Race Relations in the Varrio - Race, Cops, and a Practical Suggestion or Two
Mates,
Taking a cue from the Covid diary which was informative, I will try to do the same here, but about the issue of police, racism and brutality. I worked in law enforcement in Socal for over a decade before coming back home to Michigan. A substantial amount of my time was dedicated to gang enforcement and included running a task force with a Lt, 2 sergeants and 20 investigators from various agencies. For years my cases were gang homicides, drive-by shootings, beatings, stabbings, tortures, etc. How many bodies do you want, how do you want them killed, and I probably have a true-life story that fits.
It is a sad fact that there are racist, brutal, dishonest cops. There are also racist, brutal, dishonest coaches. And grocery store clerks. And judges, and bloggers, and stockbrokers, and teachers, and you get the picture. The problem with police officers is that their occupation makes them uniquely capable of adversely affecting or ending someone’s life in the process. We see the fruits of that from time to time, but right now it is front and center.
Beyond racism is the fact that there are bad cops (and fill in every other profession) who lie, cheat, agitate and put everybody in their circle in danger. It is the human condition, and until the second coming the world will have those people. I want to look into what cops do, the environment they work in, and maybe an idea or two about making things better.
I. Race Relations in the Varrio
In a word, race relations in the varrio can be complex. Your typical gang usually comes from a particular neighborhood and reflects the ethnicity of that neighborhood. Most gangs are of a single shade of melanin (or lack thereof), though some other melanin combinations are occasionally mixed in. To the extent that these folks go to the joint (state prison) then they will segregate themselves to a severe degree by racial lines. Painting with a broad brush here, but in the joint the most common troubles are between brown and black factions. And if there is a big dust-up, usually the brown and white gangs will align. YMMV.
In the streets the gang warfare is usually by neighborhood and that means, frequently, by race. However, the vast majority of the crimes will be inflicted on groups who have the same melanin content as the perpetrator. Of course, you have some cross-racial disputes that can be very, very bitter and lethal. As an aside, even though the black and brown gangsters were physically more imposing and more numerous, the Asian gangsters were not messed with as much as one might think as they were, candidly, more intelligent and better armed. I don’t have time/space to talk about bikers and skinheads.
II. Cops in the Varrio + Some Examples
One of the things about police work is that it is different than literally any other occupation. It demands skills that span from social worker to soldier and everything in between. Beyond that, working in your worst urban neighborhoods is vastly different than working (or living) in swanky suburbs like Bloomfield Hills, Shaker Heights, or Evanston. The mentality of those you meet in the streets, the level of danger and of chaos, is so much different than what most people will ever experience in their lives that its kind of hard to explain. I’m going to try with a few stories, some I tell when asked to talk on the topic but I’m doing my best to abbreviate them here.
- K.R. and the Gangster Bar
One of my all-time favorite peace officers was a guy I’ll designate as K.R. KR was Hispanic and worked in the same city that he grew up in, though things had changed a lot. He was as smart, gracious, and honest of a person as you would ever hope to meet in any occupation. He was a gifted investigator with a knack of getting people to talk with him and also had an uncanny providence to have major crime happen right in front of his eyes – like shootings over the top of his car. One night he and ‘Juice’ (NTJ) went into a gangster bar that was a cross between the Star Wars bar and the scene out of Animal House (“Hey, Otis!”). They are looking for a guy who has a warrant. They find him, and when he goes to stand up they see he has a gun. At this point Juice broadcasts on the radio, “10-33”, which means ‘emergency radio traffic only’ – basically every law enforcement agency immediately shut up, no radio transmissions. There is quiet ‘hiss’ of silence and then you hear Juice yell in rapid succession, “9-9-7! 9-9-7!’. In the background of that call is an unholy roar. The 9-9-7 call means, in essence, ‘We are dying. If you hear this call get here Code-3, lights and sirens, right now, we are dying’. KR and Juice were literally being attacked by a bar-full of gangsters. They were taking bottles, chairs, punches, kicks, and everything else. The guy that KR was trying to get the gun from was going for KR’s gun and KR was getting hit so hard he was losing consciousness. There’s lots more to the story, but the calvary arrived, K.R. lived and was taken to the hospital, and yeah, there were some bodies laid out.
- Execution on the Highway
One of the last warrants I filed before I left was for a gangster that murdered a CHP officer on a vehicle stop. Pulled over at about 0300 hrs for speeding, the gangster who was driving put his gun under his left arm pit, and as the CHP approached the vehicle the gangster shot him, with the bullet going under the officer’s Kevlar vest. The gangster then got out, put the gun to the forehead of the wounded officer, and pulled the trigger.
- Parolees in Paradise
Dealing with parolees is its own joy. Understanding that I’m painting with a broad brush, the psychology of felons is really hard to describe without writing a book. The thing most likely to be missing is logic and self-control. However, at least in my day, there were some honest cons (slang for convicts, having been to the joint). We went to hook one up one evening and there was a regular beat officer who rolled back-up to transport the arrestee. The parolee was calm the whole time until the transport officer was getting involved. The con called one of our guys over and asked that we take the cuffs off of him so he could kick that transport officer’s tail. The con was getting $^t-talked by that other cop for no good reason. The Sgt pulled that cop aside and he got a talking to, and we were sorely tempted to take the cuffs off. In retrospect, that’s the type of cop that is trouble. That’s the guy that is going to agitate, cause trouble, and resort to force too soon.
Outside of Rodney King’s evening back in ’91, I really didn’t see what most would call brutality. And to parse the King matter more closely than most like to, the use of force was justified at the start of that rodeo. As providence would have it, Rodney’s next arrest came across my desk a couple years later. Talk about a hot potato.
III. Some Suggestions – And What About Jerk Cops
Having sons, and with xtramelanin in our household, you know I’ve had ‘the talk’ with them. That talk is given more than once and with greater specificity as they get older. There is a heightened alert for many cops when pulling over people of color. The race issue gets wrapped up with the safety issue and whether the cop is a jerk issue. Remember too, the first rule of law enforcement is go home at the end of your shift which means to be alive at the end of your shift. I will add that I have been to too many ‘cop’ funerals, guys I knew. There is something that pulls at your heart beyond the normal funeral. Anyway, a couple of suggestions.
- Body cams. Body cams. Body cams.
As simple as it sounds it is beyond belief how many problems this one provision solves. No longer having a swearing contest. No longer guessing who said what and when. Certainty as to how much time a given activity took, what the witness or arrestee did, the route a chase took, etc. They aren’t perfect but I have to tell you this one simple idea will solve about 99% of the issues in terms of what happened and who gets held accountable for what.
Police officers train on the proper techniques to use force and to arrest. More training isn’t a bad idea, but ultimately knowing that someone will be held accountable is the trump card of behavior modification. I would add that Detroit PD is notorious for ‘losing’ the downloads of video from their scout cars. That is what corruption looks like, more benign than a fight or a riot, but the effects can be horrendous.
- What To Do If You’re Pulled Over
I imagine every set of eyes that sees this has been pulled over, and many will be pulled over again. Reading the earlier thread today we see not all encounters like that go fine and one thing that might be helpful is to be prepared. Remember, the officer wants to go home at the end of the shift and you can help her/him do that and if you’re cool, you have a way better chance of not getting a ticket. If you get pulled over:
- Turn all music/sound off immediately
- Pull over quickly and if it’s possible, in as safe of a place as you can find
- All windows go down unless it’s a blizzard or downpour – ease of view
- If you’ve got it quickly available have your insurance and registration at hand. In our rigs we put both items in one envelope that is clearly marked that way.
- Drivers, keep your hands on steering wheel with palms facing you.
- Easy, relaxed movements and don’t reach for anything unless you let the officer know, ‘My insurance is in the glove compartment, want me to get it now?’
- If its dark turn your inside dome lights on once you have pulled over – again, put the officer at ease.
- IV. Conclusions
A couple of quick conclusions. We all know that racism is bad and so is brutality. Some cops are awesome. Many are pretty good, but some are horrible. They are the ones that never made the JV team and got swirlied in high school by some of you and they haven’t forgotten that indignity. That said, police work can be unbelievably taxing, tense, difficult and require a host of skills that no other profession demands. And its dangerous: precious few of you have been a one-man unit, at night, pulling over a car load of who knows what type of people, and if somebody starts acting up you might be at the wrong end of a 2,3,4-on-1 fight to the death. Most cops deserve our respect. The bad ones deserve to be fired and/or prosecuted. Record, record, record.
p.s. I wrote this with the other board posts in mind and hope I am not adding fuel to any fires. If so, take it down, I’m not offended and certainly don’t want to offend others.
XM
Others have pointed out some flaws with this line of thinking, and I will add. That said, the issue of police killing people is relatively minor issue in terms of raw statistics.
The core problem is trust. For years, in places like Ferguson, MO, cops were incentivized to exploit black neighborhoods for profit.
In places like LA, cops were taught military tactics in a (valid) attempt to command and control extremely difficult situations. Taking immediate physical, verbal, and tactical control of a situation can save a cop’s life when the perpetrators are armed and may have malice intent. Doing that to innocent people just trying to live their lives is inappropriate. Cops were just trying to survive with these extreme tactics, and didn’t have the luxury of knowing who the bad guys were.
And then, perhaps the most insidious change, was the implementation of COMSTAT and other quantitative programs that incentivize arrests, tickets, stops, etc. Here again, a well-meaning (and initially successful) concept transformed into a push for numbers—think Wells Fargo—instead of a push for fair and honest policing.
All of this is happening not long after Jim Crow, when the police were a very real and dangerous enemy of innocent black people and frequently allowed persecution and murder to occur without investigations or punishment for the perpetrators. Sadly, some of this still happens.
There are obviously many other factors, but the bottom line is that when the police treat you—physically and financially—like a criminal because of the color of your skin, it builds a sense of fear, distrust, and anger that make it harder for you to make good split second decisions when confronted by cops. Which leads to more problems.
This is a very long way of saying that while, statistically, it’s unlikely that a black person is going to be killed by a cop of any color, lots of lives are ruined and/or adversely affected by cops. So when a death like George Floyd’s does occur, it feels like that could happen to any black person, any time.
"10 unarmed black people and 20 unarmed white people"
There are five times the number of white people in the US so Black people have two and a half times the chance of getting shot by police. 250% is statistically significant. That stat also tries to make the issue look small. It's only 10 killings out of 10,000,000 arrests....
That's one of the big problems with statistics is that you can construct misleading stories. In 2017 there were only 12,000 murders/non-negligent manslaughter cases. Should police be committing 7.6%+ of the murders in the country?
There are bad guys out there who need to be arrested and/or stopped (I'm currently watching Narcos). We need police to do that and it is a heroic job. ...but there are fundamental problems that need to be fixed. Look at liberal NYC with uber-liberal Bill DeBlasio during SIP, the police handed out masks to white people violating social distancing and arrested blacks for the same thing.
Trying to extrapolate nationwide trends and conclusions off of 10 and 20 deaths in a year may not necessarily lead to the most sound conclusions. Law of small numbers, and all.
A former cop (who worked in the same area as XM) largely agrees with you -
"To understand why all cops are bastards, you need to understand one of the things almost every training officer told me when it came to using force:
“I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.”
Meaning, “I’ll take my chances in court rather than risk getting hurt”. We’re able to think that way because police unions are extremely overpowered and because of the generous concept of Qualified Immunity, a legal theory which says a cop generally can’t be held personally liable for mistakes they make doing their job in an official capacity."
https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d1…
Thanks, pescadero. That's a good read. I especially like this bit, which gets at why I will not play xm's game of helping him delegitimize my perspective by discussing whether I am now, or have ever been, a cop:
One of the most important thought leaders in law enforcement is Col. Dave Grossman, a “killologist” who wrote an essay called “Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs”. Cops are the sheepdogs, bad guys are the wolves, and the citizens are the sheep (!). Col. Grossman makes sure to mention that to a stupid sheep, sheepdogs look more like wolves than sheep, and that’s why they dislike you.
This “they hate you for protecting them and only I love you, only I can protect you” tactic is familiar to students of abuse. It’s what abusers do to coerce their victims into isolation, pulling them away from friends and family and ensnaring them in the abuser’s toxic web. Law enforcement does this too, pitting the officer against civilians. “They don’t understand what you do, they don’t respect your sacrifice, they just want to get away with crimes. You’re only safe with us.”
And this bit gets at why I think just eliminating qualified immunity doesn't go far enough:
Understand: Police officers are part of the state monopoly on violence and all police training reinforces this monopoly as a cornerstone of police work, a source of honor and pride. Many cops fantasize about getting to kill someone in the line of duty, egged on by others that have. One of my training officers told me about the time he shot and killed a mentally ill homeless man wielding a big stick. He bragged that he “slept like a baby” that night. Official training teaches you how to be violent effectively and when you’re legally allowed to deploy that violence, but “unofficial training” teaches you to desire violence, to expand the breadth of your violence without getting caught, and to erode your own compassion for desperate people so you can justify punitive violence against them.
Strict criminal liability for all police homicides would force that disgusting, anti-social culture to start changing the day it's enacted.
jon, at this point i realize you are distraught over the topic and not able to deal with it logically. I also am guessing (but not throwing shade) that you are unemployed and/or have a criminal history. i only mention that because it is obviously coloring everything you are mentioning, including citing this one article from a radical left-leaning author whose 'sources' are equally far from objectivity. the author of this piece you mention has a fraction of the experience of someone like me, but you want to take his article as gospel. i have argued the law of homicide to dozens of juries and convicted everyone i ever tried for a homicide, but you want to question my knowledge of the law and quibble about the law in....georgia?
i will make a suggestion: no matter where you live you can contact the local police or sheriff and go on what is called a 'ride-a-long'. doesn't make any difference if you live in sleepy-ville or some wild urban area. it might not make a huge difference, but i bet you at least get a better flavor for what you have no personal experience about, but about which you also have such inaccurate passion to attack. also, its not 'delegitimizing' to disagree with you. you really have no idea what you are taking about and i guess using your logic, you are trying to 'delegitimize' me, right?
i wish you well jon, and to the extent you feel so strongly about this issue, get some first person experience.
jon, at this point i realize you are distraught over the topic and not able to deal with it logically.
lol. Me?
I also am guessing (but not throwing shade) that you are unemployed and/or have a criminal history.
First, and I mean this in as dispassionate a manner as possible, you really need to go fuck yourself. Second, I have literally never been arrested, nor have I ever been unemployed since I was like 14.
i only mention that because it is obviously coloring everything you are mentioning, including citing this one article from a radical left-leaning author whose 'sources' are equally far from objectivity.
We disagree, xm. You claim to have been a cop, and certainly you occupy the perspective of a cop. I have a different one. Adults can disagree without one of them being a criminal.
the author of this piece you mention has a fraction of the experience of someone like me, but you want to take his article as gospel.
The author of this piece literally shares your claimed experience. So how do you figure that you have more experience?
i have argued the law of homicide to dozens of juries and convicted everyone i ever tried for a homicide, but you want to question my knowledge of the law and quibble about the law in....georgia?
Now you were a lawyer. Which one is it? Cop or lawyer? Both? Or are you just running a con here? The state of Georgia text was the first thing I found when I googled. Here's the part of the California penal code, btw, that shows that homicide is not always unlawful:
Homicide is excusable in the following cases:
1. When committed by accident and misfortune, or in doing any other lawful act by lawful means, with usual and ordinary caution, and without any unlawful intent.
2. When committed by accident and misfortune, in the heat of passion, upon any sudden and sufficient provocation, or upon a sudden combat, when no undue advantage is taken, nor any dangerous weapon used, and when the killing is not done in a cruel or unusual manner.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=195.&lawCode=PEN
Either produce legal texts to the contrary or admit you misspoke.
i will make a suggestion: no matter where you live you can contact the local police or sheriff and go on what is called a 'ride-a-long'. doesn't make any difference if you live in sleepy-ville or some wild urban area. it might not make a huge difference, but i bet you at least get a better flavor for what you have no personal experience about, but about which you also have such inaccurate passion to attack.
If you actually look, you'll be able to find accounts of people who went on ride alongs and were disgusted by what they observed.
also, its not 'delegitimizing' to disagree with you. you really have no idea what you are taking about and i guess using your logic, you are trying to 'delegitimize' me, right?
You are the one claiming that only people with your experience have valid views.
i wish you well jon, and to the extent you feel so strongly about this issue, get some first person experience.
I have exactly as much first person experience of my life as you have of yours. Maybe you should get some outside perspectives, too, since you have shown yourself so incapable of taking them seriously.
I have exactly as much first person experience of my life as you have of yours.
Percentage-wise, that's true, but if XM is older then he has more.
jon, too many strawmen and diversions in what you wrote to bother with. i'll just say i wish you well again.
and here's a story you might like. or not.
xm, you demonstrably did not know the legal definition of homicide. You were definitely not a prosecutor, as you pretended in your last comment, nor do I any longer believe you were a cop.
No opinion on the story, except that I'm not interested in human interest stories designed to distract people from real issues.
jon, there is so much humor to be had here but that's not going to help your situation so let me just stick to the facts. i was a DA for a decade. mrs. XM was a DA. that's how we met. i have tried probably 150 cases in socal, and that included a boatload of homicides, drive-bys, stabbings, shootings, etc. how many bodies do you want, how do you want them killed, i probably tried and/or handled a case like it. my dear wife has seen me try multiple homicides and she and all our children watched me try a double homicide a few years back as a defense attorney (2 NG's,). i set another homicide trial yesterday, to be tried this fall. i resolved a different homicide last fall on very, very favorable terms for my client.
i have never, ever claimed to be a cop and if you look up thread a bit, i even specified that to another user (might have been carpetbagger). see also my discussion in this thread with guthrie. that's kind of shop talk, like engineers or plumbers or whatever, but for DA's.
also, not only have a number of people on this list met me, they've met my entire family. some people on this list, including some lurkers, have known me for 40 yrs. if i'm not what i've said, i am a gifted con and i'd like to be given that status. could have some advantages. or, i might be exactly what i claim to be with a viewpoint you disagree with and you are having trouble squaring up your view of the world, which apparently includes zero real-life experience on the topics in this thread, and what someone with decades of experience has shared.
yet again jon, i wish you well. use all that passion to get some real-life education on the topic and maybe we can have a more robust discussion some other day.
If this is true, you should have known that not all homicides are unlawful under California law. I already quoted the California code to you, since you tried to laugh off the Georgia version. Pick a state and I'll find you the same point in that state. Something's being homicide has to do with a human's actions causing a death, not whether those actions were illegal. That's why medical examiners can rule that things were homicides, which is merely one fact among many that DAs have to take into account in making charging decisions. Surely you should know this. Why you tried to say otherwise remains a mystery to me. You should presumably also know (re: your legal claim in another thread) that in general gross negligence cannot be waived.
Earlier in this thread you tried to gaslight me by saying that I was too emotional because I was probably unemployed or some kind of criminal, which is perhaps the most preposterous thing I have ever read on this board.
I'm not having any trouble squaring up your viewpoint with mine. I think you're wrong, and insofar as you have the experiences you represent yourself as having, I think they've warped your sense of justice so that you cannot imagine a police system that is not violent by default. But I don't have trouble understanding people who come to conclusions that I think are wrong.
What I do have trouble squaring up is your claims about who you are combined with your apparent ignorance of basic features of the legal system and your absurd attempt to gaslight me. So you can make as many accounts as you want to downvote all my posts on this thread and upvote all of yours. You'll still be the one that doubled down and went for gaslighting when somebody pointed out you said something demonstrably false about the law.
Thanks for this perspective.
I would just point out that there is plenty of research now suggesting that body cams do not in fact make as much of a difference as you suggest.
It's important to understand the anecdotal experiences of officers, but looking at the statistics of what works to reduce police brutality and improve outcomes for everyone involved is important.
What are your thoughts on the policy changes outlined at 8cantwait.org?
- Ban chokeholds and strangleholds
- Require de-escalation if possible
- Require warning before shooting
- Require exhausting all alternatives before shooting
- Duty to intervene
- Ban shooting at moving vehicles
- Require use of force continuum
- Require comprehensive reporting
Based on the studies they've either conducted or analyzed, putting all of these policies (none of which *sound* unreasonable to me) in place can reduce police killings by 72%.
Interesting proposal with some ideas that might work, but also some that are vague and/or questionable.
One issue seems to be that a lot of the data supporting the proposals is from meta-analysis and other studies that don't account for other factors that would influence the true "effectiveness" of the proposed measures. An outside assessment from a university researcher specializing in crime and racial discrimination was that the campaign proposals were "not evidence based" but more of a "brilliant marketing strategy" (https://www.vox.com/2020/6/5/21280402/8-cant-wait-explained-policing-reforms).
I think it is, at the very least, a good place to begin the discussion about what practical police reform would look like... but I'm not professionally qualified on the subject, either. JMO.
Definitely a little vague on a couple, though the website goes into more detail than a bullet point can. Looking forward to reading that article, thanks!
Hi M,
i'll try to respond in order, but first i'd comment that body cameras are the best we have right now in terms of behavior modification. i don't know what stats you are referring to and the details are important. your comment about 'improved outcomes' looks like it could be open to many interpretations but maybe you weren't being that specific. i can tell you that as someone who has dealt in criminal law longer than many here have been alive, body cams are a big deal. not perfect, but a big deal.
to your points:
- i can't speak for every dept, but i think choke holds are banned as a control maneuver. it might occur in the middle of a fray, rolling around on the ground for a second, but that's different.
- they do de-escalate
- warning before shooting is generally completely unrealistic in my experience in most use of deadly force situations that happen quickly. you might have a 'drop it! drop it!' call or something like that but the way it happens in the real world is not like TV.
- they generally do
- don't understand this one ('duty to intervene')
- i only remember one in my time and it was by guys in my unit when a parolee tried to run them over. all shooting instructions involve constant emphasis on what is called the 'background' of the shoot. lots of training on those issues.
- continuum is in play
- not sure what you are getting at with this one.
" - don't understand this one ('duty to intervene') "
A legal duty to intervene when another officer is engaging in illegal/unethical conduct... basically - your job (and possibly jail time) are on the line if it turns out you knew about some misconduct and failed to report/intervene.
okay, that makes sense now. that exists - for instance the 3 other officers standing around on the floyd case are all charged. other officers in the rodney king case were charged. also there is intradepartmental discipline on these issues. not enough, but it exists.
Actually, body cams help protect the police from false claims. Perps know they can no longer make up false claims, as they had in the past, now that the camera records the interaction. https://www.newsweek.com/amidst-debate-study-finds-body-cameras-decrease-polices-use-force-295315
First, often overlooked in these discussions is the fact that police killings have dropped dramatically over the last few decades largely because of reform..most often Court mandated. None with greater impact than the elimination of the previous policy that not only allowed but trained one to shoot at fleeing felons. Yes, statistics are fragmented but the earliest data collected by LAPD showed that the large 4 D battery metal flashlights in the hands of half a million officers every night in this country was twice as likely as a firearm discharge, after use, to hospitalize a suspect. Few remember the primary driver of the change to small flashlights was to reduce their lethal impact (google Malice Green if you want an example from Michigan's most famous use of force incident).
I give the history lesson because we only waste precious opportunity and energy to not learn from the past. The Supreme Court (mostly a more liberal court than today) has largely defined what can be done in terms of policing the police for their interactions with citizens. Most important, they require any policy or conviction pass the test of whether the act was "reasonable" given what the officer knew and could perceive at the time of the force decision.
It sounds great to come up with a proposal to "require exhausting all alternatives before shooting," but that has no chance of surviving a court review. The officer could have thrown his sidearm at the suspect with the knife before shooting..that would be exhaustive but is it reasonable?
The Minneapolis use of force policy is surprisingly out of date given the last police chief was fired over a use of force scandal (the shooting of the Australian woman by the newly hired, Somali immigrant officer). You would think the use of force policy would have quickly adopted some best practices such as some you mention (notably, how could their manual permit a knee as a neck constraint). That said, they teach using a use of force continuum and that is why the conviction of the officers is assured from my perspective...they continued restraining a man that could not possibly be resisting after the observing officer could not find a pulse or eye-movement.
That said, we need to look beyond force policies alone. What should leave us no less disturbed as that policy is the MPD permitting officer Chauvin to work nights for 15 straight years at a bar. Two-thirds of US police agencies have NO policy regulating their officers outside work. When I discuss US law enforcement abroad, this is arguably the element that foreign police have the most difficult time understanding. We have the people we permit to carry a gun and conduct arguably the hardest job on the planet to work late night shits at a second job.
This is just my own pop-psychology, but I believe Chauvin's inhuman gaze in the video with his knee on Floyd is too familiar in policing where you have too many zombie cops going through the motions of their day job while burnt out from also working a second job. Yes, law enforcement in major cities once earned 50% less than a BA-degree holding high school teacher, but today, those same officers make salaries 50% higher. It is time to stop treating police as non-professionals and outside employment (beyond training roles) should not be permitted.
Dangit, double post again. Two in two days, gotta love this website!
Thanks for this insight XM. I really appreciate it.
amen. thanks for sharing.
totally agree - cops have incredibly difficult jobs, body cams should be universal gear, there are dirtbag cops like every other sector (and by nature of the job, they can have a disproportionately large impact), even good cops can make bad calls that ruin lives, etc.
its a great conversation to have - citizens feel unjustly treated by bad cops, generations grow up hating police, less and less qualified, good people want to pursue LE work, etc. we need law and order in civil society and all citizens should feel safe and represented so hopefully some changes occur.
re one of your other comments, the absence of fathers has really hurt many black families. it all begins in the home - values, discipline, love, it all starts there. in general, many young men would be better off with 2 parents and more of a sense of community (church, school, etc). it wont solve every problem but graduating high school and not having children out of wedlock would help some young people get a leg up. easier said than done but statistically speaking, its a factor
XM- One thing I have always appreciated about you. No matter the topic, no matter the frustration, you always comment with a calm, common sense reproach for strong conversations, you have a middle ground mentality. I truly appreciate it, and have noted it publicly, and even through some personal email exchanges. Never stop being you. We could spend days sharing 'witching hour' stories...I'd like that someday. You are one of the guys I absolutely respect here.
The diary to me identifies a lot of the larger problem we face right now. The current tension and climate is a one-way street. The LEO have signs and rights allowing them to travel the direction they want down that street. Blacks, have had enough with the street, the signs, the law and it's use of that street...and damned if they do, damned if they don't many are saying fuck it...and driving the wrong way down that street, hitting anything in it's path...from LEO to government, to shops etc, defiance, in this case, isn't about breaking a law, it's about saying this law, the way it's enforced is wrong and we are done following it. Years of abuse, heck decades.
Change MUST happen. And the BLM group is hell bent on holding their end of it until change happens. I've had my own issues with law enforcement. MOST cops I've worked with, or encountered have done their job to serve the public in the name of safety. A couple have made life difficult for the sake of making life difficult, and some for the sake of politics
Change has to occur. One statement you made and I think it was a profound statement to me kudos for saying it:
"Having sons, and with xtramelanin in our household, you know I’ve had ‘the talk’ with them. That talk is given more than once and with greater specificity as they get older. There is a heightened alert for many cops when pulling over people of color. The race issue gets wrapped up with the safety issue and whether the cop is a jerk issue"
This is a smaller part of a bigger problem. I FULLY understand the need for you to have 'that talk' with your sons, and many other sons to hear the same. It's a problem that law enforcement everywhere must address. I say this also from a personal perspective. I had a buddy in high school who fought every single day. Someone talked to his girl, blood was shed. Someone bumped him in the halls, blood was shed. He was bored, blood was shed. We lifted weights together well after college, and one day on the way to the gym, some guy was tailgating him. Brakes lock up, both jump out, fists start flying. When he got back in the car, I asked, 'what the hell was that?' He said, 'the guy was disrespecting me, he had it coming.'
My point, if our world is constantly teaching that blacks steal, kill, loot, riot, and the media continues a myopic focus on the flames and drama...that's where society will remain. If we continue to teach our kids, cops are the enemy, any time you get pulled over, be prepared for brutality, mistreatment, and racism. You can't stop the fight, if you are always looking for the fight.
Right now it's a two-way fight. It started off a one-way fight, the law just did what they do. Unfortunately, the media, the politicians, agitators, etc are turning it into an ugly war. Tension was already high from months of being trapped in our homes fearing the impact of all of this virus nonsense. I truly hope at some point, we can all stop fearing the impact of law enforcement, and white men can stop telling their sons to be ready, and black men can stop telling their sons to be ready. It's a two-way street that needs to open for traffic.
Well put, well said. Beer is on me when we meet.
make mine a soda/whole milk and I'm holding you to it :) I'd even lend some help on the farm...I've spent some time with livestock.
I'll respectfully disagree on your idea for the solution as well as your take on what exactly the problem is.
I'll agree that BLM is "hell bent" on change. They should be. Would you prefer they continue to watch other unarmed black people be murdered or killed and hold vigils? "Spare the buildings, please!" Purely peaceful protests have had little to no effect over time for the Black community. Kaepernick got blackballed. MLK was assassinated. You can point to Woolworths and Rosa parks, but the medical, economic, and educational outcomes for black/Af-Am in the US have not improved since the 60s. While I am glad the protests have returned to peaceful approaches, I'm frankly shocked by the concern put forth by many for buildings and stores compared to the lives and life outcomes of Black/Af-am in this country.
I think you're way off base in your solution. You're putting the onus on those persecuted, targeted, and killed to teach their kids to respect cops who have all the power in situations and a substantial handful do not respect them. More police training--nah. You read accounts of Cam McGrone scared for his life and watch videos of unarmed black men and women murdered by cops and blame "society" for teaching black men to kill and loot. Was Cam looting? Was George Floyd killing? Breonna Taylor out there assaulting? You make several leaps of logic here.
I have massive respect for XM, and this post does not change that. However, (and I imagine XM would agree with me) I think there is an important qualitative difference between policing on gang turf (not where the BLM complaints are arising from) and policing in non-gang turf (unarmed George Floyd, sleeping Breonna Taylor, the list goes on). I do think there can be a both/and. Policing is a hell of a tough job. I respect that majority that do it to the best of their ability. But the solution is not "save the buildings and teach our young black (and brown) people to respect the police more"
i agree and indeed made mention in my OP that policing in gang-land is different than the suburbs. i would say though that reducing the argument down to 'save the buildings' is not really what the argument is. it is the legitimate maintenance of order combined with the fact that many (most?) of the businesses burned down were owned by minorities, their collective lives' work. that type of destruction, chaos, and absolute abandoning of a reasonably ordered society is most definitely not the solution.
Agreed XM life is valuable. The lives lost in police brutality is unacceptable. Turning a cheek to life lost as businesses burn to the ground isn't trivial. That was their life. Their savings their sweat love and tears. Saying it can be rebuilt is as callous as saying "all lives matter". It's true...but it belittles all that was lost in everything we've witnessed the last two weeks. Morgan Freeman has a great perspective.
Excellent post, great read. Thank you.
About priorities - you can't protect and serve as a priority tomorrow if you don't get home safely today. It is a circular priority. It is difficult to take care of others if you don't take care of yourself.
Which priority is first may be a matter of semantics. They may all fall under do the right thing, be a good person.
Thanks, XM. Always helps to have a contribution based upon experience, tempered by thoughtfulness and the passage of time to help put things in perspective.
I am fortunate to have been spared problems with the police (white privilege?), but then apart from one year at the U of M, I have lived elsewhere (Canada for the past 50 years). I am more likely to suffer at the hands of surly border agents.
The problem is that power corrupts, as has long been recognized, and inevitably some will abuse that power, whatever their position in society. I remain grateful to those like yourself who have tried to protect us from its abuses and the violence that results. Keep up the good work. And stay safe. Your kids too.
This is great XM. Somehow I missed you were an LA cop along the way. I can imagine that was a learning experience.
Two things: "The talk' needn't be for just minority children. When I read the locked thread mentioning the talk, I thought, this is the same talk my father gave me when I got my drivers license. Kids get F'd with by cops, because we are all up to no good, and the cops know it. Especially the poorer kids with the trash cars, like I was. He gave me the same advice you mentioned in the "what you do if you are pulled over" list. with the addition of "remove the keys from the ignition and place them on dash so the officer can see them", and always call him or her "Officer".
Second, you mention this in passing, but don't address it specifically Most of the people cops deal with every day aren't like the people on this board. Intimidation is a big part of a cops playbook. Not everything a cop does in his job is to write a ticket or serve a warrant, it's also part of their job to scare the dregs of society into behaving.
That inevitably gets some good cops to go too far, and even worse, attracts the worst people in the world to the profession.
I think body-cams and cell phone cameras are going to do a lot to clean up the bad cops in our police forces. I also think we have to give them a little slack sometimes, or we are going to end up with crime rates like the 80s and 90s again. No, not Chauvin, he's going to jail long enough he won't see the light of day again.
point of clarification: i was not a cop, i was a DA, and i was part of a special unit that i don't believe exists any longer. it was during they heydays of the gang culture. the experience was unique and i am glad to have had the opportunity to do so. i was young and single and that was the perfect gig for me at the time. i got married and mrs. XM and i disappeared into the night 4 months later.
it is kind of a funny and heart-warming story (at least to me) when i told my unit i was bailing out. they asked me 'why, how come, where going?'. i told them the headline for the marquette mining journal the week before, 11/1, i will never forget that one and the severe contrast to what life was like in a covert unit, wearing a bullet proof vest, using an assumed name, black and whites in front of my house sometimes 24 hrs/day, etc. the two headlines:
1. larger than average number of pumpkins smashed on halloween night.
2. grouse hunting better than expected.
Ah, well that's what I get for assuming. I know nothing about DAs in big places like LA. Most of my experience with police is from my mother working with them, and my father-in-law being one.
When I moved into here one of the first headlines I saw was "City council bans the use of indoor furniture as porch furniture". Needless to say I sent that to the family back home.
So...Did you bag your limit while grouse hunting that fall?
I 100% don't blame you for "disappearing into the night" and moving back to Michigan with your bride back then. Just the one case we conversed about a couple years ago (the Alt/Schoenborn murder case) would have been enough to scare me out of that profession.
Another industry with institutionalized racism
Thank you for posting your perspective. I am the son of a police officer, so I can confirm/relate. I definitely have some stories from my dad.
I agree with you. I wish I had time to post more...but I have a busy day ahead of me.
God bless!
Interesting post, and as well as the comments indicating people thought you were a cop when you were actually a DA. I think that illustrates an issue you didn’t raise, which is that prosecutors are extremely timid when charging those “bad apple” police officers, since they all work side-by-side.
We actually had an SIU, special investigations unit, whose job it was to look into things like that. And for really sensitive things they would refer it to the AG. I specifically referred a CSC to them for a friend.
Also, every use of deadly force was reviewed and investigated in detail. We look, we learn, we train, we get better.
I moved to LA in January, 1997. Less than 2 months later, my mom and sister visited, so I took the day off. We were hanging out at my aunt’s house when this happened:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout
Not the best “welcome to LA” moment. That event did instigate an increase in police officers’ weaponry. The response to 9/11 continued that trend. It’s not fair to ask our cops to protect us with 9 mm pistols when the bad guys have semi-automatic assault rifles and body armor. I remember learning about “bump stocks” 2 years ago after the Las Vegas massacre.
Bad people do exist. When bank robbers, school shooters, terrorists, rapists, etc. act, we need our police to protect us. This “defund the police” notion is absurd. Are we supposed to depend on the local “neighborhood watch” to protect us? The first response of the neighborhood watch is to call the police! Or are we to depend on whoever in the neighborhood possesses a firearm?
The answer I have settled on is that we must repeal and replace the Second Amendment with gun rights that reflect the realities of the 21st century, not the 18th. The number of homicides committed by cops in this country vastly outnumber the number committed by cops in other developed countries. The same is true about homicides in general. We must address the love affair elements of this country have with firearms, among other reforms, such as breaking the Police Unions’ hold over accountability.
Living in LA, I’m struck by the strength of the police and teachers’ unions. A teacher accused of sexual misconduct gets warehoused for 3 years while their case is adjudicated. Bad cops like Chauvin keep their job with 18 complaints. Minneapolis and Los Angeles are both dominated by Democrats. It’s well passed time for the Democratic Party to stand up for all of their constituents, not just the unions that get them elected. Reforms within the police and educational systems are required.
"Defund the police" is not "abolish the police department". It's "set up specialized departments to handle complex problems for which the police are dispatched now, and take money from the police budget to do it". In particular, people with mental health issues have tremendously bad outcomes when police are dispatched. If, instead, there was a medical department which could serve those people, wouldn't it be worth shaving off some of the police budget to fund them and take it off their plate?
There is also the increasing militarization of police. While I wouldn't begrudge the gang unit in a 5M+ city specialized weapons, why do towns of 100K need them?
Finally, take a look at your municipality's budget and note what they spend on education, social services, libraries, arts ... and then the police. If xtramelanin is on to something and many of our problems can be traced back to children not getting the family/social support they need, why are we not funding education, social services and so forth at higher levels?
good comments, some responses. there is a thing in many places called 'mental health court' and those are specialized courts that deal with chronic issues for folks that simply don't have the mental means to deal with society on a day-to-day basis. it also is true that our crime went up when the state mental hospitals were closed down. that is a discussion we should engage in to possibly reverse that.
agree re: small towns with giant military equipment. i don't get it when sleepy-ville has a SWAT team and an up-armored dragon to drive around in. i guess the feds were giving them away at some point but even the maintenance requires increased budgets, increased taxes, etc.
and i have studied in real terms the issue of fatherless homes for decades. as mentioned, kids without fathers are astronomically more likely commit crimes, be victims of crimes, be druggies, suicidal, divorced, needing mental health services, go to prison and on and on. the ultimate presupposition for me though is that we aren't animals and that society is far better off with not having children until/unless married. and secondly, that 'until death do us part' actually means that in the absence of physical abuse, infidelity, or abandonment. there's a lot more to this but not the forum for that.
"society is far better off with not having children until/unless married"
I would quibble and alter that statement to end with "... children unless you all really want to be parents", but I think we have the same intent: ensuring that all children are cared for by people who are willing to make the sacrifices required to reap the rewards.
"Defund" literally means, " prevent from continuing to receive funds."
Some folks advocating "defund the police" mean exactly that. Some folks want to reform the police department or reduce their budget. But yes, some people (like the Minneapolis city council) want to eliminate the police department and replace it with some sort of community based - for lack of a better word - policing system.
My guess is that people chose that phrase, "defund the police," for the shock value and to get attention. I prefer that people use language to convey meaning, not to get attention.
6 reforms are favored by >30% margins. Three more reforms have positive favorability. “Defund the police” is opposed by a 30% margin. By making “defund the police” a talking point, the protesters are taking attention away from reforms that could pass, while giving the talking heads on the right an issue to scare grandma with. And the problem is, grandma votes. Please don’t incentivize voters to elect status quo candidates. Reforms are needed: practical, common sense, popular reforms. More radical ideas can wait until after November.
Veering off the thrust of your topic, the dynamics of black/brown gang violence in LA is something I’m always amazed gets ignored by the press. In parts of Los Angeles, there were significant numbers of Hispanic gangs that specifically targeted African Americans.
Not just African American gang members but African Americans as a whole. The directive came from Eme (the Mexican Mafia) and in some neighborhoods it got really bad. It’s not as bad now but 10 years ago there were places like Harbor/Gateway where it was damn near a race war.
And another tangent. You mentioned how most gangs are pretty homogenous in their racial composition. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is if you have a gang with a large majority of one race and happen to find a member of the gang who is a different race, that guy is usually the worst of the worst. That guy seems to feel the need to prove himself even more than the usual gang member so he puts in more work and the stuff he does is fucking crazy. And especially white dudes in Black/Hispanic gangs go over the top to prove themselves.
I was hoping you'd comment, your experience being current, mine getting older. Of course I agree with your comment, some dynamics don't change. Take care.
Also wanted to mention that your point about body cams is spot on. It’s a game changer. Even if you don’t believe it discourages bad conduct, it at least gives you evidence of the bad conduct. And for those who say “they’ll just turn off the camera”, that in itself is evidence and is helpful in knowing what really happened.
Ive always been amazed that cops aren’t 100% in support of body cams. The fact is, it is overwhelmingly more helpful to police than harmful. I’ve had cops write reports that you simply knew were not true because there’s no way what they described would happen in real life. Then you see the body cam and guess what? That’s exactly how it happened.
Here’s a real life example from one of my cases. Cop pulled a guy over for making a right hand turn from the #1 lane, crossing an entire lane of traffic to go right. The guy pulls over and the cop starts talking to him. He asks the guy for his license/registration. The driver tells him it’s in the glove box but it’s under some money he won at an illegal gambling room. The cop made it clear in his report that those were the actual words used by the driver, which is obviously bullshit, right? Who would say that?
So now the cop asks him if he’s ever been arrested before and the guy says yes. He’s been busted for . . . illegal gambling. The cop gets him out of the car and asks for permission to search the car. He in no way needs permission to search at this point but the guy gives him permission anyway. So the cop opens the glove box and sure enough, there’s a few thousand dollars. He picks up the money and sees that underneath the money is a big bag of meth.
The cop was testifying to all of this and no one believed a single word. Because no one would ever admit all of that to a cop and lead the cop straight to the drugs. The defense attorney and the judge were lambasting this guy and I have to admit I was having a hard time buying what he was saying. The cop realized everyone thought he was lying and he started to get very concerned. He finally said, “I don’t understand. Why don’t you just listen to the tape?”
Tape? No one knew there was a tape because he didn’t put it in his report. He had his own audio recording of the whole thing. We paused the preliminary hearing and got the tape. Everything went down EXACTLY as he said it did. This was back sometime between 2005 and 2010. If he didn’t have that tape, he would’ve been finished as a witness.
and me being older than you, our fight with the cops was to record interviews. you have a complicated case, maybe a drive-by with a boatload of witnesses, the details matter tremendously, and there's no way to get all that down in the detail necessary for such a serious case in a series of reports written over weeks and then testified to months later.
another real life scene, which you will have utilized many times in your practice, CCE 1235, 'greening a witness', which for the non-california lawyers is where you impeach a witness with their prior statements and those prior statements are evidence. if the statements are recorded they are gold. i was going to write one of my favorite examples but the details of the story would take too long. 4 dead, one lived, wouldn't ID the shooter at trial, but he was recorded doing so at a prior time. more to it, but that was my ID. and it was good enough to get past their alibi defense.
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