[Critique Group 1] cleora's september submission

[sitting.duck at springmail.com]

White Is Not a Color
by C. S. Boyd

In old Salem, when something didn't go the way people wanted, they cried witch. In modern America, they cry racist or the ever popular bigot. The matter of police using excessive force, and other potentially deadly methods when arresting a suspect is not new. It has been around at least for the last 50 years. Perhaps this goes back to the wild west days when such force was necessary and approved in order to protect the life and property of law abiding citizens. In those days, people couldn't file insurance to get the money to rebuild and recover their losses. However, what good is the insurance if it is not safe to rebuild. Many of the business owners are unable to resume their lives because they no longer have a safe environment to restart. Many have already left and others are considering leaving the communities they formerly had established their business in.

How did we get from appreciating the work our law enforcement officers do to demanding that the rule of law is unconstitutional and criminals should be allowed to rage through our communities unchecked? In some countries, even in a secure community residents are afraid to go outside day or night for fear of being robbed and/or murdered. Millions risk their lives to travel thousands of miles to cross our borders illegally in hopes of finding a better and more secure home. Others who respect the laws of other countries emigrate legally.

It is clear that we have issues today that we didn't have 100 years ago. A policemen no longer walks a beat and becomes personally acquainted with the people in his neighborhood. Frequently, the suspect is drunk or high on drugs, and may have mental or physical issues that impair their ability to respond to police appropriately. Then there is the fact there are more people. In 1950 the world population was 2.5 billion. As of the 2018 records there are 7.6 billion people on our planet. During that period of time, the population of the United States increased by 2.1 times dramatically increasing the strain on law enforcement and other resources. The environment has changed drastically and there need to be adjustments in police procedure to address them. This is the responsibility of city and state elected officials, but the administration in the cities where rioting and destructive criminal behavior has been allowed to continue unchecked have failed to address both past and present problems in a satisfactory manner. Soon we will be casting our votes to elect officials to carry forward. Instead of listening to the claims and promises of the candidates, it would serve us better to look at what current elected officials from the different parties have done and are currently doing to prevent and deal with these situations. 

Let's take Minneapolis as an example

George Floyd was not the first. A decade before Floyd’s death, David Smith died in Minneapolis police custody after an officer kneeled on his back four and one-half minutes. But his case did not cause public outcry, and officers involved did not face discipline. However, procedures were revised to include turning a suspect over after he has been subdued to make sure he was breathing properly. Note that this procedure was not followed in the case of George Floyd, and, it would seem, no effort has been made on the part of this Democratic administration to make sure that officers comply to the procedure. 

In cases that have been on the news, it is clear that police are fond of this method of subduing a suspect. There are likely many cases in which the method was used successfully and did not result in serious injury or the death of the suspect. In the 2013 case of David Smith, the officers testified that they were exhausted from struggling with the person and were afraid that if they released their hold, he would get away. Perhaps in the case of Floyd and other suspects, they think the complaint of not being able to breathe is a trick to get them to relax their grip so he can try again to get away. After all, if he can’t breathe, how is he able to keep talking? Or even if the person relaxes, they don't immediately loosen their grip thinking the person may be faking. Consider the thinking of the suspect. He feels he is in trouble. He begins frantically to struggle harder which causes the officers to hold him more tightly. Remember that police procedure is to turn the person over and be sure they are breathing properly. In some police departments this method has been banned. Why hasn't it been banned in the areas recently sighted, or if it has, why hasn't the ban been enforced?

In the case of David Prude,March 23, Rochester New York,  they put a spit mask over Prude’s head. It is not clear if this is because he was trying to bite them, or because he told them he had COVID. They arrived on the scene at the request of Prude’s brother. They found Prude naked and disoriented. The brother confirmed to police that he was on PCP. This situation went down very quickly. After they had subdued him on the ground, in the video Prude sounds like he is having trouble breathing or is trying to spit something out of his mouth. Within a minute, they have him on a gurney. Three minutes after that, Prude no longer has a pulse. He is loaded into an ambulance on his way to the hospital 11 minutes after his first encounter with police. He is taken off life support A week later. The medical examiner ruled prude died of complications of exfixia in the setting of a physical restraint and acute PCP intoxication . 

The Seven officers involved in the case of David Prude have been suspended with pay pending investigation. The officers were following procedure step by step. In this case, the man was high on PCP, out of control, and his family called police needing help with a family member. There is nothing here to suggest that Prude being black had anything to do with the way the officers handled the situation.

The cases that have been on the news in recent years have a number of things in common. The police have been called to deal with a person that is being disruptive or a threat. The person is under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. The person resists arrest, struggles with police, and frequently refuses to drop a weapon. Police are trying to apprehend the individual and protect the lives and property of citizens in the area. The elected officials of Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, New York and other places that are now experiencing the violence have two things in common. They have had decades to examine their police procedures and make adjustments to prevent this kind of thing, and they have chosen to allow the current lawlessness and destruction of private property to go unchecked. 

Consider that police are called to handle a difficult situation. They frequently have seconds to make a decision based on their training, experience,  and department procedures. Minneapolis did respond by instructing police officers to turn the suspect over on his back and check to make sure the suspect is not in distress, but as we witnessed in the case of George Floyd, the officers involved did not follow this procedure. Possibly they didn’t believe he was really in trouble. I also point out that there were others witnessing the event and they did nothing to try to help Floyd either. If officers had followed procedure, if the procedure had been banned, or if an officer that already had 18 complaints of excessive force against him had been terminated, George Floyd might be alive today.

Recently, a 9 year old boy led a protest march in front of the home of Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price demanding justice for his Aunt who was killed when an officer shot and killed her through the window. They were responding to a welfare call by a neighbor who was concerned that her front door was open at 2:30 in the morning. His Aunt, 28 year old Atatiana Jefferson, who upon hearing noises coming from the back yard, took her gun out of her purse and went to look out the window to see what was going on. The noise she heard were the officers coming to investigate the call by the neighbor. They did not come to the door and identify themselves, possibly because they thought a burglary was in progress. If she had called police herself, the dispatch would have seen that police were on the way to the address and let her know, and would have also contacted the officers, and this tragedy might have been avoided. What if the neighbor had instead called her, or gone over to her house to see if everything was ok? The officer that fired resigned two days later and was arrested and charged with homicide six days later. 

When about 2 years ago, an officer amber Geiger who was coming home from a long duty went into the wrong apartment. Shot and killed Bolten John who was sitting in a chair in his apartment living room. She called an ambulance and stayed with the victim. He died before help arrived. She was later charged with murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2019. It takes time to do these things. Justice is not served by lynching someone without benefit of a proper investigation and trial. The officer in the case of Jefferson has been arrested and in due course of time justice will be served. There is no reason for her 9 year old nephew to be marching in front of the mayor’s home, and the city of Fort Worth doesn’t owe him a rec center for him and his friends to play video games .

there is no excuse for allowing rioting and lawlessness to continue as a result. Officials need to sit down with responsible clear headed citizens to work out new procedures to protect the rights and property of law abiding citizens and to safely apprehend law breakers to face charges against them in a court of law, then make sure those procedures are followed, and weed out those officers that don’t comply. On the other hand, Sometimes things go wrong even when everything is done right. 

Before deciding who to vote for, I invite the reader to investigate how well their local officials have dealt with this problem in past decades. why should we expect officials that haven't taken steps to prevent tragedies like George Floyd in the past, and who don't take steps to insure the safety of lives and property of their citizens now be reelected.  The idea of responding to the problem by eliminating law enforcement is irresponsible. A better plan might be to defund the administration that hasn't taken the proper steps and use those funds to pay for professional counselors to work with police in the cases where that would be of benefit. It is the poor communities that suffer most from what is going on, and these officials should not be permitted to use tax dollars to provide themselves with private security. If the rest of the citizens don't need police to keep them safe and secure, then neither do the officials.  In at least one case, they went so far as to prosecute private citizens who tried to protect themselves and their property against threats from the rioters who are allowed to continue to loot, vandalize, and destroy the property of innocent people. I suggest that administrations that haven’t addressed these problems in the past  are unlikely to do it if reelected.

in each of these cases, we see that the suspect struggled, resisted arrest, in one case got a taser away from and officer, fired at the officer and fled. They were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The police were called. They were not cruising around looking for black people to kill as The media would have us believe. If that were the case, we would have piles of dead bodies in the streets. 

Is the list of promises made year after year but not fulfilled anything more than a platform to secure votes while having no intention of addressing the problems? I would also point out that the issue of law enforcement is first the responsibility of local and state officials, not the responsibility of the federal government. Federal police are and the national guard are available to restore law and order if necessary, but the local officials need to ask. Repeated offers of help have been refused by the same elected officials that refuse to deal with the problem.

I encourage the reader to do something former generations have not been able to do. Go out on the internet and research these and other questions for themselves. Be wary. There is much false information on the internet. Be discerning and sift out the chaff. Get the real story, not the one that you first find or the one that sounds like your own personal bias. There is a tendency to cry racism every time there is something a certain group doesn’t like. They will yell for freedom of speech for what they have to say, but label someone with a different opinion as racist or bigoted. They scream for equal justice for all when a black man is killed, but are unconcerned when a nonblack is treated the same way. They want justice except in the case where they are the one running a red light, looting, vandalizing, and burning a business. What happens to a person that has a different opinion? Who is really behind a group of people who support free speech only as long as it agrees with their opinion, or justice only when it condones what they do and punish others who do not agree with them? We need public officials who will come together and address these problems with real solutions instead of political name calling and rhetoric.

I also encourage the reader to read articles that present views other than that of the reader. Give the writer an opportunity to present his/her case. Listening in no way obligates the listener to agree, it just asks the listener to open his/her mind and try to understand the other viewpoint. Then decide if they agree or not. I feel that the majority of law enforcement professionals are there to do a difficult job the best way they can and to serve and protect the community they serve. They, like all humans, make mistakes and no set of procedures is going to change that. Some, I’m sure, should not be in the job. It is up to officials to weed those out. Some will think they know how to be a police officer and ignore the procedures. This cannot be allowed to persist without consequences. The procedures are there for a reason. When a programmer refuses to follow a procedure, some things that need to be done don't get done and the consequence is lost time and productivity. When a police officer ignores procedures, too often, lives are lost or at the very least put at risk. Still, we need to realize that even when everyone does everything they are supposed to do in the way it is supposed to be done, sometimes things go wrong anyway. Defunding the police is not a good idea. We need our police to take care of the really bad guys. We could add a community squad or trained counselors to partner with people capable of handling those who are a physical challenge due to drugs and/or medical issues that may cause them to become violent. A community squad that is familiar with the people in the neighborhood and those that have special needs and issues they are dealing with could prevent what happened in the case of Jefferson and Prude. Maybe it is time to let the lack of action in the past speak louder than the campaign rhetoric. The people who will suffer the most in this environment are the poor communities that are already struggling to climb out of poverty. Don't be deceived, if this continues, crime will not be content to stay in these disadvantaged communities. Without a police force to combat them and no justice system to charge them, they will move into all neighborhoods and only those with the funds to hire private security will have a hope of being safe.

Don't misunderstand, I know that racism exists, not only in the U. S. but worldwide. I don't believe that racism is as prevalent as media and the anarchist driving this unrest would have us believe. I know from personal experience that abusive people are most likely to be abusive to everyone, not just to a specific race. There was no need to push Prude or Floyd's face down into the ground. This was excessive force and abusive. In these cases, it at least contributed to the death of the individual. It is the responsibility of the administrators of law enforcement as well as other public services to not only provide clear and appropriate procedures, but to weed out those individuals that are abusive. The first choice would be that these individuals never get the position in the first place. But, let’s not forget that people make honest and regrettable mistakes. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water, to quote an old cliche, and let's take a close look at the past performance of candidates wanting to be elected to these administrative positions.

The majority of the demonstrators are young white millennials  in their 20s and 30s. Some are being paid by anarchist groups to disrupt our society for their own purposes. I encourage readers to do their own due diligence. Listen to original information rather than relying on the news media. Examine the information carefully and make their own conclusions rather than swallow the interpretation of the biased news media. If there is truly systemic racism in the police ranks it must stem from the elected officials because they are the ones that decide the procedures used by the department in carrying out law enforcement.