The Radical Centrist™

Think for Yourself!

police

George Floyd: Ok, now what?

By 1 Comment

For something like eleven days now there have been protests and there have been “protests”*.  All over the country and in many places around the world.  Call me unsympathetic, but I’m kinda thinking any point that Floyd’s murder was racially biased and wrong has been made.  Now what?  It’s time to move to Step 2.

Things need to change, in people’s attitudes and actions and in law enforcement.  What are we going to do about it?  There are several option, some of which can run parallel, but has anyone even thought about it?

Option 1 – Police Reform

That’s been done before.  New programs, retraining, all that jazz.  Makes great headlines, but you have to change attitudes within law enforcement (LE) before police will actually follow them.

Option 2 – Public Re-education

What I mean by this is changing people’s attitudes on race across the board.  Everyone, police and citizens.  And police are really just citizens with LE jobs.  In an ideal world this is the best and correct path to take, but I personally never see it getting off the ground if for no other reason no one would ever agree on how to do it.  It would just be another example of bureaucratic infighting with a big budget.

Option 3 – Legal Reform

There are many… and I mean MANY… legal reforms that need changing, and the most significant one would be eliminating “qualified immunity” where police and other government agents pretty much have a ‘get out of jail free’ card for almost anything they do.  (Let’s not forget that Floyd’s murder would be rationalized and dismissed without the light of video.)

Where do we go from here?

I strongly suggest Option 3, at least.  Wayward police need to be held accountable for their actions, and with the real possibility of serious consequences many cops will choose to not step out of line.  It doesn’t eliminate the threat, and it doesn’t do anything regarding people’s inner attitudes, but it helps.

But how to do this?  It would require tenacious organization, dedication, time, and money… because lobbying would be involved.  And who are you going to lobby?  The lawmakers that have been in power for decades and have created and/or tolerated that laws that brought us here?  Phffft!  No, we’re also going to need a massive change in lawmaking leadership.

Regardless what is done… if anything is done, we’ve had protests and “protests” before and nothing ever changed, no one wanted to actually do the work… after people have satisfied their need for protest, serious work will need to be done.  Where does it start?  Who is going to start it?

*- “Protests” are rioting and/or looting under the guise of protesting.

How do you prioritize your outrage? It’s not always obvious.

By 2 Comments

Doh!  Another unpopular opinion.  It’s really easy to get lulled into a false sense of comfort when most of our friends and/or social media contacts are like-minded people and will agree with pretty much everything we say.  We’re simpatico, ya know, we think in lock-step.  And we’re individually intelligent people, we think these things through, and we sincerely believe we have come to the best conclusion, right?

But do we always come to the best conclusion?  Sorry to say, no we don’t.  Quite often, too often, we let emotion get in the way.  Take the graphic here, which has been seen in various forms all over social media of late, since George Floyd was murdered.  “If you are more upset seeing looting than you are by seeing a black man murdered, you are part of the problem.”  Long story short, you have been shamed by the person who posted this because you don’t prioritize tragic events the same way they do… and their conclusion is correct, of course.

They say the murder of the black man is tragic and important… and guess what, they are correct.  It IS tragic.  It never should have happened.  The man’s life was important.  There are multitudes of reason why this happened, from systemic racism to utter failings of the justice system that allows police to do this with usual impunity (qualified immunity), and many other reasons in between.  No debate from me.

The next part is comparing it to looting and rioting, which to be fair many people have condemned, including myself.  The implication here is that property is not as important as people’s lives, property can be rebuild and replaced.  Again, agree.  No debate from me… as far as that goes, but it’s incomplete.

It’s either lying-by-omission or intellectual dishonesty, or some (probably subconscious) combination of the two.  You want to talk the importance of people?  Let’s talk the importance of people, minorities, poor people, yes let’s talk about them and how looting and/or rioting affects them.

  1. When businesses burn, people who NEED these jobs for survival and to feed their families are now suddenly unemployed.  Any government safety net or charity will pale in comparison.
  2. Large corporations will usually rebuild reasonably quickly, but it will still be probably six months minimum.  That’s a huge burden to the employees.  You know, the poor people and minorities you claim to care so much about.
  3. How about “mom and pop” businesses.  There’s no guarantee they will rebuild at all.  If they can, insurance issues may take a year or more.  Mom and Pop will be out of an income in the mean time, as will what few employees they have.  And if they can’t work it out, everyone loses their livelihood permanently.
  4. More deaths.  I don’t have a source because all the numbers I’ve read vary, but as of this writing I have read between 11 and 17 people have died as a direct result of the rioting/looting.  (I suspect those are split between citizens and police.)  Are those people not important?  Equally important as George Floyd?  Less important?  You tell me.  You made the claim.
  5. Don’t forget people’s lives disrupted by injury, who now… if they still even have a job… might lose their job and/or have serious medical bill to face.

Stop.  Think to the logical conclusion.  It’s not that simple.

And spare me the outright lies that change has never been achieved without violence.  Some significant examples of successful peaceful protect include the Women’s Suffrage Parade of 1913, the Medals Heard Round the World, the Singing Revolution, the Conflict of Orders, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, all of which can be read in 5 Times Peaceful Protests Made a Difference in History.  You could also mention the Salt March, the Delano Grape Boycott, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and so on.  There’s plenty of examples.

Peaceful protest will not bring change tomorrow, and that’s not emotionally satisfying, but neither will violent protest.

Mr Trump made a good point… by accident

By Leave a Comment

Don’t you hate when a person whom you regard as repugnant makes a good point? Something that you cannot deny, lest you come off as a hypocrite? That’s what happened a couple days ago when our illustrious leader, President Donald J. Trump, said that “flipping” should be illegal.

Now, let’s be real, everyone with an ounce of clear thinking knows that Mr Trump only said this because it works in his favor at the moment. He’s trying to discredit those who have made open statements about his alleged illegal activity. We all know that the only thing important in Mr Trump’s life is Mr Trump. So while Mr Trump’s motivation here is highly questionable, his point is still a good one. He may be a hypocrite… not to mention a loathsome liar… but I try not to be. I have some level of moral conviction that keeps me looking at things as objectively as possible.

“Flipping”, or as I and many others call it, “(jailhouse) snitching”, is the act of informing and/or testifying for the prosecution of facts relating to the prosecution and conviction of someone else for their own personal gain and value. Said value often takes the form of a reduced sentences or charges, better conditions, and sometimes no charges being filed at all.

Trump’s statement puts me in a serious quandary. I have long railed against jailhouse snitching. According to the Innocence Project, “…15% of wrongful conviction cases overturned through DNA testing, statements from people with incentives to testify — particularly incentives that are not disclosed to the jury — were critical evidence used to convict an innocent person.” Who in their right mind would believe a probable criminal when you know their motivation is to improve their own situation?

Alexandra Natapoff’s book, Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice, is an excellent and well-researched source on the subject, for those who want to delve into this topic more deeply and find out how insidious it actually is.

On the one hand, I abhor snitching in the criminal justice system. To me, these people are the absolutely least credible witnesses. To the point that, should I ever find myself on a jury for a criminal trial in the future, I will most likely dismiss out-of-hand any testimony by a jailhouse snitch. It would be dead on arrival to my ears.

On the other hand, it often does seem to work rather well, actually, in white collar crime cases. ‘Seems to’ should be the key concept here.  Which, of course, brings me to my dilemma. As a simple concept, Mr Trump made a good point.  His comment, and recognizing the contradiction, is also causing me to think more deeply about my conviction regarding jailhouse snitches, in general. Why would a white collar criminal be any more trustworthy or credible than a violent criminal? There does seem to be a difference in results, but is there really? The motivation, or incentive, to lie is still the same either way. I guess white collar crime doesn’t get the after-the-fact scrutiny that violent crime does, you don’t read about white collar exonerations much, so it’s hard to say.

Is “Stand Your Ground” Legalized Murder?

By Leave a Comment

In short, no, it is not.  I know several people who feel that it is, and when I listen to their arguments I can see why they feel that way, but when I look deeper I come to the conclusion that they’re actually an affirmation of one of our most core principles of justice… innocent until proven guilty.

For those who are unaware, “stand your ground” is a law in many states which essentially says a person is not required to retreat, and can use deadly force to protect them self.  Nuances will vary from state to state, but that’s the general gist.  A good general definition can be found here.

It has long been my opinion that people have a basic human right to defend themselves, and their families, from harm.  “Stand your ground” fits neatly inside that.  Please note that it is NOT a “get out of jail free” card.  It is merely a legitimate legal defense that may or may not apply to a given situation.  You want a real “get out of jail free” card?  Try a police shooting and the shooting officer says “I feared for my life.”  The officer’s superiors pretty much close up their notebooks and go home at that point.  Case closed.  No harm no foul, not even a blot on the permanent record.  While the two sound remarkably similar, and indeed they are in concept, real-world application is night and day.  Police get away with it all the time.  That’s too far to the other direction.  And while there are some high-profile anecdotes of average citizens getting away with it, too, the incidents of this is far less common, regardless what sensationalist media would have us believe.

The current incident gaining national attention is a case in Florida, the shooting of Markeis McGlockton by Michael Drejka.  I’m not going to regurgitate the entire story, you can read about it in the link I provide, but in a nutshell Mr Drejka is a self-appointed handicapped parking space policeman and it went from there.  The sheriff announced, after investigating the case, that Drejka would not be charged.  Many people are upset about this.  I’ll admit that there are factors here that do not sit easy with me.  One, Drejka was intentionally confrontational, and it wasn’t his first time.  He also had a prior instance where he threatened somebody with his gun over the same type of confrontation.  Simply put, Mr Drejka is, in my opinion, an asshole.  Problem is, being an asshole does not legally justify being pushed to the ground, physically assaulted, when he did not initiate the physical aspect.  Did Mr Drejka honestly believe he was in danger?  We’ll probably never know, but the decision to not charge was still appropriate (though it wouldn’t bother me if there were something else legit he could be charged with).  Why it was appropriate is best illustrated here, as taken from the same linked story…

In the past, defense attorneys had to explain why their clients deserved immunity in a killing. Now prosecutors have to prove that people who claim they were standing their ground are wrong.

~Emphasis in bold mine.

That’s it right there.  That is my defining moment of why I approve of “stand your ground”.  Emotion aside, individual anecdotes showing clear misapplication aside, that’s why “stand your ground” is a good law… the prosecutor is supposed to prove their case, not the other way around.  We seem to have forgotten that.  We have been play acting at ‘innocent until proven guilty’ for decades, if not since the founding of our justice system.  We spew forth the words, but we don’t apply them, or deep down really believe them.  The prosecution has always had the upper hand in what we are learning recently as being illegitimate and unearned credibility and integrity.  Keep in mind that laws are most often reactionary, and as such “stand your ground” is a move to counter said one-sidedness and bring back some semblance of proper balance.

Iowa recently enacted their version of “stand your ground”.  There is a current case winding its way through the system where two young men were shooting at each other in a questionable neighborhood.  Long story short, BOTH men claimed they were immune from prosecution due to “stand your ground”.  Both were denied by a judge to use said defense, which right there sinks the broad ‘legalized murder’ claim if it has to be judge-approved before it can be used, at least in Iowa.  As I said, nuances will vary from state to state, but in Iowa at least you can’t just claim “stand your ground” and take it to court.

So there you have it.  Fairness isn’t always emotionally satisfying, and there will always be something that falls through the cracks, we are human after all, but the law is not intended to satisfy our personal outrage in individual cases.  The law… justice… is intended to be blind, and as such equally applicable.  We should demand no less.

Police & Respect

By Leave a Comment

Is it possible to admire and respect police for the work they do AND criticize them when they do wrong?

Yes, I believe it is. Not only do I think it’s possible, I think it’s the responsible thing to do.

I do rail against bad cops often, I grant that. I don’t as often praise them. I do occasionally, but not as often, and I’ll grant that, too. For this reason I often get accused… by people with the extreme “cops-can-never-do-wrong” mindset people, imagine that… that I am somehow “anti-cop” or a “cop hater”. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have immense respect for police.

Police do a hard job. Long hours. Dealing with the dregs of society. Dealing with outright dangerous and dishonest people. They run the risk of dying during a simple traffic stop, for example, or when they respond to a domestic dispute. Every… single… day. For this reason alone I can understand why they often get jaded. For the most part, after many years, it’s all they see.

Police put their lives on the line often for our safety and benefit. Spare me the crap about logging being more dangerous because it has a higher death rate, police work is still dangerous, and it’s also different because they’re willfully putting themselves in that scenario. Loggers may be more likely to die, but the trees aren’t consciously and literally gunning for them.

Die-hard supporters ask who we run to when something bad to use happens. Generally the police. Of course we do. The majority of us do. That’s what they’re there for.

It is often pointed out that most people wouldn’t do the job, as a defense for why they should be blindly respected. That’s true, too, I wouldn’t do the job. Most people wouldn’t. But there’s many jobs I wouldn’t do, just as I’m sure there are other critical jobs that most police officers wouldn’t do, so I’m not even sure why that’s considered a valid point.

When a police officer does do something wrong, and the other debate points have been exhausted, the apologists will fall back on the “police are only human” angle. And here’s the whole crux of the issue. As a group, most police are honorable and respectful, just as most people in general are honorable and respectful, and deserve our admiration and cooperation. Most police are in it for the right reasons, and do good work. However, police ARE only human, and as such are just as prone to be corruptible or dishonest as anyone else. Using 10% as just an example benchmark, the way I figure it, if 10% of the general population is dishonest, then 10% of police are dishonest, as well. They’re only human.

Funny that the “human” aspect doesn’t go both ways, but I digress.

Anyway, it’s often pointed out that the bad cops and bad incidents are few. Some say a very small number, almost insignificant. Ok, let’s go with that. I buy that they’re relatively few. Sounds like all the more reason that we should easily weed out the few who are bad, doesn’t it? Yet we defend them to the ends of the earth, and meaningful consequences only happen when public light is shined and public outrage becomes too much. And don’t tell me that there was never a bad cop before cell phone video.

If they’re so few, then one would think that the good cops would want to actively drive the bad ones out, for the simple reason that their own jobs are made harder, and their own lives put unnecessarily at risk by creating a bad public image and distrust, when it so easily solvable. Then they go out and do ‘community outreach’ programs to show neighborhoods that they’re just good people like them. Well, don’t contribute to or create the problem in the first place. That would help immensely. That would do more, actually, than showing up at a middle school once a year to show off your equipment. This ‘thin blue line’ makes no sense at all.

In conclusion, I said it before and I’ll say it again, I greatly admire and respect the police. But I also don’t kid myself. There are bad ones out there, too, and it’s the bad ones that are screwing it up for everybody. There’s lots of pro-police rhetoric out there, and that’s fine. Mine would be just another voice in the noise if I joined in. There’s not enough talk highlighting when cops do go wrong, and that needs to be fixed. For everybody’s benefit… including their own.