June 23, 2020

A bad habit I’ve developed during Quarantine is spending hours watching You Tube cell phone videos of police misconduct. I can’t explain the fascination. It’s like picking at a scab or repeatedly putting your tongue into a sore in your mouth. The practice has not brought me peace. Here are some thoughts after this admittedly low-rent research project. Police are capable of almost unbelievable violence and dishonesty. This violence and dishonesty is endemic, repetitive, widespread (I stopped myself from typing “universal”) and given almost complete impunity by the policies of municipalities and the power of the FOP and other police unions. “Qualified immunity” prevents even those proven to have been brutalized from seeking redress in the courts. Being white, I am not the best person to evaluate racism, but it is hard to miss the fact that black people are automatic suspects; that black youths are never kids, but rather threats; that black lives do not in fact matter to the thin blue line. I accept absolutely the argument that not all cops are like that, but I’m going out on a limb to assert that most cops are. Few cops would hesitate to lie to get out of trouble or secure an arrest, few will curb the brutality of a brother-or-sister-in-arms; few are strong enough to overcome hurt feelings or wounded vanity–or mere impatience– so as not beat the hell out of someone who irritates them. Unless someone has a camera. On that subject, one’s heart shudders at the certainty of GENERATIONS of brutalization gone unanswered because cop fiction was automatically believed. Since even the likelihood of being recorded does not stop all cop crime, imagine the depth and multiplicity of abuse when there was no reasonable expectation of being called to account. Whatever god you worship, whisper thanks tonight for the cell phone. Almost all the incidents now causing such inflammation in society would have gone unreported, unredressed, if someone hadn’t caught them on the phone. Corruption throve in obscurity, and every cell phone is a prophylactic. Another issue is the immediate and reflexive resort to firearms. Cops draw their weapons to tell people their taillight is out. Citizens end up being shot because their taillight was out. A drawn weapon is a weapon aching to be used, and once it is used, you go into fabulist mode trying to think of why it was necessary. It must become illegal for the police to draw, touch, refer to their firearms in any situation but one which an objective person would recognize as dire. Every shooting of every unarmed person MUST be treated as a murder, at least for a while, until the trigger-happy cop becomes a demon out of old legend. It should be simpler than it seems to be simply not to shoot people in the back who are running away from you. Don’t shoot into houses or cars, Even if you “think” there may be trouble, wait until there is. Is that really so complex? Don’t murder people. Just don’t do it. I’m perplexed at why that is so hard. If you “fear for your life,” back away. Get into your car. Wait for the next thing to happen, or drive away and leave people to their lives. Policing attracts brutes. There is no way around that. Those who are not brutes by nature are trained by brutes to be brutes, to “get control” of the situation rather than to solve it, to be obeyed rather than to be right. In my own dealings with the police, there has not been a situation in which lying did not play a major role, in which the attitude of the cop was other than sneering contempt, and I’m a fairly prosperous looking white guy. The house is rotten to the foundations and renovations will not work, is currently my belief. Build anew, with an utterly different paradigm. There is no room for the warrior cop, the soldier cop, the bigshot cop, for the brotherhood of blue, for anything that allows an officer to think of himself as distinct from the people he serves. It is true that the police represent our customary shield against chaos and lawlessness. The irony of our times is that our shield against chaos and lawlessness is, arguably, the most successfully chaotic and lawless element in society. I suppose we need to ask ourselves if we think this is necessary–if we think we must be defended from lawlessness by the lawless– or if we have the courage to trust some new vision. I think of the Irish Gardai, whose very name means “guardians of the peace,” and who are a little embarrassed if an encounter ends in an arrest, because that means the peace has failed. I’m glad to take this time to work things out in my head. I am going to try not to watch any videos tonight.

DS lectures me on Facebook. Maybe he forgets that I know him, and that his instructing or correcting me on any subject whatever is risible.