Reddit, Accountability, Law Enforcement, and Uvalde
VOA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This is a short post. As a father of a nearly 4 year old little girl, my heart broke this week for 19 families. I frequent some online communities, including Reddit. The response there is telling.
Leadership Reaction
On the main police subreddit there was a clear and stark difference in reaction from leadership and verified police officers. The moderators of this subreddit soon began locking down posts with messages like “Instead, hundreds of social media groupthinkers have fallen for dozens on online fantasies, precious few of which contain even a kernel of truth.” Later, the same moderator stated ““Overnight, nearly 300 brigaders attempted to dereail the productive conversation in this thread with such “alternate realitities” as “police restrained parents”, “police took 40 minutes” etc. None of those posts ever appeared, to anyone, at all. And all of those users have been banned. Some, in face, wasted their time submitting dozens of comments which never became visible.””
Of course, we now know that, yes, the police did restrain parents. Yes, the police did attempt a breach early, retreated, and then waited more than 40 minutes, and we know it was Border Patrol who pushed, not the local cops.
This is exactly what Andrew Donaldson talked about on his Heard Tell show. Accountability, especially holding one’s own “team” accountable is important.
Rank and File Reaction
There is however, a positive note. While “leadership” of online forums continues to foist blame on anyone other than the local police failing at their duty (to save little kids, dammit), the verified law enforcement officers of these very communities are very much presenting an opposing unified front
“Stop the killing first. Then stop the dying.”
“Active killer training says you immediately address the threat as soon as possible. You don’t wait.”
“Pretty ——- angry. I am retired now, but taught active shooter response for over 10 years. Uvalde ISD Chief should resign, turn in his law enforcement credentials, and get a job digging ditches. Thank goodness BORTAC took the initiative, even if they waited and listened to Arreondo for 30 minutes.”
Sources:
There’s definitely an interesting juxtaposition from the debate we saw two years ago.
On the one hand I think we should always be careful about how many conclusions we draw about day to day reality based on massive outlier incidents. On the other I wonder if we aren’t a little bit closer to the end of the bureaucratic model of law enforcement than we were a week ago.
Anyway it feels like we’re getting to a ‘worst of all worlds’ kind of situation. The police are way too quick to use overwhelming force when they should be using restraint. Yet when we have the rare situation that actually calls for overwhelming force they fail to employ it. Similarly we end up with what feels like a terrible choice between a kind of ‘stop and frisk’ civil liberties be damned approach versus a combination of blue flu and activist driven disregard for urban disorder. None of that is a sign of a model that is working.Report
Police in Florida are now bragging that they “didn’t hesitate one second…NOT ONE SECOND” to arrest an unarmed pre-teen.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-fifth-grader-arrested-threatening-mass-shooting-police-say-rcna31085?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma
They really do think we’re that stupid.Report
It would be comical if it was a movie instead of real life.Report
I once heard someone quip that Americans want the right to be as chaotic as the French/Italians but expect everything to come out as orderly as if it were run by the Japanese. As quips go, it may not be completely accurate but there is a lot of truth in it. We also seem to want Swedish government levels of government services but not the accompanying levels of taxation required to get to those levels of services.
The issue is that a lot of people do not want to make complete connections because the truth is painful. Someone I know from college has an Irish-American northeast Catholic background. This means that police work is vital to how her family and family friends achieved middle-class status. She is smart enough to realize that systematic racism is a real thing but also unwilling to even contemplate that any of the police officers she has known personally ever did anything less than morally upright.
I think defund the police/abolish the police were horrible slogans of self-own but they did come with a point that police provide an illusion of safety more than anything else. My apartment was burglarized a month or two after I moved to San Francisco in 2008. The police were professional when dealing with me but it was also clear that they would only write a report so I could go to my insurance company and make a claim. But you are correct to note that a lot of people do not like accepting low-levels of nuisance or public disorder for the sake of civil liberty.Report
The comment that made me say “this guy gets it”.
I’m honestly not sure how that police department can effectively police that town now. Even those officers not involved are tainted by this. Could you be a LEO in a town where everyone thinks you’re a coward?Report
Oooh, and this one is +5 insightful:
Those cops just made your job 1000% more dangerous. Cops across the nation have lost public support and respect from law abiding citizens. You should expect to see a lot more vigilante crime, and anti-cop aggression.Report
Yeah that’s a comment I like for the truth ringing in it and hate for the truth ringing in it. Yet despite it being a powerful contributing factor, we can count on no one mentioning this the next time there is a movement like BLM that calls attention to the police’s mistakes and failures and once again people protesting bad things police do will be called “antifa” or “anarchists” or whatever the new slur will be by the amazing pro-cop PR machine.Report
people protesting bad things police do
The more mostly peaceful of them will inspire Rittenhousen.Report
Law enforcement, whether they admit it or not, are largely about protecting themselves over any other risk/defusing a situation. It should be abdundantely clear that American law enforcement has been taught and trained and drilled to take a mentality of treating nearly every situation like they are under siege. This is one reason, possibly the biggest reason, about why American cops kill more people than law enforcement in other countries. It helps to get killed if you are not-white though.
The problem is that a lot of people want to feel safe and the police provide them with the illusion of safety. I agree with the view that defund/abolish the police are silly and counter productive slogans. I don’t think we can fully get rid of prison as a concept of society and quoting an Angela Davis article or book from 1998 is not convincing evidence on the subject but I do not think the United States is being well-served by its law enforcement as it currently operates. Another big issue though is that it is seemingly one of the few careers we are okay as providing a middle-class or above salary for people without college educations.Report
The median income for a plumber in the US in 2020 was $56,330.
The median income for an electrician in the US in 2020 was $56, 900
The median income for a senior level HVAC technician in the US in 2020 was $63,800
The median income for a police officer in the US in 2020 was $67,290
The median income of middle-class households in 2020 was $90,131
So while some police officers may be in the middle, many are slipping below it.Report
I got curious and wondered if the Protect and Serve subreddit had a thread on the whole “no longer cooperating” thing.
They do.
Pinned Comment: “We’ll officially say that’s not a good look.”Report