-continued from the previous post
The Grand Jury has spoken in the police killing of Michael Brown. I have little to add to that decision.
While it is clear that I look askance at the current state of Local Law Enforcement in the U.S., and believe that it has become unhinged from its purported roles and goals, I must say that of all of the police killings that occurred in recent years, the Michael Brown incident is likely among the least for asserting Law Enforcement wrong doing.
We have had people shot and killed by Local Law Enforcement for holding a BB gun while shopping at Walmart, for moving their car when another police officer told him to and another officer thought he was attempting to run down the officers after a college football game, and because the police mistook a power drill for a firearm.
No one protested these killings of completely innocent people, but when a 6'5" 300 lbs young man viciously assaults an officer and gets shot during the fury of confrontation... and look, I get it. It was just the straw that broke the camel's back. And I do think that the officer in this case could have chosen actions that would not have resulted in the shooting death of Michael Brown... but it is certainly reasonable to believe that the officer was scared and excited and not making the perfect decisions that are easily made when writing a blog post. It is also reasonable to conclude that the officer chased down Michael Brown and slaughtered him - just as he was trained to do.
Unfortunately, that is not illegal in the United States. In Europe, with over twice the population of the U.S., the police almost never kill criminals because they are not trained to kill criminals. They are not trained in "force elevation" that has no end before the slaughter of human life. In the United States, that is the standard. A citizen can go from Jay walking, to assault, to a slab at the morgue in the 90 seconds or so that the confrontation between Michael Brown and Officer Darren Wilson took. In Germany, Law Enforcement fired a total of 85 bullets during 2011. 85 in an entire year! Darren Wilson fired 12 rounds from a .40 Sig (an elephant gun) semi-automatic pistol at an unarmed man in a heavily populated urban neighborhood. Maybe you think that's ok. What about the kids in the house behind that unarmed criminal? Is it ok for them to be struck by one of those 12, .40 caliber rounds fired by a police officer that feared for his life from an unarmed man that had already been shot in the hand?
Think about that.
Think about that.
Darren Wilson did exactly what he was trained to do. What we in the U.S. have permitted our Law Enforcement Officers to be trained to do. To "force escalate" until the perpetrator is dead without concern for the safety of the citizenry. After all, the officer "feared for his life".
Law Enforcement points to the 30 to 50 officers killed by gunfire in the line of duty each year, and that is a fair point. Why does Law Enforcement not point to the hundreds of innocent people killed each year by police shootings and high speed chases?
Because nobody with talent and the capacity for critical thought is measuring and statistically examining outcomes.
Law Enforcement points to the 30 to 50 officers killed by gunfire in the line of duty each year, and that is a fair point. Why does Law Enforcement not point to the hundreds of innocent people killed each year by police shootings and high speed chases?
Because nobody with talent and the capacity for critical thought is measuring and statistically examining outcomes.
Is that really what The People want? Going only on the postings on Facebook it would seem that white Americans are quite comfortable with local Law Enforcement killing "criminals", or killing at any time that they claim they "felt their life was in danger". Black and brown people are not, and are accompanied in this sentiment by White Liberals. Count me in the later camp.
There are a number of questions we, the civilian authorities controlling Law Enforcement, have to ask:
Why are "The People" so angry at Law Enforcement? Think about it: If Officer Wilson asked me to step onto the sidewalk my response would be "of course, officer". Michael Brown became enraged by Officer Wilson's lawful command and physically attacked a uniformed officer.
Why?
Maybe Brown was just crazy. Maybe he was a thug. Or maybe he has spent his entire existence living in an environment of an armed occupation of outsiders that have been extorting money from "his people" for traffic violations and kidnapping "his people" and putting them in cages for "War on Drugs" violations. Now throw in the Liberal application of free housing, free food, and free healthcare... because obviously (to Liberals) these are defective people and have no capacity of making their own way in this life... and viola! Dysfunction at its finest.
America has built an entirely automobile dependent system for employment and shelter, and the economic system simply does not afford people in the lower 25% of income to be able to afford a car, gas, and most important, insurance and traffic ticket costs. African Americans dominate the lower quartile of income in America.
I know that this is hard to grasp for my fellow coastal elites... but this is as real as it gets for African Americans living in urban centers and seedy suburbs. From the article:
See, what is supposed to happen is that the people working in Law Enforcement, who are witnessing this kind of inhuman treatment of their fellow man, resign in protest. Why don't they? Two things: they have become inured to human suffering, and; they have been co-opted by the system in that they are debt and paycheck slaves just like the rest of us and they don't want to give up the prerogatives that come with government employment, a gun, and a badge. Prosecutors never had a heart to begin with, so no point calling them out on this, and most judges are former prosecutors (why no former Public Defenders as judges? You know the kind of people that actually can feel for their fellow man?).
Between the harassment from local Law Enforcement for traffic and vehicular violations (no registration (it costs money); no insurance (it costs money)) and the War on Drugs and its draconian prison sentence/gulag system, it is little wonder to me that the American People occupying the bottom 25% income bracket absolutely despise the authorities and the system irrespective of how many freebies the system hands out.
But our local governments are not interested in lowering our police killings to Europe's levels. Our local governments are in desperate need of cash because of municipal employee unions like your local police, and a major source of that cash is to run an extortion racket of armed thugs in uniforms and claim they are here to protect you! Isn't that just delicious!!??
And yet we have places - Oakland, Detroit, Memphis, et al - 20 or so counties where the vast majority of violent crime in America occurs. We, our system, created these pockets of incredible lawlessness populated by ruthless criminals that certain members of law enforcement in these locals are forced to confront at risk to their own lives - and the lives of the rest of us. And Law Enforcement in the other 3000 American counties? They are in the extortion business.
"See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true." - Milton Friedman
We created the drug cartels. We created the gang problems plaguing our inner cities. We created the demographic that commits half of America's crime - fatherless black males 15 to 24 years of age by dragging their fathers off for long prison stints over drugs and then having government fill his shoes as provider. We could fix it in a snap and in the end the War on Drugs will come to its inglorious end, but that will mean deep budget cuts for all manner of government agencies from prisons and police to welfare and healthcare - and those benefitting from that will fight this to the last man.
In the final analysis, America needs Law Enforcement to maintain order, but America is going to have to reconsider how to manage and fund the people it appoints to maintain that order. And we must be willing to examine and correct our failures, something that government personnel have not proved to be particularly competent at. I don't think a single thinking person missed the fact that the shooting of Michael Brown did not result in greater law and order in the city of Ferguson, MO. Perhaps thinking people will see that the War on Drugs and the armed extortion rackets of Local Law Enforcement are not promoting an orderly, law abiding, and respectful society.
And just once I want to see a police officer, prosecutor, or judge resign in protest over something.
Anything.
Why?
Maybe Brown was just crazy. Maybe he was a thug. Or maybe he has spent his entire existence living in an environment of an armed occupation of outsiders that have been extorting money from "his people" for traffic violations and kidnapping "his people" and putting them in cages for "War on Drugs" violations. Now throw in the Liberal application of free housing, free food, and free healthcare... because obviously (to Liberals) these are defective people and have no capacity of making their own way in this life... and viola! Dysfunction at its finest.
America has built an entirely automobile dependent system for employment and shelter, and the economic system simply does not afford people in the lower 25% of income to be able to afford a car, gas, and most important, insurance and traffic ticket costs. African Americans dominate the lower quartile of income in America.
I know that this is hard to grasp for my fellow coastal elites... but this is as real as it gets for African Americans living in urban centers and seedy suburbs. From the article:
By the time Bolden got to St. Charles County, it had been well over 36 hours since the accident. “I hadn’t slept,” she says. “I was still in my same clothes. I was starting to lose my mind.” That’s when she says a police officer told her that if she couldn’t post bond, they’d keep her in jail until May. “I just freaked out,” she says. “I said, ‘What about my babies? Who is going to take care of my babies?’” She says the officer just shrugged."The officer just shrugged." And there it is.
See, what is supposed to happen is that the people working in Law Enforcement, who are witnessing this kind of inhuman treatment of their fellow man, resign in protest. Why don't they? Two things: they have become inured to human suffering, and; they have been co-opted by the system in that they are debt and paycheck slaves just like the rest of us and they don't want to give up the prerogatives that come with government employment, a gun, and a badge. Prosecutors never had a heart to begin with, so no point calling them out on this, and most judges are former prosecutors (why no former Public Defenders as judges? You know the kind of people that actually can feel for their fellow man?).
Between the harassment from local Law Enforcement for traffic and vehicular violations (no registration (it costs money); no insurance (it costs money)) and the War on Drugs and its draconian prison sentence/gulag system, it is little wonder to me that the American People occupying the bottom 25% income bracket absolutely despise the authorities and the system irrespective of how many freebies the system hands out.
But our local governments are not interested in lowering our police killings to Europe's levels. Our local governments are in desperate need of cash because of municipal employee unions like your local police, and a major source of that cash is to run an extortion racket of armed thugs in uniforms and claim they are here to protect you! Isn't that just delicious!!??
And yet we have places - Oakland, Detroit, Memphis, et al - 20 or so counties where the vast majority of violent crime in America occurs. We, our system, created these pockets of incredible lawlessness populated by ruthless criminals that certain members of law enforcement in these locals are forced to confront at risk to their own lives - and the lives of the rest of us. And Law Enforcement in the other 3000 American counties? They are in the extortion business.
"See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true." - Milton Friedman
We created the drug cartels. We created the gang problems plaguing our inner cities. We created the demographic that commits half of America's crime - fatherless black males 15 to 24 years of age by dragging their fathers off for long prison stints over drugs and then having government fill his shoes as provider. We could fix it in a snap and in the end the War on Drugs will come to its inglorious end, but that will mean deep budget cuts for all manner of government agencies from prisons and police to welfare and healthcare - and those benefitting from that will fight this to the last man.
In the final analysis, America needs Law Enforcement to maintain order, but America is going to have to reconsider how to manage and fund the people it appoints to maintain that order. And we must be willing to examine and correct our failures, something that government personnel have not proved to be particularly competent at. I don't think a single thinking person missed the fact that the shooting of Michael Brown did not result in greater law and order in the city of Ferguson, MO. Perhaps thinking people will see that the War on Drugs and the armed extortion rackets of Local Law Enforcement are not promoting an orderly, law abiding, and respectful society.
And just once I want to see a police officer, prosecutor, or judge resign in protest over something.
Anything.
No comments:
Post a Comment