Thoughts on Law enforcement in 2020
Law enforcement: both local police and
sheriff deputies has come to be the focus of protests and sadly some
rioting by lawless thugs whose use peaceful protests to mask their
robbing, damaging, burning, and attempts to hurt individual police
officers.
Additionally, Black men and women tell
similar, sad, but consistent stories about being pulled over by law
enforcement and detailed having to find out why they were pulled over
and why they are being subjected to a traffic stop when they have
done nothing wrong. For some men, they have lost count of how many
times they have been stopped and questioned without reason.
Law enforcement in America is different
than law enforcement in other places around the world. Some years
ago, I was in and out of a South American country over a period of
ten years where “Federales” had more presence than local police.
Other nations have police which are the rule keepers of the King, or
the Dictator. They are an extension of his power.
America has largely chosen a different
path. In fact, in the United States, all law enforcement whether
police, Sheriff's Officers, Constables, State Police, the FBI, and
the National Guard have what is called “conferred” authority.
That word “conferred” is essential to understanding the authority
of law enforcement in this nation.
That is a significant statement because
these groups of law enforcement do not have an inherent or intrinsic
authority. The person who picks up a lost badge of a law enforcement
officer does not possess any authority associated with that badge.
This is foundational truth as we
consider law enforcement today. When authority is conferred, the
question is “Who conferred that authority to those who represent
the law in communities, counties, state and nation?”
The answer is simply, “We the
people.” The further one moves away from a local community the
larger the “We” becomes. We have police departments in
communities throughout the nation because communities have come
together to confer authority to a certain agency to protect, serve,
and defend the whole community without bias and without bullying. The
White community, the Black community, the Hispanic, Asian, Middle
Eastern and other residents of the community depend on a diligent,
courteous, and well trained law enforcement agency to enforce the
community standards by which the community is providing ongoing input
about needs and changes. It is that covenant between citizens that
makes a community work. Such covenant says: “We want safe traffic
laws and compliance; We want safety in our homes and businesses; We
want gatherings to be safe and meeting community standards for such
activities. That last one may be one of the most pressing at this
time. We want law enforcement which reflects the values of our
cultures within the community. We want from our law enforcement,
respect to all, cooperation with all, justice for all. I am a very
small voice in an area that has 400,000+ residents but I expect all
to be treated respectfully and evenly. That is what sets the standard
for “conferred authority” from me. The larger the area, the more
people who participate in the conferring of authority. In the past,
law enforcement in the South has been hampered by a select “we”
which resulted in an unfair, skewed caste system with favoritism for
some and no justice or rights for others.
When we speak of the “rule of law”
we are speaking about a covenant between citizens and law enforcement
that stresses a competence in what the law is, how it is applied to
all, and how interaction with law enforcement will look like. The
best law enforcement agencies have that standard. These agencies are
“color blind, blind to ethnicity, or any other handle by which we
classify or discriminate against others.
The second reality, which is huge, of
modern day law enforcement is the profoundly sad refusal of our
nation to control the weapons of war flooding our streets. First
organized in Philadelphia in 1964, specially recruited 100 member
team called Special Weapons and Tactics was formed because of a
significant increase in bank robberies and in the process finding
themselves seriously outgunned. From that first SWAT has grown a
movement to a team in many cities and counties. With the exacerbating
number of school shooting most memorialized in the Columbine shooting
in 1999, we began to see a different method of dealing with shooters.
Columbine was not the first school shooting in America, go here:
(https://www.k12academics.com/school-shootings/history-school-shootings-united-states)
but law enforcement procedures for protecting students and law
enforcement escalated from wounding to “neutralizing” which
basically meant killing with overwhelming certainty. With the
additional fire power available to the local law enforcement officer,
numerous shots could be placed into the suspect to guarantee the
suspect was no longer a threat. I am not sure this has ever been
fully discussed in the media or by law enforcement agencies but that
really is why a suspect is shot “seven times.” The old days of
wounding, disarming, and arresting suspects is long gone. It is
literally too dangerous. Even with the shift in policy, there are
still a lot of law enforcement deaths in the line of duty. Go here:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty_in_the_United_States)
Such numbers may not seem like a lot unless you are a family member
of a law enforcement officer.
The other factor which is huge to me,
is the lack of understanding of mental health crises when law
enforcement responds to a call without knowledge from the family the
person has a severe mental illness, not taking their medication, and
not having that information comes into a situation which is far more
complicated than a “hostage taking” or a shooter cornered
following a robbery or break in. The most horrific example was a West
Texas community where an officer responded to a call about a man with
a gun in the front yard. The officer responded, was not told the man
suffered from a severe mental illness and was hallucinating. The
officer arrives, tells the man to drop the gun, get down on his knees
with which he did not comply. The officer got closer, the man was
refusing to take his directions, still held the gun, and so the
officer used his TASER unaware the suspect had doused himself in
gasoline. As soon as the TASER hit him he exploded in
flames.(https://www.statesman.com/news/20170908/uncommon-but-horrific-when-tasers-set-their-targets-on-fire)
In Texas right now, the people who routinely interact with the
severely mentally ill are law enforcement and jailers. Sadly, law
enforcement are woefully under-trained for such confrontations and
families of the mentally ill reluctant to disclose such information.
I remember a panicked mother calling me when she found out her son
was to be released on parole from our prison. She and her husband
were elderly and she was afraid he would have a mental health crisis
when he came home. The offender refused to sign a consent for me to
talk with his elderly mother, so I was left with not talking
specifically about her son, but generally about people who suffer
from such diagnoses. I walked her through how a parent of someone
with this disorder would talk to law enforcement and what a parent
would need to communicate to the law enforcement people or 911.
Sadly, Texas is negligent in its services to the severely mentally
ill, preferring instead to send them to prison for their care at the
most recent cost of $30,000 per offender.
The bottom line is communities will
continue to struggle with how law enforcement should respond to the
complexities of our culture: violence, bodily harm, robberies, school
shooters, gangs, and shootings of all kinds.
For me, it comes down to an openness
from law enforcement to hear the people's concerns who conferred
authority to them, and hear from law enforcement the challenges of
defending, protecting, and serving a diverse community. The truth is,
we can do this if we work together and realize we are all on the same
team. We all want safer communities, fewer violent deaths, and
communities thriving on opportunity instead of divisiveness.
We do have a ways to go, but working
together, community by community trust can be built, conferred
authority can be respected and we can all be the better for it.
Wash your hands, wear your mask for
others, mind the gap, and be kind. We have a distance to go before
our culture returns to normal.