A Rebuttal To “Rage Revoked”

I was going to write this as a comment on the thread for the
Right Angle episode, but it’s going to be too long for that. So it gets its own
post. I’m also not going to address what happened to George Loyd. It has been established that the officer’s actions were wrong, egregious and criminal. He has been fired and charged. His life is all but over.

I don’t agree with the gesture of “taking a knee”. It is a gesture
of subservience akin to bowing. It has been a long accepted reality that
Americans do not bow down to others. Other cultures, other leaders. We are not
subservient, we are not subjects of anyone. Each American citizen is a
sovereign individual unto him(her)self.

(Don’t get me started on Sovereign Citizens. They’re just delusionally
wishing themselves exempt from the law)

Taking a knee is showing submission. In this case, it is accepting
responsibility for an action not your own. I take responsibility for my
actions, and the consequences they entail. I do not accept responsibility for
others’ actions.

I don’t know if you are aware, but there are several videos published
on YouTube (and other sites) of a cameraman going up to white people and exhorting
them to kneel and apologize to blacks for their “white privilege”.  Many of them are convinced to bow to the ground
and even kiss the feet of a conveniently present black person.

Now, I know that this is being done as a way of humiliating
Progressives, who are the main purveyors of the myth of “white privilege”, but
I see the kneeling of Police to protesters as a similar humiliation. They may
not realize it, nor the protesters that are requesting the gesture. But others –with
malicious intent– will seize upon this as a justification for their actions
against Police, against order, against society.

If the Police are delegitimized, their actions are
justified. In the same way that the Democrats have been trying to delegitimize
everything Trump has been doing in his tenure as President.

I’m not saying that I have the answer to this situation. Kneeling
to these protesters has, in fact, defused several contentious confrontations. I
just believe that it is the wrong gesture to be promoting.

Perhaps a salute could be substituted. Or, if that’s ‘too
militaristic’, how about holding hands over hearts and bowing heads. That is an
established gesture of respect and even grief. To show that the officers share
the grief over what happened to Mr. Floyd.

 

                                    ———————————————–

My second point is the behavior of the Police in the
flashpoint encounter. It has been established with certainty by now that both
primary actors in the encounter have long histories of mistreatment of citizens
and procedural brutality. Yet they had received very little in the way of
discipline for their bad behavior. This is disturbingly common among police.

I am acquainted with many officers. In talking to them about
current events, there is a common refrain. Too many times, bad cops are
protected by the police union and department management from being properly
held to accounts for their actions. There is a culture of “us against them”
when dealing with complaints of misconduct. The “Thin Blue Line”. “Protect the
Brotherhood”.

Chiefs of Departments are not immune to the culture. They
are loathe to admit that they might have ‘bad cops’ in their department. It
tars the whole force and can affect their chances of being re-elected. Police
Chiefs these days are more politician that patrol officer.

I saw the seeds of this coming back in the 90’s. Back then I
was striving to become a police officer. One thing I kept encountering was the admonition
that I was “too intelligent”, and “too well-educated” to be satisfied with
being a cop. I was repeatedly told that I would become bored in a few years and
leave for greener pastures, and waste the investment that the force had put in
me.

So they lowered the standards for applicants, to attract
people with less education and lower IQs. What they ended up with were cops who
were more susceptible to the “power corrupts” dynamic. Bullies with badges.

This trend has, thankfully, begun to reverse in recent
years, as police work becomes more technologically sophisticated. But those bad
cops are still out there, with years of seniority, oft times poisoning rookie
officers to their ways with the “this is the way it’s done, get used to it” mindset.

Some of the best, most effective police officers I know are
highly intelligent and very well educated. They enjoy the work because of the unpredictability
and variety of the job from day to day. But they are not yet a large enough
subset of the workforce to swing the tide. There needs to be a movement in the
police nationwide to re-establish the concept of the cop as a peace-keeper and
argument resolver, and movement away from the identity of Law Enforcement
Officer. Door breaker. Any arrest needs to put the arrestee on the ground to be
controlled and handcuffed.

I really detest the rationale of “My primary concern is
getting home safe tonight”. Wrong! If your primary concern is to get home safe,
become a banker. Or a CPA. Or a garbage man. (they have a really strong union,
too.) A cop’s job is to go out and, if necessary, place himself in harm’s way –even to the point of possibly getting
killed- to protect the public. If you can’t handle that, go work in a
library.

I understand. It’s really easy to become jaded and cynical
seeing only the worst of society every day. We could maybe counter that by
instigating a program of rotating service. Don’t lock a patrol officer into the
same precinct for their whole tour. Get the officers from the suburbs into the city
center for a couple of weeks/months, to let them see what they could  have to face, let the inner city cops work the
suburbs to remind them that most citizens are decent folk.

These are just my ideas, percolated from long observation
and contemplation of what I see going on in American society and police
culture. I may be wrong on any or all. But, how about we try, and see what
happens?

Phil L.