The bloodshed must stop

"Adieu!" she said softly.
And I put a bullet in the calf of her leg. She sat down—plump! Utter surprise stretched her white face. It was too soon for pain. I had never shot a woman before. I felt queer about it.
"You ought to have known I'd do it!" My voice sounded harsh and savage and like a stranger's in my ears. "Didn't I steal a crutch from a cripple?"

 
Rather than allow her escape, Dashiell Hammett’s detective shoots his suspect. Although firing on non-threatening fleeing suspects is illegal, it doesn’t stop the Continental Op. It doesn’t stop some police officers either. Hammett’s operative experiences moral uncertainty before putting one bullet in a non-lethal spot. I wonder what Rusten Sheskey experienced as he put seven bullets in Jacob Blake’s back while fellow officers watched. I think he used excessive force. Kenosha County District Attorney, Michael Graveley, doesn’t share my opinion. He declined to bring charges against Officer Sheskey.

A few miles from where Derek Chauvin stands trial for George Floyd’s death, a female officer killed yet another, non-threatening, fleeing suspect. She didn’t kneel on his neck for over nine minutes as did Derek Chauvin. Instead she mistook her gun for a taser. Answering your question is police use-of-force expert, Ed Obayashi, summarized in the New York Times, "… the officer can become accustomed to using the same hand to draw either weapon, a habit that can make it harder to tell one from the other in high-pressure situations when muscle memory and instinct kick in."

Okay, that makes sense, but why didn’t she simply let him drive home and arrest him later. I’ve noticed, in some of these recent police killings, the blameworthy officer had an audience, in several cases, rookies. Does that matter or is it coincidence?

A second’s worth of poor video shows 13 year old, Adam Toledo, unarmed, and with hands raised, just before being fatally struck by a bullet. Neuroscience shows that actions can be decided and implemented half a second before they become conscious. The officer made a split-second decision that turned out wrong. Was he wrong?

Yes, according to the Lone Ranger. “I'll shoot to wound, not to kill. A man must die, it's up to the Lord to decide that; not the person behind the six shooter.”

The Lone Ranger had a steady hand and rawhide nerves. He would not have shot Adam Toledo. Only if Adam were armed would the Lone Ranger have fired a wounding shot.

In an ideal world, police would act more like cowboys or Dashiell Hammett detectives. Sam Spade occasionally disarmed bad guys, but he didn’t carry a gun himself. “Yeah, right. What about racist policing?” you ask.

Well, according to the fifth principal of Gene Autry’s Cowboy Code, a cowboy, “must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas.”

At this point you’re thinking I’m talking nonsense You want to remind me that cowboys and movie detectives are make-believe. Yes, I’ll agree, I am talking nonsense. For this I blame the ancient Greeks and Romans. They endowed humans with a rationality that humans don’t always display. In a tense situation, rational responses are less likely to occur than those triggered by reflexes. Perhaps unconscious racism sometimes kicks-in as well.

We need more fool-proof policing methods. For example, instead of having a pistol shape, tasers could be shaped like dildos. I don’t think a cop could mistake a gun for a dildo. Better yet, let’s do away with tasers entirely. Sometimes they fail to subdue suspects, enraging them instead. There must be better mousetraps we can invent.

Lastly, there are many situations that can end peacefully if approached peacefully. Paladin’s calling card read, “Have Gun Will Travel,” but he rarely used his six shooter. He preferred conflict resolution to gunplay. According to Vox, police recruits receive extensive firearms training, but little training in conflict management. It’s time for serious changes in our policing philosophy and methods. The bloodshed must stop.

Help, I'm a cop

Burmese Days
George Orwell
Fiction, 291 pages 

"It's a drag being a cop" ~ Frank Zappa, "Help, I'm a rock"

George Orwell was brainwashed. This happened in Myanmar (formerly Burma) during his five years as a policeman. He was brainwashed by the pukka sahibs’ code. The code of imperialist occupiers. The code of colonial hypocrisy. A code similar to the one currently protested by the BLM movement.

The protagonist of "Burmese Days" is not a policeman. However, John Flory has seen through the code and now belongs nowhere--not in Burma, nor back in England.

"It is a stifling, stultifying world in which to live. It is a world in which every word and every thought is censored. In England it is hard even to imagine such an atmosphere. Everyone is free in England; we sell our souls in public and buy them back in private, among our friends. But even friendship can hardly exist when every white man is a cog in the wheels of despotism. Free speech is unthinkable. All other kinds of freedom are permitted. You are free to be a drunkard, an idler, a coward, a backbiter, a fornicator; but you are not free to think for yourself. Your opinion on every subject of any conceivable importance is dictated for you by the pukka sahibs’ code.

In the end the secrecy of your revolt poisons you like a secret disease. Your whole life is a life of lies. Year after year you sit in Kipling-haunted little Clubs, whisky to right of you, Pink’un to left of you, listening and eagerly agreeing while Colonel Bodger develops his theory that these bloody Nationalists should be boiled in oil. You hear your Oriental friends called ‘greasy little babus’, and you admit, dutifully, that they are greasy little babus. You see louts fresh from school kicking grey-haired servants. The time comes when you burn with hatred of your own countrymen, when you long for a native rising to drown their Empire in blood. And in this there is nothing honourable, hardly even any sincerity. For, au fond, what do you care if the Indian Empire is a despotism, if Indians are bullied and exploited? You only care because the right of free speech is denied you. You are a creature of the despotism, a pukka sahib, tied tighter than a monk or a savage by an unbreakable system of tabus."

John Flory's story isn't a pleasant one. It's a story of a conflicted man wanting, but unable, to do the right thing. I wonder how many good cops feel this way, wanting to improve society but hampered by their coworkers. The code of silence they follow prevents them from reporting bad fellow officers, just as the pukka sahibs’ code prevents John Flory from confronting the racism of Burma's imperialist occupiers. As always, George Orwell delivers.

Divided by lies

Politicians lie. In that, they are all the same. They differ only in the outrageousness of their untruths. Some politicians lie unintentionally with issue summaries that exclude, misrepresent, or exaggerate information. In these cases, there remains at least a basis in facts. Other politicians lie intentionally. That’s a problem in a representative democracy, but merely a control method in an oligarchy.

 The Republican Convention this week has been a fibbers festival. You needn’t take my word for it however. News organizations including the New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR are saying so. I don’t remember any news organization ever calling a president a liar before the current one took office. But there you go. It’s the new normal. Consider the words of U.S. Rep Matt Gaetz who said Democrats would try to, “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door.” Gee, I don’t remember the last Democratic president doing those things.

 I want to focus on one Big Lie. Trump says he’s a “law and order” president, but that doesn’t mean what one might think. In this case, “law and order” is code for preserving a status quo that keeps a Jim Crow legacy alive. Protests against police victimizing and killing blacks have continued for several months. During daylight hours, these protests have been largely peaceful. During the nights, some of those in much smaller gatherings have acted criminally. These people are not necessarily the same ones who protest peacefully. The Washington Post reports that most of those responsible for deaths related to the protests have not been protesters themselves. Some were white members of the far right.

 Since the protests began, the president has lumped peaceful protesters with rioters, ignoring the fact that peaceful protest is a right, rather than a crime. This is dangerous. Once peaceful protest becomes identified with criminal behavior, Americans’ right to free speech will end. The cause is just. The protest is needed. Untruths have no place in democracies. 

Wrong name. Right problem.

 

Systemic Racism is not a good name for it. It’s not a formal system and there is no formal name. And yet it’s there, flowing through our culture like kerosene saturating a dry rag.

 It’s in the things we don’t think about. Pointless commentary, children’s rhymes, ethnic jokes, in the things we don’t realize we’ve said. Those things get inside our heads and it doesn’t occur to us to get them out.

 And in some cases, those things pollute entire organizations. Take the Kenosha, Wisconsin police for example. There is no excuse for the appalling crime committed on August 23 by its officers. And yet I don’t blame the police, at least not entirely.

Our culture is ailing and the disease has worsened in recent years. Many Americans are a paycheck or two away from being homeless. This is stressful for people, including police officers. That doesn’t excuse violent behavior, though it may help to explain it. There’s plenty we can do to change policing laws and weed out bad cops, but police thuggery is a symptom, not the root of America’s problem.

 Money is the problem. Too little is a problem. So is too much. Those with too much think of themselves as winners and of those with too little as losers. If the cops kill a few losers, it’s a small price to pay to maintain law and order.

 And what is “law and order”? It’s the maintenance of an unjust status quo. That’s what the president means when he uses those words in response to “Black lives matter” Those words don’t address justice. They address social control. During the 1890s, Tom Watson tried to unite poor blacks and whites politically. He said, “You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both.” Let’s replace law and order with social justice before someone touches a match to a kerosene soaked rag.