Today is June 8th, and amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020, we in the United States are now seeing massive expressions of frustration and anger at racist injustice (and, I assume, economic unfairness mixed in with that, since racist injustice and economic exploitation are intertwined). We’re also seeing extremists who have lost all interest in preserving American society attempt to hijack the protests to further their own agendas (grabbing consumer goods, sparking a race war, sparking a class war, provoking more chaos so that “their side” can gain respect or the “other side” can be discredited). My understanding of what goes on comes from various newspapers and websites, NPR, and the posts friends and family and colleagues and former students are making on Facebook and Instagram. There is a great deal of strong emotion, as there should be, when such injustices are brought to our attention.
One of my concerns is the lack of good quality information. When people I have known for years report on what they are seeing and experiencing, I generally trust that pretty well. When people I know and trust report what they hear as second-hand reports of what has happened, I don’t always assume the sources they are using are giving me a fair or complete picture. And when it comes to journalism, I’m especially dismayed by the lack of journalistic integrity and the difficulty journalists have in giving their audiences some understanding of scope or context. Journalists are especially interested in reporting extraordinary and sensational stories, so I suspect the violence and looting are exaggerated, but perhaps the opposite is so: perhaps police brutality and looting are even worse than reported. I don’t know, and the information I'm getting doesn’t allow me to form a clear impression of the degree or quantity of horrible things happening. As part of my training as a social scientist when I was earning a doctorate, I was encourage to not waste my time on bad information, and so I have not been reading much of the journalism about protests and riots and COVID-19 because I am aware that much of what is provided is bad information, and reading it converts my time into increased confusion and ignorance. I do not want to increase my ignorance or misunderstanding.
Here is what I know. In local law enforcement in the United States there is a persistent problem of persons who are not psychologically suited to wielding lethal force on behalf of the public gaining authority and misusing it. No one who studies law enforcement can have any doubts about this. Some police and some prosecutors routinely violate the civil rights of the persons whose rights they are entrusted to protect. Many police forces use psychological screening to reduce the number of sadistic and corrupt police, but despite these attempts, there are still too many abusive and cruel psychopaths over-represented in law enforcement. Another problem is racism, where police have a bias against African-Americans or Hispanics, and it can be worse than mere “bias” in many cases, with actual hatred/contempt/fear being part of how police respond to people who are non-white.
I am seeing many video clips showing police behaving in criminally incompetent ways, firing rubber bullets directly at peaceful protestors from short-range rather than shooting at the ground to hit people in the legs with ricochet from a greater distance. Police are using excessive force and violence on persons who are exercising their civil rights and not threatening any property or persons. Police who behave this way are proving the point of the demonstrators and protestors; we have a serious problem with many police in our society. One example is the case from Buffalo, New York, where video captured an image of two police knocking down an elderly man who was out after the curfew order (but was clearly not actively looting or rioting). The man fell to the ground and started to bleed, and in addition to the assault on this man, none of the officers in the rather large group of police offered him first aid as his blood pooled under his head. This event was already bad, but what makes it worse is that the police involved lied in their report, and mischaracterized the interaction as it was caught on film. And, even worse, when the two officers who illegally assaulted the man were suspended, all 57 members of this unit (a specially-trained riot team) resigned from their special riot control duties to return to the force as regular police. This mass action of loyalty to the two colleagues who behaved in a criminal manner demonstrates to me that every single member of that riot team puts more loyalty to their colleagues than they give to the Constitution or their duties to protect the rights of their fellow citizens. None of them should be allowed to work in law enforcement. The suggestion that most police are good and only a minority of them are bad is clearly false in the case of the Buffalo police riot team, where 100% of them failed to give aid to the elderly man who had been assaulted by two of their colleagues, and 100% failed to object to a false report being filed about the incident, and 100% of them put their loyalty to the Constitution and their duty to society at a lower priority than their loyalty to members of their team. That’s misplaced loyalty, and it’s a form of corruption.
The federal government has sometimes drawn attention to the problem of police corruption and criminal behavior. The Department of Justice investigated the police department in Fergusson, Missouri, and came out with a scathing report (which I assign my students to read, in part, when we study issues around justice and crime in my policy class). We do have federal marshals who occasionally arrest local police when corruption comes to their attention. I had students work in East St. Louis in the early 2000s when I believe some police were running a prostitution ring and engaging in other corrupt practices, and as I recall, the FBI had to blow their cover as they were doing a secret surveillance and arrest police who were under investigation when they intercepted a call (they were wire-tapping local police department phones) in which a police officer ordered a hit (an assassination) of someone. There are websites devoted to collecting stories of police misconduct. There is a website devoted to covering stories of persons killed by police. As you read the stories in the killed-by-police websites, you realize that police really are doing dangerous work, over half of those killed by police were threatening the lives of police or others. And of many who weren’t actively threatening anyone when they were killed, several did legitimately seem to be a threat. But as you read the stories, what you’ll notice is that a large minority percentage of the cases involve questionable shootings. My sense is that about 20% to 30% of the killings seem like they didn’t need to happen. And, about half of those that didn’t need to happen seem egregiously horrific. With about 900 to 1,000 persons killed by police each year, this a number of police killings that might be around 100 or slightly less each year, where the killing was bad enough that it seems to me that the police involved deserve criminal investigations, and in many cases, criminal charges.
Yet, despite the investigation of the Fergusson, Missouri police, or the evidence from that team of specialized police in Buffalo, New York, I doubt that most police departments have corruption and illegal behavior that is so universal. I understand that in research on complaints about police behavior in large police departments (e.g., Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, etc.) a pattern emerges where a tiny fraction of officers get almost half of all the complaints, and a larger minority get most of the remaining complaints, and a slightly larger minority gets most of the remainder of complaints. So, it seems in many large departments, a tiny percentage (maybe 2% to 5%) are really horrible, and about 10% to 15% are sort of bad, and 20% to 30% are just not very good, but 68% to 50% of officers seem to be doing fine, and not getting any complaints from the public about their behavior. But even police in that good half to two-thirds are responsible for the behavior of the horrible 2% if they are not actively reporting and intervening to stop the behavior of the bad police. Most professions have ethical codes where professionals must intervene if they notice incompetence or unethical behavior by colleagues, and police should have the same ethical duty.
One problem I noticed in discussions I saw in social media comes from people who know and love people who work in law enforcement (I have friends and have had family members who worked in law enforcement). Some of them seem extremely defensive or scared, worried that characterizations of the police as “racist” or “bad” are unfair to the people they know. What I suspect is going on in those situations is that someone has a self-concept or identity that involves their respect and admiration for police, so when there are complaints about the sadism or racism or corruption or criminal activity of police, these people can’t dispassionately consider the facts and think about solutions; instead, they take the criticisms as personal attacks on their identity, and the fear this triggers elicits anger and hostility, and they argue back instead of accepting that the problem exists and thinking about what might work to solve it. Also, the problem is one of systems and institutions, and a police culture that has toxic aspects to it. So, when people want to talk about individual police who are good, or individuals they know in police work, they are missing the point that we have a pervasive cultural problem, and trying to keep the focus on the individual character of persons involved. Take, for example, the case of wartime atrocities and the acts of Lt. Calley in the village of My Lai. I once heard Seymour Hersh give a talk about Calley and Hersh described how the journalist Peter Ross Range got to know “Rusty” Calley, and described him as a person you would never expect to be a mass murderer. He was a “nice guy” who killed (directly or indirectly) 109 villagers, many of them children. The problem wasn’t so much that Calley was a depraved monster (he certainly was that for at least one day in My Lai), but that the war put him in an atrocity-inducing environment. The culture is now putting good guys (police) in an environment where some of them are committing atrocities. And, just like many Americans were enraged at Seymour Hersh for telling the story of the My Lai massacre, people are now very angry at the protesters and critics of police brutality. It’s pretty much the same dynamic.
Another point I have seen made in these discussions, and even heard made at a demonstration, is that the 100-or-so police killings of innocent persons each year are very small and nearly insignificant in comparison to the many Black Americans who are killed in regular community and family violence each year. There are about 14,000 homicide deaths in the USA each year, and very approximately half of all those murders are committed by African-Americans (with African-American victims almost always). African-Americans make up 12-14 percent of our population (depending on how you count persons identifying as mixed-race or bi-racial African-Americans), so clearly the homicide rates are disproportionately representing violence in the African-American community. But, if you control for poverty and living in high-crime neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, African-Americans aren’t really more violent than any other group. That is to say, what we have a problem of high levels of violence among the poorest Americans who live in socially isolated communities with high violence and poverty all around them, and it so happens that about half of the Americans who live in those conditions are African-Americans. The “black-on-black” crime is actually a manifestation of “socially isolated impoverished persons committing violence against other poor persons” crime, and the racial backgrounds don’t contribute much (if anything at all) to the rates of violence or murder. To the extent that race plays a role, I imagine internalized racism may lead some African-Americans to devalue the lives of other Blacks; certainly this seems so in the lyrics of violent rap music songs. But anyway, people are pointing out that there is much anger and many protests about a score or a few dozen of police murders of Black people each year, but nothing like this for the approximately 7,000 Black men murdered by non-police each year. Well, they’re right that we don’t make enough of a fuss about violence in impoverished communities (and thus, in Black communities), and there is also a factual correctness about the difference in scale: maybe 30-50 innocent or only mildly-criminal Blacks murdered by police each year compared to 7,000 murdered by associates and neighbors and friends. Persons emphasizing this critique, however, are missing the point that we expect a certain degree of homicidal anger among marginalized persons who live in poverty, and murderers are expected to do murderous things; but police have a monopoly on state-sanctioned violence, and their whole purpose is to defend and protect us, and so we naturally hold them to a higher standard than what we expect from the outcasts and pariahs who engage in violent crime and murders. It’s this difference in roles and expectations that makes people upset, because of the betrayal. And also, along with the betrayal that makes police killing so outrageous, there is added to this the problem of the system and culture that makes this killing go on, with police seldom adequately punished when they murder or harm people, and the fact that this has been going on with police used as an instrument of oppression and harassment against African-Americans and other non-white Americans. The police represent the worst aspects of the power structure, and the power structure is habitually harming African-Americans, and has been doing so for 400 years; so yes, there is more anger directed at police and authorities for the rare killings (although 20-40 per year isn’t really all that rare, and such a count is only police killing of innocent and unarmed Blacks, and doesn’t count the tens of thousands of degrading and dehumanizing interactions African-Americans regularly have with the racist or insensitive police).
Oddly enough, it’s probably racism that is at work in both the relatively high rates of violent crime and murder among African-American men and the widespread discourtesy and contempt directed by police toward African-Americans. In both cases, the perpetrator (either a police officer of whatever race, or a hot-headed young man or youth) is perceiving the victim as less valuable and less human. If we really had the culture that valued and celebrated life, police would be less likely to abuse African-Americans, and marginalized people would be less murderous toward other marginalized people, so there would be less violent crime (especially crime against African-Americans).
Some people seem to be confusing the protests with the looting. I think almost everyone agrees that the looting and rioting is wrong and bad; only a tiny fringe speaks out to defend or justify looting, and those who do so are undermining their credibility. That said, as a social scientist, I could explain why people loot and riot, and I could even point to historical evidence that violence and the destruction of property may be effective in pushing the powerful and community leaders to make necessary changes. Likewise, everyone ought to agree that in the face of terrible injustice, the protests are justified and ought to be supported. It should be only a tiny fringe that opposes the protests or tries to blame protestors for the looting—a fringe of weak-minded critics just as small as the fringe that defends of the looting as necessary. But, of course, it's not. There are quite a large number of Americans who blame the protestors and associate looting and lawlessness with the protests. That's unfortunate, but to be expected when the class that owns so much property controls so much of the media that reports on the crisis, and so few media outlets are controlled by the sort of persons who are regularly victimized by police brutality. Also, while what I get from the media confuses me and is probably misleading, it does seem to me that the police are introducing the lawlessness and rioting. I've seen many, many videos and read several articles describing unlawful behavior instigated by police or police operatives. And there are credible reports that some of the rioting and looting is initiated by persons who want to stir up hatred against the protestors or gain sympathy for the police. I'm sure that happens, but I don't know how widespread it is.
Police have to deal with too many traumatic issues. They are mental health workers, although they don’t want to be, because we have inadequate services for persons with mental illnesses. They are dispute arbitrators, although they don’t want to be, because we do not teach people in schools some basics of psychology or human relationships so they can avoid escalation of disputes. They are grief counselors, although they don’t want to be, because they deal with people who have been traumatized by crimes against their property or persons, or persons who are learning about, or have recently witnessed, terrible injuries or deaths in accidents or disasters. And, don’t forget that police are widely hated. Just as African-Americans must suffer (and do suffer, and give up, on average, many years of healthy life because of it) through the experience of living in a society where maybe 20%-30% actively dislike them because of their race, Police too must live and work in a society where many, many people actively dislike or hate them. At least police and African-Americans have that in common.
There are two problems here, and I know a lot about one, but very little about the other. Racism is the primary problem, and I know that a couple things work to reduce prejudice and racism. The practical implications of those two “technologies” that reduce prejudice is that we need to have Americans spend more time cultivating empathic friendships with people who are different from them, and the burden for this is primarily on European-Americans. People need to make an intentional effort to reach out to people who are unlike them to develop some rapport and empathy and establish some sort of collaboration with people who are from different backgrounds. This is actually a very pleasant thing to do, involving going out to socialize with people, having them over to your home, visiting their home, going places together with them, and that sort of thing. If people really understood what it feels like to do this sort of anti-racism work, they would embrace it eagerly. The other implication is that we need to be mindful of our thoughts, aware of racist or prejudicial thoughts that intrude into our feelings and perceptions, and develop skills in calming and dispassionately noting those prejudiced thoughts or fears and countering them with factual non-prejudiced counter-thoughts, and recognizing each time we do this that we are resisting the disease of racism, which permeates to some degree our culture. Again, it’s not so terrible to do a little bit of thought about our culture and some of the flaws in our society, and then work on resisting how these pervasive toxicities try to invade our minds. The same discipline used to struggle against racist indoctrination can be used in other forms of mental discipline to resist intrusive thoughts. So, anti-racist work of this nature will probably help people develop many other healthy mental habits.
Aside from these two approaches to addressing racism in ourselves and among our circle of close acquaintances, there are also those institutions that may perpetuate inequalities and unfair advantages/disadvantages. Here again, it can be easy and fun to work on these problems. At the very least, we can vote only for candidate who are proposing realistic and concrete plans to dismantle institutional racism (not simply those who agree that they are bad). With a bit more effort, we can work in cooperation with friends and allies to point out which practices and systems are perpetuating injustices, and tell those in authority to take our warning and change those systems.
So it goes with racism and race-prejudice-based injustices. The tougher problem is what to do about police forces and police behavior. I don’t really have the answer for that problem. I agree that police culture is generally very bad in our society, and I’m not just basing that on the riot squad in Buffalo, New York or the Department of Justice’s report on Fergusson, Missouri, or the 100-200 highly questionable or outright murderous killings committed by police each year. I suspect that the answer will include some change in the way police culture is shaped, and go beyond improved training. Police in some other societies are more well-regarded than our police are, and we should certainly look at what works in other cultures. But, American culture is somewhat unique in our individualism and our gun-fetish sub-cultures, as well as our violence. So, even more than looking abroad for models of what might work, I expect criminologists and sociologists are looking around the United States to find cities or counties where relationships between police and the community are extremely good. What is working there, and could we replace what we have in the worst police forces with what works in our best police forces?
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