Thoughts on Law Enforcement

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.