Jun 11, 2008 | 6:21 PM
Category:
Political
Police work is a stressful, dangerous profession that, more than almost any other, can have a transforming effect, changing a young idealist into a sullen cynic or worse. They lose belief in human innocence and goodness. All they are ever exposed to is the worst of human nature. They become psychologically brutalized. Studies have found that police suffer disproportionately from such stress-related problems as alcoholism, divorce and ulcers.
Police work is intrinsically reactive. A police officer is never called when things are going well. They are only called when there is a problem-usually a critical one. It is only natural that police receive the criticism that they do. After all, any occupation charged with the responsibility of bringing order out of chaos or enforcing the rules are going to be controversial positions.
An analogy can be drawn between police and their municipal cousins firefighters, who receive much less criticism and are far less controversial.
Like police, firefighters are only called when there is a problem. Like police, firefighters restore order. Like police, firefighters have to take immediate action. The difference between what police do and what firefighters do is the nature of the circumstances. The object of the actions of firefighters is a fire, whereas the object of the actions of police is a human being. When human beings are involved, the probable outcomes of a given predicament increase geometrically.
Police officers have only a set of narrowly defined objectives- and a body of law that is continually subject to revision and interpretation- to guide them. Given the urgency of the plight in which police usually find themselves, it is a wonder that the police are able to perform their duties with as little controversy as they do. There is no question that many time police are forced act intuitively. Yet, this is not the characterization of police that is rendered to the public. Police work is rarely presented to the public in a positive light. The mainstream liberal media seem to think that police work is not entertaining unless it is in a quandary.
The thousands of acts each day that police officers perform demonstrate the mainstream media, never mentions their compassion, their competence, and their fidelity. However, let a police officer make an error then a torrent of invective is let loose. Special interest groups that profit from police controversies begin campaigns demonizing police. their propaganda campaign is used to discredit the police thereby assisting in the settlement of substantial lawsuits.
Police work is thought by many to be the profession most likely to harbor racists. Police officers are unblushingly blue-collar, handle guns, ride motorcycles, and often must do violence to people for a living.
Traditionally the policeman's workplace has seldom had the sensitizing presence of women to restrain any excesses.
Many people both black and white assume that the criminal justice system is completely racist.
One black writer says "for many, many blacks there is no system, there is no justice, and it's all criminal." A black professor at Yale deliberately rights of the criminal processing system because he thinks it for blacks it meets out process but not justice another black author says simply and colorfully "police have one trigger finger for whites and another for blacks."
Some people write almost as if the justice system deliberately keeps a certain proportion of blacks behind bars, whether or not they commit crimes: "despite constitutional safeguards police and prosecutors and judges still find it relatively easy to ensure that one point out of every five black man will spend some part of his life behind bars."
During a five-year period in New York researchers found that 60.2% of the people police shot at were black, even though blacks were only 20.5% of the population. Although whites were 64.1% of the population, police shot at them only 17.5% of the time. Blacks were more than 10 times more likely as whites to be shot at by police. This sure sounds like a case of itchy trigger finger for blacks by police.
However, during the same five-year period, 62.4% of the arrests for violent crime or of blacks and only 20.5% were of whites. Thus, shootings by race were proportionate to arrests for violent crime.
Also, it is significant to note how many pf these persons whom the police shot at were armed.
Only 7.8% of the blacks were unarmed, were 15.5% of the whites were unarmed. Blacks were carrying a firearm 60.5% of the time, but only 34.4% of the whites were.
Whites who were also unarmed or just carrying a stick or knife were much more likely to be shot at by police than blacks were.
Finally, more than half of the men of all races who had gunfights with the police were under 24 years old.
The median age of black males was 23.1 years in the median age of white males was 33.3 years.
That is to say the larger number of blacks were in the age group to get in trouble with the law, and this reason alone would explain part of their over representation in crime figures. In conclusion the authors of the report found no evidence that police shot at blacks just because they were black.
Nationwide 60% of the people killed by police or black, even though blacks are only 12% of the population. Is this because the police are racist?
Maybe not. Nationwide, blacks account for 58% of all arrests for weapons violations, 64% of all arrests for violent crimes, and 71% of all robbery arrests. What is less well known is that blacks are responsible for 73% of justified, self-defense killings by civilians, and the overwhelming majority of the people they kill are other blacks.
Are the police then gunning for blacks, or they simply shooting the people who are the most dangerous? Are they racist or are they just doing their jobs?
Believers in racism by cops insist the blacks were arrested more often than whites not because blacks commit more crimes but because racist police deliberately arrest them more often. However, there is a reliable way to test this theory. When crimes such as rape, mugging, or assault, victim usually gets a good look at the criminal to see what race he is. People report these crimes to the police because they want the perpetrator arrested.
They're not going to say the man was black when he was actually white.
Therefore, if the system was hopelessly racist, there would be more reports of white crimes and arrests of white criminals. This is not the case. The ones who get away just as likely to be black as the ones were caught.
There is another way to check for police racism. Whether or not the police have the leeway to make "racist" arrests depends on the type of crime.
With violent crime, the police usually make arrests based on what they're told by victims and witnesses. If everybody tells them a white man did it, they are not going to get away with arresting a black man no matter how much would they might want to. Furthermore, there is a great deal of pressure on police to catch violent criminals. They cannot just walk away when people are raped or maimed.
Police have much more leeway to be racist in the case of nonviolent crimes, such as burglary. Often there are no witnesses, so if the police wanted to indulge a racist taste for arresting blacks, this would be their opportunity.
In fact, blacks are most strongly overrepresented in precisely the crimes of violence in which the police have the least leeway for racist arrests. In the case of property crimes with no witnesses, where police leeway to make "racist" arrests is greater, blacks are a good deal less overrepresented in arrest statistics.
You might ask "what about the well-publicized case of the shooting of Sean Bell in New York?" Here is what we know. Club Kalua is a topless bar in Jamaica, Queens — a hotbed of narcotics, prostitution, gun sales and under-age drinking. It was the early morning of Nov. 28, that time of night when police officers know that “sporting life” people are out and about.
At the club, an undercover detective overheard that Joseph Guzman, a member of Sean Bell’s party, had a gun and was about to use it. Nothing new for Mr. Guzman; he’d been convicted in an armed robbery during which the victim was shot at.
In the street, the undercover officer walked over to where Mr. Guzman, Mr. Bell and two others sat in Mr. Bell’s car. The officer was wearing his shield on a chain around his neck. He identified himself, saying, “Let me see your
hands.”
Using the car as a 3,000-pound weapon, Mr. Bell hit the accelerator, clipped the undercover officer and then, according to witnesses, twice tried to run the officer down. Then the car slammed into an unmarked police van. At some point, the officer fired his weapon. The other officers, believing they were under attack, also fired their guns, eventually unloading 50 rounds and killing Mr. Bell.
You had to be there, but ask yourself, what would you have done? Certainly there were mistakes made, terrible life-threatening mistakes. But it was the occupants of that car who made them.
Of course, this makes little difference to those like Al Sharpton who have made careers out of demonizing the police.
Whenever something like this happens, the professional police haters will hold their rallies at Police Headquarters, people will come with signs comparing the department to the Ku Klux Klan. The signs are sometimes clever but always mean-spirited and reflecting a calculated rage; any thinking person knows that they are self-serving nonsense.
There is every reason for white policeman consciously to avoid getting into confrontations with blacks. Why should they risk the public outcry? If they shoot or be a black they must face daunting criticism from the press, the mayor, the police chief, and civil rights organizations.
In America today, only foolish policeman would deliberately mistreat blacks. In fact, even when white policeman's use is justified, self protective violence against blacks, their actions are commonly scrutinized for bias. A case in point was in Toronto or a white police officer shot a black man who was swinging a knife.
The black community protested, and the officer was indicted for manslaughter. A group called the Black Action Defense Committee said that blacks might have to start arming themselves to avoid being "murdered" by the police. The police were so outraged that they demonstrated publicly against the indictment. The president of the police union said if things continue this way crime would increase because the police would be reluctant to make any arrests of black people.
If the police and courts are locking a blacks because of prejudice, many people would expect to see the most grievous effects of this in the South.
It would make sense that a blacks relative chances of being in jail would be worse were racism is thought to be worse. However, none of the states in which a black has the best chance of being in jail is in the South. In Minnesota, a black is 23 times more likely to be in jail than a white; in Iowa, 21 times; and in Wisconsin 19 times. By region, the Northeast jail's blacks at 15 times the rate it jail's whites, the South at 5 1/2 times. Once again, the racism that is supposed to explain so much does not appear to explain anything at all.
The most recent study of Driving While Black (DWB) reveals the phenomenon is largely a myth. It has been "proven" to be a routine practice by law enforcement personnel (LEP). The accounts in the mainstream media indicate there is a "tremendous" amount of evidence of this practice, but it just isn't so.This is the crux of the matter: Despite the fact that the available data do not bear out the theory of a racist police force and only inadequate data are available, the mainstream media and academicians report Driving While Black as fact.
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Those who have had a negative interaction with the police or have had a disappointment with the justice system are most likely to have a consistently negative attitude toward the police and the Justice system.
Too often, too many of us see into things what we want to see, read into things what we want to read, and in the end, believe what we want to believe.
It’s a very human foible.
Someone once said that a society that makes unwarranted war with its police had better make friends with its criminals.
If you don't like the cops, next time you're in trouble, maybe you should call Al Sharpton.
