Welcome, peaceables! Since hope is not a plan, let’s continue to plan for what is likely to happen when whoever is elected President of the United States on November 5, 2024.
Our previous Disaster Plan scenarios1 listed the police as protection from violent individuals and crowds. This essay will explore why we cannot depend on them to protect us.
As planned, we sent letters to the police expressing our concerns about the increasing violence and inquiring about the police response. We sent the letters to the village police department, the county sheriff’s department, the state police, and the FBI. We received anodyne, boilerplate responses from the village police chief and the county deputy sheriff.2 As of this writing, we have not received responses from the state police and FBI.
The concept of the “thin blue line” symbolizes the role of the police in keeping order and forestalling chaos in a civilized society. While we recognize and honor this function of the police, it must be said that the police are not the only societal force responsible for keeping order. We, the citizens, bear the bulk of the primary responsibility in maintaining order in society daily. We need and license the police to use deadly force on our behalf after all other options have been exhausted to protect us from criminals who would otherwise damage our property, or injure or kill us.
We believe police departments are staffed by individuals who want to protect and serve the public. The notion of “officer friendly” in the neighborhood is vital to a good life in a free country. The annual event, National Night Out, has become a popular, enjoyable way for citizens to interact positively with their local police force and have fun together. Community service officers reach out to meet citizens where they are in schools, libraries, places of business, and other locales in the community.
On the national scene, we recognize and honor the service of the good officers of the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police of Washington, DC, who, on January 6, 2021, worked against overwhelming numbers of insurrectionists to protect the nation’s Capitol Building, the members of Congress, and other congressional staffers.
We also recognize that police departments attract more than their share of individuals who have sadistic and violent tendencies. These “bad apples” can spoil whole departments. We live in Illinois, where there was recently news of what appears to be the unlawful and perhaps bigoted killing of a Black woman, Sonya Massey, by a police officer who escaped discipline in the past. We Illinoisans will never forget the sad case of police officer Joseph Gliniewicz, who, though he deceptively portrayed himself as a hero and mentor, had a long history of stealing and who tried to make his suicide look like a murder. Perhaps the most egregious bad apple is Derek Chauvin, who is currently serving his sentence for the murder of George Floyd.
The crisis of confidence in the police stems from the violent sadists in their number but also from the natural human tendency to avoid conflict. Even though we entrust the police to use deadly force to protect us, the officers themselves need to undergo training, as soldiers need to do, to override the natural human resistance against killing another human being. It has become evident that the training in how and when to use deadly force is inadequate and even counterproductive, leading to an intensification of sadism and cruelty in officers. Added to this is the doctrine of qualified immunity, which further protects the worst and most dangerous officers.
More fundamentally, the police force has weak hiring procedures that fail to filter out sadistic job applicants and to attract the most highly qualified in terms of legal knowledge, communication skills, and good character. Upgrading the hiring process is the first, crucial step to reforming the police.
The presence of cruel officers who elude discipline and whose misconduct is covered up, weak hiring practices, and inadequate training combine to create a “perfect storm” of failures. The recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump comes readily to mind. The tragedy of the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has become a textbook case to study how law enforcement can fail to protect even the most innocent among us, whether from confusion or timidity.3
We are far beyond the quaint notion of Andy Griffith, the Sheriff Without a Gun, perhaps the archetype of “officer friendly.” Despite the outreach from police departments, we have little confidence that the police will protect us when the chips are down. The “thin blue line” is paper thin and will tear under the least pressure. We citizens must take action ourselves. Our plan of action starts with avoiding crowds.4 If confronted by armed mobs, practice nonviolent passive resistance. If the police themselves are the armed group, nonviolent civil disobedience. We gather strength in numbers. Nonviolent passive resistance works by shining a brilliant light on injustice and shaming the perpetrators in the public eye. Perhaps this is the final way to get the police to protect us, to shame them into doing so.
PAX Εἰρήνη 平安 शान्ति
Postscript: Stay tuned for an essay about the future of the police as a meditation on the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still.
The village police chief:
While we never know what may happen in the future, I can assure you the Department trains for critical incidents on a regular basis.
The county sheriff:
We do everything we can to ensure [the county’s] safety. We work very closely with our municipal police partners to provide support and assistance when they are in need of it. We also have a number of programs to proactively address gang, drug, and illegal firearm possession-related issues, as well as a mental health response team.
This article builds to the inevitable conclusion, given that Reason is a libertarian magazine, that citizens should arm themselves instead of relying on the police for protection. Pacific Gravity does not endorse this conclusion.
Another retrospective cautionary tale from Illinois: the Highland Park parade shooting.
Prospectively, the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Let’s check in on August 25th to get the report on whatever violence resulted from protestors and bad actors attracted to the event.
Addendum
9/1/2024
“FBI informant’s book predicts far-right violence: ‘we should be afraid’”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/aug/25/joe-moore-white-robes-broken-bandages-kkk
This is an important message. How the police react to the demonstrations will determine what happens.
Thick