Seattle Police Department informs City Council that Police will have Adjusted Deployment Responses
An excerpt from the letter posted at the Seattle Police Department Blotter:
We have clear, court-mandated procedures for arresting individuals, grounded in the principles of deescalation. SPD’s de-escalation principles are premised on the expectation, consistent with policy and best practices, that officers have the full array of approved tools. In large crowds, there is no safe way for officers to effect arrests when their colleagues do not have the tools necessary to protect them.
As City Council’s legislation goes into effect, it will create even more dangerous circumstances for our officers to intervene using what they have left – riot shields and riot batons.
For these reasons, SPD will have an adjusted deployment in response to any demonstrations this weekend. The Council legislation gives officers no ability to safely intercede to preserve property in the midst of a large, violent crowd. Allowing this behavior deeply troubles me, but I am duty-bound to follow the Council legislation once it is in effect. If the Council is prepared to suggest a different response or interpretation of the legislation, I stand ready to receive it.
(Featured image is the Official flag of Seattle, created by Paul Kraabel.)
Translation: If we can’t use the tools the way we want to, rather than the way they are intended to be used, then we are taking our tools and going home.Report
About a fourth of Minneapolis’s police department has decided to move on to better cities, while many more are just going to retire. Their homicide rate has roughly doubled already. I think a lot of cities are now competing to outdo Detroit and Baltimore.
The Feds put a stay on the Seattle city council’s order, so for now the police still have a viable alternative to having regular folks shoot the protesters and letting ambulance crews deal with the mess. Washington is a castle doctrine state, so that’s legal in some circumstances. As they say, the police aren’t there to protect the public from the criminals, they’re there to protect the criminals from the public. John Locke wrote about that.Report
I checked to see if Minneapolis’ increase in crime was a thing, and apparently yes.
https://reason.com/2020/07/09/are-minneapolis-crime-increases-tracking-the-2016-chicago-homicide-spike/Report
Crime goes up when cops stop policing?Report
No. It just gets reported when, before, it wouldn’t have been.Report
And this, folks, is why our police are out of control. Because the moment you tell them they have to be accountable, they basically throw a temper tantrum, go on strike, and everyone freaks out because crime begins to spike a bit, and the cops get whatever they want.
Tell me again why they shouldn’t be under the UCMJ?Report
Oscar, I think you are grossly oversimplifying how human nature works and ignoring the effects of incentives on behavior.
Even if the police were angels, the incentives have radically changed. They almost certainly feel that nobody has their back. Thus they are exposed, risking criminal prosecution based upon video snippets in the hands of a biased media and political actors who can benefit by sacrificing cops for personal gain. I am amazed that any cop anywhere would feel comfortable even interacting On a confrontational way with a minority. News at 5!
As a manager of very large groups of people, I have found it is essential to understand how incentives work. In the case of cops in these media circus cities, the incentives are to avoid confrontation, and this is going to greatly emasculate their effectiveness (not just limit their abuse).
I (along with many others) predicted an unprecedented crime spike and Increase in black male death rates from the first riot. That is why I oppose this path. It is cancerous to everyone, and most of all to black lives.
And the root cause isn’t cop spite, it is police emasculation (a bad thing) being clothed as police reform (a necessary thing).Report
Oh, I think the emasculation is very much a necessary thing, since they absolutely refuse to accept accountability.
And that is the thing. The police could have long ago avoided this moment in time had they been open and diligent about purging bad actors from their ranks. They chose not to, even during the times when they had widespread public support.Report
This means it is OK to destroy cities and civic health and black lives to teach cops a lesson or something. Can we add a “nana nana poo poo”?
It is easy to do something. It is even easy to do things with good intentions. The art is doing something which leads to good results. Seems like you gave up on this weeks ago.
We need accountability and improved policing, not childish spite.Report
Please explain to me how emasculating an overly macho culture that is currently toxic to large swaths of our society means I think all of that is acceptable?
Because currently, what you seem to be suggesting is that we have to coddle police while we gently convince them that they need to accept some more accountability, maybe, if they are OK with it and it wouldn’t be too inconvenient for them right now.Report
Emasculation is defined as “to deprive of strength or vigor and the capacity for effective action.”
When someone’s job involves dealing with drunken, drug crazed, violent criminals, anarchists, looters and sociopaths, I would suggest that emasculation — taking away their capacity for effective action — is going way too far.
Somewhere between emasculation and business as usual (Coddling?)is a place of effective action. It will require the intellectual honesty to recognize that a huge proportion of the violent encounters will statistically be with that subcategory of Americans who are committing an order of magnitude higher rates of violent crime. It will hold cops accountable for acting professional with repercussions against abuse, dishonesty and covering up malfeasance. No coddling is necessary, nor was it implied in my comments.
Perhaps it involves many of the great ideas you suggested last month. What it doesn’t involve is trial by video news snippet biased by the color or political leanings of the victim/assailant. This way leads to a total mess. And we are currently moving head first into said mess.Report
You know, a lot of those video snippets are from the cops own body cams.
And in the cases where a bystander is taking video, or a security cam caught video, the police very often have their own body or dash cam video of the incident that they can release to counter any false claims.
So if an officer is getting railroaded because of video snippets, it’s usually because the police either:
A) Can’t find ANY other video at all (very rare these days, but it happens); or
B) They really don’t want to release other video (and make no mistake, any claims to ‘privacy concerns’ are specious, since the police always release or leak any and all video that supports their case).
Thing is, I can go online and find tons of videos where the police were 100% justified in using deadly force. Like this one. Where the only people crying foul are the dead guys family and close friends, and everyone else is saying, “Yeah, I’d have shot him too.”
Those aren’t the videos that cause riots. Don’t be acting as if they do.Report
We started talking about Unintended negative side effects of emasculating cops. My point is that this is a very, very bad thing. It is clearly leading to large spikes in crime, violence, and the additional deaths of black kids. Several orders of magnitude more deaths than ever caused at the hands of cops. After Ferguson, this surge was 100% predictable on the first day of the riots.
Tertiary effects will be further flight of businesses and middle class from said areas and economic ramifications. Again, predictable. Again, bad for these communities.
The trial by video concept wasn’t about riots per say, it was about cops, police chiefs, and mayors etc being tried in public opinion based upon snippets. This will lead to changes in the incentive structure along with the emphasis of not making waves, keeping heads down, and less emphasis on arrests and convictions of sociopathic thugs.
To understand a complex system, we need to follow the incentives. I certainly would offer that incentive structures have been messed up with police for a while, but this is making them worse but in a different way.
We want our cops to be effective at keeping down crime, especially in those areas most prone to out of control crime and violence (many of which are In black neighborhoods). The current emasculation process is the last thing these neighborhoods need.
Sometimes we want to strike out against something which is wrong. That is human nature. But doing so, even when the wallop would have been well deserved, isn’t always best.Report
So, I’m not sure of the causality here. Is the idea that criminals read the newspapers for indications that cops have been stripped of their vigor, their potency, and then go on sprees?
Or how about this: isn’t the best explanation for the rise in crime after anti-police protests that the cops simply stop policing those areas*? I mean, we have oodles of evidence that the cops do this *all the time*. Hell, they organized and went on strikes when deBlasio said he’d ban chokeholds fercryinoutloud.
So maybe that’s the question. Does banning chokeholds emasculate cops and deprive them of their vigor? Does ending QI deprive cops of their vigor? What reform measures won’t emasculate these incredibly sensitive snowflakes?
*Or Jaybird’s suggestion that they simply pad the stats?Report
Banning chokeholds (Something we all agree on) and holding people accountable (another thing we agree on) is not synonymous with emasculation, SW. Cops have a tough job to do, working with the worst parts of humanity, and we do not want to make them ineffective. Our goal should be to make them more effective and more accountable, agreed?
The original article DM linked to presented various arguments of why certain violent and gun related crimes would go up. I would add that emphasis on not making waves, especially where black suspects are involved is going to lead to fewer stops, fewer confrontations, and more emphasis on other parts of their jobs. It would change how I policed, and not just in ways which society would deem as beneficial.
I would expect mayors, police chiefs and such are changing what they emphasize right now. Less emphasis on arrests and convictions and more emphasis on being a good cop (a good thing) and more emphasis on not getting involved in a confrontation with anyone black (reverse racism on enforcing the law is not a good thing).
And finally, yes, I am sure the criminals and gangs are very well aware of how active and confrontational (vigorous?) the police are in their territories.
On the margin, even if there are no spiteful cops (and there are of course), I would anticipate a less effective police force based upon the current wave of media gotcha that is going on.
I hope that this is a temporary blip until we see real police reform. Reform which will hold cops more accountable and better trained and still hold them accountable for keeping crime to a minimum, especially in those neighborhoods where it is the biggest problemReport
If emasculating cops leads to them not doing their damn jobs because their feelings are hurt, I want them out of the job.
Remember, I’m a vet, we did not get to play bullshit games like this. We had to fullfill our duty as per the orders of our superiors and if they had an inkling that we were slacking because we didn’t want to, or because we weren’t feeling appreciated, getting emasculated would be the very least of our concerns, because NJP and Court Martial were very much on the table and employed when necessary.
I have zero patience for men and women who want the power and authority of the badge, but don’t want the responsibility and accountability that goes with it.
And don’t give me any BS about cops being in a war zone, I’ve been in a war zone, I’ve friends who’ve been in war zones. There are no war zones in the US.Report
When you alter the rules of engagement you decrease some risks and increase others. It’s fun to think “get the job done anyway” but if we’re actively telling the police to do less risky things then we should expect them to do less risky things.
Maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe the police are a big part of the problem and this will help. Maybe we’ll end the WOD.
And maybe we’ll decrease the number of police killings and increase crime in general. I can think of several ways that second might happen. Police killings is very small, crime in general is quite large in certain areas.
A lot of this depends on what we do. Punishing open murder seems like a no-brainer. Replacing most of the police force with social workers (or however we’re describing the more serious social experiments) seems less so.
It’s possible the relatively crime free areas will be the ones who seriously benefit from this. Its even possible seriously crime ridden areas are made worse.
This is the big reason I’d like to see “accountability” everywhere but the more serious social experiments rolled out in a few cities and not in the entire nation.Report
It depends on how you conduct the experiment.
Start with ending the WOD.
Move to having officers specifically trained, and constantly retrained, on mental health issues. If EMTs and medical orderlies can subdue combative patients without beating or killing them, there is no reason cops can’t, except that they don’t know how*.
Get them better body armor and throw some money at developing better less-lethal weapons.
But DO NOT let them get a pass at using enough force to seriously injure or kill a person. The need to prove their case, every time, that the use was as justified as if it was done by a non-cop. DO NOT let them have a pass at breaking the same laws everyone else is bound to.
*It’s like the reason cops shoot dogs. By and large, they have no training on how to read dog body language, they don’t want to get bit, and they face no penalty for destroying property, so the dog dies, even though pepper spray is massively more effective and safer for everyone.Report
I agree in general with your recommendations. Seems like the right course of action.
Again, what I disagree with is “emasculating” which means “eliminating their capacity for effective action”. I assume when you use the term you are inserting a definition around the lines of “making them less brutal jerks” or something. If that is what the term meant I would even agree with you.Report
The gender neutral term you are looking for is “hobbling” or “hamstringing”.
My point is that the public is not asking the police to be less effective, they are demanding that the police employ other means to be effective that do not rely upon violence.
And such means exist. The police actively resist employing them.Report
Two of my daughters are always showing me what the activists are saying. They’re asking for no deaths, period. They think every death is a miscarriage of justice and should be treated as such. Thus Darren Wilson keeps being re-evaluated to see if criminal charges can be filed (Mike Brown of Ferguson).
Their world view is that the criminal class wouldn’t be the criminal class without the police. So these carefully cherry picked examples we see constantly shown are what’s normal.
There are going to be places where that’s the dominate voice on what reform looks like.Report
Like I said elsewhere, I’m not going to lose any sleep over the guys who play stupid games with the police, and win their stupid prizes.
There exists reasonable standards for the use of force in self defense by citizens. Cops are citizens, hence they need to adhere to those standards at a bare minimum.
I can make a good faith argument that since police get additional training and have more experience in using force, they should be held to a higher, not a lower standard than the normal citizen.
If the police feel emasculated or hamstrung by having to adhere to the same standards you or I do, then the fix is simple, the types of call outs that armed police respond to is limited to cases where force (or the explicit threat thereof) is clearly called for.
No more wellness checks, no more mental health calls, no more rousting the homeless, no more calls for non-violent crimes, no more traffic stops, etc. All of that is handled by other people, other departments, who don’t carry guns.Report
Well said. I agree completely DM.Report
In response to your 8:06 comment…
Oscar, you are really “monologuing” here.
I wrote out a response on incentives and instead of addressing what I actually said you create an imaginary discussion with someone ?? who is defending cops who “are not doing their damn jobs because their feelings are hurt”. Please reread what I wrote and how incentives matter. Better yet read the original article and how they explained changes in procedures lead to increases in some kinds of crime.
You then go on to state you have “zero patience for men and women who want the power and authority of the badge, but don’t want the responsibility and accountability that goes with it.” Any cursory review of my position is that I strongly endorse more accountability. So who are you replying to? Are you just ignoring what I wrote?
And then you really jump the shark, offering that “don’t give me any BS about cops being in a war zone,”. Umm. OK. I didn’t and I wasn’t going to give you any such “BS.” But thanks for sharing.Report
I think you are grossly oversimplifying how human nature works and ignoring the effects of incentives on behavior.
“If you succeed within a system it’s hard to see how fucked up it is.” – Andrew Yang, fwiw.Report
The protests in Portland have only grown larger since Trump decided to send in his stormtroopers. Last night 4,000 people packed into the square outside the Portland Federal building.
Suburban women are fleeing his party in droves and dragging down the entire Republican ticket. Florida is “leaning Democrat” and Texas is in play.
Something tells me this is not working out the way he imagined it would.
Everything Trump has touched- his casinos, the USFL, Trump University, and now the Republican Party- has been destroyed by his malignant incompetence.Report
Yeah, there must be hundreds of suburban women abandoning Trump over this. ^_^Report
I don’t care how this works out for Trump. My concern if I lived or worked or employed people in these circus cities, is in law and order. I would demand that my local government assume control of the situation. Absent this I would demand that higher orders step in and fill the vacuum. Calling them stormtroopers is just rhetoric in search of an argument.
Yes, the man is the most incompetent human cancer of modern times. But I demand my property and person be protected by our government institutions. If it was my neighborhood, I would demand he step in. If he fails to do so, I will step in, and that way leads to anarchy, which is probably what the rioters have wanted all along.Report
In a related story, Portland has extended its contract with the Police Union for a year.
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And what happens if Chauvin is acquitted or just gets convicted of involuntary manslaughter?
And isn’t this quite likely? Better than 50%?
Rioting needs to be stopped by all responsible institutions ASAPReport
“Ammon Bundy comes out in support of BLM and defunding the police.”
Here’s the linky:
https://twitter.com/TheEpicDept/status/1288820355960799233Report
“The police have become a huge authoritarian bureaucracy that will take away our liberty.”
He blasts conservatives who don’t get that for having something wrong with their minds, that they can’t understand basic English.Report