Demonize Police, And Here's What Happens

 

Pravda-on-the-Hudson has an interesting article up that inadvertently showcases one of the effects of  efforts to demonize police by the #blacklivesmatter movement and its media and political supporters.

Here's the headline: "Heroin Use? Juvenile Record? For Recruits, Police forgive Past Sins."

The article breathlessly goes on...and note what I emphasized:

But now, faced with thousands of vacancies, a shortage of applicants and a mandate to become as diverse as the communities they serve, police departments are rethinking requirements once considered untouchable.

New Orleans no longer automatically disqualifies those who have injected heroin or smoked crack. Aurora, Colo., has stopped using military-style running tests, but now checks how quickly candidates can get out of a squad car.

Pittsburgh, accused of discriminating against black applicants, recently updated its hiring criteria to include integrity, dependability and “cultural competence,” or the ability to incorporate diverse perspectives.

In other words, the current climate created by #blacklivesmatter, the media and Democrat politicians who cater to #blacklivesmatter for political reasons means that a lot of ordinarily desirable recruits who met the old standards involving background checks required to be hired as a police officer are no longer applying. Instead, because police departments are desperate for recruits, they're opening the doors to hiring former gangbangers. With special diversity points if they're black or Hispanic. Because of course, white police are automatically racist and can't be expected to have the 'cultural competence' to treat non-whites with fairness and competence.

 

In St. Paul, the department has experimented with a number of ways to find the best officers, including taking some “situational judgment” questions — meant to test common sense, adherence to police hierarchy and police priorities — off the written exam.

Chief Todd Axtell said the tests might have been unintentionally biased against minorities, proving particularly difficult for those who are not native English speakers.

“We’ve got a lot of diversity in St. Paul, and we’ve struggled with recruiting in the past, so we need to be more thoughtful about these communities,” he said. {...}

For 'minorities' read 'Somalis.'

The department’s new written tests now focus more on personal histories and community engagement, and interviews have been refocused to allow applicants to personally explain incidents that may have previously disqualified them.

“Some people have been caught doing bad things and other people haven’t been caught,” Chief Axtell said. “The question we have is, ‘Was ownership taken?’”

Ownership???? As in 'yeah, I did it. I've gotten over it, you should too.'

As police departments grapple with complaints of excessive use of force and retrain officers to “de-escalate,” or defuse, tense encounters, Chief Axtell said he had used the interviews to identify one personality flaw that in the past might have gone overlooked.

“People who I believe have a short fuse,” he said, “will not get the opportunity in this department.”

Not that we want trigger happy police, but we've already seen policemen being murdered attempting to 'de-escalate.'

Now this isn't the first time this sort of change  has happened after the media whips up an incident to  a frenzy. After the Rodney King riots, old school police chief Daryl Gates was forced out and Willie Williams, Los Angeles's first black police chief was hurriedly hired. Williams proved comically inept and had personal corruption issues to the point where the City of Los Angeles eventually bought his contract out for a hefty sum to get rid of him. But he hung around long enough to implement new hiring practiced in the LAPD that pretty much mirrored what the New York Times is talking about here, where standards for police were dramatically lowered.

The result was the Rampart Division scandal, which involved  major police corruption including falsifying evidence, perjury, the targeting of specific gangs for the benefit of other sets and the theft of drugs by policemen from police property areas among other things. In the end, Ramparts negated over 100 convictions, put criminals who were actually guilty of violent crimes back on the streets  because of police errors and cost the City of Los Angeles  $125 million in financial settlements.

 It's a guaranteed recipe. Demonize police in big cities with fake prosecutions like Freddie Gray and Michael Brown and add a healthy dose of racialist politics. Then watch as people with impeccable backgrounds no longer find the job desirable and don't apply, or the ones already there get fed up and leave as the job becomes unbearable. 

Then, when you lower the standards simply to get more bodies on the street with diversity uber alles as a guideline, that leads to a whole different set of problems.

No police force is perfect, but demonizing police for political purposes is always a bad idea.  And keep in mind that the people sponsoring this kind of attitude usually don't have to live with the consequences, because they have 24-7 private security...many times paid for by the taxes on the same people  who will have to live with those consequences.

As The Obama DOJ Handcuffs Them, Many Blacks Beg Cops For Protection

 

The thing about the Left is that with Obama in charge, they win even when they lose. After drug dealer Freddie Gray died in police custody, the mob burned down a decent amount of Baltimore, whipped up by 'activists' and Marilyn Mosby, the State's Attorney for Baltimore who actually allowed the mob to have free reign to burn and loot in part of the city while police were ordered to stand down.

The politically motivated charges brought by Marilyn Mosby were thrown out of court as being absolutely absurd, which they were and every one of the six officers were acquitted. her conduct was so egregious that there's even talk of having her impeached.

The same thing happened in Ferguson, Missouri where Michael Brown robbed a convenience store, assaulted the clerk, tried to wrestle a gun away from a policeman and then was shot by that policeman when he refused to halt and charged him instead with his 300 plus pound body.

In both situations, the Obama Justice Department moved in, did an 'investigation' of course found what they called 'racist behavior' with little or no actual evidence, sanctioned the police departments for 'racist behavior' and demanded wholesale changes...or else.

And of course, they got them, especially in Democrat ruled Baltimore.

But apparently this behavior had unforeseen consequences, as even the notoriously politically correct Washington Post admits, if you read between the lines.

Not only has it become extremely difficult to recruit police in both places, but crime has skyrocketed to the point where residents and business people with an actual stake in their community are begging for more police protection and quicker response time. At the same time, activists and opportunistic politicians, many of whom don't actually live in these neighborhoods are pushing the Justice department to place more and more restraints on the police.

The result of course is easy to predict. Pro-active policing, the use of police presence to prevent crime before it happens is virtually disappearing. What police officer wants to risk a reprimand or even getting fired by politically correct departments wary of crossing Democrat politicians? Crimes that were often prevented by experienced officers using that legendary 'sixth sense' experienced police acquire are now occurring. Arrests in black communities are diminishing - why take a risk of an angry crowd assembling to protest the arrest of a drug dealer or even a traffic stop? Easier and far less risky to just show up after the crime's been committed and take a report, something that I'm sure infuriates police officers who became cops because of a deep seated desire to protect the innocent.

Eight days had passed since the Justice Department issued a scathing review of the Baltimore Police Department, detailing years of racial discrimination in its law enforcement practices.

Yet the 40 or so longtime residents who gathered in a West Baltimore church basement on this August night — many of whom were older black women afraid to walk to the store or leave their homes at night — had come to urge police to clear their corners of miscreants and restore order to their crime-plagued community.

“Please, help me,” pleaded gas station owner Chaudhry Masood, whose parking lot has been overrun by loiterers and where a 17-year-old was recently shot and killed. [...]

The Aug. 10 report came more than a year after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody. His funeral touched off riots, an unsuccessful prosecution of six police officers and the Justice Department investigation. Many of the abuses that investigators found centered on the way police officers interact with black Baltimoreans, including people congregating on street corners. The report concluded that Baltimore officers had “nearly unfettered discretion to criminalize the act of standing on public sidewalks.” [...]

Clearing the corners has been a mainstay of Baltimore policing for decades, a way for a beat cop to show who’s boss and to break up open-air drug markets that once numbered 200 across the city.

Anthony Barksdale, who retired from the force in 2014 as a deputy police commissioner, said he would tell young men, “Fellas, I know you’re going to give my corner,” and they would scatter.

After the Justice Department report, Barksdale said, “Everybody on the corner is challenging the police. Then when the police drive by and don’t push them off, the citizens are saying, ‘What the hell are the cops good for?’ ”

Barksdale took exception to the report’s criticism that stops of pedestrians were concentrated in a few black neighborhoods. Barksdale, who is black and grew up in West Baltimore, said that’s true only because “police are responding to crime.”

The Justice Department, he said, has effectively “turned over control of the corners to the criminal elements. The city is suffering already, and it’s going to suffer more. . . . They need to understand the streets of Baltimore are no joke, and they’ve given the bad elements more authority to destroy the neighborhoods.”

On top of all this, as existing police get sick and tired of an impossible job and go elsewhere, quality recruits to replace them are harder and harder to find. What this  eventually leads to is standards being dropped simply to keep the numbers at a sustainable level.

Here's an example. One of my best friends from high school joined the LAPD and was apparently pretty good at it, having promoted and having been cited by the Department for bravery. He left to continue his career elsewhere after the riots in the early 1990's, when the L.A. city council forced the existing chief, Daryl Gates to resign and hired Willie Williams to replace him, someone with little actual police experience but the overriding qualification of being black. He turned out to be an extraordinarily inept administrator who politicized the department and cultivated a circle of sycophants and toadies. He was so incompetent and borderline corrupt that eventually the city was forced to buy out his contract and replace him.

A lot of experienced police officers left during this time, and as we now know, recruiting standards were significantly lowered to replace them. The end results of this were things like the Ramparts Police scandal, which resulted in more than 140 civil lawsuits against the city of Los Angeles and cost the city an estimated $125 million in settlements, not to mention the legal fees and administrative costs.

Another thing to reflect on is where this attack on local police forces actually originates from. A leaked document from George Soros' Open Society Foundation shows the extent of the money involved in financing groups like Black Lives Matter (who also got millions of dollars from the Ford Foundation) with the express idea of undermining local control of police forces and ultimately federalizing them using the Obama Justice department coupled with targeted social unrest.

Soros and others are also spending large amounts of money to see to it that hard Left progressives - like Marilyn Mosby - are elected to key positions as prosecutors and attorneys general in America's cities.

All that aside, in fairness it needs mentioning that there probably are a lot of the locals who don't like the police or how they behave. To quote one Fred Price in North St. Louis a year or so ago after the police took out a crackhouse in his neighborhood, killing one of the denizens who pointed a gun at them:

“They provoked the situation,” Price, 33, said. “Situations like this make us want to keep the police out of the neighborhood. They’re shooting first, then asking questions.”

While I might disagree with Mr. Price he has a point. And points the way to a win-win solution, which I presented before when I wrote about this at the time it occurred:

The locals don't like the police, to put it mildly, and I'm sure that the police themselves don't enjoy going into neighborhoods where their attempts to do a difficult job are looked upon by a significant number of the inhabitants as the provocation of racist interlopers.
Mr. Fred Price points the way to a win win resolution that will please everyone. Let's indeed give the residents of north St. Louis and other similar areas a way to keep the police out of their neighborhoods.
Let the residents take a vote on making their neighborhoods off limits to police. If such a vote passes, let the residents make their own arrangements for crime prevention or policing should they see fit to do so,and offer property owners a discount on their taxes based on this city service they would no longer be using.
Police would be limited to enforcing the perimeters of such neighborhoods, so that thugs and criminals would be prevented from leaving these neighborhoods during certain hours. But inside the perimeter, the residents themselves would take responsibility.
Based on certain incidents that have happened in neighborhoods like this in the past during tense times, it would probably make sense to eliminate or at least cut back fire department and EMT service as well, since many times they require a police escort in order to guarantee the safety of the firemen and EMT personnel. Or perhaps these communities might be able to make special  arrangements not to attack them.

Like I said, a win win. The inhabitants of these neighborhoods would get the kind of policing they deserve, and the men and women the majorities in these communities see as vicious police killers would have no opportunity to practice their racism. And the police wouldn't have to go into these areas where they're seen as the enemy, making life easier and less dangerous for them.

 

 Of course, if the people in these communities voted to continue to allow the police to serve them, it certainly wouldn't be out of line for the police to demand respect and a healthy benefit of the doubt in exchange. 

My bet is that most people who have an actual stake in these communities - a job, a home, families and perhaps a business - would vote for option number two.




Selah

A Great Solution To End Police Shootings Of Black Youths

It happened again today. Two white policemen in north St. Louis shot and killed a black man...

A man who pointed a gun at police was shot and killed by officers in north St. Louis, according to St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson.

Officers were executing a search warrant at a home near Walton and Page, Dotson said at a news conference, when two armed men ran out of the back door of the home.

One pointed a gun at police officers, the chief said.

It appears two officers fired a total of four shots – one fired one shot, the other fired three shots, Dotson said.

Both officers, who are white, were unharmed, according to a police report.

One suspect was hit, continued running, collapsed, and was pronounced dead at the scene. The suspect was a black male in his early 20s, and he had a gun reported stolen from Rolla, Mo.

A number of other suspects were taken into custody, along with four guns and a quantity of crack. The house has had warrants served before.

The arresting officers, of course, had to put up with protests from the neighbors:

The shooting that left a black suspect dead drew protests, with many of the roughly 150 people who gathered at the scene hurling obscene gestures and expletives at investigators and questioning the police use of deadly force. Some chanted “Black Lives Matter,” a mantra used a year ago after the police shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson.

“Another youth down by the hands of police,” Dex Dockett, 42, who lives nearby, told a reporter. “What could have been done different to de-escalate rather than escalate? They (police) come in with an us-against-them mentality. You’ve got to have the right kind of cops to engage in these types of neighborhoods.”

Another neighborhood resident, Fred Price, skeptical about Dotson’s account that the suspect pointed a gun at officers before being mortally wounded.

“They provoked the situation,” Price, 33, said. “Situations like this make us want to keep the police out of the neighborhood. They’re shooting first, then asking questions.”

 

Living as they do near an obvious crack house, I admit I have to questions the mental processes of these people. After all, one less thug in a neighborhood like that, especially one crazy enough to point a gun at two policemen should be a blessing.

But on the other hand, maybe they have a point. Perhaps these policemen are vicious, racist cops who just wanted to shoot down a black youth. Maybe he just wandered in and didn't realize the place was a crack house. Maybe he didn't shoot at the police. Maybe the stolen gun was given to him by someone else to hold, or the racist white cops planted it.I'm sure that's the way these people's thoughts are running.

Since none of us were there to actually see what occurred, I think it's fair to accept the view of these residents of the neighborhood as just as legitimate as the police chief's, or mine for that matter. And therein lies a perfect solution.

The locals don't like the police, to put it mildly, and I'm sure that the police themselves don't enjoy going into neighborhoods where their attempts to do a difficult job are looked upon by a significant number of the inhabitants as the provocation of racist interlopers.

Mr. Fred Price points the way to a win win resolution that will please everyone. Let's indeed give the residents of north St. Louis and other similar areas a way to keep the police out of their neighborhoods.

Let the residents take a vote on making their neighborhoods off limits to police. If such a vote passes, let the residents make their own arrangements for crime prevention or policing should they see fit to do so,and offer property owners a discount on their taxes based on this city service they would no longer be using.

Police would be limited to enforcing the perimeters of such neighborhoods, so that thugs and criminals would be prevented from leaving these neighborhoods during certain hours. But inside the perimeter, the residents themselves would take responsibility.

Based on certain incidents that have happened in neighborhoods like this in the past during tense times, it would probably make sense to eliminate or at least cut back fire department and EMT service as well, since many times they require a police escort in order to guarantee the safety of the firemen and EMT personnel. Or perhaps these communities might be able to make arrangements not to attack them.

Like I said, a win win. The inhabitants of these neighborhoods would get the kind of policing they deserve, and the men and women the majorities in these communities see as vicious police killers would have no opportunity to practice their racism. And the police wouldn't have to go into these areas where they're seen as the enemy, making life easier and less dangerous for them.

 

Of course, if the people in these communities voted to continue to allow the police to serve them, it certainly wouldn't be out of line for the police to demand respect and a healthy benefit of the doubt in exchange.

 

Res Ipsa Loquiter.

A Death In New York

Today a New York grand jury refused to indict an NYPD officer in the death of Eric Gardner, 43 in Staten Island New York.

A cellphone video is posted above,part of a news report.

Here are the facts I know so far.

Unlike the recent Michael Brown affair, Eric Gardner did not assault a police officer,although it's obvious he did resist arrest.This appears to be a real tragedy that will obviously be exploited by the usual suspects.

The police,among them officer Daniel Pantaleo, an 8 year veteran on the force were attempting to arrest Gardner for selling 'loosies', loose single cigarettes. New York (and especially New York City) are some of the greediest places in America when it comes to fines, fees and taxes that prey on its inhabitants. So it's a common crime to buy cigarettes in places like North Carolina where prices and taxes are much lower, sell them on the streets of New York where they have been taxed to the stratosphere and pocket the difference. If this was Wall Street, they'd call it arbitrage. Unlike arbitrage, selling untaxed cigarettes is illegal, but you have to wonder whether a non-violent crime like this would really merit this kind of police presence if it weren't for the Big Apple's revenue from taxes that's involved.

At any event, when the police attempted to arrest Gardner, he reacted violently and began struggling when the police attempted to place him in handcuffs. At that point, Officer Pantaleo grabbed Gardner in some kind of hold from behind, a standard operating procedure to get him on the ground where he could be handcuffed. I use the term 'hold' advisedly and you'll see why shortly.

Gardner, who weighed between 300 and 400 pounds still continued struggling on the ground. At one point, one of the cops can be heard urging Gardner to give him his hand so he can be cuffed.Gardner can also be heard saying repeatedly, "I can't breathe."

Gardner died at the scene.

Here's what information I've been able to gather so far, and it is subject to change as more facts come out. The Grand Jury heard Officer Pantaleo voice his regret for what happened.

“I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner,” he said in a statement released by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. “My family and I include him and his family in our prayers and I hope that they will accept my personal condolences for their loss.”

During his testimony, Pantaleo also explained that he used a standard takedown that he was taught to him at the NYPD Academy.

The Grand Jury also reportedly determined that the term 'choke hold' that's being tossed around so loosely by the media is likely inaccurate. Choke hold has a clearly defined legal meaning. These holds, which cut off the air and the blood supply from the carotid artery to make someone resisting arrest pass out used to be common in police work, but were outlawed in most jurisdictions long ago because they could lead to a fatality.Choke holds are banned for police use in New York City. Had it been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Officer Pantaleo used one, I'm certain he would have been indicted.

Instead, 'take downs' usually involving a headlock or a hold on the neck and/or under lower jaw area that does not cut off the air supply from the carotid artery are taught at the Academy instead,and that's what Pantaleo claims he used. Truthfully we have no way of knowing for sure, although there's some evidence he's telling the truth.

Fatal choke holds when used also normally leave evidence such as damage to the trachea, a broken hyoid bone and damage to the windpipe.The Grand Jury reportedly looked at the autopsy and saw none of these.Since Gardner was able to talk, that's also evidence he wasn't in a choke hold. The medical expert ruled the death a homicide, but in legal terms that doesn't necessarily mean murder. It merely means someone caused death to someone else. The medical examiner also stated that Gardner's acute and chronic bronchial asthma, obesity and hypertensive cardiovascular disease were contributing factors.

Was it necessary to use such a take down? I'm not certain. Could he have been tasered? Again, I'm not certain. Was his physical condition such that any means of restraining him so he could be handcuffed might have led to his death? We don't know.

What we do know is that the prosecutor was unable to present enough evidence to a mixed race jury to get them to vote for an indictment...not for murder, which the politically correct far Left DiBlasio Administration was pushing for, and not for any of the lesser versions such as manslaughter.

One thing we also know is that had he put his hands behind his back and not resisted arrest, Eric Gardner would probably be alive right now, and you have to admit that in fairness to the police, who were there to enforce a law, even if it was admittedly a stupid one. Unlike our president, cops normally don't have a choice about which laws they enforce.A crime's reported, they go to the scene, make their determination and proceed accordingly.

This seems to me to be a culmination of tragic decisions. The cops could have decided to let this particular arrest, which did not involve a violent crime slide and gone on to more important work. Eric Gardner, who was no stranger to being arrested could have decided to go along with the procedure one more time. And Officer Pantaleo could have thought about using something else besides that particular take down,perhaps.

In any event, this isn't over yet. Eric Holder has promised a civil rights investigation ( a tough one to pull off given you have to show intent based on someone's race, but they'll try) and Gardner's family will almost certainly file a civil suit which the DiBlasio administration will almost certainly settle for large money without much of a fight,being whom they are....

As I said, a real tragedy.