Police are racist, according to Progressives.
What Harris represents is the Progressive Party...she's called a Democrat but Progressives have taken over. The old Democratic Party that was a beacon of light in our country, and that we were proudly a member of, is no more. It was the party that protected Black Americans, blue collar worker, religious people, disabled people, and women. No more. Now it is the party of college-educated coastal large-city elites.
And over and over what is said in Progressive circles (but not in conservative circles) is that the problem with policing is that it is inherently racist. Anytime something happens in policing involving a black American, the shouts and accusations are racist! racist! racist! It's become such a religious belief among Progressives that it has taken on the status of truth equivalent to the sun coming up every morning. No need to question it, or even look at it carefully, because it is absolutely and undeniably a fact of life to most or all people on the left.
Here, for example, is what the ACLU says about policing. It is representative of the general feeling among Progressives:
"Defunding the Police Will Actually Make Us Safer
Policing in this country evolved from slave patrols"
Seriously the ACLU said that. Look it up.
The thesis of this blog entry is that the assumption of wide-spread racism in law enforcement, instead of helping Black Americans and Low Income Americans, has hurt them seriously, and leaves them more likely to be the victims of crime. Additionally, that assumption, and constant refrain from Progressives that policing is racist, has left us with no viable solutions to the problems low income and minorities face.
Police "racism."
The following is a comprehensive report by Rodney Balko on police "racism." It purports to give "overwhelming evidence that the criminal justice system is racist."
Link to: Rodney Balko's "studies."
He presents dozens of studies. To his credit he also provides a few studies which do not seem to support his conclusion.
Yet if his studies are examined carefully, like a nerdy academic like me would do, one sees several major disconcerting features of them:
A. Virtually all, or maybe all, are correlational, and yet he draws cause-effect conclusions from them. That is, they present racial differences in outcomes and he concludes that, uh, it's all caused by racism.
B. To his credit, he also presents a few studies that don't fit his theory. Following the description of the studies where people have not confirmed his theory of racism there is usually a criticism of those studies. Tellingly, there are no criticisms of the studies he believes prove his thesis....despite the fact that they are correlational studies. So, a double standard in his review.
C. None of the studies he cites seem to partial out other important variables, such as income, high versus low crime area, Black-White differences in the likelihood of being a victim, or Black-White differences in serious criminal behavior.
In terms of that all important dimension of the Black Crime rate, here are some critical data:
Link to Black crime rate
---This table (above) contains the most recent data I can find. In 2013 there were 5723 murders. 2491---44% of whom were Black victims, (with perhaps more in the unclassified column) and 39% committed by Black Americans (with perhaps more in the unclassified column).
----Quote from the Washington Post: "According to (the) (2009) data, out of all violent crimes in which someone was charged, black Americans were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the country’s 75 biggest counties
— despite the fact that black Americans made up just 15 percent of the population in those places."
Using these data as a reference, virtually all the results of "studies" provided by Balko disappear...completely accounted for by both the crime rate and victim-of-crime rate of Black versus White Americans.
-------AND Balko never even tried to control for those differences or to examine the alternative hypothesis that the difference in Black-White contacts with police or the criminal justice system isn't racist but, instead, is accounted for by the need to protect Black victims who are more often the victims of crimes. This obvious explanation would have occurred to Balko if he had any kind of good training in science, or could approach his studies objectively, or had ever worked in the criminal justice system...particularly as a patrol officer. He is a journalist, and journalism can be characterized, uncharitably, as the use of anecdotes instead of data.
D. The studies Balko reviews are all studies showing Black-White differences in a wide variety of outcomes in the criminal justice system. Those differences are attributed to racism without any proof or evidence about the beliefs or attitudes toward Black Americans by police or people in the justice system. None. That is an example of the flaw of using correlational data to prove cause and effect. Those outcomes could be due to an untold number of different causes. Jumping to the conclusion that the "actual" cause is racism is not good science. It could be, definitely, but the jury is still out, scientifically.
E. With the powerful a priori view among so many people that police are racist, we don't know how many studies were subject to the file-drawer problem (i.e., where studies that did not find racial differences were either not submitted to journals or were rejected by journals).
Summary of the Balko comprehensive review of police racist behavior:
It does not support the idea that Black-White differences within the criminal justice system are due to racism. Maybe there will be studies in the future that show this. We'll keep our eyes out for them. And as liberals will be totally open to new data and new ideas.
WHAT ABOUT GEORGE FLOYD? WHAT ABOUT etc., etc.!!! Progressives would be yelling in response.
Here are those most well-known instances and constantly broadcast incidents in Progressive publications....not all of which resulted in criminal convictions:
Well known instances of police killing Black Americans
Because the people who died were Black, does this prove racism?
This "proves" racism only for people who rely on anecdotes instead of data. Some are truly awful, criminal actions on the part of police, but do they prove racism? Some were committed by Black officers. How does that figure? Black people are racist, too? One of the officers in the George Floyd murder was black, for example, as well as all five of the officers charged with murdering Tyree Nichols.
So, here are some attempts at data. Never seen this calculated before, so if anyone calculates things differently, please let us know in our comments.
My wife Vicky was in a group of 5 women who were the first female police officers in Seattle, so probably in the entire state in 1975. Spent her entire career (when she wasn't doing her favorite thing which was raising her children) in law enforcement doing things to protect women and children and minorities and low income folks in ways that would blow your socks off. I will say more about her history later.
Now on to another related topic. I'll pull them all together later.
A critical piece of information regarding protecting minorities and other vulnerable people is the current inability to hire police officers.
Cities cannot hire police officers. There are massive openings in almost all large cities. As much as 50% of their forces. This is a MAJOR and CRITICAL problem. Why? Is it money? Evidence is that even with bonuses and pay raises they can't get enough applicants. And police officers are quitting, retiring, or moving to rural districts in hordes.
Progressives' answer to this is that more money is needed, which is Progressives' answer to every problem. Yet it has been found to not be the solution because money is not the problem. Current strategies have focused, ineffectively, on the "more money" solution.
It must lead to some chagrin among Progressives that even with raising salaries police departments cannot hire enough police....although we have heard no Progressives admit that. Why not? Can 't somebody, just once, say "I was wrong...more money isn't the solution?" We'd have respect for that, actually.
Progressives, along with the BLM movement, were once strongly advocating "Defund the Police," and they have never repudiated that advocacy....they have just gone quiet on it. As said above, we have read of nobody among the throngs of people advocating Defunding who has said: "Oops. I was wrong." Or are offering other solutions to the problem they, themselves, created.
Well, they have accomplished their goal. Police are being "defunded" in a de factor manner. Police spending is significantly lower because there are astoundingly fewer numbers of police officers. But instead of being replaced by mental health professionals or whatever, they are being replaced by thin air.
And this all happened during the Biden/Harris administration.
Who does this hurt? Progressives? Middle America? Rural areas? Low income and minority areas?
Answer: Low income and minority people. Tragically. A violation of old established values of Democrats.
One of the hypocrisies of Progressives' views on policing is that they, for the most part, live in low crime districts. Studies show that around half of districts are no-crime districts, with some additional ones being low-crime districts. Crime mainly occurs in high-crime areas that are mostly Black and/or low income. Cutting back on police won't affect Progressives at all. They don't have to worry much about robberies or drive-by shootings. So the reduction in the size of the police force is irrelevant for their safety and for their families' safety....which makes it easier for them to spout off their nonsense and pass the problem on to others.
Link to urban crime statistics: Urban crime.
Link to Black people's risk of crime: Black crime victims.
In huge numbers, police are retiring, quitting, or moving to rural areas, where the crime rate is lower and appreciation for police is higher:
Link to crime rate in urban vs. rural areas: Urban-Rural crime rates
This is a link to a fascinating article in the New York Times on traffic enforcement: Article on traffic enforcement. Basically, it has almost disappeared in America...most of the disappearance being within the past few years. Police aren't doing it. And it has led to a straight line increase in traffic deaths. Surprise Surprise.
The article also reviews studies showing a long-term decline in DUI arrests (with no decline in alcohol-related deaths to account for this).
The decline has been gradual, but it seriously picked up after the Michael Brown death in Ferguson. And the decline has really picked up in the past 4 years. Brown's death it seems, by the data, is critical in understanding what is happening.
A major answer is that police officers are retreating from interactions with the public: “Why subject yourself to potential discipline or problems?” said Tom Saggau, spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Protective League union. “Why subject yourself to the inherent danger of engaging? Many times, officers are questioning: ‘Why am I even doing this?’”
The New York Times had a fascinating article on driver and passenger deaths during traffic stops by police officers. (Link to article on deaths by patrol officers ) In short, there are too many. To me, from this article, it seems that the problem is that sometimes police deal with traffic issues in a manner similar to how they deal with other criminal behavior...maybe or maybe not justifiably so. The other factor is that there is frequently too much conflict during these stops....i.e., the drivers will not do what they are ordered to do.
A major factor seems to be that traffic stops are no longer just Officer Friendly writing out a ticket and waving you on your way, but instead are dangerous for police officers. In Chicago, in the first half of 2021, 10 officers were shot doing traffic stops. "Of the roughly 280 officers killed on duty since late 2016, about 60 died — mostly by gunfire — at the hands of motorists who had been pulled over, a Times analysis showed."
So, what's the answer? The withdrawal from doing traffic stops intensified after the George Floyd incident. From the article cited above: "The pandemic, the protests and calls to cut police funding also contributed to a police staffing shortage that became acute in larger cities."
Here's the rub, in terms of the major theme of this blog post: Traffic deaths affect white people significantly less than people of other ethnic backgrounds.
In other words: Fewer police willing to risk being killed and fewer police willing to be accused of racist actions = more deaths of minorities in traffic-related incidents.
AND NOBODY HAS AN ANSWER.
Why can't cities keep police and hire more of them? Even with all the dollars to throw at them?
Summary answer: It's almost like, now, when police sign their contracts they have to sign next to a sentence that says: "I am a racist, so if I do almost anything regarding a Black American I will agree to have my life ruined because of it."
Interviews with police in big cities show this. Who wants to put their lives, futures, families at risk because of the (unproven) idea that anytime something happens with a Black American they will be assumed to be racist and at fault? No normal person would do that. And they aren't. Surprise Surprise.
And there is something else critically important related to this issue of the massive drop in policing in urban areas:
Why do a job with no meaning?
Police used to go into the profession because they needed a job. And, significantly, because they thought they were doing something meaningful by protecting the community. Meaningful.
Increasingly more people are learning (although some have known this forever) that money from a job isn't the be-all and end-all of many peoples' desires and dreams.
Instead, they want to do something meaningful.
55 years ago I was on a panel at a University regarding what students wanted out of their educations. Another person on the panel was arguing that students wanted well paying jobs. I argued that what students wanted was a way to find meaning in their lives. It was obvious to me then. And I was no Einstein.
Below is an interesting article from The Atlantic on how this idea even explains the reduction of births in our country (far more among Progressives than among conservatives). The author shows, quite convincingly with data, that the crux of the issue isn't financial considerations. Countries that pour tons of money into supporting parenting are still seeing massive reductions in births.
So, what is the problem? Answer; Progressives do not see meaning in bringing children into the world and raising them. It's not a financial issue for the most part.
Link to Atlantic article: Meaning and having children
Here is an article that assessed police recruits motivations for becoming police officers. A very important reason for them was altruistic--to be of help to their communities. Link to article.
Currently police are finding that in urban areas policing is solely a job that decreasingly is about protecting the public but is increasingly about not getting themselves into trouble. Protecting and serving the public is a far distant priority when you and your family are threatened and everything you do is followed by accusations of racism and possible lawsuits and even criminal charges.
Simply: morale sucks.
In summary, people are not wanting to be police officers because of the accusations by BLM people and Progressives that they are "racists!!!" The widespread nature of that belief has robbed police of the meaning that they used to have in their work. So these folks get out, transfer, quit and seek jobs without the risk, and find meaning in their lives in other ways.
Now, some more on Vicky's experience in law enforcement:
As I said, she was placed in the high crime district...99% Black. The "brass" wanted to see if women could cut it in those districts. Answer: yes.
She had many mothers come up to her begging her to get the "bad guys" before they could get to their own children and get them hooked on drugs or selling drugs themselves. These mothers were desperate for police. Do you see how meaningful it was to her and her fellow police officers to at least try to do this? You would go home at the end of the day and say to yourself: "I mattered." And how much meaning they got from the idea that these mothers had faith in them?
This explains, quite completely, why she arrested more Black than White people. She worked in a Black area, and it was the Black mothers who wanted her to arrest Black people.
One time my wife and another officer went to the funeral of a 7-year-old Black boy who had been killed in a school yard in a drive-by shooting. The other officer was a Lieutenant who had been in charge and immediately did an all-hands-on-deck thing, sending all of his officers out to scour the area, contact all snitches, etc. Total deployment using every resource. Incredible.
They got the guy! By that night! Do you know how few murders are solved? From The Hill: "in 2021, only 51% of homicides were solved, according to FBI statistics analyzed by the Murder Accountability Project. The country is seeing a continued decline in cleared cases compared to previous decades when the rate was closer to 70%." That low figure of 51% is even with incredibly improved technology we have, including, but limited to cameras everywhere. Why is that?
My wife and this Lieutenant (in uniform) were the only two white people at the funeral. They were welcomed with open arms, literally. Through the horrible grief of the family and other people there were smiles of immense gratitude toward them. Profusely thanking them for catching the person who had killed one of "theirs" and for being at the funeral with them. My wife and the Lieutenant were not treated as "outsiders" or as "racists." They were practically adopted on the spot.
Years later, to this day, this experience affects my wife. Those two people at the funeral and catching the guy and seeing the gratitude shows how policing was more than just a "job" to them. It was what made their own lives something special and important. They "mattered" to those folks.
Nobody yelled "racism" when they arrested the black murderer or at that funeral.
More on those mothers I mentioned earlier who begged my wife to help them. Vicky and her fellow officers tried....hard...seriously hard. And as hard as the police worked, it was somewhat hopeless. But they didn't give up. She believes they kept the crime "at bay" and kept people somewhat safer. She says they put a "dent" in in the crime. But criminals would be released and be back on the streets.... a revolving door.
That was, according to her (and understandably), demoralizing, but most of the police officers she worked with never gave up.....although she said some of them did. Relevant to this issue of recurring crimes committed by the same people which may have relevance in retaining good police officers is the issue of cash bail. There is a major movement currently to eliminate cash bail. Some people (academics) provide evidence that cash bail is ineffective, and hits harder at minorities. Illinois has recently eliminated cash bail entirely.
The pros and cons of this range too far for me to get much into the issue here. What I will do, though, is provide some perspectives on the issue. My wife worked in as a juvenile probation counselor for several years. One boy she talked with was complaining once that he wasn't driving when he was caught...unfair. So my wife asked him how many cars he had stolen and had not gotten caught for. He laughed and said "hundreds, so I guess it's fair."
One of the serious flaws I have seen in studies of law enforcement is researchers using, as their major data, future arrests or convictions as a dependent variable. However, those data are not the full picture, in fact far from it, because most crimes are not cleared and increasingly are not even being reported (Pew study on crimes solved). Time will tell on this. But it is obvious that one of the reasons my wife saw for police "giving up" was from going to the effort and danger to arrest someone, and then seeing them back on the streets soon after.
It does not appear that actual law enforcement officers are being consulted about this issue of cash bail....instead it being driven by activists. Here is an interesting anecdote from a police perspective (from this link):
"Being a police officer is inherently a risky job, and police officers accept that risk, Heubusch said. It's also a tough job where officers are expected to deal sometimes with uncooperative or even hostile criminal suspects. But that aspect of the job has been made worse, by bail reform, Heubusch said.
He said when people understand they're going to get an appearance ticket, they're more likely to flee or or fight with an officer because resisting arrest won't elevate the seriousness of their criminal activity.
"We've seen people run from us, fight with us, and attack us more than they did before, in my opinion, because they know, it's not taken as seriously or, you know, 'haha, I can get away with it. I'm gonna get a slap on the wrist from the judge. See you next week or see you tomorrow,' that type of thing," Heubusch said. "It just seems that the attitude, to resist arrest, to fight with the cops, has increased."
Bail reform has also made it hard to get drug dealers off the street, Defreze said.
First, the Class B felony of criminal sale of a controlled substance
in the third degree is a non-qualifying offense, meaning a judge can't
automatically set bail. Defreze said he's seen dealers back on the
street selling narcotics within five hours of their arrest."
This is an anecdote, not data. But it fits with my wife's experience. And no studies, as was mentioned, seem to have asked for the views of people on the front line--i.e., police officers.
And not seeking police officers' perspectives and knowledge has a potentially very powerful unintended effect. If eliminating cash bail won't work, as many officers and others seem to say, it won't be the activists or lawmaker who will pay for that failure. And, by not being listened to or having their expertise taken into account, police will just get out of policing. They won't just do it because they are ordered to. That's how they will resist those "orders."
If it wasn't so serious, these next two links would be a hoot.
Polls related to the public's view on cash bail. Two links:
Guess which poll showed the public backing bail reform by a large margin and guess which poll showed the public opposing bail reform? No wonder we're a mess.
Now, back to more on those mothers I mentioned earlier who begged my wife to help them, and the risky things that police officers did to protect their communities.
In my wife's district there was not only a lot of drug dealing, but also a lot of prostitution. She wife noticed that the vice unit was arresting only the females for prostitution. Never the men.
So she asked her supervisors if she could do a sting. They gave her an enthusiastic and immediate "yes!" She dressed as a prostitute and walked the streets. When someone (always white) propositioned her, she refused to get into their car and instead said they had to meet her at so and so isolated area. When they drove there, her officer buddies and she arrested them. The men had to take some “action” for the police to be able to arrest them and for them to be prosecuted. In summary, she volunteered for dangerous duty. To protect young girls and desperate women. That's the essence of meaning.
Here is a photo of her, on the prowl to catch sexual perverts. It's interesting about her acting job. She is almost always with a smile on her face, but she had to look grim in order to be convincing. Prostitutes aren't happy....they are abused women and girls.
Rodney Balko would call my wife part of the racist cop crowd. (and he also has never been in law enforcement. His job is as a "critic!" bruhahaha)
Here is more about my (so-called) racist wife: For 6 years she worked as an advocate for abused women and children. In her position as an advocate, she helped women and children through the court system when they pressed charges against their abuser/rapist. Most lost their cases, being a pervert-said/she-said situation. And they knew that ahead of time...that they were likely to lose.
My wife rehearsed court proceedings with them. For example, defense attorneys like to confuse witnesses by throwing multiple questions at them. She taught the women/girls to say: "Which question would you like me to answer first?" And in saying this, would look over to my wife and give a little smile...knowing they had been given a way of being in charge because my wife had rehearsed that with them.
But what she did for those women and girls, although they usually lost, was to give them power. They had to grasp their inner power to sit there on the stand, children as young as four, teenagers, and women in their 60’s—look their abuser in the face and testify….knowing that they were probably going to lose. But my wife helped them see that they had done something really stunning for themselves and others, something life-changing. And that doing this with those men would be, for many of the abusers and rapists, a major shot across the bow to not do this to any other girl or woman. She gave them a meaning to their attempts to prosecute the man above and beyond the verdict.
Now, here is the part that, as if that wasn’t mind blowing enough, is more than mind blowing: She had women come up to her on the streets 25 years! (not a typo) later to thank her and tell her what she did for them. I was with her one time when this happened. We walked into a store and the checker exclaimed: “VICKY!!! You probably don’t even remember me.” My wife immediately called her by name. The woman told Vicky that she was happily married, with children, and thanked her over and over again for what my wife did for her so she could go on with life. She was 16 when my wife helped her. And she had lost her case against her rapist.
I'm going to tell you more about my wife later. But you get the idea. What she did was not just a job-for-money. Instead it was something that had meaning to her and to all of those women she protected all of those years.
So much meaning that she could still remember that girl's name 25 years later. How many people who work just for the money can remember the names of their clients 25 years after they worked with them? And have their clients remember them so vividly that they yell out their name in a grocery store and tell them over and over about their gratitude for them?
And think about this: Would you want to continually piss off an endless parade of violent abusers and rapists? Would you want to have all of them furiously angry with you? Would you feel safe? My wife had a gun in the house and two dogs to feel safe. How safe do Progressives feel in their high-rise offices? Another example of the guts needed by law enforcement to protect vulnerable people. Those racists, huh?
She worked one year as a Corrections Officer in a large county jail. She was assigned one day per week in the unit for sex offenders. The jail had an individual who read each inmate's mail. One time that person warned my wife that one of the inmates had written to someone about his detailed plan to lure my wife into his cell so he could rape and kill her.
Want to do that Progressives?
.....kind of a tangent, but not really. It has to do with the quality of people who went through her training with her. Inmates gave the Corrections Officers shit. But not her. One time two inmates started fighting each other, and my wife jumped in between them and pushed them away from each other and told them to "cut the crap out." One of them approached my wife with clenched fists to hit her. There was a large Black man in the unit who grabbed him and said "Save it for another shift...."Leave her alone. She shows us respect.....and she don't like paperwork."
She ordered them to their cells (she almost started laughing because it sounded like a mommy telling her kids to "go to your bedrooms.") As they were heading to their cells they both said "We're sorry Miz Graybill." In about 15 minutes she went to their cells and asked them if they were "ready to behave" and come out. One of them said "No, I'm still pissed...you better leave me in here a little longer."
Isn't it amazing? The prisoner protected her. The others showed her respect. Can you imagine the talent and compassion needed to be able to engender this type of respect?
What could motivate someone to want to do that job, and do it while at the same time forming powerful relationships with felons?
Answer: Must be a "racist" police officer like my wife. Seriously, find a Progressive with this type of experience who has the willingness and guts to risk themselves to protect two Black inmates. Progressives' "guts" end with typing something on their cell phones.
Implications for protecting the vulnerable
Because of the constant accusations of racism and racist policing, my wife has said that she would never go into policing now. We really need to listen to this and let it hit us.
She wouldn't do it.
It's too risky for her life, and too risky for her family. And it would have no meaning with all of the Progressive accusations of being a racist. Instead of protecting people, especially women and girls like she did, her focus would be on protecting herself....which means getting out of the profession or never going into it. She is totally competent, and could get a well-paying job doing something else.
She's not just "one" person saying this. She is representative of thousands of the highly competent people out there who feel the same way, and police who are abandoning the profession in droves.
So, this is an example of how Progressive thought, erroneous thought based upon anecdotes and not data, would chase any sane, healthy, and qualified police officer out of the profession and into something more meaningful and rewarding and with less risk of having your life ruined...or of being killed.
Here is more on that issue:
Currently, police departments are having to offer bonuses for people to apply. And they are lowering standards in many ways. And one unintended effect is that officers they work with who didn't receive bonuses and are resentful. Who wouldn't be? Imagine the morale. Is there an unintended effect of officers who are already on the job getting angry and leaving because of watching new officers being given money that they aren't being given?
The five (black) officers who slaughtered Tyree Nichols were all hired with bonuses.
This is an example of Progressives believing that money is everything so give more money and voila! the problem is solved.
Really?
When my wife applied to the police department, they accepted 29 out of 2200 applicants! Can you imagine the ability to get the top people, instead of having to resort to lowering standards and/or giving bonuses? My wife graduated 3rd in her class. She had to take multiple tests. What she believes is that some of the testing was not over police-related issues or policy but was, instead, intelligence tests. And an entire battery of psychological tests.
The standards in the Police Academy were rigorous beyond belief. My wife studied from 5-11 every night, after she got home from the academy, and every weekend...for three months. She had to memorize front to back a 2-inch thick criminal law book….as one of the text books. For the first three months, it was all book learning. Lectures all day long. Then she had rigorous physical training. It required top competence in all areas. Most of her cohort were college graduates so they could handle that.
Is it still like that in the Academy? We have been reading that now police applicants can fail their exams multiple times and just keep taking and retaking them.
Strangely, also, they can retake and retake their physical tests. It's odd because anyone who has to work to barely pass their physical tests is, within two weeks of passing, going to be back to their previous lower level of physical ability. My wife worked six months getting into shape for the tests....and graduated 3rd in her class, as I previously bragged.
If you can't pass it the first time, you shouldn't be a police officer. They were given the requirements for all of the physical tests ahead of time, so they would know what to work on. The significance of that is that they knew BEFORE they took the official tests whether they could pass. But now? How strange is it that these new applicants would take a test they knew they would fail? Huh?
Reason they would do this: Probably because they were counting on luck, and/or knew there were no consequences for failing so just "hoped for the best"..knowing that only consequence for failing was being able to take the test again.
My wife indicates that to get into the police academy you HAD TO PASS THE EXAMS AND TESTS ON THE FIRST TRY. Period. And they all did. ALL...OF.....THEM....IN....HER....COHORT.
Her tough training installed in those officers a strong sense of pride. You could be proud of being able to get through that hard training regime. And significantly, people who feel a sense of pride always do better in their professions...as well as in life. Would someone who knew that the department had to lower its standards and give bonuses and had bad work histories and retake tests multiple times be a person who would carry around a sense of pride in themselves? Or a sense of pride in the other officers on their squad?
Do you remember the ending of An Officer and a Gentleman where Mayo (Richard Gere) was going to set the course record in the obstacle course? He was on his way to doing it when he saw that the woman applicant had failed to get over the wall. He stopped, knowing that she would be booted out of the academy if she failed, giving up the record himself, and talked (yelled) her over that wall, with both of them running to the finish line together. Such a movie cliche, but I love it.
That's the kind of togetherness that my wife saw in the police academy--a type of togetherness that makes everyone realize that they can always count on each other for backup.
In fact, in her class there was a woman who just simply couldn't do that one kind of test needed to graduate. She had a 5-year history of successful law enforcement work, and had even worked with a very famous person doing physical and demanding activities (I tell you who the famous person is, but that could possibly identify the woman and I don't want to do that). She was great in all of the other fitness tests. And one of the top overall students in the academy.
The academy police officer, who was in charge of physical training for her class, told everyone in the class that on this final fitness test everyone would need to get "over the wall" in order to graduate from the academy. He proceeded to tell the class that they should work together as a team, as they would be expected to work together as a team when they were street officers. He was a former military officer (hello once again An Officer and a Gentleman) and so realized the importance of team-work.
(no, his name was not Louis Gossett, Jr.)
So when she got to that part of the course, that academy officer made an excuse to turn his back, and several of the recruits ahead and behind her hoisted her over. Can you imagine the morale and pride of the entire graduating academy class? I can almost hear Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong when she got over that wall.
Now? To get enough police officers (or to try to, although it's failing), in many departments recruits can just try and try again to pass the tests. No reason to get together as a unit and get someone over that wall. Can you imagine the morale difference between my wife's experience and current experiences in the academy in terms of pride and cohesion?
Another benefit of feeling pride: She says that when a fellow officer did something that was below the standards, the other officers would confront them on it and if that other officer continued the inappropriate actions they went to their supervisor about it.
Now, compare this with Tyree Nichols. Nobody in that group of five officers had enough pride in themselves and their training to say "STOP!" Anybody in my wife's cohort would have immediately sprung into action to protect Nichols because, simply, "THIS IS NOT WHAT WE DO!"
Who would you want in that room with Sonja Massey? Someone who couldn't get a job anywhere else so had to be hired with a bonus, or my wife or anyone in her cohort? Or someone who had passed demanding tests, and so had a sense of pride in doing police work right?
Who would you want outside the school in Uvalde? My wife and her cohort would have entered the school immediately, according to her (and knowing her, she would have), being scared shitless, as she says, all the while. Nobody was in charge in Uvalde, officially or unofficially. Compare that with the Lieutenant who my wife attended the funeral with who immediately sprang into action and caught the killer THAT DAY. She says that in her day there were many situations where someone senior would simply appoint himself to be in charge, and they all trusted him and would have been able to execute a coordinated effort.
For example, one time there was a report of a man on a roof with a gun who had been shooting. Dispatched broadcast the call to every police officer in the whole precinct. No supervisor came on the air. One officer, a seasoned beat cop, immediately took charge as cars rushed to the scene. He did this while he was still en route to the scene, ordering other officers to various positions to secure the area, etc. Even though he had no official status to be able to issue orders. Immediately assuming a leadership position---someone other officers knew and respected.
The suspect was apprehended. Nobody was killed.
I wish to God he had been at Uvalde. And likewise all of the other officers my wife worked with who recognized competence and leadership so that they could all act in a coordinated manner as a team.
I'll answer the question for you about who you would want outside your child's school: You'd want my wife and people from her cohort and that "seasoned beat cop." All of whom were dedicated officers who were risking their lives to protect others. All of whom felt their jobs had true meaning, and had pride in themselves for that reason. You would have a much greater chance of seeing your child come out alive. Competence! Intelligence! Hard training! Extremely high standards for selection. Pride. Meaningfulness driving them.
Same with Tyree Nichols. Killed because Memphis could not longer hire the best, and had to settle with men they had to bribe with bonuses.
Maybe we are going to have to re-instate the draft.
Major Point: Good people don't want to do policing any longer because Progressives have destroyed the meaning of it.
Progressive have also put police at risk for ruined lives for simply doing regular police work that is, because of the data presented here, going to affect more Black Americans, proportionally, than White Americans. Protecting Black Americans could easily ruin their lives. Period.
In the very odd world we are in now, Progressives seem to feel that criminals are misunderstood victims. There is more empathy for them than for their victims and for the police who try to protect those victims. It is a strong sense that comes from reading an untold number of articles, especially in left-leaning publications. That's just very weird.
Crime by district
Crime doesn't take place evenly across all areas of large cities. Some 50% of areas have no crime. One could, to satisfy Progressives, assign the same number of police to areas that have high crime and and areas that have no crime (the latter would get to know all of the good coffee shops). Then there wouldn't be accusations of racist policing. Everybody would get the same policing!!!!! And people in high crime areas, that is people with low incomes and minorities, would pay for that.
Instead, given their resources, more officers are assigned to high crime areas which I have shown (and virtually everybody has shown) to have a higher proportion of Black Americans. So is it surprising that proportionately more arrests are made of Black Americans? Is that racism or is that a function of police presence which, in all studies, has shown to reduce crime?
Studies have proven that policing benefits minority and low income areas the most, not the least.
Study showing benefits to minority areas
---Powerful, large scale study. Summary: "Each additional police officer abates approximately 0.1 homicides. In per capita terms, effects are twice as large for Black versus white victims. Larger police forces also make fewer arrests for serious crimes, with larger reductions for crimes with Black suspects, implying that police force growth does not increase racial disparities among the most serious charges. At the same time, larger police forces make more arrests for low-level “quality of life” offenses, with effects that imply a disproportionate impact for Black Americans.
Those "low level offenses include Disorderly conduct, Suspicious person, Curfew/Loitering, Vandalizing, Vagrancy, Gambling, Drunkenness, Liquor, Drug Possession. If you notice, these "low level" offenses are almost a perfect description of homeless populations which are far from being "low level" in terms of how they affect the quality of a neighborhood, especially for people with young children. Furthermore, those "low level" offenses are truly against the law. Do police just let them go? Finally, there are good data that people who commit felonies have long histories of "low level" crimes, so those "low level" crimes are not independent of serious crimes.......they are part of policing for serious crimes.
See this article: Criminal histories of Federal Offenders.
The following is a nice review in the Washington Post of studies showing how policing benefits minorities. If you want to have some fun (?) look at the comments made by the Progressives who responded with snark and indignity.
Article reviewing policing benefiting minority areas
Given that crime is higher in minority areas, and that police help those areas the most, who is now going to police those areas? Qualified and experienced police or people given multiple chances to pass their physical and written tests and have to be given bonuses to apply? My wife and her cohort or Sean Grayson (who shot and killed Sonja Massey) ?
Harris's views on policing that completely contradict the research and the experience of police officers:
There are multiple videos made of Harris where she refuses to disavow Defund the Police, and then goes on to say what is needed, which is to "move resources from police to other areas." In other words, Defund.
Here is something else she says in all of those videos: She says the answer to crime is not more police officers. WHAT? As a supposed DA and Attorney General she is so clueless about the mountain of research which shows that more policing results in less crime ESPECIALLY IN MINORITY AND LOW INCOME AREAS?
Here is a paragraph from a David Brooks 2020 article in The Atlantic:
Over the decades, Americans have consistently said they want more police officers. A 2019 Civis Analytics poll for Vox found that 60 percent of African Americans, 65 percent of Latinos, and 74 percent of whites would like to see an increased number of police officers in high-crime areas. In 2015, just after the protests in response to Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, Gallup asked Americans whether they would prefer to see a larger police presence in their neighborhood or a smaller one. Thirty-eight percent of African Americans said they would like to see a larger police presence, 51 percent said they wanted no change, and only 10 percent said they wanted a smaller police presence.
Fewer cops does not mean less brutality. Officers often use force more when they are tired. A 2017 study of the Sheriff’s Department in King County, in Washington State, found that if an officer works four additional hours of overtime in a week, the odds that he or she will discharge a firearm the following week rise by 15.2 percent. If you have fewer tired officers working longer shifts with more overtime, you will have more incidents. And, as Matt Yglesias has argued in Vox, research clearly shows that the presence of more cops leads to less crime, fewer police stops, a reduced likelihood of abuse when stops do occur, and less incarceration.
Currently she isn't being honest by admitting that all of those Progressive ideas about policing and DeFunding and "Reforming" and the ideas about police and law enforcement being inherently racist were wrong. Instead, she has left it as the police being the problem.
Police don't need "reforming."
To protect all of us, and minorities and low income folks especially, we don't need to "reform" the police (which is basically "reform them so they aren't so racist and "unnecessarily brutal""). Instead, Progressives need to be called out for their non-scientific accusations and about how it is that they, themselves, not police, who have destroyed policing in America. It is they themselves who have caused the good ones to get out of the profession, and are discouraging future good ones from applying. And it is they, themselves, who are responsible for the police shortages that seem to have no answer to them, despite throwing tons of money at the problem.
So now we are stuck with situations in almost all large cities where even with bonuses and raises, good people are not applying. And police departments are way below the numbers needed for effective crime prevention.
And it isn't Progressives who will suffer. Where they live is in low-crime areas.
It will hurt the people my wife and her cohort protected, at risk to themselves, for a "greater good" of helping people...giving meaning to their own lives through their often dangerous and always hard work.
It will hurt the people we Democrats used to always protect and help.
Another reason "Progressives" are so clueless about policing
They live in a bubble. They have never really seen the world. They have only experienced their high-living, relatively safe world where people follow rules and think logically, coherently, and usually by balancing their own interests with other peoples' interests.
They have never had to experience the ugly part of our world, where people are violent, degenerate, evil, and psychopathic. So their views of policing fail, in major ways, to be based upon reality. The stories I have presented here of my wife show this side of human beings. And I want to say to Progressives: GO SEE THE REAL WORLD! The things police officers deal with are not what human beings should have to deal with. It changes you when you constantly live in that "other" world.
Where, in Progressive circles, is there any real sympathy for these people willing to do that?
I read an interesting article once about the film High Noon, where Gary Cooper is retiring as the town Sheriff. Three outlaws arrive on the noon train who are committed to killing him. Spoiler alert! Although everyone in the town was praising Cooper, when those men arrived they simply disappeared, leaving him and his wife, Grace Kelly, to fend for themselves. It showed how people want and need law enforcement, but actually don't want to be a "part" of it or be close to the people who do it. How relevant, huh?
For 25 years I worked as a consultant in community mental health centers. You see a lot of that hidden world in those centers. One time a court ordered a woman to undergo an evaluation because she had watched, while doing nothing, her boyfriend strangle her child. None of the other counselors would do the evaluation---they wouldn't even be in the same room with her, and I don't blame them. Being the consultant, it was rightfully my job to do, so I did it.....internally retching the entire time. I still remember that vividly, 30 years later.
My wife, years and years later still has those violent, degenerate, sad, hopeless experiences easily accessed in her mind, easily retrievable, including memories of recently dead people.
I'd like to see one...just ONE, article in The Atlantic, the New York Times, or Washington Post that shows even the tiniest amount of compassion or understanding for what it's like to work in Law Enforcement. Or even a single article written by a police officer. Just one would be nice. Instead they are all articles written by academics and opinion writers about police.
Why is that? Almost every entry in the victim sweepstakes in those publications gets ample opportunities to have their voices heard? But not police. THAT's "liberal?" No.
And instead of the constant CONSTANT accusations of racism, there hasn't been an article where there is even just a bit of compassion for law enforcement officers from Progressives.
No compassion for the degeneracy that they deal with on a daily basis, and the corrosive effects this has on their souls.
Is it too late?
How do we, as a civilized society, reverse what Progressives have done to policing, to our safety, and to the people we Democrats had always had a priority to protect? How can we make policing have "meaning" again? How can we get the top 29 of 2200 applicants who can all pass their tests on the first try and who are in the profession because of a genuine desire to do good for their communities? It seems hopeless. We have seen no answers to this problem that Progressives/BLM activists have created.
We, ourselves, are still safe. We live in an area where police are still valued and respected, so we can get the best to apply (and others, as we have read, are coming here from "Progressive" areas). So why should we care?
Answer: Because we are Democrats.
And as we have said (boringly, we know, over and over and over), it is low income and minorities who will pay the price for the negativity shown to police and law enforcement.
Who we will vote for
We will vote for a candidate who will confront the anti-police bias and who will defend police against accusations of racism. In other words, a candidate who will truly protect minorities and low income people with more than idle, self-congratulatory talk. A candidate who will value the people who do the dirtiest work on the planet dealing with unbelievable soul-crushing depravity and violence. And that's not Harris or her Progressive soul-mates.
We'll
actually consider voting for Harris if she will, personally and
publicly, apologize to my wife and to all of the other officers she has
so demeaned by joining in with those who call law enforcement racist. And admit that she was fundamentally wrong in saying that what was needed was to Defund the police.
Dying in the line of duty
Vicky, in her career in law enforcement, has attended two funerals of officers killed in the line of duty...one man and one woman. Their spouses, children, and parents were there of course, as well as all of the police force that wasn't needed at that moment in their communities. All of the other officers, as well as those from law enforcement throughout the state, were honoring that man and that woman who died, and grieving for and with the family.
Those hundreds of other officers were there to show to the fallen officers' families that those officers had given their lives for a greater good, that their deaths were meaningful in that way. To leave them with a feeling of pride to hopefully soften, just a bit, maybe in the future, the pain of their loss. All of the attending officers' badges were covered with black tape to show there was a death in the "family." Bagpipes played as the bodies were lowered into the ground, followed by a 21-gun salute to honor them.
My wife, the "racist cop" who spent her life protecting people like the cop critic Rodney Balko, and like Kamala Harris who wants to Defund police (my wife one time was on a police security detail with the Secret Service when Ronald Reagan made a speech at a stadium in Seattle and another time for Gerald Ford). And unlike Progressives who have never done police work or risked their lives themselves in any way to protect anybody (but are experts anyway), in these instances plus hundreds of more, it could have been my wife who those officers were honoring at these ceremonies.
She risked it all for the greater good, and I get to look at her over the dinner table. Lucky me.
Importantly, the fear of being killed did not drive those officers at the funerals out of the profession. What is driving good officers out is, instead, as I said in this blog entry, the the fear of having their lives ruined by Progressive actions if anything goes wrong. And the reluctance to be thought to be racist, which has robbed the job of meaning.
As my wife, at this moment, is telling me about these funerals, she is weeping. So am I.
Thank you for the post...I'll follow your travels
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