Highlights
A search for answers after the death of George Floyd.
If America now believes that all cops are the problem, why would they stay?
Cops understand the anger regarding the George Floyd case and others where their counterparts did something incredibly stupid or criminal. However, they want some understanding and consideration for those devoted to equal treatment for all.
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of criminology and public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Aspiring drummer.
Preface
This is part of an ongoing series to understand society’s reaction to the death of Floyd George and to seek solutions. I will “try” to see both sides of the issue knowing full well that neither will see my critique favorably.
No one disputes that the death of Floyd was criminal. People in law enforcement and police unions are falling over themselves to say this. The officers involved will be charged and prosecuted.
No one disputes that there are problems. Accountability is necessary. It’s been taught to cops throughout their academy training and careers.
There is a 63 percent decrease in police recruitment in the US.
Article
I was watching the CBS Morning News discussing the Floyd George disturbances. Host Gail King and an array of African American leaders went out of their way to remind the audience that the great majority of police officers were decent people and they were addressing the actions of a few. They went overboard to portray most cops as fair and decent people.
I don’t think the message took.
I looked at a staged Facebook post of a police officer walking away from his vehicle with his uniform left behind suggesting that cops were leaving the job. The commentators were joyous stating that they didn’t need or want cops.
“The Minneapolis city council has pledged to disband the city’s police department and replace it with a new system of public safety, a historic move that comes as calls to defund law enforcement are sweeping the US,” The Guardian.
It’s been my experience that most cops feel they are part of the solution, not part of the problem. Most understand the nature of racial inequality and “thought” that they could thread the needle of enforcement and race relations. Most are dedicated to impartial policing. Most understand that they serve the public regardless of who they are.
Many outside of the justice system think that I’m delusional, wrong, racist, pinheaded, stupid, unintelligent, ignorant and descriptions not fit for the bathroom wall of a biker bar. To them, cops are racist and brutal, every one of them. After reading hundreds of comments on Facebook and other social media platforms, I believe I’m not that far off the mark.
Most of the news coverage is brutal. For several years, the media have attacked cops in every possible way. Yes, some of that coverage was more than justifiable.
There is no excuse for unjustifiable use of force. There is no excuse for disrespect. The majority of police officers understand and support this. They dislike the butthole cops who create problems for everyone. Every cop I have spoken to wants all Americans, regardless as to who they are, to prosper and live in peace. If remotely true, then can anyone ethically support stereotyping a million cops and civilian employees as brutal thugs?
FTP (f___ the police) demeans all, including black, Hispanic, and female officers. You can say it’s just an expression of justifiable anger. I’ll suggest that it’s a hateful stereotype.
Right now, every police officer in the country is rethinking their commitment to law enforcement. Good cops simply refuse to be stereotyped. There is not a police family in the country that is not urging cops to leave, and to leave now.
The Challenge Of Law Enforcement
Most police officers believe that they are fair-minded, tolerant, compassionate people who save women from domestic violence, attend to your wounds after an accident, and find your lost child. In all weather, 364 days a year, regardless of the circumstances, cops will respond to your problems and try to resolve them.
They inhabit one of the most dangerous jobs in America. There are more deaths from the Coronavirus in law enforcement than doctors and nurses, Cops Dying. Thousands are assaulted or killed each year. The lists of police officers killed or injured during the recent riots are dismaying.
Yes, cops sometimes do stupid stuff or they make split-second judgment calls that go wrong or they have bad days or some do something incredibly stupid and criminal.
Are there bad cops? Are there bad priests, doctors, reporters, and business people?
Are cops inherently racist? Are there any institutions (including the media or business or religious organizations) that are not inherently biased?
Is condemning one million cops and civilian employees under the banner of bigotry inherently prejudiced? If you are capable of such a stereotype, does it indicate your own lack of decency?
Are there decent cops that make bad choices? Again, does that apply to any profession?
Systemic Racism
If the African American leaders interviewed on CBS are correct that the great majority of police officers are good people, then is it the problem systemic? If it’s a matter of bad cops, and if it’s a minority, is the problem institutional?
When I became a cop, my agency visited or called dozens of people who knew me to see if I was someone with prejudices or if I had an inclination to use violence. I was polygraphed twice as a cadet and an officer. Like all jurisdictions, they want to avoid bad publicity and multi-million dollar lawsuits. How racist cops get through this process is beyond my understanding.
But if American policing is inherently raciest, what can anyone do about it? Critics will state that the first thing is to admit that institutional racism exists. EVERYONE understands that institutional racism exists throughout all aspects of society.
My last two criminal justice organizations (for 26 years) were black managed and had mostly black staffs. The last one had a workforce that was 85 percent black. Yet we had the same statistics as any other justice-related organization.
There are 700,000 cops and 300,000 civilian police employees. About 1 in 4 officers, and 1 in 5 first-line supervisors, were black or Hispanic. About 1 in 8 full-time sworn officers, and about 1 in 10 first-line supervisors, were female, Bureau Of Justice Statistics.
Most of the mayors and chiefs of police recently interviewed by the media were black and they have been in charge for decades. Do they bear any responsibility for what’s happening?
Politicians And Communities Drive Crime Policy
As to arrests, most officers will state that they are simply carrying out the will of communities they serve. There is a long history of community leadership, including African American leadership, demanding aggressive action to clear communities of troublesome or dangerous people, Community Demands.
There is a history of “liberal” leadership calling for more arrests. Joe Biden (and endless others) strongly supported aggressive law enforcement and incarceration in the past. Per the former Vice President, “Give me the crime issue … and you’ll never have trouble with it in an election.”
If any of this is remotely true, and if everyone supported (demanded?) arrests and incarcerations, then why is this solely a matter of police officers gone bad?
The Baltimore State’s Attorney, who unsuccessfully charged multiple police officers with homicide after the death of Freddie Gray, asked the city police to take action regarding drug use in the neighborhood Freddie Gray was operating in, NY Times.
In The Eric Garner case in New York, community and business members complained and asked for the removal of people creating problems.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg apologized for his controversial “stop and frisk” policy that sowed distrust of police in black and Latino communities during his administration.
There are endless additional examples,
While protestors ask all to listen, cops say the same. They are tired of endless, unreasonable demands of politicians and community leaders encouraging arrests that will inevitably go wrong.
The enforcement of Coronavirus restrictions was left to law enforcement which created considerable resentment, COVID Enforcement.
Cops warned that ultra-aggressive stop and frisk tactics were harmful and dangerous. They did the same for Coronavirus enforcement. No one listened.
“Mayor Bloomberg could have saved himself this apology if he had just listened to the police officers on the street. We said in the early 2000s that the quota-driven emphasis on street stops was polluting the relationship between cops and our communities,” Fox News.
Cops Leaving
Cities are having difficult times keeping and recruiting cops. Baltimore can’t recruit cops in sufficient numbers to overcome those leaving. City police report that it hired 147 officers in 2019. That contrasts with the 177 officers who left per a local television station.
There is a 63 percent decrease in police recruitment. Police agencies across the country are having trouble keeping and hiring police officers, according to a new survey obtained by ABC News. Produced by the Police Executive Research Forum, the survey shows a “triple threat” for police departments: there is a decrease in applications, early exits and higher rates of retirement. Departments are also having trouble hiring non-white/minority applicants the most, followed by female officers, according to the survey. The rate of full-time police officers decreased by 11 percent from 1997 to 2016, Declining Cops.
Police initiated contacts are down by huge numbers, Proactive Contacts. Arrests are also down considerably, Arrests.
Is the immense negativity thrown at cops causing them to pull back? Per Pew, 72% say officers in their department are now less willing to stop and question suspicious persons. Overall, more than eight-in-ten (86%) say police work is harder today as a result of high-profile, negative incidents. About nine-in-ten officers (93%) say their colleagues worry more about their personal safety – a level of concern recorded even before a total of eight officers died in separate ambush-style attacks in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Cops Holding Back?
The data on police PTSD, suicides, drug and alcohol use and general stress is well documented, see Police Stress. Is policing becoming too hard, too emotionally draining? Is that why recruitment and retention are problems?
There are endless references as to how being a cop changes your personality. “How many domestic violence calls can you handle? How many people shot? How much blood? How many abused children? How much violence can you process?” Crime in America. We express understandable sympathy for urban residents being exposed to violence and resulting cases of PTSD and depression, but none for cops.
More police officers have died from the Coronavirus than doctors and nurses, Cops Dying. Thousands of police officers are assaulted or killed on a yearly basis. Hundreds more were killed or injured during the recent disturbances.
Families see the danger. They see endless negative media coverage. They insist that cops leave.
Two Percent Of Police Contacts Involve Force Or the Threat Of Force
An estimated 40 million U.S. residents age 16 or older, or about 17 percent of the population, had a face-to-face contact with a police officer in one year. Among people who had face-to-face contacts, about nine out of 10 residents felt the police were respectful or acted properly, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Having said this, it’s inevitable that out of 40 million yearly encounters, some will go bad. It’s a statistical reality. Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics study, police used or threatened to use force in less than two percent of contacts, yet there are endless charges of police excessive force.
Cops Rated Highly?
Even in fragile communities (i.e., high unemployment), a study finds that 74% of fragile-community residents vs. 87% of Americans overall think people like themselves are treated “very fairly” or “fairly” by their local police. The results vary by racial group: Black (65%) and Hispanic (72%) residents of fragile communities are considerably less likely than white residents (87%) to say people like themselves are treated fairly by police, Gallup.
When it comes to ethical behavior, cops rank higher than members of Congress, journalists, religious leaders and heads of tech companies, Gallup. Gallup’s 2018 Global Law and Order report state that US and Canadian police are the world’s most trusted law enforcement officers based on a measure of confidence, Gallup. But there are surveys where the news is not as rosy as those above, Pew. Note that Pew is an advocacy organization, Influence Watch.
Baltimore
The five years since the death of Freddie Gray (six police officers charged-all exonerated) led the city of Baltimore to be one of the most dangerous and violent cities in America. The riots and looting and negativity produced a police force that cannot recruit police officers and the ones remaining are not being proactive thus leading to massive violent crime. There are endless charges of criminals running roughshod and that cops are not doing anything about it.
Why bring up Baltimore? The city is hemorrhaging residents, visitors, tourism, jobs, and investments. Who wants to be associated with a dangerous city?
See “Who Wants to Run the Deadliest Big City in America?” Politico.
“It was a striking echo of the language in the Department of Justice report and the activists’ condemnations of the police following Gray’s death. Back then, the claims were of overly aggressive policing; now residents were pleading for police officers to get out of their cars, to earn their pay — to protect them,” NY Times.
It will take decades to overcome the Baltimore riot and looting of five years ago.
Every city in the country where riots occured will face the same economic and social circumstances to some degree.
Defund The Police
From The Atlantic: “Police forces across America need root-to-stem changes—to their internal cultures, training and hiring practices, insurance, and governing regulations. Now a longtime demand from social-justice campaigners has become a rallying cry: Defund the police. This is in one sense a last-resort policy: If cops cannot stop killing people, and black people in particular, society needs fewer of them.”
“The death of George Floyd and the egregious, unprovoked acts of police violence at the peaceful protests following his death has raised these urgent questions. Police forces across America need root-to-stem changes—to their internal cultures, training and hiring practices, insurance, and governing regulations. Now a longtime demand from social-justice campaigners has become a rallying cry: Defund the police. This is in one sense a last-resort policy: If cops cannot stop killing people, and black people in particular, society needs fewer of them,” The Atlantic.
I suspect that there are thousands of cops who love this idea. To do this, cities will have to provide financial incentive packages and extend retirement benefits. They will be paid to move on, which is exactly what they are doing now.
Answers?
We need answers as to how to move forward, and it’s obvious that no one has a clue as to how to do it. People are insisting that now there will be change. Now it’s time to put effective programs to deal with police inequality in place.
Then why haven’t we done this decades ago? Are people suggesting that they have been sitting on solutions and purposely not implementing them?
The answer is that there are no immediate answers. If someone comes forward claiming that they have the solutions, they are either lying or should be condemned for not pushing them forward a long time ago, and that includes an endless array of mayors and chiefs of police.
There is nothing wrong with banning chokeholds or other arrest-related actions. But that’s just a very small tip of the iceberg. Cops insisted that they are not qualified or equipped to handle mental health-related cases that are the source of many bad results, but cities ignored their pleas based on budgets.
We all acknowledge that systematic racism in all aspects of society can’t be stopped by waving a magic wand. We all understand that this will take hard work on the part of fair-minded people.
So What Happens Now?
Cops are bailing; many have decided that being stereotyped is not their cup of tea. If a significant portion of the American public now condemns all cops as racist or brutal, it’s probably time to go.
Or officers will decide, like cops in Baltimore, not to engage in any proactive actions. They will do routine patrols and respond to calls, but that’s it. As a multitude of officers have stated, “if we are going to be condemned regardless of what we do, then it’s time to tread lightly.”
Baltimore cops insist that they are simply doing what the community asked them to do; they are backing off of aggressive stops. They will stay long enough to get experience, pension benefits or retire, but that’s it.
The primary issue is public safety. There was a time when limited but good arrests were encouraged before America became arrest happy and wanted everyone locked up for drinking and driving and domestic violence. Then came the rise in violent crime in the 1990s where many demanded community safety through aggressive police action. Officers suggesting that this was not in anyone’s best interest were ignored.
All stops are dangerous. All arrests can turn ugly in a second. Aggressive actions were never the choice of officers; they were forced into it by many of the same people now condemning them.
The cities affected may see dramatically increased crime. The cities affected, like Baltimore, will lose jobs, economic vitality, tourism, residents, and investments. The cities affected by the riots will see the same to varying degrees.
It’s happened this way in all cities affected by disturbances. No one will invest in places deemed dangerous. The effect lasts for decades.
Residents will suffer. Cities will be unsafe. Children will be in jeopardy.
This is partially because of people who felt that they were part of the solution leaving. They thought that they were the good guys. They thought they were protectors. They thought they understood centuries of racial animosity and brutality. Regardless, they wanted to serve until society decided that they were unworthy of support.
Cops understand the anger regarding George Floyd and the other cases where their counterparts did something incredibly stupid or criminal, they just believe that it shouldn’t be directed at all police officers.
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