HOW NOT TO IMPROVE POLICING EVEN WHEN YOU REALLY WANT TO
When you’re suffering, do you want to hear words that keep you locked inside your anguish — or are you willing to face the discomfort needed to get you past your pain?
Easier said than done, but there’s only one path to evolution and growth.
An avid James Altucher fan, I curiously listened to his podcast recently with Andrew Yang.
Yang’s remarks on policing were symptomatic of a population desperate to sound compassionate — rather than bravely engage in honest and fulsome discourse to arrive at long term solutions.
Nothing new. Made worse by Yang dressing his comments up in “data.” It’s a smart technique to call yourself something you may or may not be often enough so people believe it. Is Yang really the “data guy?”
Based on his comments on policing, it’s unclear as to whether this is a legit claim …
1. Police “brutality”
Introducing …
Yang’s wonky opening statement on the issue:
“I mean when I looked at what’s going on with police brutality, as the data guy, I was like OK what are the measurements you can have with this problem. So issue number 1, how many people are killed by police every year. It turns out the best you can do is an estimate — which itself is very dark and scary because legally they’re supposed to report this stuff but instead you have compiled news reports that say reliably we can say 1000 people plus get killed by police officers every year … uh … that’s a baseline, like is it possibly more than that? Yes. OK, so that sounds pretty bad like 3 Americans a day are just getting shot by a police officer somewhere … “
Given that …
… in 2018 there were over 1.2 MILLION episodes of violent crime (comprising murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) …
… an estimated 100,000 CHILDREN are trafficked in the US every year …
… in 2018 there were over 1 million arrests for driving under the influence …
… there are 50 million + police contacts per year …
… police are shot at or threatened with deadly force thousands of times in the course of dealing with this violent insanity in exchange for an average annual police officer salary of around $50,000 and the public screaming “that’s your job!” …
… AND
… it might not be as straightforward as we may think to define precise methodology to measure police deaths across all 50 states and numerous police agencies, since there are many contributing factors to how one might die in this crime mayhem …
… isn’t it then kind of a lazy conclusion that OMG 3 Americans a day are shot by police?
Playpen.
(Side note: I was disappointed with Altucher’s framing of the questions to Yang, starting with, “… solutions ranging from … how you’re going to deal with the officers, to maybe different types of weapons — what are you looking at?”
How about we look at the underlying causes of crime? The degree of comfort that too many anarchists and rioters (James poetically refers to this as “more aggressive protests”) feel as they hurl balloons filled with urine, frozen water bottles and lasers at officers’ heads and eyeballs? The lack of school choice and teachers unions — that might even encourage that attitude? The fact that a race war was created — again — after zero evidence that George Floyd’s death had anything to do with race and regardless we still live in a country where innocent until proven guilty applies? The extent to which our justice system goes to protect criminals — but not victims?
No. Let’s blame the police. Or the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
PS About 16,000 murders happen each year. OK, so that sounds pretty bad like 43.83 Americans a day are just getting killed by murderers somewhere …
2. A billion spent on civil judgments
“OK … so the second thing is can you measure police brutality? And it turns out we’re paying over a billion a year in successful civil judgments against police departments around the country. And they have a very high legal standard to clear even in civil suits. Can you imagine trying to sue a cop for some f***ed up shit they did and then winning? [Yang laugh] Like a lot of things have to go pretty well for you in the sense like you must have some real damage, witnesses, video, like something … because you know that police departments are very well lawyered and you’re going to have a very high legal standard to get through.”
Yang concludes that if there’s a billion dollars in successful civil judgments then the “scope of the real harm,” the “police brutality,” is “some multiple of that.”
Boy.
I’m a corporate lawyer with zero expertise in litigation but even I know how data guy is making a pretty glaring error in his use of data here.
Many cases settle for judicial expediency. That’s it. With the justice system as bogged down and dog and ponied as it is, it often makes sense to settle a matter rather than waste limited resources going to court.
Isn’t that common knowledge? Did they not cover that in data school?
Since we all know settlements happen in the interest of judicial expediency, we also all know that the underlying merits of settled cases are … well … often without merit. And when it comes to police, it’s probably an even less compelling statistic than it would be in any other setting. Why? Police are easy targets. (Probably much easier for you to find an experienced officer who has been sued compared to one that hasn’t.)
Criminals, unhappy with police interfering with their criminal activity, sue police. They can’t effectively sue their prosecutor, or the judge. Cops? Not a problem.
Yet Yang refers to “well-lawyered” police departments. He must know that police departments are lawyered by the Attorney General’s office of the applicable state for state police. For local police, it’s generally lawyers from the relevant police department’s insurer that will defend.
There are undoubtedly many excellent lawyers in AG offices all over the country. But even with the best lawyers (and we have to acknowledge that many of the best litigators will prefer the salary and prestige of the private sector over public service), judicial expediency works double time.
In the private sector, a lawyer serves their client and ultimately takes their instruction. When a cop — and more accurately the police department — is defended by the AG’s office or insurer, the individual cop named doesn’t have quite the same freedom to exercise their representation. If the AG wants to settle for a sum, and the police officer wants to pursue the matter to protect his or her reputation knowing a case has zero merits, what will happen? The case will settle despite that. The defending cop really has no option other than to accept it, or use their pittance of a salary to hire their own attorney. And if the cop retains their own counsel separate and apart from the state or local representation, the police officer then bears personal responsibility for the judgment of a judge or jury.
In today’s world of legal dysfunction where one never knows what biases will appear in a courtroom, why would anyone risk putting him or herself in that position?
Furthermore, the current polarized environment is a wet dream for the bar. Slithering defense attorneys and human “rights” lawyers feed off the rhetoric de jour and make it their business to sue any cop on behalf of any criminal who can convince grandma to deed her land in payment.
Even better, there are lawyers that make it their very profitable business to simply take on clients to sue cops on their behalf and work for contingency fees waiting for that payout. Even if they lose 9 out of 10, they’ll eventually get that good one by manipulating the justice system and the public’s compassionate but ignorant hearts.
We should all love to know just how many of our tax dollars end up going to pad the pockets of lawyers and criminals who get a pay day for their criminal behavior.
Yang could have chosen to propose real change, such as advocating for loser-pays rules to discourage frivolous lawsuits. It’s at least worthy of discussion. He chose instead to focus on a single data point, didn’t bother to interpret it fairly or adequately, and extrapolated utter nonsense from it.
Here’s a quick example — of many. In a case I’m familiar with, two police officers were sued after they arrested a multi-time convicted felon. In the course of the arrest, the criminal’s mother swung at the police. Her arm was restrained and her arm injured. She pled guilty to assault, received two years probation, and a subsequent internal affairs investigation cleared the officers from any wrongdoing and concluded the officers responded exactly as they were trained in accordance with all policy and law. None of that mattered. She sued both officers, and because the police representation didn’t want to deal with this nuisance matter she got some undisclosed settlement amount.
Taxpayer dollars at hard work.
Lawyers know this game. And many know that judicial expediency will make pursuing even small payouts worth their time.
Incentives. All in the wrong places.
PS In 2018, property crime alone was responsible for over $16 billion in losses. (Do we have stats on losses resulting from the physical and emotional trauma suffered by victims of crime? It would be painful to know them.)
3. Prosecutors
Yang wonders how these billions of dollars of “police misconduct” (unsubstantiated, re above) are being enforced.
He suggests this is problematic because prosecutors aren’t going to want to “stick it to them [the cops]” because then good grief how will the prosecutors ever work with police to “make cases?”
Where there is a matter of police misconduct or asserted misconduct, prosecutors in the jurisdiction that represents the officers are conflicted out of the matter and a special prosecutor or the state Attorney General will step in.
Pretty straightforward really.
4. Non lethal weaponry and getting “shot in the back”
You’ve probably seen some videos of new technology being developed that will help police officers apprehend suspects with non lethal force.
That’s terrific.
But maybe we should take a look at the non lethal force officers already have available to them so they don’t need to hang yet another piece of equipment off their loaded belts.
I learned that there’s something in law enforcement called a force continuum. Cops are trained to use it. The force continuum includes …
Their presence.
Verbal commands.
Mace.
Their hands.
A taser.
A baton.
A gun.
Yang wants to see “intermediary force.” But doesn’t mention there are already some examples of that in the cop’s arsenal.
As we can imagine, different instances demand a different combination and different ordering of the use of the continuum. The idea that police are too often reaching for their guns and shooting people has been examined ad nauseum and has never held up. We should ask why we choose so strongly to believe it.
In almost all instances of police killing civilians, there are altercations with police. Are we really supposed to expect police officers to put their lives on the line without being able to defend themselves or citizens they are charged to protect against those who set out to do innocent people harm?
Yang mentions the Atlanta incident referring to Rayshard Brooks getting “shot in the back.”
There’s video coverage of the incident and, unsurprisingly, it’s only after the handcuffs come out after a long exchange of respectful discourse that things turn ugly. Ultimately, a taser was taken from and used on the officer — as Brooks turned halfway to shoot it towards the officers while he runs in the opposite direction.
Notice the words. Turned halfway around to shoot towards the officer while he runs in the opposite direction.
An education in forensics isn’t necessary to imagine why it might be that people come to be “shot in the back.”
Whether someone is running away or not, if they have a weapon like a gun — or a taser — they’re still a threat. And unlike in movies or Joe Biden’s mind, you don’t stop a threat by shooting someone in the leg. (Besides the fact that it’s hard enough to hit a target with a gun, let alone someone running away.) Police officers are regularly shot at (and hit) by people running away. The law allows police to shoot back — with good reason. Moreover, police are trained — also with good reason — to shoot at the largest area of the body to stop the threat to themselves and to other bystanders.
By the time someone finds themselves in a position to be running away from the police with a gun they’re unlikely to have been arrested only once or twice. And continuing to paint these scenarios as police bad guys, criminals good guys is wreaking major havoc on innocent people everywhere — and most certainly vulnerable communities that we seek to protect. It’s curious why we let it happen. We know why politicians and Black Lives Matter (the organization) do it. Why do the rest of us?
Another example of declining discourse … to then bemoan a lack of decorum.
5. Investing in crisis workers
Picture this.
An emotionally disturbed man has been off his medication. He lives with his sister and has threatened her with a knife before turning outdoors, mumbling to himself. The neighbor’s young children are playing by the apartment building. Still carrying the knife, he screams at them. They’re frightened and run back to mom. Not the first time this has happened, so mom decides it’s time to call the police.
By now, the man has returned to his home where he’s naked, running about still brandishing his knife deeply within the realm of his own reality. The sister doesn’t know what to do. But it’s happened before and he’ll come out of it. She hopes.
I ask Yang. However big a game one may talk … what crisis worker is likely to head into that situation? Even firefighters and EMT will wait until police arrive and secure a location. (We saw this in full display recently in the short-lived land of Chaz.)
Yang would say he’s suggesting investing in crisis workers for incidents that do not warrant a police officer arriving with a gun.
Oh.
When does this particular incident go from manageable to dangerous for a family member or neighbors or the individual himself? At what precise point does a domestic that starts off as a loud fight become violent? When does a drug addict on mind and body-altering narcotics go from docile to uncontrollable?
When does anyone really know if the situation “warrants” someone with a gun — until it’s too late?
Who’s prepared for the consequences if the wrong judgment call is made?
But, since we’d like to blame police for all societal ills, let’s give it a shot.
#callasocialworker
6. Union rules
Unions are not created equal. They seem powerful in some places and not in others. Many law enforcement agencies are not part of any union. Police unions tend to be more powerful in areas where Yang’s party is firmly entrenched.
Can we address that issue?
7. Demilitarization
Yang talks about police departments having equipment that needs to be used otherwise they need to give it back suggesting they’ll find any excuse to use their “tanks.”
I think the word he was looking for was “armored vehicles.”
There are different types of those, including the commonly used BearCat which are almost exclusively used by SWAT teams in the most dangerous of situations where police or civilians are under imminent threat.
So … to save people. It’s a dangerous world out there.
For example, Yang might recall the Pulse nightclub shooting when Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and injured 53. After barricading himself in the nightclub bathroom with hostages, the gunman was eventually shot and killed only after a BearCat broke through the wall and police managed to distract and shoot the murderer.
The BearCats look more similar to a bigger, bullet-proof Hummer than they do a tank. (Google or Duck it.)
A BearCat was also used when police confronted the San Bernardino terrorists after they killed 14 people and seriously injured 22 others. They did also use a “Rook” which to me looks like a futuristic tractor and was used in this case to protect officers as they investigated the terrorists’ SUV, suspecting explosives (in the course of this tragedy, several bombs were found and detonated).
Yang chooses to resort to inflammatory language, and insinuates that equipment will be used unnecessarily because otherwise they need to “give it back” — without acknowledging that there’s a process in place for larger law enforcement agencies to get the equipment and return it.
It’s easy to make judgments about what equipment is needed and when. It also behooves us to shut up about it when it has to do with exercising jobs we know nothing about.
8. “The problem of police brutality is real by the numbers”
It’s certainly not real by Yang’s numbers. He wants to sound compassionate without doing the work. And in so doing, he perpetuates vapid talking points that do more harm than good.
The proposals and rhetoric make it harder to recruit good people into policing, would send standards into continued decline and make policing more difficult — which ultimately has the exact opposite effect the well-intentioned seek.
No public or private organization — business, academic, judicial — can improve without an objective and fulsome look at the problems that play into its inadequacies.
Instead of calling out the more complicated issues affecting policing, and engaging in a holistic discussion intended to truly help vulnerable communities and achieve greater equality, the intelligentsia, the “thinkers,” the “compassionate,” …
… choose to hole up and let the mob run wild.
Since no one seems ready to have smarter conversations then let’s take the most productive and less costly approach. Let’s go on a massive advertising campaign to teach all people — no matter their identity characteristics — one thing:
Don’t fight the police.
It doesn’t matter that Yang will never be President. There’s a real danger in us assuming that the compassionate-sounding are truly compassionate.
Perhaps it’s the guns, or the uniforms, or the notion of authority — or even the failure to remember that there are rotten teachers, doctors, scientists et al that also impact life and death — that have caused such intense animosity for people who put their lives on the line every day.
Whatever it is, what we see today is not leadership.
There’s much scope for a discussion of real solutions so I hope you’ll connect and follow along …
