"Don't Judge the Police Using 20/20 Hindsight" or: Forget Rational Thought Regarding Public Safety

The title of this post must be read with an understanding of what I'm talking about. In most mostly-white communities, the police are the people we depend on to help us create a sense of public safety. ('Public safety' actually existing and being a thing is its own debate, which I imagine I'll turn to at some point in the near-ish future.) They help find stolen items, solve violent crimes when they can, and generally can be seen and interacted with as officials that represent state-sponsored control. Or more generally, law enforcement officers (LEOs). I have known many LEOs through my friends who chose that career path, through dealing with police personally, through a whole bunch of second hand accounts, through my life as a sociologist and criminologist, and now through the lens of a law school grad. DISCLAIMER: for the most part, I personally believe that most LEOs are good people, and want to be good people, and want to be forces for good. This, I believe, is generally indisputable. That there are 'bad apples' or people who aren't actually good people at their core that also join police forces is also pretty indisputable. But there are problems with simplifying the issue down to the previous three sentences.

First, because those three sentences are generally indisputable, it does us little to no good to have that conversation. They are a given. Like gravity. Or that the earth is a spherical planetoid. Or that #mentoo is stupid, and men don't need to interject and include ourselves in women's fights for equity so that we can be included in the 'victim' column. (Women were standing up for male victims of sexual and interpersonal violence before it was cool.) Y'know, obvious shit.

Second, the 'good people' and 'bad people' issue is wholly unnecessary if we're talking about a systemic problem. Systemic problems are not started by just having 'bad people' around doing their 'bad people' stuff. It's a ridiculous argument to make that any police officer who does something shitty is just a 'bad person' and needn't be taken as a representation of a systemic problem. That's also an old argument that just...doesn't work anymore.

Third, if what people were really concerned about (as they addressed the issue of police violence in the US) were 'bad people' becoming and working as police officers, this conversation would be about HR practices and hiring metrics. This conversation is not about that. Humans, please.

The issue of unnecessary, unwarranted, and ultimately unjustifiable violence by LEOs is a systemic discussion. It is one that must start at the beginning (the first 'police' departments grew out of the tyrannically racist slave patrols) and continue through today (police departments as one arm of a criminal justice system that implicitly and explicitly negatively affects our larger society, but much more acutely communities that aren't mostly wypipo). The part of that discussion that no one wants to have is the one where juries of normal people continue to absolve LEOs of such unjustifiable violence. This absolution comes through our Supreme Court holding that the only requirement for the justification of homicide by LEOs is being afraid. On top of that, when juries are counted on to make these distinctions, they are only allowed to place themselves in the defendant officer's shoes within the moment of the violence. No 20/20 hindsight, no reasonable and rational look at whether the violence (often homicide) was reasonable and rational within our societal context. THIS IS A HUGE FU**ING PROBLEM.

First, if we are making the case that LEOs are better people than your average US citizen (as the case has been made during all this police officer hero worship), and we demand that these people receive extensive training about how to do the job well, how can the justification for homicide be, "I was afraid for my life." That is ludicrous. Simply, utterly, ludicrous. I'll even give you that LEOs are generally not better people than the rest of us, but they certainly do get trained to behave better. Even then, being afraid as a highly trained officer of the law cannot be enough to excuse homicide. It just cannot. LEOs ARE PAID TO BE AFRAID AND HANDLE IT BETTER THAN THE REST OF US. Popping off five shots into some guy because you can't handle the stress simply shouldn't cut it anymore. Your job is to deal with the stress the rest of us don't, and shouldn't, need to. The real absolution should only come after this additional jury instruction:

As a law enforcement officer trained in emergency management and subject de-escalation and control techniques, is it reasonable for this officer to have killed this person in this situation?

Even this would probably produce some questionable outcomes, but we sure do think police are mighty fine, and if they happen to kill some folks, well, they were probably askin' for it. But to instruct a jury, or anyone else for that matter, to drop rational thought when glaring back at a tragedy to determine whether violence was justifiable; it's idiotic. Humans, please. LEOs in general need to be held to a standard that demands they behave better than early homo-erectus. See a tiger running at you? Being scared is a fine reason to kill that tiger. It's a fu**in' tiger! But a person who's lying on the ground handcuffed or walking down the street while not being a white person? LEOs shouldn't get to fall back on fear as an excuse. Their job is to be better than we would. Their job is to overcome their base instincts, like we sometimes can't. Celebrate LEOs for saving people in burning buildings? Absolutely. And if those LEOs can suppress their base instincts to run into a burning building, they can suppress their base instincts in killing someone out of fear. If we as a society continue to allow LEOs to kill us because they were afraid for their safety while trained to overcome that fear and operate rationally in emergencies, 'public safety' is a joke. ('Public safety' already is a joke in many places where the majority of humans aren't white folks. This is a fact. And the police shouldn't be part of this problem.) This could be different. But it won't be different until our standards line up with our expectations, and our legal system brings accountability to our streets.

Back to Life

I felt like writing a little, but I wasn't quite sure what to write about. There are multiple constitutional crises happening right now in the US, and it's bad. Very bad. SAD! But there are already many peoples who have that covered. Our Supreme Court has decided a number of impactful and seriously important cases over the past couple terms. Again, other folks have that covered. So how about this: what's up with me, and why does it matter?

I recently graduated from JFK University College of Law. That's right, y'all, I earned a JD. This was after I spent three years in Hawaii working on PhD level course work, teaching 5-6 sociology/criminology courses per semester, and learning a whole helluva lot about racism and whiteness, gender and all it's effects and implications, and the relationships both implicit and explicit within our societal and cultural frameworks. (I also pushed a couple 'official' publications out during, so not a total loss of time and effort professionally.) Prior, I earned an MA at Cal State Fullerton, after earning a BA at Cal State San Bernardino. This has been documented on this blog before, but hey, a little round up can't hurt.

During my legal education, I felt like I was in the right place at the right time, specifically in terms of what I was learning and how I was learning it. I loved learning the law, as much as it contributed to a sense of isolation and some personal...hiccups. JFK is a CalBar school; it is not accredited by the American Bar Association, which carries certain implications. (1) I cannot practice law outside the state of California for five years after I am certified in this state, unless I go through a decent amount of bureaucratic wrangling; (2) many folks in the legal community might view my JD as less than impressive (seriously, it's law school, and it wrecked me, and I fucking kicked ass); and (3) I am now more than $400k in student debt. Yep. 400,000 ugly electronic dollars, and some odd cents or other. This is the culmination of my total educational debt, worth three degrees and three years of out-of-state tuition in a very pretty, but very expensive US-controlled (read: colonized) island in the Pacific. So there's that coming. The student loan payments. Much of it is federal, which is slightly less shit-tastic, but some of it is private, and they don't give a shit about my income. They want their damned money back with hella interest.

Okay, section two, or why this matters at all to anyone else: law school debt and post-grad employment has been discussed ad nauseam over at Above the Law. They are a fun and pretty solid journalistic outlet for legal news, gossip re: the legal world, and some fun stuff that ties in to the legal profession in general. It became required reading after starting law school, and I still tune in pretty often. But here's the deal: a legal education costs a great deal of money, no matter where you acquire it. It is simply expensive to get almost any education, especially at the graduate level. Before choosing to go to law school, one needs to be certain they WANT TO ACTUALLY GO TO LAW SCHOOL, or that one has the time and money to just give it a go. This is a personal decision, and no matter how much my student loan payments hurt, it was right for me. I have no regrets on that front. But going to law school means that you will be making a conscious choice to have far less of a life than you would have been used to. You WILL NOT be able to retain certain niceties and comforts to which you have become accustomed. You will have to focus, non-stop, on learning how the third article of our constitution works, both in theory and in practice, and that is simply a monumental task. Just to be clear, if that's what you want (to intimately learn the law, and say goodbye to seeing most of your friends and family in any regular way for three to four years) I've got your back. But know that it can feel like a shitshow for no apparent reason, and feeling haggard and worn out for years at a time is kinda the norm.

A further caution to every person who comes across this blog, regards the reality of mental health during graduate education (hell, even undergrad education can really stick it to someone). Throughout all of my graduate programs, I dipped in and out of homelessness, struggled mightily with money, still managed to be relatively 'successful,' and during all this I did my absolute best not to let it show. At all. This may have been a mistake. I reached out for real help only occasionally at most. We don't talk about how to ask for help, so we sort of have to learn that skill on our own. But it can be very important, and it can literally save lives. If you choose to work toward graduate level degrees, if you're an undergrad, if you're a person at all, ask for help from someone you trust when you feel like you might need to. It's okay. Every person needs, and receives, help in some way at some point. It does not make you weak; asking for help proves the depth of your strength, in fighting against the internalized fears and the sense of failure. You are more than an isolated case of nerves; you are a person with other people in your life who care about you.

I'm now working as a graduate advisor supporting the graduate students in the Economics department at UC Berkeley. It's temporary for now, as I needed a new gig and they needed somone competent help to fill the spot for a bit. But it's really a joy to work with grad students (and undergrads occasionally) and help the internationally recognized program keep flourishing. I'm not sure what will happen in the coming months and year, and I'm taking the bar exam in February (wish me luck and stuff), but I'm going to enjoy every moment I can. I can breathe, and studying for the bar, while definitely time-consuming, is fun again. I needed a break, and I took one by choosing to put off the bar exam until the next round post-graduation. So off we go, on this new adventure. We'll see how things go from here.

I guess that's my entrance back into the blogosphere. Looking forward to it, and hopefully more comments than I used to have. I see those clicks, y'all, I know you're reading. Although, I guess that's enough.