The Trump Presidency

[Jason Thompson]

Thank you all for the replies. Most interesting. It seems I am guilty of the same fallacious thinking I have pulled up JFK conspiracy theorists on, in assuming that trained officers are not so subject to the same instincts and adrenaline as the rest of us. Also highlights how little I know of actual gun use or the effects of being shot. Frankly, I am still glad to live in a country where strict gun control laws make either myself or someone I know having any first-hand experience of this pretty unlikely, and where the majority of police I encounter are not equipped with the option of using lethal force if they think I might be reaching for a weapon rather than my driver's licence. Seeing any armed police makes me extremely uneasy.

[JayUtah]

I think Sir Robert Peel would be appalled at the state of American policing.  I grew up thinking the unarmed London policeman was a quaint throwback, but much of the civil unrest in the U.S. right now is aimed at dispelling the myth of the American police officer as a high-trained, apolitical, fair-minded agent of the law.  It doesn't help that the concurrent political unrest lets that continue to be mischaracterized as a debate between "law and order" and "violent anarchy."  As a Caucasian male in a reasonably affluent socio-economic environment, I've more privileged than my peers to see and experience first- or second-hand the abuses, excesses, and corruption that our minority friends have been decrying for decades now.  It's real, and largely disbelieved or ignored by many.

As Gillianren notes, it goes beyond the mere failure to conquer adrenaline and instinct.  American police officers are immersed in an environment that does little to encourage fair-minded law-and-order.  Most American police forces are ruled, not by the Chief of Police and the Mayor, but by powerful labor unions that have successfully resisted nearly every legislative or executive attempt to reform law enforcement in the United States.  There is little interest among these unions in adopting a mode of policing that doesn't involve overwhelming application of pseudo-military force.  It's the job of the union to protect officers' jobs, so individual miscreant officers are rarely punished lest the department incur the wrath of the union.  Similarly the union rejects civilian oversight, citing fears that such review boards will be packed with liberals who will question every use-of-force decision.  This is not to say that every American police officer is an undertrained, racist thug.  But if you happen to be any of those, it won't stop you from working successfully as a police officer in the United States.

The thinking of the JFK assassination conspiracy theorists may be naive, but it's not unreasonable.  On both sides of the policing debate remains the notion that armed officers have more time, ability, and discretion when an armed encountered is unavoidable, and should exercise more restraint as a rule.  In cases where this can be shown to be naive, it gives police unions a toehold to fight back and say, "You people who've never fired a gun don't know what you're talking about."  It behooves those of us who have some experience with firearms to help separate the rhetoric and make cogent arguments for gun control and police reform -- ones that aren't so easily dismissed.  The argument should not be about finer aim, or a more judicious use of deadly force.  It should be about changing the whole way we approach enforcing the law.  The police need to be demilitarized and de-unionized.  Their present role in American government and society needs to be divided among more specialized, unarmed professionals.  But the present political situation will not allow this.  Hence the escalating unrest.

The separate question of private gun ownership still divides Americans from each other as well as Americans from much of the rest of the civilized world.  The slight advantage possibly gained from having more people understand the principles and limitations of firearms is probably not outweighed by the promise of general increased violence.

[smartcooky]

Thank you all for the replies. Most interesting. It seems I am guilty of the same fallacious thinking I have pulled up JFK conspiracy theorists on, in assuming that trained officers are not so subject to the same instincts and adrenaline as the rest of us. Also highlights how little I know of actual gun use or the effects of being shot. Frankly, I am still glad to live in a country where strict gun control laws make either myself or someone I know having any first-hand experience of this pretty unlikely, and where the majority of police I encounter are not equipped with the option of using lethal force if they think I might be reaching for a weapon rather than my driver's licence.

I too live in a country where the Police are not routinely armed - individual Police to not carry sidearms. Patrol cars do have weapons in a locked cabinet, but if either of the officers even unlocks that cabinet, they have to justify done so, a task which involves much paperwork!

Seeing any armed police makes me extremely uneasy.

I had a frightening experience in Greece many years back at Athens Airport. This was back in the mid-1980s a few months after the hijacking of a TWA airliner at that airport. I had a metal pin in my right arm after having broken it a few months earlier, and of course, when I walked through the metal detector, the alarm went off. Immediately, three or four armed airport security guards pointed assault weapons at me, and other airport security personnel started babbling at me in Greek. I don;lt speak the language. but it I wasn't hard to guess what they were saying , so I put my hands in the air..... very... very...     slowly! 

[Luther]

it gives police unions a toehold to fight back and say, "You people who've never fired a gun don't know what you're talking about."

It's actually true that the police, having direct first-hand experience of police work, have the best knowledge and experience to judge things like whether use of force was justified in a particular situation.  The problem is, they don't have the best motive.

When you are the police, you may sometimes have to be judged by people who don't know what it's like themselves.  What other alternative is there?  You could say, "we don't know first-hand the difficulties and challenges that police face, so whatever you decide to do, we'll take your word if you feel it was justified", which declares open-season for all manners of abuse.

This isn't unique to police.  If you're driving the train, and the train crashes, there's going to be an inquiry in which people who don't drive trains decide whether you have some responsibility or not.  We could decide, train drivers can only be judged by other train drivers, which guarantees that the people doing the judging know a lot about what it's like to drive trains, what sorts of problems can occur, what the best ways to handle those problems are, whether it's difficult or easy, and so on.  They're also the people who have the best incentive to say, when a train crashes, it's the fault of anyone except the person driving it.

It's simply the hard reality.  When force is used, there may have to be a justification, and the justification may have to be made to people who aren't front-line police officers.  I think the problems likely to occur if police can only be judged by themselves, are obvious.

[gillianren]

I recently acquired Cop Rock on DVD, and there's a plot in it about a police officer (I promptly dubbed him "Murder Cop," because I couldn't keep track of the characters' names) who shoots an unarmed, handcuffed suspect because the bust is bad and he and the suspect both know that the suspect will go free--despite having previously, in another incident, killed a cop.  Murder Cop is, of course, acquitted--and this was in 1990, so it's not a Rodney King reference.  It's just an awareness that cops are more likely to be acquitted by juries for murdering people regardless of circumstance.

Similarly, the military base near my house has been doing night exercises lately.  There are people defending artillery and machine gun fire in the middle of the night as "the sound of freedom."  One of my concerns about the night exercises is the health and well-being of the soldiers; it seems likely to me that one infected soldier will spread it to the rest of the group unless they're taking serious precautions, but we're so accustomed to defend the military here that people aren't even criticizing a bad decision on the leadership's part.

[JayUtah]

I have to say Cop Rock takes me back.  I remember as a teenager thinking it was a conceptual nightmare.

The analogy to train drivers is apt.  This is a chronic problem in transportation.  If equipment makers get to the make the safety rules, a crash is always due to operator error.  Conversely if the operators' union makes the safety rules, a crash is always due to equipment failure.  And if those were the only two goalposts, we could just let them fight it out.  But because we're talking about public transportation, the public gets to have a large say in safety rules, even if they don't know how to make trains or drive them.  That's simply the nature of the work.  As the ultimate risk-takers involved, they have a moral stake.

The police are an arm of the government, which ought to be an extension of the people.  They are the only ones authorized to employ force (sometimes at their discretion) without the customary legal consequences.  But the point is that what they do is done in the name of the people.  If a police officer shoots an unarmed person of color in the back, that action is ostensibly under my direction.  If we excuse violence applied by the police as a necessary evil to maintain order, then we should have a great say in the rules by which that violence is applied.

When the public makes a rule that says, "If you are driving a train, you can't also be using your smart phone," it rings hollow if the answer is, "But you have no idea how much attention it takes to drive a train, so you don't know whether that's a good rule."  If my life is in your hands, I ought to have a say in what those hands are doing.  On the other side of the coin, it's absolutely appropriate to regard police officers as experts in the tactics of fighting crime and apprehending miscreants.  Those who have never fired a gun shouldn't try to judge whether a police officer should have aimed at a suspect's ankle instead of his head.  Those of us who have never been threatened with deadly violence at work might not make the best rules by which police can employ force to defend themselves.

But the rules are not just about tactics.  Having police at all is a moral decision.  Arming them is a moral decision.  Different civilizations feel morally different about all of that.  But the people for whom the police are agents and by whose authority they can, if desired, wield deadly force ought to be fully qualified to say what the moral boundaries are.  And yes, it may weigh disproportionately against the police.  But that will have to be the job.  To say we have to respect the police at all costs, and approve their brutal tactics because we've given them a hard job to do, abrogates our role as the ultimate authority in whose name they carry out their duty.  Similarly, if you don't know what the police are doing in your name, that's not much better.

But in the U.S. we're at the point where the police have become so powerful that they can simply substitute the argument about tactics every time a question of moral authority comes up, and there are plenty of people willing to let that be the trump card for every trick.  "You can't imagine what it's like to be a police officer facing violent protesters that could harm you at any moment," ought to begin the debate, not end it.

[Jason Thompson]

The analogy to train drivers is apt.  This is a chronic problem in transportation.  If equipment makers get to the make the safety rules, a crash is always due to operator error.  Conversely if the operators' union makes the safety rules, a crash is always due to equipment failure.

A situation common in all areas I feel. I work for a distributor of medical tests. When we deal with complaints inevitably the customer believes there is a fault in the test kit, while the manufacturer believes there is a fault in the customer process. It's not a lot of fun being in the middle refereeing these debates!

The police are an arm of the government, which ought to be an extension of the people.  They are the only ones authorized to employ force (sometimes at their discretion) without the customary legal consequences.  But the point is that what they do is done in the name of the people.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I may not be an expert in policing, I may not be an expert in making and driving trains, but I am entrusting my safety to the people who are experts, and I therefore expect them to work for my benefit, and if necessary to justify their decisions when they affect me. No, I am not an expert, but I won't be satisfied with being brushed off as such as if that is the end of the debate.

Those who have never fired a gun shouldn't try to judge whether a police officer should have aimed at a suspect's ankle instead of his head.

A justified rebuke as this was precisely what I had done.

Those of us who have never been threatened with deadly violence at work might not make the best rules by which police can employ force to defend themselves.

Also true, and in fact I have defended police officers in this country accused of brutality in trial by media in discussions before now. One I recall showed CCTV of a woman being arrested, clearly violently resisting, dragged to the floor by two officers where she could not be seen as she was obscured by something in the foreground. The video showed one officer raising his fist and thumping her twice, hard, and he was accused of assault. The arguments all centred around why he needed to hit her at all when she was restrained, and the moral arguments around a man hitting a woman at all, but no-one could see what she was doing or what she might have been reaching for, so there was no context to his actions and hence no grounds on which to assume he was being un-necessarily brutal.

In cases of police using lethal force, I concede I am not familiar with the use of any firearms, nor have I ever been in a position where I might be in immediate mortal danger from a suspect, so my ability to judge the actions of a police officer is limited. However, there are elements that provoke a visceral reaction, such as being shot in the back, or being shot because there might be a weapon, or being shot in bed... 

But the people for whom the police are agents and by whose authority they can, if desired, wield deadly force ought to be fully qualified to say what the moral boundaries are.  And yes, it may weigh disproportionately against the police.  But that will have to be the job.  To say we have to respect the police at all costs, and approve their brutal tactics because we've given them a hard job to do, abrogates our role as the ultimate authority in whose name they carry out their duty.

Indeed, again I am 100% in agreement. I am disturbed greatly by the constant discussions that go on here and in other places about increasing police powers in regard to crime prevention. This inevitably leads to punitive measures being taken against people who have not in fact committed any crime as yet on the basis that they might do so. It's not an easy debate, because of course there may be no crime committed until a lethal action is taken and people die or are injured, but where do we draw the line? I can see that people who are clearly gathering materials to make bombs and making plans to attack targets need to be stopped before they do anything, but in a country like the US where having a gun is defeneded as a right of all law abiding citizens, does proving the person the police shot was armed justify the use of lethal force? What does one do in the case that the police stop a driver and ask for their licence, and the licence is in the glove compartment or in a pocket of their coat and there happens to be a gun nearby?

Similarly, if you don't know what the police are doing in your name, that's not much better.

I think there are large swathes of the population who would argue the police are not actually acting in their name at all, despite the supposed mandate to act for all.

[JayUtah]

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I may not be an expert in policing, I may not be an expert in making and driving trains, but I am entrusting my safety to the people who are experts...

More importantly, you are entrusting your safety to people who need to demonstrate to you that they are experts.  As I mentioned before, American police officers are trained differently than their G8 counterparts, and for far less time.  The public should have a say in what police officers are trained to do, and how that training should occur.  But again, that's mostly controlled by unregulated police unions.

A justified rebuke as this was precisely what I had done.

I apologize if it sounded like a rebuke.  What I mean is that people who propose regulations ought to do so from some position of knowledge.  And to acquire that knowledge, it's proper to ask questions like what can be accomplished with a handgun that would be less final than killing the suspect.  That's what I interpreted you to have been doing.  You had a legitimate question that deserved an informed answer.  When you come to find out, despite your prior reasonable assumptions, that handguns generally alternate between ineffective and lethal, you understand why some other countries' police forces use them only as a last resort.  You're having exactly the kind of conversation that intelligent, well-meaning people need to have before they make decisions about public policy.

Can a handgun apply stopping force surgically?  No, not in the tactical situations we mean.  Can people be trained to act calmly in stressful situations and not be ruled by adrenaline?  Yes, but American police generally are not.

However, there are elements that provoke a visceral reaction, such as being shot in the back, or being shot because there might be a weapon, or being shot in bed...

Yes.  There are clear cases of police misconduct.  That's why people are so angry, and why they are less pacified these days by being told it's none of their business or beyond their ken.  We give police a hard job, but it's not the hard job they think it is.  The job is hard because we ostensibly require them to do it within the bounds we set.  These days they just don't seem to want to.

I am disturbed greatly by the constant discussions that go on here and in other places about increasing police powers in regard to crime prevention. This inevitably leads to punitive measures being taken against people who have not in fact committed any crime as yet on the basis that they might do so.

Yes, this terrifies me.  As the police in America come under increasing fire (no pun intended), they have taken to "cracking down" in order to show how necessary their role is in society.  It's fear mongering to justify brutality.  They are thus also now in the business of generating crime that otherwise would not occur, just so that they can conspicuously fight it.

...but in a country like the US where having a gun is defeneded as a right of all law abiding citizens, does proving the person the police shot was armed justify the use of lethal force?

Contrary to popular opinion, most Americans don't wander the streets with holsters at their side.  It's quite uncommon for anyone minding their business in the city to be armed.  Out on a ranch, you'll see hunting-style rifles quite a lot, though.  But the question I think you're asking is whether discovering post facto merely that a person was armed should not justify using lethal force.  If the police break into my house to execute a no-knock warrant, shoot me dead summarily, and later discover a handgun in my desk drawer, that's not going to fly as justified use of force.

What does one do in the case that the police stop a driver and ask for their licence, and the licence is in the glove compartment or in a pocket of their coat and there happens to be a gun nearby?

I'm glad you asked.  Weapons carried in public generally must be in full view.  It's unlawful in all but six states in the U.S. to carry a concealed firearm without an additional permit.  Among the remaining 44, laws differ on your duty to inform a police officer who stops you whether you are armed.  My state imposes no duty.  Other states require you to inform an officer at the outset of the encounter if you are armed.  Still more states don't require you to affirmatively state this, but you are obliged to respond honestly if asked.

Here's what my State advises.  https://bci.utah.gov/concealed-firearm/general-information/concealed-firearm-permit-frequently-asked-questions/

If you open your glove compartment to fetch your license and a handgun falls out, you will have broken no law (in Utah).  But you will have failed common sense.  Even though no state law requires it, it's highly advisable to inform the officer that you are armed, that you have a proper permit, where the firearm is, and whether it's loaded.

That said, do criminals obtain these permits and follow the laws?  Obviously not.  And a violation of that is simply one more charge added to their list.  Not much consolation after shots have already been exchanged, I know.  But it should be mentioned that laws restricting the ownership and possession of firearms in America -- such as they are -- are generally vigorously enforced.

[Luther]

If equipment makers get to the make the safety rules, a crash is always due to operator error.  Conversely if the operators' union makes the safety rules, a crash is always due to equipment failure.

Hah, ain't that the truth!

The other thing that springs to my mind now is military action.  Since each country judges its own motives, we are very fortunate to live in a world where, in all of human history, there has never been a single aggressive military action.  Only defensive actions.

Re the police, it also occurs to me that the "you don't know what it's like" argument could cut both ways.  Perhaps many police don't know what's it like to be a member of a minority group that lives in fear of police violence and abuse.  So if a member of that group is accused of killing a police officer, how can we judge him?  We weren't there, we didn't know what pressure he was under, we don't know what it's like to have to make spur-of-the-moment decisions when you're not sure what's going on.  So why don't we just trust any defendant who says he was in fear for his life, and killed the police officer in self-defence?

[gillianren]

If you open your glove compartment to fetch your license and a handgun falls out, you will have broken no law (in Utah).  But you will have failed common sense.  Even though no state law requires it, it's highly advisable to inform the officer that you are armed, that you have a proper permit, where the firearm is, and whether it's loaded.

Though of course at least one person has been shot by the police for doing just that.

That said, do criminals obtain these permits and follow the laws?  Obviously not.  And a violation of that is simply one more charge added to their list.  Not much consolation after shots have already been exchanged, I know.  But it should be mentioned that laws restricting the ownership and possession of firearms in America -- such as they are -- are generally vigorously enforced.

Though of course there are also some pretty prominent exceptions to that.

[JayUtah]

Though of course at least one person has been shot by the police for doing just that.

And I think that becomes the point.  If Jason posits an unremarkable hypothetical, and all the possible outcomes credibly include, "You will be shot by the police," then I think that outlines a problem.  Out-of-control police are part of that problem, but not it entirely.  There has to be a way for a law-abiding citizen to confidently believe that he's going to survive an encounter with a law enforcement officer.  And Jason's point is intriguing:  if "law-abiding" includes the hallowed possession of a firearm, how should that mesh with ordinary policing that shouldn't otherwise escalate?  It does seem somewhat hypocritical.

Though of course there are also some pretty prominent exceptions to that.

Yeah...

I guess I'm trying to convince our friends here -- for whom private ownership of guns is wholly foreign -- that the United States is not the lawless wasteland that the media sometimes depicts where guns are concerned.  Here's our state's law regarding who may not possess a firearm.  https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title76/Chapter10/76-10-S503.html  These offenses are not just for show; they are routinely prosecuted and result in conviction, notwithstanding the 2nd Amendment.  Quite a number of arrests of repeat offenders that are reported in our media include a violation of this section.

[gillianren]

The problem is that the safest way to possess a firearm around the police is "while being white." 

I'm honestly not a fan of guns.  I don't think most people have any need to have one in their homes; I found out a couple of years ago that the parent of another kid on Simon's bus kept one in their apartment that he said he could get to in [a few seconds; I don't remember quite how long] but also believed was safe from his daughter, who simply wouldn't play with it because she wasn't supposed to.  He's also the person who asked me where  this "well-regulated militia" stuff I was quoting came from, since it wasn't in the Second Amendment originally.

[jfb]

He's also the person who asked me where  this "well-regulated militia" stuff I was quoting came from, since it wasn't in the Second Amendment originally.

 

It may or may not have been mentioned earlier, but there's a concept of "qualified immunity" - in the course of executing their duties, law enforcement personnel may have to use force, including deadly force, and innocent people may be injured or killed by accident (not through negligence or malice).  QI is supposed to protect officers who do everything "right" per training and policy but still accidentally injure or kill someone. 

The problem is that the definition of "right" has been stretched so far as to render QI meaningless.  And where departments do suspend or fire the clearly incompetent, negligent, or malicious officers, the union is there to demand they be reinstated. 

I believe in unions, I think they are necessary, but so many police unions have made the problem so much worse. 

[gillianren]

Yeah, police unions more closely resemble organized crime than a proper union, which ought to be concerned with things like public safety and, frankly, the public perception of the people in their union.  I'd have more respect for police unions if they fought for people who were fired for reporting their coworkers for excessive force and racism and so forth.

[JayUtah]

A lot of things are good ideas until you factor in the worst side of human nature.

Labor is in crisis in the U.S., and has been since the 1980s.  We don't have a credible labor movement.  We don't have a credible labor political party.  As such, the One Percent manages to convince everyone, on the basis of the visible corruption in labor unions, that unions are wasteful and bad and should be abolished as impediments to business competitiveness (read: impediments to obscene profits funneled into executive compensation packages).

That's why no one films entertainment in Hollywood anymore.  The reason we have new large-scale, regional production facilities in North America -- Atlanta, Albuquerque, Park City, Vancouver, Toronto, New York -- are that the labor unions had such a powerful stranglehold over Hollywood film and television production that it literally did become cheaper to move everything elsewhere.  All the Disney Channel movies in the 1990s and 2000s were filmed in a warehouse-studio in an industrial complex near the downtown Salt Lake Home Depot store.  Sure, IATSE (film production crews) and SAG/AFTRA (actors) and DGA (directors) are alive and well in Utah, but they don't crap all over the studios.

The idea of organized labor and collective bargaining is great.  It serves as a necessary check on the power of capital.  But power inevitably corrupts.  Or rather, the opportunity to wield power attracts those who would wield it for ulterior motives, whether in government, industry, or labor.  And this runs roughshod over what otherwise would have been a good organization serving a valuable purpose.  Quite a lot of good things, such as government and policing, are ruined by human nature.  Even controversial topics like private ownership of firearms can't be discussed without an army of not-so-straw men arising out of human nature.

This is why I think the American Experiment is not so much whether a representative government of, by, and for the people can long endure.  It's whether such a disparate rabble of people can unify under one banner.  George Washington said, in one of the brilliant addresses Alexander Hamilton wrote for him, that the two-edged sword of American government was that it allowed maximum freedom, so long as individual discipline would be maintained.  People will simply not tolerate abuses of power or encroachment upon their rights.  And if they did not behave with honor and discipline themselves, the people -- in one form or another -- would take steps to enforce good behavior more broadly.  If not by government authority, then by taking to the streets.  If I, through my entitled and wanton misbehavior, trespass upon Gillianren in any way she finds uncomfortable, the courts may redress.  Or they may not, because I might not have committed any cognizable tort.  But that doesn't mean she has to endure my boorish conduct.  Thus breeds contempt among neighbors.

If the government itself is what is acting oppressively or without discipline, then taking to the streets -- and what subsequently follows -- is really all that's left.  We're seeing a revolution against police power, because we have little else to rely upon.

But I digress.  My point is to agree that police unions differ little from organized crime at this point.  But they have badge-wearing, flag-waving, in-harms-way appeal that speaks to people who have little daily contact with police, little understanding of what minorities face, and little understanding of how the police have become the de facto local government.

Our local political cartoonist, Pat Bagley, has national exposure.  His latest cartoon in the Salt Lake Tribune has sparked outrage from the local police union.  Those of you outside the U.S. may have to hunt down the cartoon on social media, as the Tribune's web site is generally blocked in GDPR-protected countries.  Briefly, it features a Utah policeman in a doctor's office looking at an x-ray alongside the doctor.  The x-ray depicts a KKK member wedged up ... well, you can guess where.  The doctor says, "Well there's your problem."  The message, of course, is that the police in our city are encumbered by the infiltration of white supremacists, who generally cannot be held accountable because the Fraternal Order of Police opposes any sort of oversight.  Naturally the FOP opposes this cartoon vehemently, and demands an apology from the Tribune -- whose interim editor has politely told them where they can stick it.

There was a lackluster protest last night supporting the police.  But when you protest against a Pulitzer-Prize-winning newspaper, you get more that you bargained for.  The organizers of the protest turned out to be a vehement anti-BLM organization, anti-maskers -- the whole nine yards.  This is the sort of support our "union" craves and relies upon.  The FOP has been calling the BLM and related protests "riots."  But in fact -- having observed several of them now from a polite distance -- I can say that they don't become violent until the police show up.  And yes, it is the police who are starting the fights.  The unions provide the political cover for ongoing thuggery, not just against people of color.