Last year a man who owned a store in Alabama was being burgled. He called the police and they beat him — broke his jaw — and let the burglar go. It will sadly not surprise you that the store owner was black and the burglar was white.
A white woman asked in a press conference recently “if we disband the police who will we call when someone is breaking into our house?”
That is a very, very good question. Who do you call when you can’t call the police?
What’s wrong with the police?
Racism is fascism and fascism is never satisfied. It has no end. Blacks yesterday, Mexicans today, Chinese tomorrow.
Jim Crow, Build that Wall, a new Asian Exclusion Act? Fascism doesn’t need swastikas or Confederate flags. Hate is hate. It feeds on a sick brew of fear, resentment, victimhood, and shame.
Fascists and sadists flock to the police like pedophiles to churches and for exactly the same reason: A steady supply of victims.
I’m not saying that police departments and churches are rife with malefactors.
I’m saying the malefactors are attracted to the open fields of possible victims. They infiltrate. They smile and lie and hide their agenda.
Churches these days are quietly vigilant for predators to keep their children safe.
Remember the Catholic Church pedophile scandal of, well, pick a year? For decades they dealt with their kid fiddler problem by using the Catholic Method — they shielded them, hid them, lied about them, and protected them.
The Catholic Method
Many modern police departments — in fact, I think all of them to a greater or lesser extent — use the Catholic Method for dealing with the predators in their midst. They carefully protect the predator and ignore or silence the victims.
Nearly all denominations of nearly all churches have figured out that the Catholic Method always fails. Always.
If you want any kind of long-term success you must expose predators and turn them over to the proper authorities. Predators don’t want anything but open access to victims. Everything else is secondary to them. If that is also secondary to your embarrassment or sense of fellow feeling, then you have violated your oath.
Police departments need to learn from the failure of the Catholic Method. I know a lot of churches and police departments have learned from that failure and fire anyone who betrays their trust.
Who’s the traitor?
Derek Chauvin betrayed the trust of his fellow officers. He and his three enablers betrayed the police.
A moment before the incident, the crime, these four men were the police. The moment they killed George Floyd they became criminals. They were murderers so depraved they did it knowing they were being recorded. Murderers, so smug they thought they were going to skate away with no consequences.
If a police officer observes an act of attempted murder and doesn’t intervene or arrest the perpetrator, then that officer is not fit to be an officer of the law. The police are law enforcement. If they can’t or won’t enforce the law then they need to go be Pilates instructors. Because a civil society needs law enforcement. We all need to be able to call 911 and actually get help. Every single one of us.
It’s all about access to victims
My medium-ish town has about 200 officers give or take. If 10% are only interested in opportunities to hurt people with impunity that’s 20 officers. This town isn’t that big. Twenty would be catastrophic — we aren’t Chicago, for crying out loud.
But let’s say it’s 1%. That’s two. Quite a few of the other 198 officers have met these two guys. They know who those guys are. They’ve seen the bigoted bumper stickers on their trucks and have laughed along with their violent and concerning stories and jokes. Supervisors know how many civil rights complaints are normal and which officers get excessive complaints. Supervisors are also generally aware of who has ties to white supremacist organizations.
The police aren’t children. They know racists, sadists, and thugs when they see them.
They must be scrubbed from police departments everywhere in the nation.
Don’t use the Catholic Method
Advice to police departments: Before those two hypothetical sadists murder someone in plain view of 7 billion people perhaps you should shy away from the Catholic Method. Have a blue wall, but make sure it excludes people who are going to make your department famous on YouTube.