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Damaged Goods
I’ve read a lot of criticism of police training recently. But I’m really not sure that better training would have changed the recent events in Minneapolis. First of all, I suspect police training is pretty good, because events like this are so rare. But secondly, I’m not sure that the cop’s behavior would have improved with better training. I mean, he’s kneeling on a guy’s neck, the guy’s struggling and saying he can’t breathe, over and over. Then he stops talking, stops struggling, and lays very still. At which point the cop continues to kneel on his neck for an extended period of time. What the heck? Who does that? You don’t need a training manual to tell you that you shouldn’t do that.
The way you avoid such egregious behavior is not through training but through recruiting and screening of applicants. It’s hard to modify the behavior of bullies and psychopaths through training. It’s easier to just not hire them in the first place. This cop had had several complaints against him in the past, for excessive use of force. If Mr. Floyd had survived, and this had not become a national event, I presume that the cop would have continued to have intermittent complaints of excessive use of force. That’s just who he is. Guys like that are dangerous roaming around on the streets – much more dangerous if they have a badge and a gun. Which brings me to the training of the looters roaming the streets of our major cities right now.
How much of the sociopathic behavior we’re seeing on our streets these days could have been avoided with better training? Stronger family structures. Being raised in a religious setting. Being taught the value of education, integrity, and hard work. I presume that such things would have reduced the looting a lot, because I presume that only a very, very few of the rioters and looters are damaged goods, like the cop who’s being accused of murder in Minneapolis. Or, at least, they certainly weren’t born that way. They were raised that way.
Many of us on the right fear the loss of strong families, churches, and schools because we understand that without such a structured background, many children will wander into lives of chaos of one sort or another. A peaceful society is difficult to build and easy to destroy.
I suspect that many on the left have similar fears, but rather than rebuild families and churches, they would prefer to fix the problem with (surprise!) more government, like government-funded daycare, head start programs, guidance counselors in public schools teaching socially acceptable systems of ethics, and so on.
And, obviously, for the past 50 years or so, the leftist vision of raising kids has been winning. Families and churches continue to disintegrate, while public programs for kids and schools continue to grow.
And this is what we get.
The government can do a lot of things, but apparently it does a poor job of raising kids. Perhaps a village can’t raise a child. Perhaps that child needs a family.
One of my patients is a black man from Georgia who is about 60 years old; he’s a dentist (went through dental school in the military), he’s done well, and he’s in the process of retiring. His son is also a dentist and is gradually taking over his practice.
Anyway, he was complaining about the riots, and he said (to paraphrase), When I was a kid, whites distrusted the negroes. They said they couldn’t go to school with whites, because they didn’t have the work habits or the brainpower. They said they didn’t want to work, they just wanted to steal stuff. Said they were violent and dangerous. Rev. King comes along with his obvious integrity and intellect, lots of people make lots of sacrifices, we made so much progress. And then this happens. The rioters seem determined to remind every person of every stereotype of blacks from the early 1900s. There are going to be white kids out there, who weren’t racists before, but they’ll watch TV, and they’ll be racists now. This sets our struggle back by 75 years.
I reflexively tried to reassure him and told him that I thought he was over-estimating the impact of the riots, although I certainly understood his concern.
He wasn’t angry, really. He just seemed so sad.
As I said, I don’t think improved police training could have helped the bad cop. Not at this point. He’s damaged goods. Maybe he needed a better family. Maybe he was abused as a kid. Maybe there’s something wrong with his soul. But better police training would not help him at this point. He’s just damaged goods.
I do, however, believe that better training (better upbringing) could have really helped the young people that we see rioting in our streets.
But I understand the fear of my patient: He fears that more and more people will start to look at the rioters the way I look at the bad cop. Damaged goods. Beyond any hope of improvement.
What if people start to actually believe garbage like that? Imagine. Oh my God. That would be good news for Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. But it would be an absolute catastrophe for every other American.
My patient is afraid that the rioters and looters will teach whites that black people are dangerous. I told him that I think he’s wrong. But what I meant is that I hope he’s wrong. I really, really do.
When it seems to make sense to use our own military to invade our own cities, that means there is a very big problem.
If my patient is right, our problem may be much bigger than it appears.
The rioters and their supporters seem to believe that they are virtuous, but American society as a whole is damaged goods, beyond any hope of improvement. I hope they’re wrong.
I really, really do.
Published in General
Yup. That’s why my formulation has been: Minneapolis has a serious problem with hiring, training, supervising and disciplining police officers. My guess is that it’s hiring priorities are defective. The reason I say that is that I’ve talked to cops in San Francisco, for example, who told me that the hiring board (civilian-heavy) counts military service and having played football in high school or college as negatives when vetting a police officer.
It would not surprise me if Minneapolis is doing similarly stupid stuff. In fact, we kn0w they are—Mohammad Noor was fastracked through the hiring process, and hired despite the negative assessment from the psychologist the city specifically hires to screen for what we might delicately call “issues.”
So there’s hiring.
Then there’s training. I mentioned elsewhere that Colorado game wardens are required to take a unit (I think it’s three hours) of implicit-bias training at In-Service every year. The reason I know this is that I’ve been an instructor at their in-service training session. About half the group couldn’t take my class in death notification because they had to do their Implicit Bias hours.
I don’t know for sure, but I strongly suspect that Minneapolis P.D. is squandering in-service training hours that could be devoted to defensive tactics (or, for that matter, the much more applicable and humane skill of death notification) on “you’re a horrible bigot” training instead.
I’ve seen, somewhere, that medical schools are starting to do the same thing. “You don’t need to practice inserting a catheter! Let’s talk about what a horrible bigot you are!”
And, crucially, through the removal of the ones who slip through or become rotten during years of service. I have an officer friend who just retired from years of service as a recruiter for the New York State Police. I have some idea of the standards they try to uphold during hiring. But if we assume that the experience of service can change people, and that a certain number of bad hires will happen in any case, then we need a way to remove the bad apples.
And that brings us back to the unions.
The act itself is damning enough.
Criminals are generally liars and opportunists familiar with the advantages of accusations, as often are their friends and family (supposed witnesses), so complaints of excessive force seem predictable nonsense unless backed up by physical evidence. I expect most police dealing with robbers and thugs have been accused of one thing or another by those they arrested.
I did not watch the video. But I saw no evidence of racism in pictures and descriptions. If a person of one race mistreats a person of another race, that cruelty is not necessarily or even probably racist in nature. This cop was married to an Asian and accompanied by a hispanic partner. Unless the officers were saying derogatory things about blacks, it seems they were rather reckless or vicious to a particular individual.
The combination of riots and renewed hatemongering by the Left will drive wedges in the short term. Whereas people who live outside of high crime neighborhoods already steered clear of certain areas, perhaps under particular circumstances (late at night, alone), now they must be wary of those residents and other Democrat pawns who have been deliberately riled up with racial animosity.
I’ve delivered Meals on Wheels in poor apartment complexes. Once, I had to walk past police tape, where the lady accepting the meal said she was warned minutes before the murder that there would be a shooting (perhaps by the murderer himself). Meals on Wheels deliveries have mostly been cancelled because of the virus, but I would be more reluctant to enter those neighborhoods right now as a white man. Democrats encourage hatred of whites even in normal times.
Except the unions appeared not to stand behind Chauvin and his escorting Trio.
The fact that the four of them were fired, and so immediately says an awful lot.
I’ve not seen the video, but from what I gather, there is little gray in their egregious choices.
That is exactly what should happen: the union should abandon them. They were indefensible, in terms of being a police officer.
Agreed. And I don’t know enough about the man to know if he should have been disciplined sooner, perhaps preventing (well, delaying) the convulsions we’re experiencing now.
Two of them were apparently probationary. If you screw up when you are a rookie, out you go.
I don’t know how much experience they really had.
And also, people change. It would be great if police departments had a recertification program for officers every five years or so, just to make sure they are as psychologically healthy as they were when they were hired.
well, when you a probie, fire on your feet either reveals durable metal, or clay. It would have taken a strong man to go against their superior, if that was Chauvin’s position.
It is sad. Hopefully those probies can accept responsibility, pay their penance and move on to something productive.
What makes you think he’s a bad guy? Less than 1 complaint per year seems low for a beat cop in a city.
Note the egregious racist conduct Buzzfeed was able to find:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/minneapolis-derek-chauvin-history-of-complaints-george-floyd
What should each of them done differently and when?
Excellent post.
Why do you assume that the rioters aren’t damaged goods, as you put it? I think it is difficult to change kids fundamentally after the age of four or five. And I haven’t seen looters younger than 5 out there.
Also, I think you are making a fundamental error in not being able to distinguish between what a statistical outcome will be and what an individual outcome will be. Systems should be organized on the statistical basis for a desired outcome. But that doesn’t mean every individual meeting those criteria will meet that outcome because no system is going to deliver 100 percent. This is true for policemen and rioters.
That shouldn’t keep those making systems from continuing to evaluate and improve.
As for the dentist, there were white looters as well.
Maybe the George Floyd case will provoke a national conversation on whether it’s a good idea to have public employee unions.
I started to write about this several times today and abandoned every effort. But here’s some of what’s been churning in my mind this week:
Racism is an irrational and emotional thing. It can not be “trained” out of you and it can be acquired long after training. In short it is a human flaw.
I am disturbed by the phrase “systematic racism.” The reality is that institutional racism, i.e. codified racism through law and custom in this country has been thoroughly dealt with since the end of WWII. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick. But it was a journey we had to make.
My gut feeling is there is more emphasis on “the system,” than on race. This is more about lighting up the Constitution and capitalism. And none of that is going to change anyone’s racial views and it may even mean more violence in the future.
I hang out in a bar where many Ford employees hang. They’re a bunch of rich red necks. Smart guys, they know they are Democrats, they know Ford makes the best trucks and they’re all a touch anal. I know a guy who worked with me at the hospital. Very smart guy, a touch anal, he has tried three times and failed at Ford. The Louisville Police Department might be smart to copy what Ford does. A hired employee, who makes it through probation becomes an endangered species. You can’t get rid of the red cockaded woodpecker. I’m not surprised Chauvin survived 18 reports. He is probably an expert at the system and taking advantage of lax leadership.
I’m with @ctlaw.
The safety director at the company I work for works as a sheriff’s deputy on the weekends. I asked him how unusual a record like like Chauvain’s would be. He said not very. Think of the number of interactions cops have with civilians every year, and the potential for meaningless accusations that leaves.
That’s certainly true. But he thinks that some people will view these riots as being racially motivated.
To a large extent, that is what the media is telling us (though the media seems to have some confusion about its narrative because they occasionally try to make it the work of white nationalists). But most of the media coverage is that the riots are the rage of black people. And it would be entirely reasonable for some white people to conclude from the large number of black people involved in the rioting that black people are savages who are incapable of impulse control. The dentist is right.
Yes, children raised by government know only force and coercion. They don’t know love. So when they encounter something they don’t like, the only response they know is to exert force.
I think whites already knew that. However, I also believe whites in general were willing to give blacks the benefit of the doubt – until now.
Michael Brown and Trevon Martin were cases where the perp was not the victim, and look at what happened. Freddie Grey? Not so sure. The OJ verdict didn’t help either. Stories about blacks terrorizing whites didn’t result in riots by whites, even this vicious assault:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Channon_Christian_and_Christopher_Newsom
But now, it seems clear your patient should be concerned. There will be no more general “benefit of the doubt” shown by whites, IMHO. Look for major cities to empty at even faster rates over the next few years. Most people cite their job or love for their home town as a reason not to leave. But when your live and those of your family are in danger, no job or hometown pride is worth the price of your child becoming another Channon or Christopher . . .
Oh boy.
There is a tremendous amount of virtue signaling all over this case. Maybe those excessive force complaints were valid but maybe they weren’t. The fact remains that the Floyd guy was an ex-felon committing armed robbery and serving 5 years. His “rehabilitation” seems to have been incomplete as he was passing a counterfeit bill and may well have swallowed drugs to avoid a possession charge. The toxicology report is not out and there are lots of rumors about he cops discussing him as a drug overdose, including meth,. Have you ever seen a meth overdose? I have. It is way too soon to be jumping aboard this train with such enthusiasm.
I dunno. This is where we need ex-President Obama. He would tell us whether or not it is time to rush to judgment. It’s hard to know, otherwise.
Training and disciplinary actions are the best way to weed out bad apples.
Having good policies and procedures is first step. I was reading the procedures for St. Petersburg, FL and they explicitly prohibit any use of force that affects breathing. (muckrock.com collects them).
I don’t know what Minneapolis allows.
Great points.
This is a complicated problem, which means we’re going to get a lot of simple discussions in the mainstream. My question is, what kind of talent pool are you hiring from when you hire police officers? Who would want to police in a war zone where the law is loose? These Democrat-run metropolises are notoriously loose on crime. We see repeat violent offenders given multiple chances. I would imagine some of these police are afraid to enforce the law against a minority class. They could lose their jobs or even worse, have their entire lives destroyed by the mainstream media. We’ve seen these happen far to many times, where the media immediately jumps to race and purposely omits relevant portions of the story to fit a narrative.
Who on Earth would want to police in Minneapolis? Or Detroit? Or Baltimore? You probably do get a lot of good people that truly want to help these communities. But you probably also attract an awful lot of cowboys and mavericks that treat this as a mission or challenge. I don’t think I could deal with it. There’s far too much risk involved, and I’m not talking about just the standard physical risks. I’ll go police the ‘burbs.
Heather Mac Donald (written in the wake of the Emanuel A.M.E. church massacre in Charleston in 2015)
Los Angeles had a choke hold lawsuit back in the 80s and banned them. The cops were advised, and trained, to use batons instead. Rodney King was stopped by a female CHP officer, Melanie Singer whose husband was also a CHP officer. King refused to obey Singer’s orders and she was about to shoot him when LAPD arrived and took him down with batons. The event was videotaped by a citizen and the result was that the cops went to prison, King got $5 million (He was not seriously injured) and Singer testified against the LAPD in both trials, then retired on stress disability.
The reason two of the officers went to jail is because the federal trial determined that just the last few swings of their batons were unjustified. In other words, “we hereby find you guilty of beating him for 7 seconds longer than you should have”. That kind of Monday morning quarterbacking puts many cops in a no win position. The video this time looks pretty clear, but so did the Rodney King video that the MSM allowed the public to see. But the judge and jury got to see the whole video. There is missing video this time too. This one might not be as open and shut as it looks.
The double jeopardy helped. They were acquitted by the first jury and the Clinton DOJ came right back after the riots to new charges of “Civil Rights” violation. The Civil Rights were exactly the same facts as the acquittal trial. That’s why the cops in Minneapolis are screwed no matter what the toxicology says.
That may be true for some, but I don’t know how many. I live about seven miles from where Michael Brown lived and died (I just moved about two miles closer, actually). I never actually seen any of the riots or looting. (I haven’t seen any demonstrations, unless I were to count that pathetic little affair in that lily white suburb out west.)
Since the day Brown was killed, I’ve seen black people going about their daily routines as always; working, shopping, eating out, serving me in stores and restaurants, shooting in the booth next to me at the Conservation Department range, attending my (predominately white) church, etc. My opinion hasn’t changed. What percentage of black people participate in the protests, let alone the riots?
On the other side is the white business owner in Ferguson who told me he had never been a racist until vandals wrecked his business. Even then, how do I know if he really changed his mind, or if he was just angry, deeply disappointed, and looking to vent some frustration. Or maybe he was always a racist, and events in Ferguson gave him an excuse to say so.
Probably true, but in the popular mind, it’s a movement for and about black people.
The cop was an almost 20-year veteran so this was not impulsive misjudgment. My guess is that Floyd flopped to the ground as arefusal to be put in the squad car, sitting on him until he choked out or asked to be raised was intended to be a kind of bruiseless beatdown rather than homicide. Someday we will find out what the hell he was thinking.
Your discussion of the behavior of the “protesters” is not permissible in most circles.
These riots are the whole problem in microcosm—a single incident that serves the narrative (and white self-righteousness) gets 100% of the attention and is absurdly held out as symptomatic of a trend while a vast tide of vile destructive behavior is deemed invisible, justified or irrelevant.