We held a backyard barbeque last night with three other couples from the neighborhood. Good times were had by all: good food, lots of laughs and tall tales, and a little Presidential election banter.
I spent the evening shooting the breeze with the three husbands: Al, Jim, and Galen. They are nice guys that I occasionally golf with. And they’re all Donald Trump honks.
The three of them got on a collective rant about law and order, communists, black celebrities that talk too much about Black Lives Matter, and such. I’m sure they believe in their hearts that they’re not racist, but if someone had taped the conversation of these three old Caucasians, and then played it back to them, they’d probably be ashamed of themselves. I’m sure their mothers and children would. I just sat there and listened to them, not wanting to ruin the evening by saying something impolitic.
The Trump cult has demonized free speech, peaceful demonstrations, public protest, and even weapons-toting mobs intent on getting across some important social message…except in the cases where the participants are MAGA supporters, Nazi sympathizers, or Second Amendment nutjobs flaunting Confederate flags who like to brandish AR-15s in public places. The President is even proud of the teenager who crossed state lines with his assault rifle and shot to death two BLM protesters.
American citizens who are fed up with systemic racism in the criminal justice and law enforcement arms of government are branded “leftists”, “socialists”, “Antifa”, “communists”, “disloyal traitors” and worse. I heard some of that shit at the barbeque last night, along with cackling about the Democratic Party wanting to “defund the police”.
Let’s all be honest with each other: everyone is in favor of law and order in American society. Even Black people and Democrats. Of course, “law and order” means different things to different Americans: it means protecting the status quo to White people, while to Black people it means getting the same service from the police that White people do.
The hot issue right now is not getting rid of our police departments but, rather, making them more accountable for their actions.
Police officers are public servants, just like all of the other workers who toil for our cities and counties. There are codes of conduct for all public employees, and those individuals can’t make up their own rules as they go along. I worked for the County of Riverside for 32 years, so I know what I’m talking about. Crappy performance has consequences. Employees who violate laws get fired.
Unions used to be big in America but are not so much nowadays. They got a bit too big for their britches and employee demands for better working conditions and more pay got increasingly out of hand. Lots of industries that used to be unionized are now either defunct (because they can’t compete) or they were shipped overseas so they could be competitive.
The bottom line is that powerful unions sometimes lose track of what’s important: like the mission of the business.
One of the few instances where unions are still very powerful is law enforcement. Police unions fund candidates for City Councils, Mayors, and Sheriffs. They exert their political power by demanding high wages and exorbitant retirement benefits for their members. They demand that the local governing authority (usually a City Council) allow police officers to regulate themselves by “reviewing” citizen complaints in-house. They have intimidated local officials to adopt police officer “Bill of Rights” ordinances, which protect officers from being held accountable when they abuse their authority. In many states, police unions have pressured State legislators to adopt laws which shield officers from criminal liability in cases of police brutality.
The generic police slogan “To Protect and Serve” that one sees on the sides of squad cars has unfortunately come to mean protecting and serving themselves as a first priority.
Accountability has become a common casualty in many jurisdictions.
Recently a brouhaha developed in the Breonna Taylor case, when the secret grand jury proceedings (that led to no criminal charges against the police officers who murdered Ms. Taylor) came into question. The Kentucky Attorney General, who briefed the Grand Jury, said everything was on the up-and-up, but one of the jurors revealed that murder charges against the three officers were never even considered.
Once again, Black Americans are outraged, and the whole law enforcement/criminal justice model is brought into question. As it should be.
Secret grand juries are relics of the past, now only found in the United States and the African country of Liberia. They are sometimes used to determine if criminal charges should be brought against a person or organization. In most cases, the function of a grand jury has been replaced by a “preliminary hearing”, where a District Attorney will bring evidence before a judge to determine if the matter should go to trial. In this normal way of doing things, the accused can be represented by counsel and can argue that (for instance) insufficient evidence has been presented to warrant criminal charges. Or present exculpatory evidence (like, perhaps, the accused was in another country at the time of the crime).
So, while the function of the grand jury has been, for the most part, absorbed by Superior Courts, prosecutors can utilize grand juries if they think secrecy is necessary. For example, if the activities of an extended criminal enterprise (like the Mafia) were being investigated, prosecutors might need to shield witnesses from public scrutiny until after the criminal indictment has been authorized by the court.
Unfortunately, the prosecutorial authority (a District Attorney or state Attorney General) can misuse secret grand jury proceedings for political purposes.
The temptation to do this can be strong when it comes to holding police officers accountable for their criminal behavior. This is because the police, prosecutors, and the courts work hand-in-hand; i.e. they need each other’s help in carrying out their jobs. Hence, prosecutors are loath to bring charges against law enforcement officers. It’s considered traitorous by members of the Thin Blue Line.
In a case like the murder of Breonna Taylor, obviously police broke down the door of her apartment (under a no-knock warrant looking for drugs). Her boyfriend, who was startled by the crashing door, fired a shot at the intruders, which is his Constitutional right to do. The police then riddled the apartment with 30 bullets, five of which found Ms. Taylor, who had awakened to see what was going on.
No drugs were found, and no charges were brought against the boyfriend who fired at the intruders. Bottom line: the police shouldn’t have been there.
The police officers claimed that they announced their presence before bashing in the door, even though they possessed a “no knock” warrant. The intent of such a warrant is to catch the perpetrator by surprise or “in the act”. Possessing such a warrant, one would wonder why they would then yell out, “Police here. Open up!” Obviously, they wouldn’t do that if they thought drugs might be hastily flushed down a toilet. So, it is extremely doubtful that the three police officers announced anything before busting down the apartment door.
At the time of the initial investigation, no witnesses claimed to have heard anything more than the loud sound of a door being bashed in. Later, a witness was produced by the prosecutorial authority that claimed to have heard the police identifying themselves. That witness testimony materialized months after the fact (when police were tidying up their official story…because the outraged Black community became militant and the story was picked up in the national press).
Evidently, the Attorney General who presented the case to the Grand Jury only quoted that one, exculpatory witness which, of course, justified the police returning fire. The A.G. did not recommend criminal charges against the officers who murdered an innocent woman in her own home. The only charges he recommended (six months after the fact, when public outrage was at a fever pitch) was “reckless endangerment” against one of the cops who had emptied his clip wildly, spraying a nearby apartment with bullets. His punishment will be a slap on the wrist.
The Black community has a right to know: (a) What evidence was presented to the grand jury; (b) What evidence was not presented (i.e. contradictory witnesses, forensic evidence on the bullet from the boyfriend’s gun, possible contamination of the crime scene by the police); (c) Why no charge of murder or manslaughter was brought against the officers involved; and, (d) Why no charges of any kind were brought until many months after the incident, and only when public outrage had reached fever pitch.
As a matter of fact, all Americans need to know the answers to these questions. There have been too many of these cover-ups involving police misconduct.
I like having police officers around and am glad that they do the job that they do, protecting me and mine. Most of the ones I’ve met in my 72 years have been good guys, and I’m sure they think they are. My son Ronald is a retired Lieutenant of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and is now double-dipping as a “consultant” with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (in Southern California).
I can’t imagine my son shooting up Breonna Taylor’s apartment…and then pretending that it was OK to do so. But I could be wrong.
Cases like this (which are coming to our attention more and more nowadays due to video cameras) give credence to the idea that maybe it’s time for the police in our country to get their wings clipped just a bit. There’s too much self-serving shit going on, too much aggressive behavior targeting people of color, and very little accountability.
Anything can be improved if there’s a will to do so.
As an example of the wrong thing being done, just the other day the City of Buffalo (NY) enacted a law that removes the requirement that police officers wear a badge with their last name on it…so they can’t be identified by the public.
In other words, the people who pay their salaries, and get served by them, can’t know who they are! The police, who requested this law, said it was necessary to avoid police officers being doxxed (i.e. identified and harassed). Of course, other public servants in Buffalo wear name tags, and I’m sure they’d love to be nameless in case they wanted to insult or mistreat a constituent down at City Hall.
The whole idea of policemen being harassed goes back to the issue of public service…i.e. “To Protect and Serve”. An officer doing a great job has no fear of harassment. On the other hand, an officer who abuses his authority and mistreats citizens probably needs to be identified and weeded out of the police department. That’s harder to do when the abused citizen can’t identify the uniformed perpetrator.
The “no identification required” ordinance in Buffalo fits nicely with the general militarization of police throughout the United States.
Gone are the days when “peace officers” pounded a beat, knew everyone in the neighborhood and were known to all, and were armed with a nightstick. In recent years, policing has gone heavy into military-grade weaponry, body armor, SWAT teams, tasers, tear gas, bean bag launchers, and two-man teams.
The latter is important, because not only can the partner “have his buddy’s back” in the field, but he can also alibi his partner when things have come off the rails or something stupid has been done.
The use of force, often lethal, is all too commonplace in today’s model of policing. Officers responding to a variety of calls, many of which don’t involve violence or a heinous criminal act in progress, invariably exit their vehicle with guns drawn. That’s a problem: it indicates that the highest priority of the officer is self-preservation, not community policing.
A week or so ago, a woman called the police to report that her young son, who had mental problems, had run off. She asked if they could find him and bring him home. The police found him, and he fled down the street from them, disregarding their orders to “Stop!” The officers then shot him in the back, multiple times, killing him. He had no weapon, hadn’t threatened them or anyone else, and was just a scared kid. Evidently, he made the officers mad, so they shot him.
One wonders what the justification is for a police officer to discharge a lethal weapon. I would think that someone brandishing a gun in public, or shooting at police or the public, or someone caught in the act of committing a robbery, or assaulting or raping someone, would qualify.
On the other hand, we hear so often about people getting shot at by police for such serious offenses as showing disrespect to an officer or fleeing when the squad car pulls up. There are numerous incidents each year when someone is shot to death reaching for their cell phone; the cops say, “I thought it was a gun.”
Gee, if a private citizen uses deadly force against another, he better damn well make sure it was a gun, or he’s going to prison.
Too many “suspects” are getting shot in the back by police who supposedly were “fearful for their safety”. Jaywalkers and vagrants are being choked to death by police who claim that the individual was “resisting arrest”. Question: When did we pass a law that levies the death penalty for jaywalking, vagrancy, disrespecting an officer, or resisting arrest?
Answer: there are no such laws.
I think that weapons should only be drawn as a last resort, not as a first response. An officer who draws his gun from the holster inflames the situation, rather than calms it. The best tools in the policeman’s kit are his brain and his mouth; they need to be employed first, in most circumstances. That’s the way our beat cops used to work, and that’s the way policeman in Britain handle their jobs…without guns.
There has to be a Code of Conduct for police officers, just like there is for other public employees. Even our soldiers, in a battlefield, are subject to strict codes as to what they can and can’t do…even when they are pissed off.
I think that such a Code of Conduct should be approved and routinely reviewed by the governing body (i.e. the City Council or the County Board of Supervisors) after a public hearing. Citizens should know the rules by which their employees are governed. The Police Chief or the police union officials should not be the authority on allowable code of conduct by law enforcement officers: they are biased.
Each city or county should have a Citizen’s Review Board, appointed by the governing authority, to hear complaint’s about police misconduct. Perhaps the annual review and any proposed changes to the Code of Conduct should have to be reviewed by this Board before moving on to the governing authority for adoption.
The body camera (body cam) is a technology that helps to document what actually happened when there was a police/citizen interaction. Most police departments have acquired them and use them. However, far too often, when shit hits the fan, an officer will report that his body cam was “off” (i.e. not turned on). This is convenient in the cases where there was inappropriate action by the officer and/or his partner. It is particularly convenient when there was malice aforethought, as in cases of harassment of people of color.
I think that body cams should become mandatory equipment for each sworn officer and that they be required to be turned on whenever that police officer interacts with a citizen. Failure to do so would subject the officer to discipline, and three such incidents would result in termination (“Three strikes”).
The video footage from all body cams (and video cams on police vehicles) should be non-erasable and secured, and the integrity of this evidence should be the responsibility of the Chief of Police subject to policy established by the City Council or other governing body.
Video footage secured by body cams and vehicle cams should be made available to the Citizens’ Review Board upon request, as should incident reports and eyewitness accounts.
Police officers who repeatedly violate the Code of Conduct should be terminated. The “Three Strikes” rule should apply.
If measures like the abovementioned are adopted by local authorities, they will go a long way toward restoring community trust and confidence in law enforcement.
There is no need to “defund the police” as a punishment.
All we need to do is make them more accountable.