Posts tagged as “criminal justice”

Before we rush forward to enact new legislative “reforms” we should step back to ask important and searching questions.

Excuse me, but may I ask a question? Or rather, a series of questions?

Oh, I know that no one today has much time for questions: because the loudest voices, in our newsrooms and out in the streets, are too busy telling us what the answers must be.

And, unlike the activists, the politicians, the pundits, the sports stars, and assorted other know-it-alls, I don’t pretend to have all the answers. However, I do have some pertinent—and perhaps unwelcome and inconvenient—questions to ask.

May I?

Thank you. I won’t take much of your time. I promise.

Federalism

1. Should the federal government micromanage state and local police departments and law enforcement agencies?

2. Does federalism matter, and might federalism help us determine which reforms work and which ones don’t?

Legislating Police Practices

3. Do we have a problem with specific police practices, such as chokeholds and no-knock warrants?

Or, instead, do we have a problem with specific police officers, such as Derek Chauvin, who misuse and misapply those practices?

4. Did Officer Chauvin kill George Floyd with a choke hold or by pressing his knee into his neck?

5. If the problem is specific police officers such as Chauvin, then why focus on stopping certain practices? Why not focus on recruiting better officers, training them better, and screening out bad officers?

6. Rather than ban or proscribe certain police practices, might we do well, instead, to train officers to use better, less dangerous, and more effective practices by which to subdue and control suspects?

7. Will legislation designed to outlaw or ban specific police practices actually end police brutality or make much of a difference? Or will bad police officers still find ways to commit egregious acts of wrongdoing?

8. Fox News host Sean Hannity has promoted non-lethal weapons that will “incapacitate violent or threatening subjects” without killing them.

Hannity says non-lethal weapons in the hands of the police are a way to balance the need for robust and proactive policing while simultaneously averting the excessive use of police force and wrongful deaths.

Does Hannity have a point, and should not the use of non-lethal weapons rank high on the police reform agenda?

‘Systemic Racism’

9. Is our problem “systemic racism” or human nature and human frailty?

If the latter, is it possible to legislate or change human nature and human frailty? Or will we still inevitably have incidents of police brutality and excessive police use of force?

10. If our problem is “systemic racism,” then why did the police kill more unarmed white suspects in 2019 (nineteen) than unarmed black suspects (nine)?

Why did unarmed black victims of police shootings represent just 0.1 percent of all African-Americans killed in 2019?

11. If our problem is “systemic racism,” then why is a police officer “18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer”?

12. Does “systemic racism” explain why the vast majority of African Americans are killed by other African Americans, and why, overwhelmingly, the victims of black crime are innocent African Americans?

13. An increasing number of police officers are black, Hispanic, Asian and other minorities, as are big-city police chiefs. Many departments—including the New York City and Los Angeles police departments—are majority minority.

Are these police officers and departments, too, plagued by “systemic racism”?

14. If, indeed, the police are statistically more inclined to police or confront African Americans, and sometimes on specious grounds, is this necessarily because of racism? Or might disparities in criminal conduct among different racial and ethnic groups have something to do with it?

15. Is there any other country than the United States of America where blacks have achieved more and enjoyed greater opportunity and more equitable treatment?

16. In the past 20 years, America has elected and reelected a black man as President of the United States, had two black secretaries of state, two black national security advisers, and at least a dozen black, Hispanic, Asian, and Indian governors, lieutenant governors, and senators.

Does this not refute the notion that ours is a country imbued with “systemic racism”?

‘Black Lives Matter’

17. If the protesters really believe that “black lives matter,” then why do they show little or no concern and passion for the lives of black teenagers and children murdered by black criminals in the inner city?

18. Why are there no “take-a-knee” protests and high-profile, high-vis funerals for black police officers killed by violent thugs?

19. We hear much about the historical legacy of racism and how it haunts law enforcement, and American society more generally, even today. Okay, but has anything changed for the better in the past 50 or 60 years, and can we also acknowledge this history and its relevance to the current debate?

20. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are considered landmark legislative achievements on the road to racial equality.

Ditto the 24th Amendment to the Constitution (also ratified in 1964), which prohibits poll taxes or any other tax that infringes upon a citizen’s right to vote.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968, likewise, prohibits racial discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing.  Did this and similar legislation, as well as the 24th Amendment, achieve anything substantive and long-lasting?

21. America across the board—in government, corporations, public and private agencies—has instituted affirmative action programs to assist disadvantaged blacks.

Federal, state, and local governments, likewise, have spent trillions of dollars over a period of decades to assist disadvantaged Americans, black and white.

Is this evidence of a country that doesn’t believe “black lives matter”?

22. Polls consistently show that Americans are far less racist today than they were 50 or 60 years ago. Do these polls reflect reality, or are people lying to pollsters about how they really feel?

‘Militarization of the Police’

23. Is there any evidence that the so-called militarization of the police has resulted in more killings and bad community relations?

What if better armed police actually have had the opposite effect? Will policymakers and pundits then call for increased “militarization of the police”?

24. When the police receive equipment from the U.S. military, is this equipment assigned to every police officer within a law enforcement agency, or just specialized units such as SWAT teams?

25. Within police departments, is there a role for SWAT teams and should these teams be heavily armed and equipped?

26. Does the so-called “militarization of the police,” especially during introductory induction training, contribute to any shared sense of camaraderie, pride, and esprit de corps among cops? And, if so, might this help promote professionalism and good conduct?

27. Counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan emphasized protecting the indigenous population and exerciseing real restraint in the use of force.

Are there useful lessons here for our police? And, if so, doesn’t greater “militarization of the police”—meaning greater DoD-police cooperation and training—make sense?

‘Defund the Police’

28. Former NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly notes that about 95 percent of all police budgets are for personnel costs. So would not “defunding the police,” or reducing police budgets, mean fewer police and less of a police presence on the streets?

29. Given that blacks in the inner cities are the most victimized by violent crime, would not “defunding the police,” or reducing police budgets, hurt them the most?

30. Heather Mac Donald observes that “the most urgent requests [for a proactive police presence] come from the law-abiding residents of high-crime neighborhoods”; and that she’s seen these requests “time and again in the dozens of police-community meetings [that she has] attended.”

Moreover, she writes, “the percentage of black respondents in a 2015 Roper poll who wanted more police in their community was twice as high as the percentage of white respondents who wanted more police.”

Do these black citizens matter, and should their concerns be listened to and heeded?

31. Incidents involving the mentally ill, the psychologically maladjusted, domestic disputes, spousal abuse, juvenile delinquency, and drug addicts can be dangerous, with the threat of violence ever-present.

Given the clear possibility (and sometimes likelihood) of violence, then, does it really make sense to have unarmed social workers and not police officers deal with these type incidents? What happens if social workers who respond to these type incidents are killed as a result?

‘Qualified Immunity’

House Democrats have unveiled a bill that would abolish “qualified immunity” for police officers—on the grounds that this “undermines police accountability and encourages bad behavior.”

But qualified immunity is rarely invoked and revoking it is a recipe for police inaction, according to Ray Kelly, former head of the New York City Police Department.

32. Who’s right: House Democrats or Ray Kelly?

33. What is the greater risk or danger: that police will withdraw from the streets and cities because they fear lawsuits, or that police will respond too aggressively and with excessive force because they need not fear a lawsuit?

34. What does the data tell us?

Honest, Good-Faith Debate

33. Is there any evidence that the so-called reforms being pushed will actually save black lives? What if the so-called reforms will do the opposite?

34. Can we discuss these issues fairly, honestly and dispassionately? Or must we, instead, dispense with fairness, honesty and dispassion because “this time’s different”?

Excuse me? “Am I done?” you ask? Yes, well, I understand that I have exceeded my time and perhaps overstayed my welcome. I have many other questions, and perhaps I can ask those at another time.

But with all due respect, it seems to me that before we legislatively chisel the protesters’ preferred answers into the legal equivalent of Mount Rushmore, we ought to ask some important and searching questions.

I offer these up only as a starting point. We have, dare I say, a lot more to think about. 

Feature photo credit: Refinery29.com.

The facts and the data tell a far different story than what the media is feeding us.

As I’ve explained here at ResCon1, groupthink is a real problem in contemporary America. We’ve seen it with the cult-like following behind mask-wearing allegedly to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

And now we see it with the universal declaration, trumpeted throughout the media and in the popular culture, that the murder of George Floyd is an obvious instance of racism—and emblematic of the “systemic racism” that supposedly pervades U.S. law enforcement and American society more generally.

In truth, racism is less of a problem today in American than in all of human history. No country in the history of the world, moreover, has done more for blacks and other minorities than the United States of America.

And, despite the best efforts of left-wing, “progressive” journalists to show otherwise, there simply is no data to support the notion that there is “systemic racism” in law enforcement.

Quite the opposite: as Jason Riley reports in the Wall Street Journal : 

In 2016, [Harvard economist Roland] Fryer released a study of racial differences in police use of deadly force.

To the surprise of the author, as well as many in the media and on the left who take racist law enforcement as a given, he found no evidence of bias in police shootings.

His conclusions have been echoed by researchers at the University of Maryland and Michigan State University, who in a paper released last year wrote:

“We didn’t find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime.

Adds talk radio host Larry Elder in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity (June 2, 2020):

According to the CDC, in the last 45 years, killings of black by the police has declined [by] 75 percent.

Last year there were nine unarmed black people killed; 19 unarmed white people. Name the unarmed white people who were killed.

You can’t because the media gives you the impression that this is something that happens all the time [and only to black people].

Obama said this ought not be normal. Mr. former President, it’s not normal; it is rare. Cops rarely kill anybody, let alone an unarmed black person.

And the idea that this happens all the time is why some of these young people are out there in the streets. And it is simply false. Isn’t that good news? It’s not true!

What most left-wing “progressives” gloss over or refuse to forthrightly acknowledge is that, as Riley explains, “racial disparities in police shootings [stem] primary from racial disparities in criminal behavior.”

“Why are the Minneapolis police in black neighborhoods?” asks Heather Mac Donald.

Because that’s where violent crime is happening, including shootings of two-year-olds and lethal beatings of 75-year-olds.

Just as during the Obama years, the discussion of the allegedly oppressive police is being conducted in the complete absence of any recognition of street crime and the breakdown of the black family that drives it.

The murder of George Floyd was an abomination, but it is not a racial or racist abomination. Instead, it is a rare law enforcement problem that affects a small number of police officers, white and black.

It was only last year, after all, in Minneapolis of all places, that a black Somalian-American police officer, Mohamed Noor, was convicted of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for wrongly killing an unarmed white woman while on patrol in 2017.

Acording to the New York Times, the woman “was unarmed, wearing pajamas, and holding nothing but a glittery cellphone.” Yet she was killed by this black police officer. However, nowhere in this Times article on the case does the word “racism” appear.

Racism? So why is racism being seized upon now in the murder of George Floyd?

In part because all Americans of goodwill are understandably sensitive to the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial discrimination, and how that legacy might have ramifications even today.

But there are less benign reasons as well.

Anti-American anarchists and far-left extremists seek to use the cudgel of race and racism, real and imagined, to attack and destroy America.

These are the people affiliated with Antifa and foreign intelligence services who have hijacked otherwise peaceful protests and used them as vehicles for arson, looting, rioting, and lawlessness.

Politics. There also are nonviolent “progressives” eager to exploit Floyd’s murder for rank political reasons. They see in his death an opportunity to push for sweeping legislative changes that will “fundamentally transform” America along statist lines.

The racist narrative, albeit false, is politically useful to these left-wing activists; so they push it with unrestrained gusto.

We the people, however, should not be fooled. While racism certainly exists and should be called out and acted against whenever it rears its ugly head, it is a far cry from the most significant problem that we face today.

And it is far cry from the most significant problem that blacks and other minorities face today.

What’s worse? Subpar schools and a lack of educational choice and opportunity in too many poor black neighborhoods. The breakdown of the family and the absence of fathers in too many homes, black and white.

Black-on-black crime that results in the senseless death of too many young black men and innocent children. And a relative lack of jobs and economic opportunity in too many of our nation’s disadvantaged communities. 

But all of this has very little to do with racism and a lot do with economics, sociology, and public policy. 

In truth, we Americans should take pride in what our nation has done for blacks and other minorities. And we should be grateful for our police, of all hues, colors and ethnicities, who put their lives on the line every day to protect us from the barbarians at the proverbial gate.

The thin blue line, remember, is neither black nor white. It’s blue, and it includes Americans of every race, color and creed.

Feature photo credit: LAist.com.