LAW &
ORDER!!!
5:04 AM · Aug 30, 2020
As you watch confrontations of left
and right, as conflicts between “always Trumpers” and protesters against racial
injustice – often accompanied by violent and even fatal confrontations – rage
across the land, the new GOP rallying cry of “law and order” generates two big
questions: which law and whose order? RNC Virtual Convention: Pounded
by one speaker after another, the mainstay of Donald Trump’s acceptance speech,
“law and order” meant repressing urban protests against racial injustice across
the country. All on the property of “all Americans” – the White House lawn –
that legally was never allowed to be used for purely political campaigning…
used here exclusively for political campaigning.
Trump-world: Angry and well-armed “fine
people” who assemble to confront protesters addressing a glaring racial divide
are patriotic Americans. The protesters against racial injustice are not. While
left and right generally agree that those engaged looting, vandalism and arson are
criminals, the right has conflated all such racial inequality protests as acts
of radical leftist criminals that need to be stopped, by force if necessary.
Those who believe in deep state
conspiracy theories, who simply deny statistics and scientific facts about the
pandemic and those who take up arms against those opposing Trump’s politics are
true Americans. Those trying to correct America’s shortcomings, as our
Constitution was created to support, are part of a great leftist conspiracy,
led by Godless radical Joe Biden, aimed at tearing down America. Trump
flaunts/defies the law, more than any president in American history, provokes
violence and thrives on polarizing, divide-and-conquer, politics.
Self-admittedly, Trump is not President for all Americans… just to those who
support his agenda.
On August 19th, President
Donald Trump went so far as to give admiring support to believers in the
QAnon conspiracy theory, which maintains that the president is secretly
fighting to save the world from an elite satanic pedophile network, calling
them ‘people that love our country. On August 26th, Fox News host
and unabashed Trump mega-ally, Tucker Carlson, lent his support to Kyle
Rittenhouse, a teenager who killed two Wisconsin Black Lives Matter protesters
and maimed another. Carlson suggested Rittenhouse felt he “had to maintain
order when no one else would.” Right wing Trumpers added another shooting death
to their well-notched holsters on August 29th… another Portland
protester killed.
There must be a parallel America with
a different constitution and a different set of statutes than those contained
in the US Constitution and the United States Code that I studied in law school.
I see lots of laws and constitutional prohibitions against what Donald Trump
advocates and not so many laws and constitutional enablements in support of
autocratic executive orders, misuse of public trust properties, deploying US
forces in contravention of clear legal mandates to the contrary and what many
describe as “inciting” violence. Trump has achieved a level of scofflaw we’ve
never seen in an American president. As
Shakespeare admonished: “The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.” Say the
words and do the opposite. The Trump legacy.
I’m watching police departments and
their all-powerful unions defying public oversight, denying access to body cam
footage and relevant internal reports, dealing in internal reports of faked
evidence and “cop-gang-vigilantes” waging an extralegal wars against those it
deems probable criminals, excusing over-reaction in arrests as necessity,
and implementing law enforcement dressed
in military fatigues, rolling in with armored personnel carriers and deploying
urban warfare military tactics. I see excuses, denials and misinformation. I
understand why some may believe that the police should be defunded and perhaps
disbanded, although I passionately disagree with those sentiments. We need to
fix the problem, for sure, not destroy this necessity.
We need police. They need
to be relieved of the “there’s nobody else doing it” obligation to solve social
problems, from mental illness, drug addiction, homelessness, and most forms of
domestic disputes. They can’t be adjuncts to our military. They are civilians,
uniforms notwithstanding! They are the most direct public servants that most
Americans will ever see. They need our respect and support… but they
also need to earn that public respect and support. Most of all we have
the dual crisis of defining what social values police are obligated to “protect
and serve” and how they must earn and maintain the universal public trust that
is currently anything but consistent.
Perhaps nothing has exposed police
failings and exacerbated the erosion of public trust like ubiquitous cell phone
videos. Spin and denial are facing the beginning of an end. If there is to be
trust, truth and transparency must prevail. But police are gravitating towards
Trump extremism, one that just does not question police excess as a matter of
policy as their unions provide blind support in of what many of us would
describe as undeniable on-camera brutality. In the end, technology will make
that resistance impossible. And the number of voters who are no longer
convinced of police justification is growing fast. Still police departments and
police unions are spending serious money to spin what our own eyes see
and our ears hear into a false exculpatory narratives.
“As cellphone videos increasingly
draw people to the streets to protest law enforcement, police public
information officers are under more scrutiny, with some critics saying their
reports protect the image of officers and taint people targeted by police. In
the wake of protests over the killing of George Floyd, there are growing
questions over whether these units are serving the public with unbiased facts
or are getting in the way of the truth.
“‘We’re spending good money to be
lied to,’ said Reuben Jones, a criminal-justice reform advocate and executive
director of Frontline Dads, a group supporting formerly incarcerated people in
Philadelphia. ‘Do the police need their own communications teams simply to
craft a narrative that best serves their interests?’
“Inaccurate police accounts are
sometimes due to the information fog of a fast-moving event. But critics say
police press units nearly always put forth a story line that makes officers’
actions appear justified. And when police spokespeople publicize the prior
criminal history of people killed by law enforcement or call them ‘gang
members,’ it amounts to an insidious form of police abuse, they say.
“Recent polling shows there is
growing support for more extensive, independent oversight of police behavior.
Some say this should extend to press shops, which should focus less on
advancing a narrative and more on relaying facts without spin. That includes
the timely release of footage from body cameras, details about officers who
discharge their weapons and other information requested by community members —
even if it doesn’t necessarily make the department look good.
“Law enforcement agencies argue that
their public affairs teams are essential to getting out vital information
quickly and defend the tactics and size of the units. The Los Angeles County
Sheriff’s Department had 42 people in its information bureau as of last month,
at an annual cost of about $4.8 million. The strategic communications director
at the time of Robertson’s killing earned $200,000 a year; the bureau’s captain
last year made $218,000. The Los Angeles Police Department spends about $3.29
million a year for 25 people in similar units, as of last month…
“The media play a significant role in
amplifying statements by police and allowing law enforcement sources to be the
primary — and sometimes the only — voices in a story. And even as news
organizations are trying to revamp their coverage of police, cuts in the
industry mean there are fewer journalists to respond to scenes and develop
diverse sources, at a time when there is more pressure to provide instant news.
“Many police officers feel
misrepresented in the media. But unlike victims of police shootings, law
enforcers have public funding at their disposal to generate favorable
narratives about themselves. Sometimes that means bolstering the public affairs
staff with outside communication firms, at considerable cost.” Maya Lau writing
for the Los Angeles Times, August 30th. The story is pretty much the
same across the country. Not to mention the billions of dollars spent every
year in “settlements” paid out by state and local governments to victims of
police excess. It’s time to open the doors and stop wasting taxpayer dollars to
prevent taxpayers from knowing the truth.
I’m
Peter Dekom, and we either fix the system or the system will fix us.
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