And Here Comes Ferguson

First in a series of articles regarding the impasse and dilemma confronting America with its current system of Local Law Enforcement.

The Grand Jury's decision in the Ferguson, MO case of a police officer shooting an unarmed 18-year-old man is due any day. The world is watching.

The uncomfortable questions that society is being confronted with:

When is it acceptable for the government to kill a criminal in the field? What are the circumstances that would make the killing of a human being by an armed government agent justified? "What if" what is acceptable and justified in the minds of the police, prosecutors, and judges is substantially different than what is acceptable and justified in the minds of the citizens of the community these local officials are sworn to protect?

I have had a number of conversations with people working in Law Enforcement about this case. Universally these Law Enforcement Officers ("LEO's") are of the opinion that the officer in question should not be "second guessed" by any non LEO person - but especially not by civilians and elected or appointed officials "that have not carried a gun to stand up to danger and to protect others from danger" that have the temerity to question police actions and activities.  A better example of the "hero complex" I can't think of at the moment. Somehow doing such questioning and independent thinking makes the the questioner and thinker anti-Law Enforcement. In short, the police and the judicial system firmly believe that they should be able to police themselves with no input from the rest of us, in this, you know, democratic Republic?

Is this what our "War on Drugs" and polluted American Body Politic has brought us to? (I think it has. The reader will have to draw their own conclusions.) And we, the citizens, have so little in the way of protections in this system that it is hard to frame that circumstance with a government that draws its authority to govern from the people. Read this, and noodle that for a day or two. How can we in the other 49 states that do not have independent oversight of police killings actually believe that we live in anything other than a police state?

Loretta Lynch, current presidential Appointee to the Office of Attorney General of the United States had this to say in her closing arguments in the Abner Louima case (never heard of that? Police in New York shoved a broom handle up the rectum of this helpless prisoner while in lock up and nearly killed him):

“Don’t let these defendants push us back to the day when police officers could beat people with impunity, and arrest people for no reason and lie about it to cover it up,” Lynch told the jury during her closing argument that day in 1999.

Perhaps we should not have second guessed the officers in that case as well?

Society desperately needs its LEO's. Is it out of order to demand accountability of LEO's? And to make adjustments in failing, or worse, disastrous, law and policy?

In spite of what Law Enforcement would have you believe, crime in general, and violent crime in particular, is in free fall in the U.S. FREE FALL. There is no other way to describe it. The media outlets bombard you with videos of crime do that for their own reasons... to make you angry; to sway your vote; to control you... but "facts are stubborn things", and the salient fact here is that violent crime is in FREE FALL.

Yet police budgets continue to grow exponentially. Why?

And with this increased police budget comes increased police violence, not just actual shootings and beatings but the drawing of firearms by police and threatening to kill citizens with this act - hey, that is violence! How many videos have we seen on youtube of an enraged police officer pointing a FIREARM at a human being because that human being was holding a camera? Or beating that citizen and seizing his/her camera? How is it possible that the officers in these videos are still working in Law Enforcement? (This is an officer sworn to uphold the Constitution... perhaps a a redirect to the 4th Amendment is in order?)

The FBI is incredibly efficient in the collection of crime data with one glaring exception - the killing of citizens by Local Law Enforcement. That data is reported, not collected, voluntarily and at the discretion of the reporting Law Enforcement agency. The entire State of California, 1/8 of the American population and perhaps 1/4 of police involved killings, is pretty much excused from reporting the killings of civilians by police under the California Supreme Court's insane Copely decision.

I had LEO's telling me that the facts were that "only" 400 Americans are killed each year by the police. Where did they get that statistic? From the FBI and its voluntary system of reporting that does not include the State with 1/4 of the police involved killings!!!

The United Kingdom had THREE, count them... 1... 2... 3...!!!!!  instances in which their police forces actually FIRED a weapon in an entire year. (The number of killings was ZERO (I guess they are bad shots?). An industrialized nation with a population of over 64 million people and absolutely zero police killings of civilians? Does that mean that every criminal arrested in the U.K.was smaller than the LEO making the arrest? Isn't that the justification of the shooting of Michael Brown? That he was 6'5" and 300 lbs and the officer was afraid for his life based on the size of Michael Brown?

How do Americans reconcile the facts in the U.K. to what is happening on the ground in America (well, the fact is we don't have the facts... I think we need to ask ourselves why not? And for what reason?) We have become so desensitized to violence that people will read this and actually come to the defense of the police rather than questioning the blood on the ground. Worse, our LEO's, like the rest of us, have come of age in front of the blue spectrum light of the TV screen soaked in the Blood of "The Terminator", "Scarface", "Rambo" (Eric Frien anyone?), "Robo Cop", "Dirty Harry"... the list sickens me and it has sickened the people now walking around with guns and badges.

(I avoid watching violent movies for the most part, but sometimes I forget to click off advertisements on youtube... so, here we have an aging actor Liam Neeson, 60 years old, several face lifts and a bad case of ink head hair dye pretending to be an LEO (Air Marshall) on a flight between NY and London in which ol' Liam solves all of the problems on an AIRPLANE, 36,000 feet over an ocean, filled with K1 JET FUEL, with... wait for it... A %******* GUN. This is what we have all been poisoned with since childhood, including our current Law Enforcement personnel. Anybody here besides me see a problem?)

Are there bad people out there that can only be addressed and neutralized with extreme (deadly) force? Of course there are.

Was Michael Brown one of that number?

Law Enforcement seems to think so.

The people of the Ferguson community? Not so much.


-to be continued...