Racism and Bears: How systemic racism leads to minorities viewing police as predators

There is so much I want to talk about right now, but I cannot talk about everything at once.

I've written before about how the social contract between the public and the police in this country needs to be renegotiated.  We've never truly come to a real cultural agreement about police in this country.  And I think that the lack of a real understanding of what police are leads to these cycles of violence.  I wrote that post two years ago during another round of killings by and of police.

I've written before about how gun control, Second Amendment rights, and police militarization are linked and all applied very differently to black people in America.

I've written about how "common sense" type weapons laws are actually used to abuse and persecute minorities.

I've even written about how complicated actually trying to understand violence statistics is, and how many ways there are to mess up data with subtle errors.  And that is assuming that there is no agenda, and when people (including myself) write about violence there is almost always an agenda.

And yet there is ever more to talk about.

I want to talk more plainly about things I've already touched on.

I also want to talk about what police go through.  The dangers they face, the things they have to experience, and how little attention their heroism and sacrifice receives.

I want to talk about the problems of police being used as revenue generators by governments.

I want to talk about so many things, but what I want to start with today is by trying to explain how structural racism works.  I want to explain why complaining about a racist system is not the same as calling police racists.  It's not.  I realize that I will probably fail to change many minds, but I need to at least be able to say that I've tried.

Philando Castile, even though this article doesn't focus as much on Mr. Castile, I still felt that he is emblematic of this current cycle of violence by and against police.  Particularly since he did nothing to become an emblem of violence.

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I'm going to start my explanation with an example and position that I am sure will be seen as wrong by many:  The Police Killing of Alton Sterling was justified.

As far as I am concerned, based on the video, the police were totally justified.  Despite having two police officers on top of him trying to subdue him, Sterling was still clearly struggling with the officers.  Even if he had not been armed (which he was), continuing to resist at that point would have been monumentally inadvisable.  Alton Sterling had a gun in his pocket.  You can shoot through a pocket.  Police were responding to a report that he had already threatened someone with his gun.  From the perspective of the police they were going to arrest an armed suspect who had already demonstrated dangerous actions.  When you are armed and police are arresting you because of reports of you threatening people with a deadly weapon, continuing to resist goes from being monumentally inadvisable to being suicidally inadvisable.

But notice that I am not saying it was suicidally stupid.  Because the question of why anyone in that situation would be so unwise as to foolishly invite lethal actions by the police leads us to try to understand the ways that racism affects people and groups.

Why was Alton Sterling struggling with the police?

He knew he was armed.  He knew there were two cops on him.  He sure as heck should have been smart enough to realize that you don't get to shoot your way out of a situation with police (at least almost never).  And yet he continued to fight.  Overwhelmed, outnumbered, and out-gunned, he fought vainly and suicidally.  There was no possibility of anything positive coming from his actions, but he struggled.

There is a comparison that I can offer that I draw from my Alaskan upbringing.  He fought like he was being mauled by a grizzly.  When you are attacked by a grizzly there is really nothing you can realistically do to make yourself survive once they have their jaws and claws on you.  You might survive, but not because you really have a chance of killing the bear.  And yet people fight back.  If you are going to die anyway then maybe you can take the bear with you.  And sometimes miracles happen.

I cannot say what was going through Alton Sterling's mind, or whether or not he thought things through when he decided to struggle, but my suspicion is that he wasn't thinking.  My suspicion was that he went into fight or flight mode, and flight wasn't an option.

But why?

For myself, if police came to arrest me, I would not resist.  Even if they abused me and violated my rights I would not resist, because I know that no good can come from it.  Plus, not resisting increases my chances of surviving, and if they do violate my rights it puts me in a better position to turn around an sue them.  My underlying assumption is that the police are not going to kill me, and if they break the law I have the resources to sue the police.  (This underlying assumption is pretty much the dictionary definition of privilege)

For many white people it is easy to point to the ways that so many people killed by police seem to bring it on themselves.  When you assume that the police aren't going to kill you it changes the way you perceive them.  To go back to the bear analogy, many white people's relationship with police is a lot like urban environmentalists relationship with bears.  People who don't have to worry about getting eaten by bears think of them as beautiful creatures that serve a vital ecological role.  People who do have to worry about getting eaten might still appreciate and respect the ecological role that bears serve, but they don't want the bears near them.  Because they don't want to get eaten.

If you are one of vast majority of Americans who are statistically less likely to be killed by police it is easy to assume that #blacklivesmatter people are being overly dramatic, and that all people need to do to not get shot by cops is to not do stupid things.  But if you are part of the 14.5% (13% African American, 1.2% Native American, source) of Americans that are more than 3 times as likely to be killed by police as white Americans (source) then it doesn't seem so dramatic (Native Americans are actually more likely to be killed by police than blacks).

It just so happens that this week provided an object lesson in why so many dark skinned people fear the police.  Philando Castile was a law abiding, licensed firearm carrier, and school employee.  He was killed despite following the rules, and complying with the police.  Killed by a police officer while in a car with his girlfriend and her four year old daughter.  After he was shot he was allowed to bleed out rather than receiving prompt medical attention.  The killing of Philando Castile serves to effectively confirm the idea for many people that even if black people follow the rules the police will still kill them.

(Just to be clear here, I do think that the killing of Alton Sterling was justified, and I would be shocked if any inquest found otherwise, but the killing of Philando Castile is unquestionably minimally Manslaughter in my opinion.  If the officer who shot Philado Castile is not minimally charged with manslaughter I feel it would be a gross injustice.  But I want to avoid going too far down the rabbit hole of parsing what killings are acceptable, and which are not.)

This is where we start to see the real impact of systemic racism.  I am NOT talking about the killing of Mr. Castile in this case.  While I have no doubt that race played a key part in Mr. Castile's death, that was an individual act.  The real impact is in the reinforcement of the narrative that police kill black people for no reason.  When black men get killed for no good reason by police officers, and then the police officers get away with it scott free, it supports the idea that cops are looking to kill black people.  And that idea of persecution is self-fulfilling.  If the cops are just going to kill you anyway then why not go down fighting?

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We can talk all we want about the importance of respecting police, but you can't really respect someone you think is trying to kill you.  It's like respecting bears.  You can respect bears, even if you are scared of them, but when they get their claws on you then you can't really respect them in that moment.  This is the effect that a racist system has between those who are discriminated against and those who are charged with enforcing the system.  In the aggregate it doesn't matter if most cops are good and non-racist, the environment of fear and distrust that has been created is self-reinforcing.  If a population responds to police doing their jobs like they are rabid bears then those police are going to get used to having to fight, and that population is going to have ever more reasons to believe the cops are after them.

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And let us be clear, the police do a dangerous job.  There are roughly 800,000 sworn officers in the US which comes out to roughly %0.26 of the population.  In 2015 130 of those officers died in the line of duty (source).  That means that the death rate, in the line of duty, for police officers in 2015 was 16.25 per 100,000.  For comparison, the homicide rate for the US in 2013 was 5.1 (source, figure 18).  So police are 3 times as likely to die in the line of duty as the average American is to be killed by anyone.  So far this year there have been 59 officers who have died in the line of duty, which puts us on pace for a similar death toll.  One of those officers killed this year was Steven Smith, the brother of a friend, a 27 year veteran, and very much the epitome of a heroic police officer.

Law Enforcement Officers are very much aware that they have dangerous jobs, and they would have to be mentally incompetent not to realize that certain groups are far more likely to get violent with them than others.  On individual levels this is frequently wrong, but people would have to be inhuman not to make associations.  Danger can feel color coded for cops and blacks alike.  African Americans learn to fear blue, and Police learn to fear brown.  That is simply human nature, and there is only so much that can be done to address this problem without addressing the underlying racist structures that create this situation.

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Because we really can't understand how this situation where blacks view police as predators arises without understanding the ways that police are saddled with fundamentally racist law enforcement priorities.  Those are not priorities set by the police, those are priorities set by elected leaders.  There is plenty of attention paid to the ways that black people are scapegoated and vilified in the media, but the police are also convenient scapegoats for elected leaders who don't want to admit that their own actions force police to behave in racist ways.

In particular here I am referring to the doctrine of "broken windows policing."  Broken window policing is based around the idea that if you aggressively go after visible symptoms of crime that you will drive down crime rates.  This approach does work, and it is great for property values.  If you eliminate the visible signs of crime then people are more willing to invest in properties, thus property values increase.  New York city is the prime example of this.

But visible signs of crime is effectively code for visible signs of poverty.  What broken windows policing does is it criminalizes poverty.  When property values are driven up it drives out lower income people.  In the case of New York, since the 1990's values have gone so high that families with six-figure incomes can barely afford (and often can't afford) apartments.  This is great news if you are a property owner, and as a politician you get to brag about how you've gotten rid of crime.  Rudy Giuliani became a nationally prominent politician based on how effectively he criminalized poverty in New York.

But it is a problem if your skin color is a visible sign of poverty.  Not all brown people are poor, but a higher percentage are than pink skinned people.  And that is really how racism works.  You don't pass a law that makes it illegal for black people to be in a neighborhood, you pass a law that makes it illegal to do things that poor people do.

Here is a scenario:
More lower income people smoke than higher income people, so if you jack up cigarette prices you will disproportionately cause hardship for poor people.
If you make it harder for poor people to buy packs of cigarettes you will increase the purchasing of single cigarettes, so if you pass a law banning single cigarette sales then you will create a demand for an addictive good that can now only be satisfied illegally for many poor people.
Now that you have created a demand for illegally sold single cigarettes the local government can set an enforcement priority on cracking down on people selling single cigarettes.

That is how Eric Garner died.  He was selling cigarettes, because the New York City government created a demand that disproportionately affected poor people, who are disproportionately minorities.  And those laws specifically included criminalizing a behavior common to lower income people (resale of loose cigarettes), and then policing of that crime was prioritized as a part of a broken windows strategy.  Then Eric Garner died while resisting arrest for selling cigarettes.

The national dialog focused on the apparent racism of the police choking a black man to death for selling cigarettes, but it didn't address the fact that those police were doing their jobs enforcing a racist system of policies designed to persecute the poor.  Those laws aren't limited to cigarettes, that is just a specific high profile example.  I have also written in this blog about New York's knife laws that have clearly racist application and orientation.  Police in New York have the power to make almost any modern folding knife illegal if they want (even though those same knives an be purchased legally), and people who work physical jobs (lower income) need knives at work more, and so those laws once again disproportionately affect black people.

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This is what people mean when they talk about racist systems.  Saying that there is racial inequality in the US is not about saying that individual cops are all racists, it is about saying that there are structural elements in our society that systematically negatively impact minorities.  Too often people on the side of law and order take cries of racism as personal accusations of bigotry.

Explicit racism is certainly dangerous when we are talking about lynchings and cross burning type stuff, but it is the systemic issues that perpetuate racial inequality.

An individual racist is fairly easy to avoid.  In today's world there aren't many people who tolerate open racism.  But it isn't bigots who are the real power behind racial inequities, it is all the people who fail to acknowledge the racist structures that perpetuate violence and discrimination.  It is politicians who pass laws and policies that discriminate against poor people and then don't acknowledge their complicity in killing poor people.

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Eric Garner died because police were enforcing racist laws.  Those kinds of racist laws lead to feelings of persecution among minorities.  Those feelings of persecution lead to inappropriately violent confrontations on both sides.  That is why people like Alton Sterling continue to struggle when they should just lay down with their hands on their head.  And then killings like Alton Sterling's lead to increased agitation, and scapegoating of police leads to retaliatory shootings like in Dallas.  Then the police feel targeted.  That leads to cops getting extra jumpy when doing routine things like pulling someone over for a broken taillight.  That leads to innocent people like Philando Castile getting shot for no good reason.  And those types of unjust killings, precipitated by fear, perpetuate the fear and violence that drives this endless cycle.

That is how racism works.

Marriage is Finally Legal For All Americans

It is with great pleasure that I read the news this morning that the Supreme Court of the US has ruled that Gay Marriage is legal.

Yay!

As I have written before, the majority of people in the US have been in favor of legalization of marriage for gays for a couple years now.  This is in clear contrast to the legalization of interracial marriage which took 30 years of legality to gain majority approval.  It was seriously not until the late 1990's that the majority approved of interracial marriage.  Of course, many people in the US still vehemently oppose gay marriage.  Rick Santorum described the decision as "Judicial Tyranny."

If you grew up in a place like I did, where interracial marriages were the norm (Nome Alaska, fyi) it might seem strange that until the late 90's most Americans still opposed interracial marriage.  But when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of interracial marriage in 1967 only 20% of the population approved of interracial marriage, and change was slow to come to the hearts of the majority.  Today 84% of Americans approve of interracial marriage, but most of that change happened over just the past 20 years.  When interracial marriage was legalized it truly was Judicial Tyranny.  It was also right, and just, but there was no way that the majority would have voted in favor.

I feel like the conservative anger at this decision has a lot to do with the fact that conservatives know that there is no rolling back this decision.  The majority is on the side of justice and equality when it comes to marriage.  The days when the numbers were on the side of those who wish to suppress homosexuals with the force of government are gone, but for conservative politicians this is a problem.  No politician can get elected without getting the support of their base.  The majority of conservative voters oppose equality for gays, even though the majority of America as a whole is in favor.  This means that there is nothing that conservative politicians can do to change the outcome, all they can do is ride the anger of their base.  You can rest assured that anger over gay rights will remain a caucusing issue for a while yet, but the anger will be politically impotent, which will likely make the anger burn hotter in the short term.

For conservatives the best option for venting that anger is to decry "Judicial Tyranny," even if polling suggests that the Supreme Court, in this case, is actually more accurately reflecting popular opinion.  

But why did the Supreme Court need to rule in favor of Gay Marriage if the majority was in favor?  The answer is of course my favorite political hobby-horse, division politics.  The US is not divided into two clear cut camps, the vast majority falls somewhere in the middle, but about half fall a little more conservative, and half fall a little more liberal.  To gain traction most politicians need to appeal to the more politically active people who might support them, and those people are usually more extreme than the middling majority.  So issues like Gay Marriage are a good way to make sharp divisive distinctions for politicians, and stumping on those issues gets the base mobilized.  

This means that even though the majority of the population is in favor of equality, a little over half of the elected legislators are beholden to a active minority that opposes equality.  In this case, division politics allowed a minority to block any legislation that might have legalized gay marriage.  But now the Supreme Court has moved, and that minority is not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.  I'd hardly call that "Judicial Tyranny."

This is good news.

There is a part of me that can't help but wish we could have had a vote, like Ireland, but I understand that the US political climate makes that too tall an order.  Our political system feeds on anger and fear on both sides, and a vote on an issue like marriage is ultimately asking people to vote on an issue of hope and fairness for the future.

But in any case, now that gay marriage is legal there is no way that a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is going to pass.  Marriage equality is here.  Our country just got a little fairer.  And this is not an isolated thing either.  Despite what you may hear, our country is actually doing pretty well.  Our country is changing rapidly.  Feminism and civil rights, which were so very radical 50 years ago, are becoming the norm.  This same time period over the past 20 years that has seen the majority come to approve of gays and interracial marriage has also seen the precipitous drop in homicides and gun violence (yes, despite what you read in the news gun violence and homicides are at historically low levels in the US), crimes against children are down, the list goes on.  

For all the fear that plagues our politics and media, our society is actually improving.  Ironically, the same ubiquity of information that makes our society's problems seem worse seems to make our society more sensitive to the problems and awareness makes the problems less common.  Our modern connectedness is like a searchlight lighting up all the dark corners, and while the things we find in the dark corners may make us recoil, there are fewer places for bad things to hide.

This makes me hopeful.

And the legalization of gay marriage is another part of this sweeping change in our country, and it also makes me hopeful.  It leaves one less place for discrimination against homosexuality to hide.  Less than 20 years ago Matthew Shepard was beaten and tortured to death, and the defense was "gay panic."  That is emblematic of how rapid the change regarding homosexuality in this country has been, and just how bright the light shining into the dark corners is these days.

And now, I think it is tie to stop using the phrase "Gay Marriage."

It's just "Marriage" now.

Knives in New York: A Fashion Statement That Can Get You Arrested

So this blog entry is really more of a grumble rant, and a public service announcement.

This lovely, and amazingly well made knife, is a Sebenza 21.  It would cost you around $425 dollars.  The blade is a hair under 3 inches long.  It is one of the knives described in the New York Times article, and if you carried it in New York City, it could get you arrested.

A few days ago the New York Times published an article about pocket knives, the web version is titled "It's a Jungle Out There?  Carry a Pocketknife."  This just struck me as seriously irresponsible journalism since carrying a knife in New York City is a good way to get arrested.  The Village Voice ran an article last year about how the NYPD has been using a vaguely worded 1950's law against gravity knives (an extremely uncommon type of knife) to prosecute 60,000 people in the last decade.  These thousands of people who have been prosecuted for "gravity knife" violations have largely been prosecuted for carrying knives that are readily available in NYC, and are in no way gravity knives.  Then this week the NYTimes publishes an article about pocket knives as a fashion accessory and the closest they come to warning readers that this fashion trend is very risky for New Yorkers is:

"In the right hands, pocketknives can be more than fashion accessories (they can also be illegal to carry, depending on local laws)."

That doesn't seem like a very adequate warning that in New York City, if a police officer sees a pocket clip it constitutes grounds for searching you, and if the police officer can manage to make your knife open through "centrifugal force" in any number of attempts (and it has a locking mechanism), then you are then guilty of a crime.  Never mind that "centrifugal force" doesn't actually exist, this means that almost any modern folding knife with a lock is a "gravity knife" by the interpretation the NYPD and New York prosecutors have been operating under.  I really feel like the New York Times should at least warn people that getting into this fashion trend with most of the knives described in the article can get them arrested.

This is kind of an ongoing point of discontent for me.  New York City is a place that I visit from time to time, and it is the only city that I go to where I just do not carry a knife at all.  I typically think of a pocket knife as a necessary daily tool, plus if an emergency pops up, like someone is trapped in a burning car, it gives me the ability to help.  But not in New York.  As far as I am concerned, the likelihood of having a negative interaction with a police officer in New York is enough higher than the chances that someone will need rescuing by me that I opt to not carry anything.

Theoretically there are knives that are totally legal in NYC, like Swiss Army Knives, or other types of traditional slip-joint or friction folders that are three inches long or shorter.  But as far as I can tell, if a police officer decides that you had malicious intent, even those knives are illegal.  There are no concealed carry permits in New York, and there is no way to get licensed to carry a knife.  Technically carrying a knife is fine and legal, unless an officer decides that you shouldn't be carrying one.

This type of situation where it is up to the police officer to make the call as to whether or not your pocketknife is a weapon is pretty scary to me.  In practical terms, as a white man, I really am not at much risk, since white people only account for 11% of arrests for knives, and even when stopped and frisked for knives white people are twice as likely to be let off with a warning as be arrested.  So, in reality, I probably would not run into trouble...  but I still am uncomfortable with the idea.

A Voice analysis of stop-and-frisk data shows wide racial disparities in arrest rates for knives. Gravity-knife arrests are not tracked as a class, which makes it impossible to determine an exact number of such arrests. The Voice's analysis of stop-and-frisk data is based on a pool of knife arrests involving sections 265.01 and 265.02 of the Penal Code -- the statutes that contain the gravity-knife prohibition -- excluding arrests that involved any other kind of weapon or criminal charge. The result is a conservative estimate of the number of arrests under the program, informed by extensive reporting.  From the Village Voice. 

From the Village Voice

But this kind of New York law does not end with folding knives.  There is a proposed "ban" on machetes in New York, that is not a ban at all.  It is a law that would make machetes "deadly weapons."  That would mean that machetes would be legal to own and use, until it was decided that a specific one was not okay, then it would be a deadly weapon.  But the law would only apply to fixed blade knives with blades longer than four inches.  If this law was passed, and if it was not misapplied, then it would be fine.  People who attack other people with machetes should be charged with attacking people with a deadly weapon.  Machetes absolutely can be deadly.  I also use a machete regularly for landscaping.  The machete is a ubiquitous tool.

But the machete "ban" like the "gravity knife ban" is vaguely worded.  Most people have sturdy fixed blade knives over four inches in their kitchens.  And there are not many hunting knives that would not also meet the criteria.  The village voice seems to think that it is a "conservative freak-out" to think that this ban would be misapplied by the police.  But when a 1950's law designed to combat the terror of youth gangs can be misapplied half a century later to justify "stop and frisk" searches it seems like a scary law to me.  The thought that immediately comes to my mind is a way to justify searches of homes, if nothing else comes up, there is usually a knife that could be determined to be a deadly weapon.

But maybe that is just needless hand-wringing about a law that is not even an actual law, just a proposed law.

But for what it's worth, if you are thinking about carrying a pocket knife, be sure to find out what the laws where you live are.  There are a lot of places where it is illegal to carry a locking blade knife, especially out East.  There are also a lot of places where it is illegal to carry a knife in your pocket (they have to be on your belt or clipped to the outside of your pocket).  And knife laws are variable from state to state and city to city.

The good news is that for the most part, police in most places don't make a habit of randomly searching people and arresting them for having pocket knives.  If you are not doing stupid things with your pocket knife, you probably won't have trouble with the police about your knife.  Most cops I've known don't run around looking for reasons to make people's lives harder.  But it is still better to be safe and legal.

But if you live in New York City, I would think very seriously and do some research before considering carrying a knife.

Be careful, be safe, and be legal.  And shame on you New York Times for providing no warning.



P.S,  I love that the top picture in the New York Times article was of a guy batoning a log in Los Angeles.  With a folding knife.  Batoning, it's so hot right now.

How Do We Arbitrate Social Contracts?

I haven't been writing much in my blog this Month.  Since I returned from Easter Island I have been very busy working on the report of my research as well as working on the graduate school application process.  Additionally, there just hasn't been news stories about which I felt I had anything of value to add.  Then I saw a very scary picture yesterday.

Hundreds of NYPD officers turned their backs on mayor de Blasio

The picture that I found scary was one of hundreds of police turning their backs on their mayor.  This image scares me for many reasons.  I will list some of those reasons.

The most basic reason that the picture scares me is that it suggests that the NYPD equates criticism with the assassination of police.  De Blasio joined in criticism of the NYPD when people were protesting the death of a man who was choked to death for selling cigarettes.  Then a lone gunman killed two officers in apparent retaliation.  This image of the police turning their backs on the mayor suggests to me that the NYPD considers any criticism tantamount to endorsing the murder of police officers.

The next reason that this picture scares me is that the image suggests a rift between civilian leadership and police forces.  As those who read my blog are aware, I fear the growing militarization of out nation's police forces.  Civilian control of the US military is a fundamental issue protecting our country against military dictatorship.  Military officers are supposed to remain apolitical and respect civilian leadership because that helps defend our democratic system.  Civilian control of the military also helps to maintain the idea of the military existing to defend the people of the USA, rather than the people existing to support the military.  Military personnel swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution.

Over the past several decades US police forces have increasingly become domestic military forces that owe no allegiance to the US Constitution.  With this image it appears that the NYPD owes no allegiance to the civilian leadership of the city of New York.  The question of who the NYPD serves brings me to the biggest reason that this image scares me.

The image of the NYPD turning their backs on the elected executive of the polity they ostensibly serve causes me to fear that the social contract between the police and the citizenry is broken from both ends.  The protests across our country over the past few months have shown that there were many US citizens, especially people of color, who felt that the social contract between the police and themselves was broken.  Of course most of these protests focused on the police as the source of rupture of trust.  Police supporters essentially responded that the failure was on the part of populations that failed to conform to acceptable social norms (obey the law, don't resist arrest, and you won't have trouble with the police).

While most of my writing on the police in recent months has been critical, my personal biases tend to lie more in line with the police supporters.  I see the police as the good guys (with rare exceptions).  I've known and worked with many police officers.  And I suspect that social groups that are pounded with the message from birth that the police are liable to kill and/or victimize them are going to have a hard time trusting the police and behaving in a truly respectful manner.  If you are convinced that a group of people is out to kill you then fear only motivates you to stay in line until you feel that your time may have come.  People who think the police are out to get them can't truly respect the police on a fundamental level.  So I have tended to view instances of potentially excessive force as driven more by a failure of trust than of actual racism or ill will on the part of the police.

When two police officers were assassinated in New York City the possibility of a severely broken social contract seemed very possible.  It was a lone gunman, but coming against a backdrop of nationwide protests and cries of police racism, it seemed like an increasing number of people were seeing the police as the enemy.  Speaking purely subjectively and anecdotally, in my social circles it has seemed in recent years that almost all discussion of the police has been in terms of opposition.  Of course opposition to, and distrust of, law enforcement has a long history in this country.  During the early years of our nation's history there was no provision for formal police forces.

The process of revolting against British authority had so poisoned the culture in the US against law enforcement that professional law enforcement agencies were scarce across much of the country until very late.  The first municipal law enforcement agency in the US was formed in Boston in 1838, more than a half a century after the Revolutionary War ended, and it wasn't until the 1880's that police forces were ubiquitous even in major cities.  If you want more information on the history of police in the US (including things like the evolution of police in Southern states from the Slave Patrols) then I suggest reading more here.  Suffice to say, in the US, law enforcement was more likely to be conducted by vigilantes or private forces until almost the twentieth century.  But as the US grew, the need for order became increasingly pronounced, but the US has never truly found peace with its peace forces.

Over the past hundred years or so we have become, as a nation, more accepting of the need for law and order; but that acceptance has never truly been unambiguous.  One can contrast the US's history with law enforcement with our neighbors to the north, Canada.  Canada did not have a Wild West the way that the US did.  Canada had organized law enforcement in the form of Mounties.  The US had self appointed "lawmen" who got into shootouts with people they didn't like.  Hark A Vagrant has a very fun comic relating to these historical differences.

I'm sure that the punishments were more severe than sitting in a corner in real life, but the relationship to officers of the law was radically different in Canada and I believe still affects Canadian cultural on a very basic level to this day.

The differences between Canadian attitudes toward the police and US attitudes continues to be pronounced.  When I was living in Canada in 2005 the Mayerthorpe Tragedy occurred.  Four Mounties were killed in the line of duty.  It was a national tragedy.  In Ottawa, where I lived, thousands of miles from where the tragedy occurred, flags were lowered to half-mast.  It was the worst single day loss of life for the RCMP in modern Canadian history.  Even the name "Mayerthorpe Tragedy" speaks to the radically different attitude toward the Mounties.  Mounties are federal police, would the death of four FBI officers be a cause for national mourning?  Mounties are seen as heroes, US policemen are all too often viewed as violent predators.

I don't believe that the difference in the way people in the US and Canada view their law enforcement is because Canadian police are all angels and US police are all devils.  I believe the difference is because the US never truly established a national trust with the forces of law and order, and the uneasy trust that grew over the first half of the twentieth century (especially after the end of Prohibition) has eroded dangerously since the Vietnam war.

Now in a time when police are more militarized than ever, and anti-cop sentiment is a seething current in our country, some people are seeking to wage war on the police.  Two days ago, at the memorial for the two officers killed in New York last week, hundreds of police officers turned their backs to the mayor.  With this gesture the police communicated that they also saw the public, and those who would criticize them, as the enemy.  The NYPD seemed to tell the world that the feeling was mutual.

We cannot repair the relationship with law enforcement if the police see the public they are supposed to serve as the enemy.  But the social contract goes both ways.  We cannot repair the relationship with law enforcement if the public views their protectors as the enemy.  It seems that the social contract between the public and the police has been horribly ruptured, at least in New York, and it is not clear how to repair that trust.

The severity of the fracture of trust is further underscored by another image, also apparently from the memorial two days ago.

But it appears that one officer did not turn his back

And this image might be even scarier.  In a sea of white faces turned away from the mayor, a black officer did not turn his back.  This image seems to simultaneously magnify the severity of the breach of trust represented by the NYPD turning their backs, and to further confirm the perception of the issues as one of race.  The narrative of racism feels like it is acting as a runaway train eradicating any hope of constructive discussion.

Yesterday a story came up on my Facebook feed of a black plainclothes NYPD officer being shot and killed by other NYPD plainclothes officers.  It is a real story, and true, and reported by the New York times, but it is not current.  The story is five years old, and as tragic now as it was a half decade ago.  But such is the power of social media's ability to engage in News Necromancy, that when people get upset about an issue, all the previous stories that confirm a bias can be revivified and made new.

Even the image of the black officer not turning his back has traveled via social media.  I have not been able to find the source of the image.  I don't even know if it is real or if it was taken at the memorial.  But this unattributed image is moving through social media, and while it is a troubling image, it underscores the difficulty facing us if we want to repair our society.

Emotions are running high.  Social media creates an environment where every tragedy gets rolled into every tragedy and it is impossible to parse what is going on.  While emotions run high it is nearly impossible to even try to discuss issues like use of force and institutional racism.  Everyone just yells past everyone else, unhinged individuals assassinate police, and the police set themselves in opposition to civil society.

It is a scary situation.

It is a situation that must be repaired.

But I don't know how to repair this situation.  When a social contract is broken, how can it be arbitrated?  If a contractor breaks a contract they can be sued.  Who can we sue when the public and the police are both in breach of contract with each other?

We need police.  And far more than the individuals in uniform, we need trust in the police.  There will never be enough police to keep everyone in line.  Our society works because we believe in it.  We trust that our system should work.  Laws are obeyed because people agree they should be obeyed.  Even our money only has value because we agree it has value (US currency is fiat money and is intrinsically worthless).  Our entire interconnected world functions because of trust.  That trust is built on order, and in an urban society the municipal police are a fundamental cornerstone of that order.

We cannot, as a society, simply accept the failure of trust in the police.  Nor can we simply blame the collapse of trust on the police.  Police officers daily risk their lives to maintain order, but in order for the police to be able to keep the peace they require the trust of the public.  We all of us, each and every one, bear a share of the burden of keeping our society functioning.

The most concrete suggestion I can offer toward repairing the ruptures in our society is to engage in actual conversation.  Do not demonize police.  Do not demonize minorities.  Do not demonize conservatives.  Do not demonize liberals.  We need to try to find points of agreement and build from there.  If we want a functioning society we have to agree on what constitutes functioning.  If we want police that protect us we need to agree that we want police to exist.

Maybe the first step could be agreeing that we want police to protect us.

To Serve and Protect: Why are Cops Sporting Military Gear?

In a mature society, "civil servant" is semantically equal to "civil master."

       "Time Enough for Love" by Robert Heinlein.

This post is a rambling mess, and I apologize ahead of time.

Police interacting with an unarmed protester in Ferguson - Source NYTimes

Another day, another young black man killed by police.  This time the victim was named Michael Brown, he was 18, unarmed, and had his hands up before he was shot to death in plain sight.  Now there is a no-fly zone above Ferguson, and "riot police" are running around in military costumes.  But at least we don't need to worry about the safety of the officer who gunned down an unarmed teen, his identity has been protected.

This post is difficult for me to write.  My feelings on the subject are confused.  I find the trends in Law Enforcement in this country terrifying, but I have always been on the side of the Police Forces.  I worked in security for over a decade, and in that time I came to feel an identification with the forces of law and order.  To me the police are the good guys.  I like them.  I have police officers as friends.  I worked regularly with the Seattle Police Department and the FBI.  I was so impressed by my interactions with the Seattle Police Department that I went through the hiring process with the Federal Way Police Department.  During my panel interview I realized that the attitude of serving the public that I found so attractive in the SPD was not so evident with the FWPD.  I quickly came to feel that there was an antagonistic attitude toward the public at work in the interview, and my responses were shifted toward service to the public.  I was not surprised when I was turned down by the FWPD.  The experience also convinced me that police work was probably not in my future.  But the experience did not change my basic feelings about police, just about my ability to be a part of a police force.

Before we go on I feel like I should talk more about my interactions with police.  As I have said, I have always felt that the police have been on the same side as me.  With only one exception I have never felt endangered or threatened by the police.  The exception to that rule was when I was pulled over for going 12 miles over the speed limit on the freeway through Salem, Oregon two years ago.  The officer that pulled me over was without a doubt the rudest and most verbally abusive police officer I have ever interacted with.  It seemed very clear to me and my wife (girlfriend at the time) that the officer was trying to provoke a confrontation.  It seemed like he was not going to be satisfied until there was a physical confrontation.  Fortunately after some time of verbal abuse when it became clear that my responses were not going to vary from polite and my hands were not going to leave my wheel the cop wrote me a $280 ticket and left.  It was a scary situation.  I've always wondered how it might have been different if my wife and I were not two white adults driving a two year old car wearing conventional clothing with conservative haircuts.

But let's be clear here.  For me this was a completely singular experience, and I was not harmed or arrested.  For me, even the experience of someone being rude to me is highly unusual.  I am a large, friendly, white male with short hair.  I interact with people courteously.  Everywhere I go people are polite.  I go to bars in rough neighborhoods, rural remote areas, other countries, places where I am the only native English speaker, and everywhere people are nice to me.  I know that not everyone has that experience of life.  I try to be cognizant of that when I try to give people advice.

So for me the most egregious act that a police officer has perpetrated on my person was an unprovoked verbal assault.  For Michael Brown it was getting gunned down in the street.  For Eric Garner it was getting choked to death in public for selling cigarettes.  For Jonathan Ferrell it was getting tased and then shot ten times for knocking on a door asking for help after climbing out of the wreckage of his car.  For John Crawford it was being shot to death for holding a toy gun in a Walmart.  The most obvious difference between me and those four men who were killed by police while unarmed is that I am white.  They are black.

But I really don't want to make this post about race.  God knows racism is a real thing.  My time in security gave me a perspective that made racism far too evident to be denied.  I am not even going to try to list individual events.  And I also know that being white is not a total insulation from being harassed by the police.  When I was a young man I drove a beat up car and worked a late swing shift.  I usually headed home around 3am, and I was pulled over a minimum of four times a week.  One night in particular I was pulled over twice driving the 100 blocks from my work to my house.  Police saw me, a young man in a crappy car driving at 3am, and assumed I was drunk.  But since I was polite and sober every time I received literally hundreds of verbal warnings for various pretexts that were cited for pulling me over between the ages of 18 and 23.  I never begrudged the police their pulling me over, statistically you are pretty likely to catch a drunk driver if you pull over young men in crappy cars driving on surface streets at 3am.  And in every one of those cases the officers were polite and professional.

I figure that the police probably would not have given me endless warnings or been quite so polite if I had been black, but I really want to try to make this post about more than racism.  The trouble with making articles about the police centered around racism is that for white people like me, police racism hurts other people who look different.  The militarization of police forces affects all of us.  Race makes the threat of a militarized police force seem less threatening to people who look like me because we see pictures like this:

Police menacing that same protester - Source The Concourse

Yes the force brought against the unarmed black protester seems unwarranted.  But hey, there is graffiti saying "fuck the police" in the image, there's a storage facility in the background (you don't see those so much in affluent areas), and the guy is black with long hair.  All things that might make the image seem a little more distant and understandable.  I mean, everybody knows poor black people hate cops right?  Of course the cops would launch a military style assault on black people.  It just makes sense.

That's why I like this picture better:

Whatcha doin?  Oh you know, cop stuff. - Source Business Insider

Now it just looks scary.  There is no graffiti, this could be anywhere in the US.  And the picture puts you in the position of the viewer.  The viewer confronted by faceless men in military style tactical gear with no apparent name tags.  Men wearing sidearms in addition to their carbines, backed up by the police version of an MRAP (the Lenco BearCat).  But these men aren't soldiers, or at least they are not supposed to be soldiers, they are supposed to be police.  Why would police in the US need desert boots?  Why would they need camouflage in a city?  Why is that cop pointing a 5.56 carbine with a 30 round magazine at me? 

This is not a group of police officers seeking to keep order, this is a group of police officers preparing to fight a battle against the public.

And now let us turn back to race.  In 1967 Daryl Gates assembled a SWAT team in Los Angeles to combat things like snipers (from race riots) and the Black Panthers.  Gates used officers with military experience.  He created a military force to use against Americans.  The first LAPD SWAT team battle was actually with the Black Panthers.  But that was not technically the first SWAT style action, the first was north of LA against non-cooperating farm workers.

It is interesting to note that at the same time that California was militarizing against black militants Ronald Reagan was also speaking out against open carry.  Ronald Reagan was trying to ban open carrying of loaded weapons.  The law that passed in 1967, signed by Reagan, is named the Mulford Act.  Who was the law seeking to strip of their right to keep and bear arms?  The Black Panthers.

That's right, limiting the right to keep and bear arms and SWAT teams came about the same year, in the same place, for the same reason:  To fight back against those uppity negroes.

Maybe I'm drawing too strong of a point, the Black Panthers were in fact rather scary.  They were a bunch of angry black men running around with AK's.  And the SWAT teams were also used to crack down on Mexicans first, but...  yeah.

(Parenthetically, I don't want to draw too strong of a connection between the squashing of the right for US citizens to keep and bear arms and the militarized oppression of Americans by the government.  Not because there is not an obvious and progressive correlation, but because correlation does not necessarily imply causation.  Just because 0.125% of homicides in the US in 1991 used a military grade weapon doesn't mean that the Assault Weapons Ban was aimed at furthering the force asymmetry between the police and the populace.)

Unsurprisingly, against this same backdrop of the civil rights movement, crying out against police brutality, disquiet about Vietnam, and growing distrust of the government, one year later the Federal Government passed the Gun Control Act dramatically reducing which arms citizens could own.  Two years later the government proved that they were right to restrict the means of violence to themselves when the National Guard fired into a group of unarmed students at Kent State.

Not that the populace reacted with the same sanguine chill to the Kent State Massacre as they did to black people getting killed by militarized police forces, but I see a connection between use of military force against black people and the broadening of who the government can use military force against.  But once again, I might be drawing connections were none exist.

If we fast forward a decade or so we see another major uptick in the militarization of police forces.  Ronald Reagan (again) helped broaden the scope of what SWAT would be used for as he broadened the War on Drugs.  The scope of who the government would use military force against was expanding.

Fast forward another decade and a half.  9/11 happens.  The War on Terror happens.  The Patriot Act eviscerates the constitution.  The number of cities fielding SWAT teams explodes.  The funding for militarized police forces explodes.  And once again mission creep sets in.  The police become essentially an internal military force to protect the government populace against the populace terrorists.

Color me naive, but I feel like we have the FBI and the National Guard to protect the country.  I feel like the police are there to enforce local laws and keep the peace, not to fight wars.

But now we fast forward another decade plus to today.  80% of cities with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 have SWAT teams.  In 1983 that number was 13%.  In 1975 there were 500 Swat teams in the whole country.  In 1966 there were no SWAT teams (and civilians could own machine guns).  An average of 50,000 SWAT raids go on every year in America.  Today SWAT teams are used for such dangerous missions as breaking up poker games, or checking out a bar that may have sold liquor to minors.  One of my favorite anecdotes is when a SWAT team went to investigate a man suspected of running a cock-fighting ring and they drove an armored vehicle through his fence and proceeded to kill 100 of his chickens and his dog.  (for more read this article, it's better than mine)

Today police continue to kill black men with the same racist impunity they have for decades. The difference is that now a city of 21,000 people in Missouri can call in a military style assault force to crush any opposition without having to involve the actual military.

I guess my point is this.  Racism is a problem, not just for the races being discriminated against, but for everyone.  Because when racism is allowed to affect policy those policies affect us all.  Racism allowed our country to slowly build up a militarized police force.  Military force is still mostly used against minorities, but it threatens all of us.  And today it is used against all of us.

When you read about Michael Brown being gunned down in broad daylight you should acknowledge that race played a big part in his death.  You should also realize that Michael Brown was a human being, just like you.  And the same rules that let Michael Brown's killer go unnamed would let your killer go unnamed.

Think about it.

Michael Brown, yes he was that young.

And sorry again for the rambling tangent-riffic mess of a post.  I just had too many thoughts to pare it back.  I try to maintain focus in my posts, but sometimes they get away from me.