No reasonable person can make such a claim about 700,000 people…just counting current officers in the US. Your question potentially covers the entire profession universally. If you can’t see the disrespect in that, you lack any self awareness whatsoever.
Now, as for being appointed…that doesn’t mean fuck-all. If you were appointed by the burning bush on top of Mt Sinai, that may be an HONOR, but it is not experience. Providing diversity training to WHOMEVER…is not experience. It may very well be an accolade, but it is not experience. You may even call that the selection an experience in being selected…but it is not EXPERIENCE in the thing you are selected to train about. Being appointed or selected is only a statement about the one doing the selecting. It doesn’t say anything about your experience with the subject matter. Presumably, I could be SELECTED tomorrow to be an Astronaut. That doesn’t mean I have any experience at being an astronaut. It would not matter whether I was selected or appointed by the head of NASA, or by the guy remodeling my bathroom. One might make it more likely, or say what my abilities might be perceived to be, BUT IT IS NOT EXPERIENCE. All that it is is experience at being selected. You taught Black Studies at Yale. It stands to reason why a judge might select you to provide training to police officers about diversity. That is not nearly experience being a police officer. Those are not remotely similar ideas. By the way…the same goes for credentials. Credentials imply knowledge of experience. They are not experience. They are also not knowledge.
09/08/2020 @ 7:02 am
“In too many black communities, the police function like an oppressive military force of occupation not as uniformed public servants…“
Here is a perfect example of not understanding what you are saying. You’re expressing an observation from 35,000 feet, and not understanding that you are not seeing the diversity of practice that happens on the ground. THEN, you take your observation from a distance and applying it uniformly where it does not belong.
Police departments don’t do the actual policing. Police officers do. Police officers don’t do it all the same way, not even on the same departments, not even on the same shifts. Administrations of cities, and even of departments may suggest or even design patrol plans as you describe, but the individual practice happens by individual humans. Individual humans can still apply their conscience and skill to doing their function humanely, honestly, and in such a way that will stand up to scrutiny over changing political eras. That is how it happens at ground level. Officers are not automatons. Does the administration allow for abusive policing? Obviously yes, in far too many cases. Do administrations order abusive practice to the extent that it is uniformly “miscreant”, to where you can not tell good from bad? No. That is a weak minded, absurdly simplistic, devoid of human understanding perspective. You are just wrong, Ron. Face it.
09/07/2020 @ 9:38 pm
“I never said that policing causes an individual to become a racist any more than lawyering or doctoring or teaching does…“
“The blue wall of silence, also blue code and blue shield, are terms used in the United States to denote the alleged informal code of silence among police officers not to report on a colleague’s errors, misconducts, or crimes, including police brutality“
“Who are the good cops and where are they?“
Now, the top is your denial. They are refuted by my interpretations the the next two quotes. The first one sets the context for your question. There is more to it, but let’s agree to reduce it to (focus on) racism. The brutality discussed recently has been discussed as a manifestation of racism. The last line is your title. The title implies that all cops are bad, and you seek the demonstration/presence of a “good” one to challenge your null hypothesis. As such, Ron, you absolutely did say that cops are bad + bad is defined in this context as brutal, criminal, or incompetent. The title could question racism within society and be fair. It doesn’t. It attaches to police work by necessity. You even used the term “cop mentality” in one of your responses. The term itself disparages all cops. You can’t disparage all cops while saying that you don’t disparage all cops. It doesn’t take a “cop mentality” to see that. It only takes a mind. What exactly is your excuse?
09/07/2020 @ 9:58 pm
“No reason for me to take any of this personally….I just chalk it up to your cop mentality…And the fact that this is just social media…“
This is a particularly interesting comment. I have taken you to task about the “this is just social media” thing. You say it again as if you think it somehow gets under my skin. What you don’t seem to understand is that you are insulting yourself.
The thing I dislike about the notion concerns matters of principle. It implies statement of principle, or truth are less important some places than others. This is the thing, Ron, your complaint about “where are the good cops” is asking where are the people who act on principle whether they are being watched or not. Where are the people who elevate principle over their own well-being. Your insistence on repeating that idiotic lack of principle shows you to be a hypocrite. You dare to complain about an entire profession, implying a lack of principle, while being one the best examples of lacking principle. You never admit you’re wrong, as far as I can tell, and you repeat a corrosive notion of selective principled conduct. It is like watching someone commit character suicide.
09/07/2020 @ 11:00 pm
Ron,
Not very long ago you told me that you and Lezlie really disliked being viewed as exceptions. So does Bill, though in his case he’s referring to being an exception to the stereotypical norm of his former occupation rather than an exception to the stereotypical norm of his race.
I said this earlier and if anything it’s becoming more obvious. This generalizing is damned near identical to the logic of racism. And yes, this generalizing also showed up in your religion posts. You’re skating on extremely thin ice here.
I have been taken to task for telling you what it’s like to be Black, though I have never actually done that – and that accusation was implied by GH, not you. You are now telling Bill what it’s like to be a cop. As I am not qualified to tell you about the Black experience, you are not qualified to tell Bill about the police experience.
09/08/2020 @ 3:37 am
@Bitey;
Interpretation is not the necessary result of implication. It’s the result of inference…
If/when you misinterpret or misrepresent something…
You can do the math….
The title here implies that there ARE ‘good cops’ who have been invisible and silent.
My question suggests that it’s time for this “silent majority” of ‘good cops’ to step up, stand up, speak up, and speak out…
And
If there are barriers and impediments in the way of this occurring, it is high time to remove that which is preventing good cops from being seen and heard re how matters of race and racism impact policies, procedures, practices, and protocols in their respective departments…
09/08/2020 @ 6:40 am
Bullshit! Your title implies that they do not exist. Your title asks two questions. It says, WHO and WHERE are they?
You lie so hard that it appears you’re lying to yourself. If you wanted to say, ‘why wont the good cops stand up’…you could just say that. That is not what you want to say. Just like your accidental, “religious people…”. You have an m.o., Ron. It isn’t a series of accidents. It is a design. Your use of the term, “cop mentality” is derisive, elitist, and bigoted. Does your concept of “cop mentality” extend to the “good ones” that you now claim exist? You’re covering yourself in shit, Ron.
You seem to think that if someone says that you’re elitist, or full of yourself that it is a compliment. It isn’t.
09/08/2020 @ 3:44 am
@Koshersalaami;
I’ve been subjected to double standards and double jeopardy my entire life…
Encountering ‘thin ice’ is nothing new to me…
09/08/2020 @ 6:46 am
Whatever injustices that you have experienced in your life does not justify you spreading that injustice with unfounded, irrational, illogical complaints about others. Consider your abusive, and offensive accusations about religious people. You’re not defending yourself, you’re on the offense. And that would remain in its own context except for the fact that you will turn around and use famous, respected religious people as your examples by quoting them. You place yourself on the thin ice there. You encounter double jeopardy by re-offending, not by injustice pursuing you. There would be no need to point out your hypocrisy regarding the religious if you had not attacked them first, and quoted them in your attack of others second. You are your own double jeopardy. You seek out the thin ice.
09/08/2020 @ 9:34 am
Ron, you aren’t being subjected to double jeopardy and your thin ice is not a result of anything courageous. You are using an approach you would not tolerate in another context. .
09/08/2020 @ 7:53 am
You have denied that your title implies that there are no good cops. As evidence of your intended implication, I offer you another of your titles, followed by your interpretation of it.
“Who or What is a “Centrist”?: Making Amy’s Case”
“You can’t define that which does not exist.“
You imply with your title that a centrist does not exist. Then in a conversation about it with Jonathan Wolfman, you explicitly state that it does not exist. You have created a polemical which attempts the absolute denial of a third position. You repeat this thinking error over and over in various pieces. Again, here you state that a philosophical center does not exist. Regarding the religious, you make an absolute judgement. And with regard to cops, you imply that there are no “good” ones.
Now, I’d give you credit for being tricky here, but I think it is just a failure to understand. The error here is that you are conflating a philosophical position with a political strategy. Compromise within politics is tactical, not philosophical. Compromise may be contained within a philosophy, but it is not the philosophy itself. Your assertion handles it as if compromise is the philosophy. The fact is, successful democratic political systems require functional compromise. The functional compromise does not mean that those compromising are philosophically centered where the compromise settles. Your post absolutely implies that, however.
“ A “centrist” is the individual who is involuntarily caught between what appears to be opposite poles in the struggles for social and economic change and justice and has no posture or position either way because he/she, “Never really thought about it…” (Read: Never had to think about it…)“
Here, again you mention “opposite poles”, your preferred perception of reality, and any center position as, being “stuck”, or not actually considered. This does not only lack nuance, it eschews it. It denies it. It disparages it. The collection of your arguments are effectively a ministry of the denial of nuance.
09/08/2020 @ 9:53 am
@Bitey;
I’m opposed to religiosity or the hypocrisy in the use of religion in support or justification of racism…
I eschew both the political and philosophical concept of centrism when and where ‘centrist’ compromises do little more than maintain the status quo over the progressive change required to achieve racial or social justice…
Centrism is the status quo wearing different clothes…
I eschew ‘nuance’ when and where it is weaponized and used to delay or deny human or civil rights…
Nuance is often used as the refuge or hiding place of ‘sophisticated’ or ‘educated’ racists and bigots…
09/08/2020 @ 10:56 am
Like we condone the use of religion to support racism.
Yeah, all that nuance adds up to lesser evilism. That’s the perfectly good reason that the Greens didn’t support Hillary in 2016. All that rejection of nuance worked great, didn’t it?
09/08/2020 @ 11:38 am
@Koshersalaami;
Re re “rejection of nuance”
Totally different context….
Hillary lost because she underestimated the support for Trump and she and her senior advisors overestimated her strength as heir apparent….
Instead of running a campaign, they were preparing for a coronation.
09/08/2020 @ 12:04 pm
That’s not really accurate either. Clinton got 3 million more votes than Trump did nationally. Your analysis implies that she misjudged and received fewer. The fact is, she received fewer electoral votes which does not underestimate Trump’s support, it underestimates Trump’s support in a very narrow, very specific context. Your theory is based upon as rather ‘nuanced’ view of democracy…using a system designed to protect the institution of slavery. Oh, the irony.
The electoral college is an aberration. If you are evaluating her strategy based upon crowd sourcing, you must use popular vote totals, not the electoral college vote.
09/08/2020 @ 11:31 am
“Centrism is the status quo wearing different clothes…“. Balderdash! You just tell yourself nonsense to make yourself feel good. This is how you deceive. You’re arguing about a tangent. You are always seeing or expressing things in extremes. This is not about how you FEEL about centrism. Your position is that centrism doesn’t exist. It can’t be nonexistent and “status quo wearing different clothes.” That’s just bullshit wearing any clothes…or none. Does it exist or not? Wait…I don’t care. You’re full of it. You have just conceded that it does exist.
Let’s see what else you have in your bullshit basket.
“ I eschew ‘nuance’ when and where it is weaponized and used to delay or deny human or civil rights…“. Where did that weird condition come from? Who said anything about weaponizing it to delay or deny human or civil rights? You make up straw men to knock down.
The recipe that you are creating is 1. Agree with everything that Ron says, or be “bad”. 2. Pretend definitions don’t matter. You sound much more like the current president than someone who values liberal democracy.
Democracy is built upon the assumption that everyone wont agree. Whether or not you concede that a philosophical middle exists, a compromise in resources and selection of projects absolutely does. We live in a finite world, and the notion that all resources and plans must be yours or else they are evil is not how anything works. Compromising and meeting in the middle to solve problems is not “weaponizing” anything. It is about as far from that as I can think of. The concept of balance is not weaponizing anything. Not only is your notion that only the poles exist wrong, it is also unbalanced. If you had invented a piano, it would only have two keys. You’d never have been able to play Clair de Lune. Finesse, balance, and nuance exist, and they are useful in creating and maintaining everything from the ordinary to the majestic.
From this point forward, everything you say will be qualified by your view of balance and nuance. You have come down on the absolute prohibition of nuance. Your statement actually sought to nuance the use of nuance by adding in the conditions with the words “weaponized”, and “often used”…but that is an attempt to use nuance, isn’t it? Therefore your statement does not mean what you claim it means. You philosophically reject what you have just said.
09/08/2020 @ 12:14 pm
@Bitey;
I’m asserting that in certain rhetorical contexts, ‘centrism’ is a euphemism for the status quo….
“You lie so hard that it appears you’re lying to yourself.”
When engaged in civil discourse and debate on matters of principle, invective and name calling are inappropriate, unecessary and uncalled for…
People who resort to epithets have run out of either vocabulary or argumentation or both…
This is especially true when and where virtually every comment they make is replete with projection and confession…
I won’t bar you from my page, but since you have resorted to calling me a liar, I feel that the best response is to offer to agree to disagree on the subject and close comments before this becomes ugly and disagreeable….