Every month, the Ann T. Hathaway blog honors law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty. January has been a particularly full month for those who protect us daily. Please take a moment to consider the fallen, their families and friends, and their colleagues.
This is the front of the Sixth Precinct in Detroit, Michigan, where on January 24, a lone assailant came in and started shooting, wounding four police officers. It is a low building in civil-service brick, in deference to the cash-strapped taxpayers of Detroit. The pillars are there to remind us that this is a Hall of Government.
The huge window and open entrance convey that law enforcement is for the community; that it is transparent; that you may come in and make your concerns known. The big window serves to also to show the officers within what community they are connected to; what prevailing conditions are. It is a no-barrier. The glass is not even bullet-resistant.
Well, that's not going to work in the world we have now.
Today I went to the Bureau of Justice Statistics Web site to look at the relationship of assailant to victim, and found some other things besides. I also checked out the Center for Disease Control.
Mostly, We Lived In the last year of reported data (2007) at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC FastStats site), there were 1.4 million emergency room visits because of assault/attempted homicide/homicide. Murder was the 15th most likely cause of death (behind heart disease (#1), cancer (#2) , and suicide (#11)).
There were 18,361 homicide deaths in 2007. 12,632 of those resulted from firearms use.
You have to say those emergency rooms are doing a good job: assuming that all the murder victims died in an E.R. (which they don't), that would still be a 1.3% death rate to overall visits for assault. If you're dying, the paramedics and the E.R. are generally going to save you. Unless you go out afterwards and continue to do whatever got you there in the first place. The same of course is true with heart disease: can't do what you've been doing and expect to live a long life.
But Sometimes We Didn't The BJS site is a little behind the CDC: most of their reporting ends at 2005.
Victim/Offender Relationships: 1976--2005. All Homicides 1976-2005 100% 594,276
People kill their spouses about 7% of the time. Wives and ex-wives usually die of gunshot wounds. They kill their boyfriend or girlfriend about 3.8% of the time. Boyfriends usually die of knife wounds. They kill some other close family member about 8% of the time.
They kill "non-intimate family", friends, or acquaintances about 32.1% of the time. It's more likely that these acquaintances will be male, and of age 18-24. This is also the age that uses guns the most. Gang violence has increased 800% (eightfold) over the reported thirty years.
The relationship was undetermined for 35.2% of all homicides in that time period. That particular statistic "undetermined" is trending upward: no doubt caused by a variety of factors, including a lack of police manpower for apprehensions and for murder investigations. In 1975, 79% of all homicide cases cleared; in 2005, 62%. That's a pretty strong correlation to the undetermined percentage, which has also trended up.
So at least 50.8 % of all homicides are committed by people that knew the victim. Arguments factor into most of them: that's how the homicide starts. That's opposed to homicide in commission with another crime--robbery, rape, and so forth. Mostly it's people getting mad and settling it forever. With a gun. Usually. The BJS says gun-related murder is trending downward, but I don't think the CDC believes it. That's why it's good to check more than one site for your stats. Each producer of stats has a vested interest. Each of them has a different means of getting their reports.
Strangers committed 13.9% of all homicides in that time period. None of these figures add in 9/11, which according to Wikipedia, killed 2977 people. If you add those into the total, the figure for "homicide by strangers" goes up to 13.95% . The Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania--as awful and symbolic as they are--do not add appreciably to the number of murders that happened in the United States from 1975 to 2005. But perhaps it's not fair to dilute that by 30 years.
Murder per capita, selected years: 1974--10.1 1980--10.7 1991--10.5 2001, including 9-11-- 7.1. According to the CDC, 20,308 people total died in 2001 of assault/homicide. Even if that includes the 9-11 deaths, then less than 15% of that years' homicides were from this frightening terrorist attack in three locations. Not even equal percentage to the number of intimate family homicides that same year. 2006--6.2 2007--6.1
According to the BJS, homicides clear more often than any other type of case. And that makes me wonder something else about police work. Big crimes are fascinating to us: they are discrete (separate) events. Crappy crimes like armed robbery or car theft are more likely to happen to us. They are more likely to impact our daily life.
We hold the loss of human life as the most important, but is it really the most important to us? A murder across town--does it affect us as much as having our handbag stolen? It takes forever to get a duplicate license, a new picture of our boyfriend or grandchild, to cancel our credit cards. A wallet costs more than $20.00 these days, and requires a trip to the store when we don't have our new driver's license yet. Plus we're anxious, angry, afraid, and maybe kicking ourselves for being careless.
But these crimes have a less successful clearance rate. I wonder if our society's dissatisfaction with policing comes from the difference of our moral expectations--and our real expectations. I wonder if our real expectation is to be spared inconvenience--not to worry about human life.
Doing More Triage with Band-Aids And more than ever, a quick look at statistics shows us this: whichever we pick, the "life is precious" road or the "convenience is precious" one, we've underfunded our police departments. We've got mixed motives in our policing expectations, and a far from clear set of priorities. That's made us ambiguous at best and hostile at worst toward law enforcement and its officers. "Shouldn't you be out fighting real crime?" they hear. Yet accidental injury (including drunk drivers and road war) is #3 on the CDC mortality statistics. Way above murder. Way above suicide. It's life-affirming to write traffic violations. Why is that so hard to believe?
I believe law enforcement agencies have realized this societal ambiguity between life-affirming and convenience-affirming. The LEO on the street is inconvenienced and importuned by it and the agencies have internalized it. We now have a lot of bean-counting inside the agencies, which the police officers seemingly don't like and we don't pay attention to anyway. Statistics on robbery or loitering seem to figure more highly in "police performance assessment" and reportedly can be fudged by knocking down the charges to a lesser violation, or inflating the number of contacts. It's artificial. On some level, it's meant to appease. And get funding. Our ambiguity trends into our funding for the departments. The bean-counting is their fight back. It only works half the picture at best, and reinforces our ambiguity at worst.
As long as society at large fails to realize that police "productivity" is in direct but also inverse proportion from the stats, society will not get either the convenient or the life-affirming law enforcement response. The more crimes solved or prevented, the less need it seems we have for police. But prevention means placing resources before the fact. You can't go by need alone (crime is going up; case clearance going down), but also by the effect (crime is going down; case clearance is up). When law enforcement succeeds, we cut funding. It only makes sense in statistics, not in real life.
This is not what I was starting to look for when I studied homicide statistics. It's just what grabbed me. I was looking for stats comparing Bubba Terrorism to Islamic Terrorism. Haven't found those yet. I got distracted.
Support your local law enforcement agencies. That's what I really have. Do it from the pocket--you get what you pay for. And do it with a smile. That would be life-affirming. Might even work on the convenience scale, too.
I receive a newsletter from an organization that studies stressors on police officers in the field, including at the point of conflict. I have things to write about that--I have learned a lot.
But the thing that I keep thinking about on and off is a perhaps less acute problem--instead it's a nagging problem: the problem of lower back ache for police officers wearing lots of heavy equipment around their waists.
I know of at least one police officer with serious lower back pain. And he is not an officer with a pot gut that is swaying his spine. I'm willing to bed good cash that he does sit-ups, cross-training, and weighs the right amount.
And sometimes I think a little fix makes a big difference. So, in my armchair, without any experience whatsoever, I keep turning to problems of Design and Ergonomics. I should say also that I haven't studied Ergonomics worth a damn. However, Design always interests me.
Does anyone out there understand the lower back? I would like to know where weight should be distributed. In addition, there has to be a way to include safety and security as well as ease of reach for these heavy tools and weapons that officers carry.
Image via WikipediaSince I am also an armchair historian, I ruminated over historical methods. And this is funny, and I don't think it would work: the bandolier. It's a bit of a stretch thinking that a modern LEO wants to imitate Pancho Villa.
But I am perfectly serious in my interest to this question. So please write in if you have any ideas whatsoever. It's turning into one of those symbolic concerns I think: there's just too darn much on a policeman's back.
And that might be the psychological truth behind some of that back pain after all.
Every month, the Ann T. Hathaway blog remembers law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty the previous month. Once again, we must count the costs of safety and security in human life.
Each of these deaths is untimely. Each loss affects the family of the fallen, their friends, their colleagues, and their communities. They affect us all.
This is my favorite of them all: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. It's also my sister's favorite. I think it's a good mix of the spiritual, the reassuring, and the historical. It's also easy on the ears, which Jingle Bells is not. So for those who might be reading who are not Christian, I hope you will enjoy (as I do) the inherent humanity in it.
The lyrics were first collected in the 1800's, but have been around since the 15th century. It is also a carol associated with the night watchmen of English villages, who used to sing it for tips hundreds of years before tax dollars paid for city security.
This is Annie Lennox, with her clear voice and some great minor key harmonics. (Sorry, you do get a commercial first.) The video is meant to convey the "mummers" of English folk life also.
A special thanks to all our watchmen and women,
keeping us safe during holiday hours.
Merry Christmas to you all.
Thank you for the gifts you give us--security, confidence--
Each month, the Ann T. Hathaway blog remembers officers who have died in the line of duty. Each one leaves behind family, friends, colleagues. They leave behind a world of actions that have enriched our community. During this holiday season, we could also reflect upon the sacrifices made, and still felt, by the people that knew these officers well.
--Ryan Bonaminio--David Grove--Kevin Kell Roberts--
Every month, the Ann T. Hathaway blog offers a post for the memory of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. The officers who died in October are remembered here. Please take a moment to reflect on the sacrifices made, and the lives forever changed, by the life and death of each of these fine people.
Every month, the Ann T. Hathaway blog honors those law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty. Please take a minute reflect on September's losses to our nation, our states, and our local jurisdictions. Each one died trying to bolster the good in our community.
Every month the Ann T. Hathaway blog commemorates those law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty. Please take a minute to reflect on these losses to their families, friends, and colleagues; their agencies, their jurisdictions, and to us all.
What I know about the way New Orleans acted during the flood came straight from the horrifying coverage during the event. So much blame flew around. The whole thing was embarrassing to the United States, the state of Louisiana, and to the City of New Orleans. But while everyone had a tale to tell, they never added up. And maybe they shouldn't. It was a disaster.
Near the River is higher ground. Lakefront and New Orleans East are lower. N.O. East had no levee protection, but plenty of development.
Geography is Fate New Orleans is a city surrounded by water. Land is at a premium. This is not something you readily understand if you are from Texas or Nebraska. There is not More, there is only Less. There is high ground and low ground. Every inch of elevation makes a huge difference.
New Orleans is a city where a car is necessary. Public transportation has always been unreliable for those going to work. But it has never been a city that really made room for car transportation. City streets are mostly two lane. They flood. They have cars parked on either side, and that makes a large number of them actually one-lane streets.
There are three bridges out. One goes East, where Katrina was also wrecking Alabama. One goes West, to Houston via Baton Rouge. That was the one people wanted. It goes over swamps and Lake Ponchatrain and Lake Maurepas, almost all the way to Baton Rouge. The road South of New Orleans is surrounded by ditches and then swamps. These flood regularly. Water runs over the road after a storm, traffic stops for awhile, then everybody goes home. But not for Katrina.
All of these bridges were mostly two lanes out, with lane separators, and a generous shoulder in most places. There are, or were, call boxes every 1/10th of a mile. The call boxes are there because once on a bridge, there is no getting off of one. You need gas or car repair? It is geographically impossible to pull your car onto the grass and walk to a station. You need a bungee cord and a rowboat.
Picture a mass evacuation, two lanes of cars. The cars are overloaded and in poor repair. Indeed, on every road trip, one can find people driving cars with no license plates. Each of those cars had a piece of shoddy cardboard in the back window: "Lisens Applid for". Now picture one, just one car, breaking down in the gridlock. Six people get out of it and look under the hood.
And Planning??? When Hurricane Francis hit, two or four years before? I-10 flooded at the city limits of New Orleans and Metairie, the closest suburb. It wasn't very far across. But that particular location, an underpass, is deep. You couldn't get through it. Traffic was backed up all along I-10. People just ran out of gas on the road, or their car overheated, or they stalled it out trying to pretend their car was an amphibious device.
Already Below Sea Level, Already Below Zero New Orleans is fascinating, lovely, exotic. I still miss it. I'll never forget it.
In the years I knew New Orleans, no police car had all its fenders uncrunched. No NOPD car had hub caps. That's just what I could see.
There were at least four agencies in the city. The Levee Board police patrolled the levees where the rich people lived. The bridge police patrolled the bridges. Orleans Parish SO served papers and watched prisoners. The NOPD took everything else. The levees were made of land reclaimed from Lake Ponchatrain and were great places to live. Most of your yard was common easement and the Levee Board kept it mowed for you. The LB PD only had thin stretches of parkland and well-to-do people to take care of. They also had state retirement benefits. NOPD had parish retirement benefits.
The Levee Board was supposed to take those real estate earnings and invest them to keep up the levees. The original levees around the lake were earthworks. They were not augmented. Instead they were packed down and diminished by the weight of many jogger's shoes. The money disappeared, long before I ever arrived in Louisiana. And every single one of those homes was under water after Katrina. Not that they were the only ones, mind you.
When I moved there, New Orleans was the murder capital of the world. Maybe it was also the truant capital of America. High school kids drank beer on the street at 1 p.m. to the sound of the house alarms always clanging, clanging, clanging. It seemed that they all clanged for a year. The police couldn't get to them. That year, an alarm was a do not respond call. It just had no priority.
Its housing authority was so corrupt that the Feds would not release the funds slated to New Orleans until they fired some people and did some audits. In the meantime, the projects were crack-and-murder central. That was the NOPD's place to work. Not Lakefront. Oh no. The NOPD also watched over the city's moneymaking area, the Vieux Carre [Old Square] more commonly known as the French Quarter. That was the safest place in town, and it was not safe unless you stayed with the crowds. I remember watching a hooker nearly rob a blind man in broad daylight. Only my saying, "Watch it," made the blind man stop and put his hand on his wallet. The witch cursed me and kept walking. Fast. Just a little of the everyday.
The School Board held their meetings at Ruth's Chris Steak House while thousands of school children ate in pest-infested cafeterias. Through two different school board administrations. The same problems. The superintendent had a million dollar contract, but nothing changed for the kids during his tenure.
City Hall was full of people whose job was to carry files from one office or another, or, to sell hot dogs for those whose job was to carry files from one office to another. The City Government was bloated. The NOPD was not. They were over-run.
I also know that New Orleans is a port town, and the drug money did cause NOPD scandals every once in awhile. There was a Federal sting once thatcaught some drug-dealing officers, stupid, full of chutzpah. There was an NOPD officer who was a serial killer, who used to take prostitutes and then dump them in the forlorn swamps east of the city. But most of them were just flat busy with crime--recording it, stopping it, arresting those who did it. Dealing with bad equipment and corruption elsewhere. Gearing up for the insane crowds at Mardi Gras, the Jazz Fest, the you-name-it. Plenty of times the city was a free-for-all.
And never more so than when everyone who had the means to get out, got out. All those who had a reason to believe in stability and property to protect: mostly out of town. Or completely inundated and overwhelmed.
Houses, abandoned, or filled with the dead or starving or mentally ill, or those too stubborn to leave. Cars couldn't get around. Phones didn't work. No groceries were entering the city.
Extreme Conditions But we also need to remember that during Katrina, police officers were attacked in their precincts, completely surrounded by anarchy as soon as the sun went down. That they stayed, with no supplies, to protect and serve. That they were targeted, in at least one instance, at least one night, for hours. It was on CNN.
We need to remember that the good officers got no sleep, no chance to check their own property or even use a phone, because the communications towers were down. There was also no parish jail. It had flooded, with prisoners still in it. There was no hospital. It had flooded, with patients still in it. The doctors had mostly evacuated, leaving people to die in the hospitals with very little care. There was no transport.The NOPD were on their own and on their lone. They mostly had their families out, I think, but not all of them.
The geographical landscape changed. The landscape of competency, available tools, changed. The atmosphere, the tenor of the city, also changed. Unattended deaths. People desperate for food. People living on the roof or looting, shooting, coming off their junk. And who knows what else.
They were scared and without support. If they banded together, it is not to be wondered at. There was little or no obedience to law. Under such conditions, we need to decide how we will judge. I already know where I stand.
Eleven cops have been indicted. Many, many civilians have not been caught or indicted for what they did in that time--or what responsibilities they fled. I wasn't there. I don't know. And if I had been there, I could not have been everywhere and seen everything. If these police officers robbed people, looted houses and businesses, that's one thing. If they took a sandwich, that's different under those conditions than taking a diamond necklace. If they shot someone, a looter, that needs to be considered, very carefully, under the circumstances. Very carefully.
Corruption: there's no excuse for disloyalty, for agreeing to break your sworn promise without leaving your office first. I believe that. Do I want to hit the NOPD first? Not by a hell of a sight.
What would you do under anarchy, when no expectation of infrastructure is met? So far, most of us do not know the answer. And most of all--
It is never easy for the NOPD in the Big Easy. And it was never harder than during Katrina. Let's remember those who kept the faith, before, during, after. Let's don't be too sure we know the score.
Medical Personnel Evacuating Charity Hospital at the Last Minute. Not all the medical staff left. Not all the critical patients were evacuated. Those that stayed behind basically comforted the dying in a building with no utilities, no fresh air, no potable water.
Every month the Ann T. Hathaway blog remembers officers who have died in the line of duty. This month, twelve officers have departed from the roll calls of their agencies. Each man and woman listed here matter more than a number. They leave behind family, friends and colleagues. All of those left behind continue to sacrifice, through their grief and in their work, for their communities. Let these fine officers be recalled today, at least for one quiet moment. .
I. A Memory In the first years my husband and I were married, we went to a family barbecue--my family's barbecue. My father-in-law was a small-town/rural family doctor, who also was the medical director at the local hospital, and the chief medical officer for the local small-town retirement home. My husband was in his first year of medical school. Previous to that, he had worked in many mental health clinics and hospitals.
I warned my husband that my dad would probably pigeon-hole him somewhere down the line. "My dad has a lot of definite opinions," I warned. "He frequently likes to yell about them when he gets going." "Okay," my husband said, calm as always. "Thanks for the warning."
True to form, my father leaned over my husband (both of them the same height, over six feet--it was done by body language) on the back porch for hours.
"What did you guys talk about?" I asked, on the ride home. "Your dad has never been a doctor, he never had a dad that was a doctor, and he's never worked in the hospital industry. He was in sales, right? Did he ever sell medical products?" "No. Housewares." "Well, he told me all about the medical industry, how it was conducted and organized, and what its likely future was." I nodded my head. "Yup, that sounds about right."
Sometimes I think the public shares this quality of my Dad's, especially when it comes to police work: two minutes of video, and they're freaking experts. I am not an expert either, but I have spent more than two minutes on it. So I'm going to give it a go.
II. The Videos. Here is a short one. It makes us feel sick, of course it does. No decent person wants to see another person killed. So you'll have to watch it more than once if you want to see what happens. And even then, you can't see everything. All of the video records are incomplete witnesses.
Most of the videos have a lot of coverage of the ceiling. They all record the casual feeling and also a gotcha attitude in the crowd--both laughing but also recording, heckling. We civilians who access YouTube watched these with little or no prior knowledge of the terrain, the procedures, or any idea of what it's like to be stuck in a crowd that automatically hates you, surrounds you, and may bully forward at any moment. Many of us don't know how to handle weapons or the adrenaline that accumulates in such a situation. It's not the same as getting mobbed leaving a stadium after a baseball game.
Oscar Grant was resisting arrest in an enclosed space with limited exits and a huge crowd. He reached for a pocket. A full search of his person had not yet occurred, so it was more than possible he had a weapon. Officer Mehserle wanted to Tase him so that they could follow safe procedures and get control of a disintegrating situation. If Mr. Grant had pulled a gun, there is no telling how much more blood there would have been. Police killed, but also innocent bystanders. All of whom were screaming their support to Mr. Grant. They were not helping Mr. Grant, and Mr. Grant was not helping himself.
You can also see how upset the police officers are. How unprepared for the outcome of a gunshot. It was an accident. Compare and contrast it to Video # 1 in the footnotes, where successive attempts to kill (this time a police officer) mean the violence drags out, more and more and more.
But many of us felt free to judge without walking that mile in the shoes, or even, Lord help us, thinking it through. Would you choose to kill someone in that arena? I think not, unless you had a death wish for yourself and all your colleagues. Officer Mehserle had no such intention. It truly was an accident brought on by the conflict at hand.
I read that the prosecutors noted that the weight of a Taser is different than the weight of a gun, and Officer Mehserle should have known as he pulled it. I don't think the weight in his hand was anywhere near top of the list of things to consider when Mr. Grant might be pulling a gun out of an unsearched pocket. He also wasn't holding it very long.
III. A Quote. From the sidebar of the blog: The Johnny Law Chronicles, a quote from Otto Bismarck: "People who love sausage and people who believe in justice should never watch either of them being made."
I don't believe that. I just know that it's hard to watch the videos where crime is committed and apprehensions are made. And that's in an armchair, with a cup of coffee. I don't have to live it, smell it, taste it. I don't have to face the gun or wash off the lice or the vomit or the sweat.
Every day, police officers face the unknown from a routine traffic stop (Video #1 below) to the fall of a skyscraper in New York City. They get run over by people who want to resist capture or questioning. They get mauled by the neighbors of someone who stops them for a traffic ticket (Video #3). They got shot in their agency's parking lot or in their parents' front yard, at subway exits, when they're talking on their cell phones, or reviewing procedures with a new officer in their police car. They get shot in coffee shops as they try to catch up work.
Therefore, they have procedures. Procedures alone will not save them, but it minimizes their risk somewhat. If Oscar Grant had followed procedures, he would be alive today.
IV. The Verdict. So I am not all the way up on the law. At first I thought that the verdict of involuntary manslaughter was a good sign: not murder one. Not murder two. Then I read that the sentencing guidelines might add an extra ten years to the two to four for involuntary manslaughter. Mr. Mehserle shouldn't even go in for two. Not two days, two months, or two years.
The truth is, this was a regrettable accident. Police officers have a risk of accident like everyone else. Mr. Grant was resisting, and he was reaching for a pocket.
There should have been a not guilty verdict for any charge.
Furthermore, it should never have gone to court at all. There should have been an agency-driven, administrative hearing, as exhaustive as hell and conducted by perhaps a non-involved agency.
V. Cowardice. There are so many cowards in this account, that I will make a list. If I've missed any, just write on in.
1. The onlookers, for not acknowledging their part in driving this situation to the brink. 2. The family of Oscar Grant, for not acknowledging their part in Mr. Grant's regrettable choices during his life. 3. The armchair pundits who trade in outrage and make rules for a profession they have no experience in, and who do not seek to learn. 4. The city officials who deemed it necessary to change procedure in the face of contention they did not avoid anyway. 5. The city attorneys, who washed their hands and left their own best partners (the police) to hang in the wind while they garnered publicity and votes. 6. Law enforcement officials, high in the BART agency, who did not speak up about ordinary procedures that they have for shooting situations. 7. The community leaders who enable demonstrations that sock all the responsibility on one party, and who, b. allow violent elements to take advantage of their group, knowing they will show up; and c. yet disclaim responsibility for that unofficial alliance, and d. fail to see that incendiary language adds to the possibility of violence. 8. So-called moderates who invoke or continue to emphasize racial distinctions, such as in the jury composition, without mentioning any other quality of the jury because they are too lazy or afraid to look; 9. News accounts that emphasize race above any other distinction or action of any other party, because they are afraid to say anything else.
Mr. Mehserle had to resign from BART law enforcement in order to capture proper legal counsel and defend himself. His reputation is trashed, he faces up to 15 years in prison. His sentencing hearing is on August 6th.
If any of you have any standing with the Almighty whatsoever, pray that Johannes Mehserle is sentenced with time served. Because he is in huge danger otherwise, for something that was an honest mistake, involuntary, brought about by pressured events. He was brave enough to be in harm's way. A bunch of cowards have put him where he is today. They all forced Johannes Mehserle under the magnifying glass so that they did not have to look at themselves--or face scrutiny by others.
VI. Final Note. Perhaps I am like my father, blathering on past my expertise. If I have something wrong here about law, police procedure, or the trial, somebody write in. I wrote two letters to police officers I sort of know, reaching out for information. Then I realized: they are too besieged, too stoic, and too disappointed to write me back. So I just went ahead on.
And though I am angry on behalf of Johannes Mehserle, and think Mr. Grant's parents didn't help him enough, I realize that's also armchair talk. Perhaps the family of Oscar Grant won't believe this, but I am sorry for their loss. It can not be easy. It is perhaps natural to look for someone to blame.
Johannes Mehserle apologized, and of course that is not enough to assuage the grief. But Johannes Mehserle did not want to kill your son. Allowing him to be a cause, and then the cause of a riot, is dangerous to the other sons still living, of all colors, races, creeds, and financial conditions. It sacrifices another life today, and it sends countless others down a bad road.
This was hard to write.
References, besides those above, are below the jump, including videos mentioned above.
There are snobs out there who say Norman Rockwell was merely an illustrator. That is bull. There is always a lot of emotional content in his paintings. Perhaps the modern art critic wants something with a little more death and destruction in it. But in art history, this shows up in many paintings as the historical record of times, clothes, kings, and verities that are no more. Here, too.
In the eternal verities, the urge to rebel is universal, the call to obey as well. And where is the time flying part of this message? In the faces, but also in the contrast between human and institution. The straight lines and clean, nearly untouched whites of the background--things already set, like stone. Only law, order, rebellion, youth and age , guilt and innocence, fear and epiphany belong to the humans.
This is a dynamite picture. It has everything in it except a Female. The composition--three heads forming a triangle, show justice, mercy, laughter, stability, and even sadness. I love Norman Rockwell.
Our Declaration of Independence was won by gentleman farmers and good writers, men in agreement. After that, we've had to fight to keep it so, in small ways and large, meeting both threat and stupidity head on.
Today and here, this blog honors the nineteen law enforcement officers killed in June, 2010. Their sacrifice causes me to reflect that Independence is a living thing that must be renewed every day. These who are listed below are some who have kept it alive. They are not now here to enjoy it. Some were felled by gunfire by vicious killers. A significant number of others were killed by drunk drivers. Almost all of them leave behind families with young children.
A new summary of attacks, including the latest attack with a shoulder-fired bazooka toward the building, is at Officer-dot-com. (Source Riverside CA Press-Enterprise.) Bunkermeister at SGT Says briefly discusses it here.
Though the attack was unsuccessful, it remains a terrible warning. Yet only the local paper and the law enforcement news aggregators are documenting it. This is home-grown terrorism. It's dangerous to our civil society, and sets a terrible precedent.
Law Enforcement: stay safe out there. And citizenry: be aware. Your security will dribble away, drop by drop, without attention to items of this nature.
Talking Points Memo (TPM) also has some posts on this at their Muckraker.
After the tragedy in Cumbria, it is coming out that this shooter could have been stopped earlier, if only law enforcement had firearms. No, the police in the UK do not carry firearms.
This post is for Inspector Gadget at the Police Inspector blog. Joseph Swain is an illustrator who produced a series of engravings on the plight of police in the Victorian Era, I believe for Punch Magazine. So far I have found two. I think they are copyrighted, so I will just pass them on in the hopes some Reformer Organization in the UK will pay to use them. Or heck, don't we need this one right here in the U.S.? This one is called, "More Police!!"
The next one is called "An Unequal Match: The Truncheon is no Match for a Gun." We could also say, in the U.S., that this applies, although the force differential is not quite as wide.
You know, Reality frequently stays the same. But Policy??? Never.
Never, ever a shortage of Wing Nuts: and I feel so much like ranting, but I don't want to be one too.
A police officer stopped for coffee in a Southeast Portland cafe. After he bought the coffee, a woman stopped him, preparing to tell him how grateful she was to local police. Lately they had saved the life of a man she knew who had been shot.
The proprietor came over and asked the police officer to leave and never come back. He doesn't want the police around.
He discriminated against someone according to their job, without finding out anything about that person as an individual. He does not like police because they have guns. What about that the police save lives, too?
And, as later disclosed, if his shop was robbed, he would not call the police. He would ask for help from his friends--do they have guns? What will they do? I read one comment that this vegan joint is a hotbed of anarchists. That's unsubstantiated.
But, Anarchist? If it's True? If he got shot by a bad guy, would he go to a county-funded hospital, or would he let his barrista do the surgery? Does this barrista have a food-handler card? How about a license to practice medicine or time in a government-accredited medical school? Does he take government-issue money, or do people pay with sacks of squash?
So, good. You got your way, boyo. I would never be so tacky as to wish calamity upon you. Instead, I hope you re-evaluate your position the easy way.
If in Oregon, please do not patronize the restaurant Red and Black in SE Portland. This would be to make a stand against discrimination and small-mindedness. To support the local law enforcement. I still can't believe this pseudo-moralistic crap. But I said I wouldn't rant. -- Police One has the short version, taken from this story at The Oregonian. The friendly bystander, Ms. Seigneur, has a blog. She posted the incident once. Then she posted a second time, based on the number of comments she received. I would read the Oregonian and the First post by Ms. Seigneur if I was short of time.
We had a bust-up on the Metro. 15 kids arguing with one kid about Air Jordan shoes in front of his mother. The group calls 16 more kids and jump the one kid at Union Station. Supposedly this is all the details, but I don't know. A replica of a gun (uh-huh) and a B-B gun were recovered at the scene of the conflagration. So I guess we have some wildings on Transit.
I am going to start planning for this now. Exit is one problem. The other problem on underground transit is sometimes your cell doesn't work down there.
We have had some gang shootings earlier in the year. Not like this is new. But we are starting to get our 100 degree temps in the afternoon.
Best wishes to the Metro Transit police and staff, and
Best Wishes to the Metro PD, out there saving our now-frying bacon.
This may surprise you to hear: a lot of those wagon trains to the West lost their children. Not just to attacks, accidents, cholera, or smallpox. They left their children behind, or, the buckboard bounced a child out and nobody noticed. They had the prairie version of road hypnotism. Or driving oxen under the influence. Or exhaustion and anxiety. -- Now that you know about my store's no-babysitting policy . . . . previous post . . .
A clerk in the children's department came to find me one evening. "I've got this kid who's been reading for hours," she told me. "Nobody comes to check on him."
"Is he causing trouble?" I ask. "No no, he's just read a whole bunch of books," she said. "I've been watching him and sometimes he goes outside. Then he comes back in to read another book." She was totally worried. "He was here at three when I got here."
It's now nine-thirty p.m.
We go into the children's department. The clerk was really good. She'd already learned his name and so she introduced me. Rather than stand up over him, I sat down at the kid's table. He's about ten years old, a serious boy.
"So, Travis, do you know where your parents are?" He shrugs. "No." "Okay. What have you had to eat today?" He shrugs again. He's not moving from the chair, I can see that. I can see he's pretty much holding onto books and his composure, and that's a lot. I turn to the clerk. "Get a chicken sandwich from the cafe and tell them I'll stop by there later." We don't have a lot of nutritious stuff. "What do you want to drink?" A soda. Okay. She leaves and I turn back to Travis.
"Tell me about it." He tells me, not in so many words, but his parents are on the lam from Florida. The whole car of family were stopped in our parking lot to sleep for awhile. Travis woke up, he went into the store because he wanted to read and not disturb anyone asleep. They took off without him. "But I think they'll be back," he says. I nod. "When did you notice they had left?" He doesn't want to say. Early afternoon. Oh shit, they're not coming back.
I think about taking him home, brief fantasy, but no. All I can give him is the level.
"Travis, the store closes at eleven. There's no place for you to go after that if they don't make it back by then." I clear my throat. "I'm going to call the police. That way, your parents will be able to find you if they come back."
Neither of us say the police are the last people his parents want to talk to.
The clerk returns with the food. She agrees to watch over him a little more. My department head on duty is good, she's already got the crew rocking and rolling on clean-up. I go call the police. I pay for the sandwich. The entire cafe staff is now worried about this boy. They want to do something, do more. I kill their brief fantasy just as I squashed mine.
The police come: one male, one female. They get a description of the car, maybe even a license plate, names, circumstances. They tell Travis he has to go to juvie now. The clerk comes to get me. They need me to unlock the door.
He's leaving. I'm lost somehow. I say, "Good luck, Travis." He doesn't know how to take it, any better than I knew how to offer it. The police woman says, "Say thank you." She made it right for me. Travis says, "Thank you," right before he heads to his fate. I lock up behind them.
