If They Don't Want to be Policed, Don't Police Them
December 31, 2014
It is obvious, is it not, that all of the recent problems with
the police have occurred because cops keep meddling with people. If the
fuzz had left
Rodney King alone, Los Angeles would not have burned. If the cop
in Ferguson had not stopped Michael Brown after he robbed the store,
the town would
not have burned. If a New York cop had not tried to keep from
selling illegal cigarettes, there would be no protests. If OJ Simpson
had not been
prosecuted for murdering his wife, racial tension would have
been less. On and on.
It is blindingly clear that nothing but trouble results when
cops interact with criminals in places of high diversity. It makes no
sense to meddle. It
is racism. It is irresponsible. It leads to arson. It needs to
stop.
And it can.
If you were a young white cop just out of the academy, and asked
my advice, I would say, "When on the street, mind your own business."
For example, if
you see a drug dealer on the corner peddling rock, what should
you do? Nothing. Doing nothing protects you, protects the dealer, and
keeps the locals
from burning the neighborhood. As a police officer, it is your
duty to protect.
Do nothing. Here's why: Let us suppose that the dealer is young,
weighs 290 and, when you try to arrest him, says, "Fuck off, whitey."
You are 35, 180,
and haven't been to the gym for a while. What can you do?
You could call for backup and five of you could swarm the guy,
but that looks bad to the population. ("Dem white muhfuhs be gangin' up
on a brotha.")
Your other choices are try to wrestle him down, pepper-spray
him, Tase him, club him, or shoot him. All of these are ugly to watch
and upset the
locals.
All have a chance of ending unhappily. The perp has asthma and
the pepper spray does him in, or has a weak heart and the Taser croaks
him.
Then here come Jesse and Al, Barack and Eric, the Four Horsemen
of the Acopalypse. You will be raped in the media, lose your job and
your mortgage,
goodbye retirement, and face six months of media circus, death
threats against your family, civil suits by the family and civil-rights
charges by the
feds.
Don't risk it. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Leave drug peddlers alone. Don't get involved.
Nonintervention, note, will please everybody. If your department
really is brutal, as all are said to be, you can't be brutal if you
leave people
alone. Complaints about misbehavior will diminish, pleasing
blacks and liberals, and this will make your chief happy.
When you go on the street as a rookie, you will find that police incidents fall into three categories.
First, things that you encounter by chance: crack whores, bar
fights, drug dealers, muggings, burglaries, the fifteen-year-old runaway
being worked by
her pimp, the guy breaking car windows to steal the GPS. These
are the small change of police life. Ignore them. You can later say that
you didn't see
anything. It is much harder for the feds to come after you for
something you didn't do than for something you did. Again, you have
nothing to gain by
interfering with local enterprise.
It is simple democracy. In regions that are almost entirely
diverse, people do not want to be policed. It is unmistakable. Why force
outside cops on
them? It leads to chaos, arson, and armored shoe-stores. Should
they not be allowed to police themselves as they choose, to the extent
they choose, as
towns once did? Live and let live. It is the American way.
Second, hot calls: rape in progress, armed robbery in progress.
You have to answer these because dispatchers record their radio traffic.
They are,
however, calls dangerous to you. For example, rapists often have
violent tendencies. They usually do not want to go to jail. A rapist
may attack you
with a length of rebar, in which case your choices are to shoot
him or have your skull crushed. How do you profit from either of these
outcomes?
The armed robbery offers equal hazards with no rewards. Armed
robbers typically are armed. In a shootout you very possibly get killed,
which is not to
your advantage, or the perp does. It then turns out that he was
sixteen, wanted to go to divinity school, the gun was plastic or a cell
phone.
Brutality, extremism, overreaction, profiling, black lives
matter, and here come the Four Horsemen.
But a wise cop can easily avoid these perils. Rapes don't last
long, nor do armed robberies. When you respond to the call, drive at the
speed limit,
stop for traffic lights, and hit the siren and bar lights well
before you arrive at the scene. When you get there, the rapist will be
long gone.
This is a happy ending for everyone. You are happy because you
will not be charged with racially motivated murder. The rapist is happy
because he will
not go to jail. Businesses are happy because they won't be
looted, the locals because a brothah was not mistreated.
Be very careful of profiling beefs. Since this sin is not
defined, you can never tell when you have committed it. Suppose you
encounter a 2015 Beamer
with the passenger-side window broken out, plates with rust
stains around the bolt holes, and a nineteen-year-old driver in
ghetto-bag attire who
refuses to make eye contact. What do you do?
Nothing. It would be profiling. (If you saw him run out of a
bank with a gun in one hand and a bag of money it the, and arrested him,
it would be
profiling.) Don't risk it. The locals will appreciate your
sensitivity.
Technical tip: Don't run the tags out of curiosity. They will
come back to a 2006 Camry, and you will be on electronic record as
knowing the car was
stolen and not doing anything about it. It isn't your problem.
The insurance company can handle it.
If you are of liberal leanings, you can think in terms of cost
and benefit. Is an $80 GPS worth a man's life? Should a rapist die
because of ten
minutes of bad sex? Ferguson burn over a handful of stolen
cigars?
In black neighborhoods, you should do nothing at all in response
to anything. This just shows a decent respect for the desires of the
population, who
do not like white cops, or any cops. (Chanting "What do we want?
Dead cops", would seem indicative.) Find a good bar or doughnut shop.
Stay in it.
In mixed regions, arrest only middle-class whites over
forty-five to avoid profiling. As for the neighborhoods of rich white
liberals, they do not need
police because they live in gated communities, so you probably
will never be assigned there.
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