Policing & Racism

I know this is going to be contentious, but before I begin, I'd like to ask the site moderators not to censor this thread.

The past few days have convinced me that, more than ever, we need to be able to talk about this subject, and everything being done right now in an attempt to be "sensitive" is, in fact, causing the problem to spiral in the wrong direction.

I also want to point out that nearly everyone on both sides of this argument is completely in the wrong.  This is why we see no progress towards a solution.  The reason these police incidents keep occurring is not because of racism per se.  It is injustice itself, from whatever motive, that gives rise to these situations.  There are three main causes for these incidents, one of which is impossible to stamp out completely:

1) Sampling bias - In essence, from both the law abiding community's interactions with police, and the better part of the law enforcement community's interactions with the public, the fact that we uphold the laws and regulations upon ourselves mean that we'll interact disproportionately with folks on the other side who don't follow the rules.  In short, only bad cops hassle the law-abiding, and good cops mainly interact with the worst and most criminal members of society at large.  This is the unavoidable point which everyone seems to have forgotten, if indeed they took the time to understand it in the first place.

2) Selective enforcement - We have, in the United States, so many laws and regulations that enforcing them all is impossible, however large and well-equipped the police force may be.  Obeying them all is likewise nearly impossible.  Many of these laws are plainly unreasonable.  I had a friend (who is white) who got pulled over on consecutive days on the same stretch of road.  The first time he was doing 32mph in a 25mph zone.  The second time he drove exactly 25mph and was promptly cited for impeding traffic (which he was, of course, because no one naturally drives that slow unless they're drunk).  In such a situation, laws will always be enforced selectively, and there is simply no equitable way to do that.  Some will be punished severely and others not at all.  This is by definition unjust, and will lead to confrontation between police and individuals who feel they are being singled out (for whatever reason).

3) Police Unions - Edwin Curtis (look him up, please) predicted that police unions would lead to an overall lapse in discipline, and that this would make unfit officers a menace to the communities they are hired to serve.  The present circumstances I believe have proven him right.  The unions do serve a constructive purpose in negotiating for suitable pay and benefits, but their interference with disciplinary matters, and more ominously their support of prosecutors (District Attorneys & Attorneys General often seek their endorsement) mean that it is too difficult for police departments to weed out the bad apples.  Bad cops make good cops' jobs more difficult, of course, but union interference with due process is wholly inappropriate.

Issue #1 can only be addressed at the individual level, and really only by talking to one another.  There are bad people in every group, the job of a police officer is difficult and dangerous even under ideal circumstances, but the responsibility of an officer is to the community at large and no one else.  An officer who is gripped by fear or driven to loathe that community is not fit to serve, and should find another profession.

Issues #2 & #3 can be solved by political action (but not mere protest), but principally at the legislative and local prosecutorial levels.  The President could not be more powerless to help.  Laws which overreach, or which are simply to complex to enforce and/or obey, need to be repealed in their entirety.  Police Unions need to be restricted in their scope of action to matters of pay & benefits only.  Police Departments need the ability to discipline and fire officers who break the rules over a single offense, without appeal.

The leaders on both sides of this don't really intend to solve the problem, they merely want to use it for their own self-aggrandizement.  If they really cared, they'd be endorsing Libertarians.  Politicians benefit from the crisis, and suffer from the resolution of it.  To put it simply, you're more useful to them when you're angry.

Personally, that's what bothers me most about this situation.  Huge numbers of people are simply being used (again, by both sides) to visit harm upon others who have done them no wrong.  I know it's hard to think clearly when the topic is this raw and emotional for so many, but until we do, there is no hope of finding an equitable solution.  At best, we'll simply be trading one injustice for another.

That's another issue - many are afraid to talk, because they fear someone will jump down their throat the moment the speak up with an idea which someone else doesn't like.  If we can't talk objectively about the subject, it basically means we can't talk at all.  That gets us nowhere.

Villainizing police is indeed counterproductive, but the notion this is about money or about black people's participation in policing is incorrect.

If you merely encouraged or even required more black officers to be hired, there would still be that small number of people who enlist simply because they like the idea of bullying people with a badge.  The color of the officer might change, but the number of people being victimized by bad cops would not decrease at all.

Second, if you want the community to engage with, much less join, their local police departments, then they must see a lot less of their friends & family being hassled by the few (and they are assuredly a small number) bad cops in the department.

When bad cops hassle law-abiding people, then law-abiding people start avoiding all police, and treating them with suspicion.  The good cops can't get information they need to work effectively, and have a harder time staying grounded emotionally.  If you want the good members of the community to join the police, they first must look up to police as a model of virtue and discipline.  Again, it comes down to discipline, and the need for the department to rid itself of bad actors is front and center.

When everyone on the right side of the law treats others with civility and respect, even during a confrontation, the other issues will quickly solve themselves.  Cities can't hire local citizens into the police force if they don't want to be cops.  And in a city where cops are perceived as bullies, who but the local bullies would even bother to join their ranks?

I'd frankly love to see folks from both sides come in and voice their opinions here.

I don't think there are very many people who would argue against the idea that law-abiding citizens shouldn't be hassled by cops, or that already-subdued or cooperative suspects shouldn't be injured or killed by cops.

Likewise, I don't think very many people would argue with the idea that policing is a difficult and dangerous profession, and that those individuals who conduct themselves well in that profession are worthy of our universal respect and admiration.

It's clear we're in a mess right now when it comes to policing, but few have really taken the time to understand how we got here, and what is really preventing us from reducing and/or eliminating the problem.

Everything each side is doing right now seems to be increasing the antagonism between police and the communities they are intended to serve, and this costs innocent lives and livelihoods on both sides of the divide.  That's why I felt compelled to start this thread.  The solutions are simple, but they are politically inconvenient to both the right and the left.

"Policing has historical links to lynching, back to the Jim Crow laws."

Not quite.  Lynching (at least as a racial issue in the United States) began before Jim Crow laws, and was always an extra-judicial activity.  Many lynchings followed acquittals or dismissals of charges in the courts.  Segregation efforts didn't really take root until Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, and wasn't applied at the Federal level until the Woodrow Wilson administration in 1913.

This did not lead to gangs, at least not directly.  Gangs, like other forms of organized crime, arose as a result of Prohibition in 1920 (another Woodrow Wilson special).  Gangs often took on an ethnic/racial identity, this much is true, but it wasn't until there was something illicit and valuable worth smuggling & distributing that they actually arose as an unsettling force within urban society.  And among gangs, different kinds of white people fought each other as much or more than they fought blacks.

"As much as we can't go back to the Jim Crow days, justice has to be done locally by local citizens of that area."

I have to take issue with this.  By this logic, your solution is, quite literally, a lynch mob.  Lawlessness breeds lawlessness, and almost without fail such efforts punish the innocent with equal fury to that which is set upon the truly villainous.  The rule of law must be equitable, reasonable, and absolute, otherwise you get tyranny and oppression, which always leads to an increase in violence.

"Teenagers need money for college, so they sign up for the military."

Your characterization of the military is also quite wrong.  Certainly, for some people (pilots, army medics, technicians), the financial motives play a part in their enlistment, but no one I know who has served (and I considered it myself when I was leaving high school, many of my classmates served, and some are still in the service 20 years later) didn't do it without being prepared to fight.  Military servicemen may not choose the conflict, but they understand it is part of the job.  When I was in school, I watched genocides play out in Rwanda and the Balkans, and it was America's failure to intervene there which convinced me not to join the Army.  The last thing I wanted was to be trained and prepared for combat, and then not used for that purpose when the need, however remote and removed from America, might arise again.  The benefits seemed almost meaningless in comparison to the purpose of the profession.

The difference between the military and the police is discipline.  Most of the better cops are former military.  You step out of line as a soldier, and you are punished severely for it.  Before police unions, police departments were very much the same in this respect.  Police today, however, might be put on desk duty for a week until the union rep convinces the powers that be to drop the inquiry.

"If a sheriff can complain that looters are not locals of the city but people coming to their city, then the same should be said of the police officers hired."

Is there not a huge difference between a criminal who comes to another town to visit harm on others, as opposed to a person who comes to town to protect its peace and prosperity?  You mentioned the Michael Brown case as an officer originally from TX moving to MO, but there are at least an equal number of incidents involving officers from the same state.  It's the quality of the officer, from whatever place he originates, which matters.

More importantly, nearly everyone moves when they leave school and/or the military.  I grew up in eastern MA, and almost none of my friends remain there today.  You move where you can find a job in your chosen field, wherever that may be.

Moreover, even supposing you could and should hire cops locally, are there not roughly the same proportion of bad actors in every place?  Bad local cops, at least in my experience, are the worst of the worst.  In my hometown growing up, there were two officers in the local PD that everyone knew by name, and they both grew up in town.  They did nothing but hassle inoffensive people all day, every day, and would brag about it vociferously as if they were doing everyone a public service.  Bad people from town have a better knowledge of how to put the screws to the locals, which makes them more dangerous to the community, not less.

Still, @COMPUTERSareEVIL, I thank you for wading in to this conversation (I can see no one else has, which is disappointing but not surprising).  I understand your sentiments, but at the end of the day it is good laws and good police officers which will solve this problem.  Nothing else will even make a dent.

If the goal is to have a civil discussion, exchange facts,, and educate each other, it wouldn't be a problem.  But people would rather fight, argue, and blather on.

@IMBacon - Exactly so, at least for the people who are most emotionally vested, and (dishonestly, of course) those who seek to expand their own influence.  Most of us, however, would like to see real, tangible progress made towards having a safe community where no law-abiding citizen has to fear police overreach.  It can be done, but we have to think carefully about how it can be done, and what really it is that stands in our way.

@COMPUTERSareEVIL - I had chess.com erase my replies twice yesterday, so I feel your pain in that regard.

As to bad cops being shuffled around, and blacks being generally underrepresented, this is undeniably true, the only exception I'm making to that part of your argument is that a direct intervention to hire whatever local & minority candidates are willing to join will fail to deliver good candidates under the present circumstances.

If you want to attract good, disciplined, level-headed, and truly caring individuals into the police force, your police force must first be a model of virtue.  If the locals don't believe police can help, that they only serve to bully people, then the job will not appeal to the virtuous, only to those who like to bully people (and we have those in every community).

Supposing you can find enough good local people to adequately fill the ranks (and I have no doubt that every city has a sufficient number of these, as well), convincing those particular people to sign up is an altogether different matter.  Even if starting from scratch (and this is simply not practical), the mere memory of how rotten/oppressive/corrupt local policing has been will make it nearly impossible to attract the talent you need for the effort to work.

It is the shuffling around - rather than the outright dismissal - of problem officers that is at issue.  On that point it seems we agree - but that's the police union at work.  You have to get the bad cops out, that has to be step #1.  To get them out, you need to break the power of the union over disciplinary actions and criminal prosecutions of officers who break the law.  To do that, we need to vote in local elections (which have notoriously low turnouts), and elect libertarians when we do.

For the most part i can have civil well thought out discussions with people face to face.  We dont always agree, but its generally civil.  Online?  Completely different story. 

That is undoubtedly true, as well, but in the days of Covid-19, talking face-to-face is not easily done.

The online discussions are mainly more difficult because the written word can often be interpreted differently by different readers.  In a live conversation, the emotional context and sincerity of the speaker can be more accurately conveyed.  With online posts, you can never be 100% sure from a single post whether a person means what they're saying, or is just trying to get a rise out of certain people.

However, if they are sincere, it will be evident by their commitment to the conversation, and by how they elaborate on their position to make it better understood.  Most of us are rational, caring people. 

@COMPUTERSareEVIL, for example, has brought some good, constructive points to this conversation.  His views aren't in complete alignment with my own, but it's clear that this person cares about the issue, has thought about it carefully, and strongly believes that locally-sourced police officers are the solution.  This suggestion is not itself an unreasonable one, but there are (at least in my view) more than a few reasons why it can't work under the present circumstances.  This individual's view of the "ideal end state" is well-reasoned, but the means by which that state might be achieved are more complex than at first it would seem, primarily because participation in the profession of law enforcement is entirely voluntary.

Good people join the police force (and the military, for that matter) because they see a noble profession, enforcing justice and protecting the innocent from those who would do them harm.  That belief is shaken when laws are oppressive or when those tasked with enforcing them are corrupt or inequitable.

From the departmental standpoint, strict discipline of offending officers is necessary to removing the doubts which the community at large will always have in response to police offenses.  The oppressiveness of the laws themselves is derived from the fact that there are too many laws (again, selective enforcement is by nature inequitable), and also that many municipalities rely on civil fines as a revenue source, which is a perverse incentive for police to write too many tickets and make too many arrests, most of which have no positive effect at all on the public safety.  In the former case, it's the police union which stands in the way of progress, in the latter, it's the excessive indebtedness and fiscal irresponsibility of the government which hires the police which is aggravating the problem by increasing the number and severity of confrontations.  In both cases, the libertarian movement is the only political group which seeks to remove the obstruction in question.

Most republicans just want more cops, most democrats just want more laws, and neither side is doing anything to improve the quality of either (cops and laws, respectively).