See beyond “the police” for change…

Posted on July 6, 2016 by donofalltrades

It is absolutely the worst kept secret that police officers are our own worst enemies.

For whatever the reasons are, we not only look a gift horse in the mouth, but we question it, frisk it, shake it down, and run it for warrants just in case.

Damn.

Another black man is dead, and what I’ve been reading all day is that he was killed at the hands of “the police.” This time, it happened in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It seems we can’t take two or three baby steps forward with rebuilding public trust before we take a giant, grown man step backwards.

All I’ve seen all day online line is that we, “the police,” are awful.

“The police” are racist.

“The police” are blood thirsty.

“The police” are violent.

“The police” are vengeful.

“The police” are acting as judge, jury and executioner on the streets of America.

“The police” killed this unarmed, well, I guess armed man, but not armed in the sense that he was a threat, no. He just had a firearm in his pocket while he sold music illegally at 12:45 in the morning.

Killed for selling music? That seems harsh.

Wasn’t there a call that this man had threatened another man with a gun? Whether that’s true or not, wasn’t that how the call came out? Is that what responding officers heard?

I’m not making apologies for the officers involved in this shooting. I’m not saying they’re right by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m also not going to sit idly by and let people, most of whom have never in their lives answered a 12:45 AM radio call for a man with a gun, denigrate the reputation of “the police” without being taken to task for their overly broad assertions.

You see, as most of my regular readers know, I am who you are talking about.

I am “the police.”

On Wednesday morning at 12:45 AM Baton rouge time, however, I was sitting on my couch in Missouri, hundreds of miles away, drinking chocolate milk with my dog while deciding whether or not to write a blog post or just go to bed. I was completely oblivious to this shooting.

I’d just gotten home from working secondary at the Cardinal’s baseball game and must have missed the meeting where it was agreed that we, “the police,” were to be in Baton Rouge to kill another black man.

I clearly suck at being “the police,” because I’ve missed every other such meeting and have killed or criminally assaulted exactly zero other black guys in my nearly eighteen years of urban policing.

I was going to write a blog post about the bloody holiday weekend here in my fair city. Six or seven people were killed over the course of about twenty-four hours, none by “the police,” but now I see that there is more interest and outrage locally at this killing hundreds of miles away than there is about any of these or the dozens of other non-police related killings in St. Louis this year.

“The police” are working in trying times, for many reasons, some of which are admittedly our own fault.

Below are still shots from video provided by our police department to the media from just one of the killings in St. Louis on July 4th.

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This is one of multiple suspects, in the middle of the day – a holiday mind you, who is literally hunting down his victims in the middle of an urban neighborhood with an assault rifle.

He looks very carefree and confident.

He looks to me to also be wearing a bullet resistant vest.

People don’t wear bullet resistent vests unless they’re expecting to be shot at. I have to wear one when I go to work, because I have to expect that I can be shot at whenever I’m on duty.

The man in this picture could have very easily been wearing the vest because he also expected to be shot during the course of his work. Perhaps he considered that he would have an encounter with the police during his attempt to murder his victims. Maybe that was even his hope.

Fortunately for him, and potentially any police officer who may have crossed his path, it didn’t happen, probably because many of the would be police officers in this neighborhood were working a 4th of July detail on their days off.

The funny thing is, or sad thing maybe, depending on your point of view, is that had he been stopped by police prior to murdering anybody, this man would have been in more trouble had he had bottle rockets in his possession, than he would have been for carrying around this firearm in plain view.

That’s not even a little bit of sarcasm, that’s the truth.

That’s Missouri and the current state of gun culture here for you.

Griping aside, I do get the frustration.

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The little yellow markings above are just some of the many shell casings found at this singular murder scene. The lack of human decency for each other and the violence is completely out of control, and “the police” aren’t any more immune to it than the rest of the world.

I get that we want to have faith in our sworn protectors. We want to believe that “the police” aren’t unfairly targeting minorities, and we especially want to believe that “the police” aren’t killing minorities disproportionately, for reasons outside of anything but the defense of their lives, or the lives of others.

Are minorities killed disproportionately by police officers? I think the answer to that is pretty obviously yes.

Don’t confuse disproportionate with unfair necessarily though.

Do minorities commit more of the violent crime in areas where these confrontations occur? Again, based on where I work, I’d say that’s a yes too.

How do we fix that?

I teach Constitutional Law to new police recruits. I don’t teach them how to use deadly force, I try to teach them when they can use it. When are they okay to feel like they won’t be killed because they waited too long to protect themselves, or be sued because they used too much force prematurely? Those are difficult scenarios to teach in a classroom setting, but they’re even more difficult lessons to learn on the streets for the first time.

I’m trying to teach new police recruits that the use of deadly force is a last resort. I show them that the provision in our police manual regarding the value for human life is the first thing they’ll read after the table of contents. It’s there because it’s important for two reasons.

It’s important that they understand that they are vested with the right to proactively take another person’s life, if they have to. Not many other people possess that power. If they’re put into a situation where deadly force has to be used, they must be able to use it, or they or another person will be killed, or suffer serious bodily injury. It’s also front and center as a reminder that, with that power, comes great responsibility. We are tasked with protecting life, above all other things. That includes everybody’s life, even criminals.

We, “the police,” aren’t in the business of killing people for no reason.

I’ve taught my classes that it’s okay to walk away from certain scenes, if your uniform is only making it worse. Can you imagine that? Police officers leaving scenes they’re called to by the public?

There are times when it may be the better option, especially if it means a deadly force encounter is avoided.

Deadly force.

It HAS to be THE LAST resort. It should be the exception that a person die at the hands of police, and the ugly truth of the matter is that people dying because of the police IS the exception. When the number of police and citizen encounters is taken into account, the number of deaths, particularly wrongful or criminal deaths, is negligible.

While we’d like to never see a person die via a police shooting, that’s a pipe dream at this point.

There are violent people out there waiting to hurt you and your loved ones, and, if they could, they’d hurt the police.

Police officers are targeted like never before. I don’t need stats to know that I’m less comfortable now than I’ve ever been at work.

Just pay attention in your daily to commute to other people who drive straight through red lights or speed or change lanes without signaling or flip other drivers’ off. There is a general air of disregard for other people and the law nowadays, especially laws people perceive as trivial. Along with that disregard comes greater disrespect and animosity towards those who are sworn to enforce those laws, namely,”the police.”

I’m glad there’s video that exists with more and more of these shootings nowadays, both police shootings and otherwise. It’s easy to read about people being shot everyday, especially when it happens mostly in areas you don’t visit much, but it’s much less easy to watch it happen live. My hope is that the violence put in front of all of our faces will cause us to collectively gasp at some point and say, “What the fuck? It’s gotten to be too much!”

Maybe then, when we’ve finally had our fair share of real life violence splashed in our faces from all over television and social media, we can start to seriously consider how to fix what’s wrong with society, especially with respect to violence.

Until then, things will move along as they always have. There will be more conflicts and police shootings and finger pointing and people making a whole lot of noise to distract everyone from the real truth, which is that these noise makers are doing nothing with their actions to cause a change for the better.

They’re just being windbags.

Blocking highways and looting and yelling and screaming has proven ineffective, as has placating people with firings and policies and training for police that don’t address the true underlying issues, issues that are the giant elephant in the room that people with all the power can afford to ignore, and will continue to ignore, because it’s not their lives that are affected.

 

My hope is us little people, both black and white, police and non-police, can come together to figure out what to do to fix what so clearly ails us.

The cure will be found in the grass roots of what has become a decaying society. When citizens understand that “the police” shouldn’t bear the brunt of the actions of some bad police officers just as “black people” shouldn’t bear the brunt of the actions of some black individuals.

If we’re all unable to see the forest for the trees, with respect to each other, nothing will ever change. Ever.

Posted in Police, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 43 Comments

Toyotas…

Posted on July 3, 2016 by donofalltrades

The internet is a wonderful place or thing or whatever it is, because there are millions of people always standing by, just waiting to share ideas and opinions, but the internet can also be an awful place or thing or whatever it is, because there are millions of people always standing by, just waiting to share ideas and opinions.

The Internet brings like minded people together, which can be a good thing.

Folks who think Ford makes the best pickup truck can easily find other people online who share this opinion. There is nothing wrong with loving one’s Ford truck, and being able to talk about it with others, mostly strangers even, who feel the same way, is great.

Ford truck owners might discuss where the best places to buy a Ford truck in their area is, or what sort of accessories are available to make their truck owning experience the best it can be.

All good things for sure.

Inevitably though, online talk can turn from why we love Ford trucks so much to why don’t other people love Ford trucks like we do? Why would somebody choose to drive a GMC or a Chevy truck when there are Ford trucks out there?

Interspersed with pr0- Ford truck comments will be memes or Tweets or posts about why Ford trucks are better than Chevy trucks. The memes or Tweets or posts are meant to be funny, of course, but posting such anti-Chevy content in a pro-Ford online forum is also a way for the poster to feel validated by the likes and shares that he or she will get on their anti-Chevy offering.

It’s a way for the original poster, and those who enjoy the post, to solidify their opinion that Ford trucks are the best, and anything that isn’t a Ford truck is inferior. Talk in the online group has shifted somewhat from how to get the most out of being a Ford truck owner to why we’re all right to be Ford truck owners compared to other truck owners.

This line of reinforcement isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, when talking trucks. Ford makes nice pickup trucks for sure, and not liking Chevy trucks doesn’t make one a bad person, assuming one isn’t judging the owner of the Chevy truck. The risk is that there might be a better truck out there for these Ford owners, but they’ll never hear of it now.

It’s also possible though, that the creator of the anti-Chevy meme doesn’t even own a Ford truck. Maybe he can’t afford one, but hopes to one day be a Ford truck owner. Maybe his ex-girlfriend drove a Chevy truck, or maybe he doesn’t even like Ford trucks himself, perhaps he’s a Nissan Truck guy. Nothing in the Internet rule book says that a Nissan truck guy can’t post his funny anti-Chevy memes to get a few laughs and stir the pot between the Ford and Chevy people.

Anti-Chevy memes will be countered by pro-Chevy truck owners with anti-Ford memes, and it will go back and forth between the two groups for all the world to see.

Chevy owners will post facts and stats about Chevy trucks to reinforce their stance, while Ford owners will do the same thing to put their beloved Fords in a better light. 

Both sides are so passionate about their love for their own trucks, that they’ll not listen to reason from the other side. It’s very rare that a pro-Ford guy will post pro-Chevy content in order to have a discussion with his pro-Ford buddies about the validity of the pro-Chevy information.

No way. Instead, both sides will limit their posts to either entirely favorable to their side content, or damning content about the other side.

“I heard that Chevy trucks are known to blow up in rear end collisions,” a Ford owner might post, not knowing whether or not this is true.

Ford owners will like and share the unresearched post thousands or even millions of times, until it doesn’t even matter whether there’s truth to the statement that Chevy trucks blow up in rear end collisions.

It’s out there and in the minds of millions of viewers, many of whom are potential future truck buyers.

Chevy owners will counter with memes and stats of their own, but their protestations will fall on deaf ears from the other side. Ford owners want only to hear good things about Ford, and nothing about other trucks, unless it’s negative information that makes Fords better by implication.

Meanwhile, between the two truck owning groups, are those in the middle of the argument.

The people in the middle can be swayed to one side or the other. Some who think that Chevy trucks could blow up in a rear end collision will side with Ford owners, while others, who at one time or another thought they wanted to be truck owners, will mentally shut themselves down anytime Chevy or Ford trucks are brought up in conversation because they’ve lost interest in truck ownership entirely.

All of the bickering is just too much for them at some point, so they’ll just continue to drive a sedan.

Those who are still interested in truck ownership though, and who are rational in spite of all the protestations from both sides, might be able to make use of all the rhetoric from both sides to make a more informed decision.

Perhaps a potential truck owner never considered that a truck could blow up if rear ended hard enough, but now has online information to at least use to research the veracity of that claim.

The rational middle ground crowd will sift through the piles of information on both sides and attempt to sort fact from fiction. 

Unlike pro-Ford or pro-Chevy people, the middle grounders will post information that is both positive and negative about both truck groups. In doing so, conversation can be had on their posts with people from both sides of the debate, as well as with people who still haven’t made up their minds. Some of those people who are on neither side of the debate, but who do enjoy pickup trucks, might share relevant information about other trucks, like Toyotas.

Toyota truck owners will then come out of the woodworks to share their reasons for loving the Toyota brand. While Ford and Chevy owners continue to battle back and  forth, rational middle grounders will now research other options, like Toyotas, to make a more informed decision.

While their research might lead them to buy a Toyota truck, it’s also possible that they’ll be persuaded by their research to go with a Ford truck. Maybe they will join an online Ford discussion group based on their purchase decision and bring some rational thought to the group now based on their research.

When these online talks aren’t about trucks, but are rather about rights or race or sex or bathrooms or kids or breast feeding or circumcision, etc., the middle grounders are trying to be heard over the yelling from both sides.

In my own online world, I have friends who are very much either Chevy or Ford owners, and will be until the bitter end.

I read posts from my friends about race and sex and guns and the end of civilization being near, and it makes me roll my eyes sometimes. 

I can admit that.

But it also makes me smarter.

Many of my online friends are thoughtful and bright, and can have an argument about something with the understanding that a disagreement over a particular topic doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends. A person can be either pro or anti gun legislation and still be a Cardinal’s fan.

We can agree to disagree about gun legislation and agree as well that the Cardinals need help to win the wild card and that we both hate the Cubs.

I’ve never been gay or a young black man or an immigrant or a rich white guy, so I have to learn perspectives about these people, who all want my support, from these very people, before making a decision. 

That’s why the Internet can be so cool. I have friends of all these different types and I listen when each of them says something.

I will be swayed with facts and logic and my own sense of what is morally correct.

Shouting and anger and finger pointing won’t win my vote.

Also, talk to me about the side that you don’t support and why I shouldn’t support them. A person able to make the argument from both sides is a person I want to listen to. If you’re pro-gun rights, but can’t even understand the arguments being made by those who want to limit those rights, then you haven’t really done your homework.

Many of my police friends are completely against the Black Lives Matter movement and refuse to try to understand where the discontentment comes from. Learning where the anger is truly coming from will only help in our discussions moving forward, about how to deal with the issues, many of which are probably not even police related.

I want to hear what both sides have to say, but I want both sides to hear and understand what the others have to say about their opposite views.

I want more information to be a better citizen.

Talk to me about the Toyotas.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Devil’s advocate for “20 minutes of action…”

Posted on June 7, 2016 by donofalltrades

The internet is awash in rage today, well, it seems to be awash in rage everyday, but the focus of that rage has shifted from Presidential candidates, unisex bathrooms and shitty zoo related parenting to a letter written by the father of convicted Stanford University rapist Brock Turner.

For those not familiar with this story, Brock Turner is the Stanford University swimmer who was found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman while she was passed out cold.

The attack happened outside a college party, behind a dumpster, and was thankfully interrupted by two Swedish grad students who chased and detained the also drunk Brock Turner before he could make good his escape.

I say thankfully, because the attack was already brutal enough for the victim as it was. Who knows what would have happened had the rapist not been interrupted.

Here’s one of the many articles chronicling the story of what the rapist’s dad wrote to the court. In it is a link to the victim’s statement to the court, which is an amazing piece that should be required reading for every person entering college, man and woman alike.

Most of my readers know that I teach law at the police academy.

I like to have a sex crimes detective come and talk to my recruit classes and they always bring a victim of a sex crime attack to talk to the class with them. The victim’s story is always intense, and the negative aftermath for the victim is still evident, sometimes even decades later. The police recruits can’t help but face the ugly reality of the effects of a rape.

I have said many times that rape is the most disgusting crime to commit against another person, because the degradation goes beyond the physical pain and cuts so deeply into the victim’s spirit and soul that they’re often never the same person again. Even the victim of a homicide has the luxury of never having to relive the attack in their minds again.

I imagine that Brock Turner is an entitled douchebag, and his father is probably a person I would also label a douchebag, but is it necessarily fair to attack him so vehemently for trying to support his son?

What the man said in his letter to the court was completely ridiculous, sure. 20 minutes of action? That’s a disgusting line right there. Action? What does that imply? I’ll let you summon your own unflattering conclusions, but I get the vision of dad slapping his son on the back like he done good.

Still, the letter was meant to sway the court to be lenient on his son, and who among us wouldn’t have written a similar letter to keep our 20 year old lily-white son from going to prison?

“Oh hell no, Don! Not me, or anybody with any decency, that’s who wouldn’t!” I can hear many of you screaming.

Bullshit.

Prison is rough, and they’re not sending out the same people they take in. Rarely is the end product better than the original.

That’s your son, and you’d do what you could to protect him, even though your son was, at least for one night, a monster.

It’s not only entitled, wealthy, white folk either.

At any time during most weeks, there are courtrooms all over the country holding sentencing hearings for suspects of all races and income levels, (though if we’re being honest, it’s mostly lower income minorities), for all sorts of heinous crimes. Behind many of these defendants in these various courtrooms are family, sometimes friends, parents and kids and sisters and brothers and others, all there to support their guilty loved ones.

They will speak or write letters on behalf of their beloved defendant, who has assaulted or murdered or yes, even raped another human being, because they are incredulous to the notion that their loved one could do such a thing.

It’s everyone else’s fault, really.

The victim shouldn’t have been where he was or did what she did. It’s the police too. The police are so often to blame for the guilt of their loved ones. Little Johnny shot at a police officer, yes, but they didn’t have to beat him up for it, no matter that he wasn’t going to go to jail nicely. They cling to something, anything really, that mitigates what they would otherwise have to face as truth, that their loved one is a criminal and has nobody to blame but themselves.

I’ve seen it dozens of times and I never know how to feel for the family of the defendant, because I’ve never been there.

I don’t know how I would be expected to feel about having a loved one who’s a convicted rapist, especially my own son.

The sins of the son are almost an indictment of the father, and that failure stings.

Do we wash our hands of them completely? Change the locks on the doors or even better, move while he’s in jail so he can’t find us when he gets out? Do I unfriend him on Facebook?

What’s the etiquette here?

Maybe behind closed doors, Brock Turner’s dad is a good dad. Maybe the guy who presumably put his own plans aside and paid shitloads of money for swim lessons and camps and trips, and who sat through swim meets and encouraged his son to be the best he could be talks to his boy about why he fucked up that night.

Maybe he tells him that gentlemen don’t pursue drunk women at  parties for sex. Maybe he’s said, “What the hell were you thinking, Brock? You assaulted a woman who was passed out? Unconscious?! Who fucking does that!? You’re a pathetic human being, and you committed a terrible crime! You’re throwing all that you…. no, we, worked so hard for! You need to come to grips with how much pain you’ve caused her, the victim, as well as to your mom and me! We gave you every opportunity in life that we could afford and you’ve ruined it. You have nobody to blame but yourself! I feel like you’ve ruined this whole family forever!”

Probably not, but maybe.

Either way, what is said between father and son in private may never be our business, but what is said in a letter to a judge trying to keep one’s son from going to prison is exactly what this letter sounded like to me. It was all about “my boy” and how he’ll never be the same boy he’s known for twenty years again.

There’s probably truth in that, and if you think about that in another context, it’s sad.

Even if it’s completely the son’s fault, can we not have even a little bit of empathy for his mom and dad? It’s mostly a rhetorical question, but I say yes.

Sure, the letter is self-serving and extremely tackily written. You bought your son huge ribeye steaks? That’s something that wealthy people say and don’t even realize that they’re being douchey for saying it. Did he say that the consequences of binge drinking are “unfortunate results?”

Ouch, he sure did.

To suggest sexual assault is an unfortunate result of binge drinking is horrendous, and extremely degrading to the victim of not only this crime, but every single sexual assault victim before her.

But, this is the father of the rapist. His son is now a rapist. The boy they used to dress up as a cowboy or Mario for Halloween will now have to register as a sex offender. The consequences of that are far reaching, and probably the main reason they’re appealing this conviction.

My son the sex offender.

He has to come to grips with that, and I imagine that’s not easy, especially in the hoity-toity circle of friends I’m sure these people run with.

I’m not suggesting that we should all call Dan Turner and apologize for calling him out as an asshat, because the chances are good that he really is an asshat.

All I’m suggesting is that we try to understand that, at the end of the day, this man’s son has altered not only the son’s own life and the life of the victim, but that of his whole family’s too. They no doubt planned to travel to watch him compete as a collegiate athlete, and maybe one day they hoped to be in RIO or Tokyo and watch their son compete for the good old, U.S. of A.

Instead, they had to sit in a courtroom and listen to what a fuckup their son had become. It probably cost them a lot of money in the process.

He’s a rapist, not an Olympian or even a collegiate swimmer anymore, and I’m sure that’s a bitter pill for him to swallow.

That he completely disregarded the effect of his words on the victim, or even failed to acknowledge her pain or his own son’s culpability is not shocking, or even mildly startling in this age of instant gratification.

This whole ordeal reminded me of a sexual assault alleged here on a college campus in St. Louis that I don’t believe ever went anywhere. I vaguely recall the dad of this young lady insisting that the police look into this further, and maybe we did, but probably we didn’t because athletes. That the woman in this Stanford case got a conviction speaks volumes to me about what a warrior she must be and my hat is off to her.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 39 Comments

Bashing police for political gain…pathetic.

Posted on February 12, 2016 by donofalltrades

 

I loathe election time.

It’s a time for everybody to witness America at its worst, and this year’s offering is no exception, in fact, it’s the most perfect example ever of what’s wrong in this country.

The bottom line is this: with about 300 million people in this country, how in the world are the people offered up to vote for this year the best available options?

The Democratic front runners are life long politicians with no clue about what it takes to raise a family in middle or lower class society, and the Republican choices are just, well, wow.

Surely, there are rational human beings out there who would love a crack at running this country, but can’t because they aren’t wealthy enough to be considered.

It’s ridiculous, but I digress.

I’m mad at the Democrats right now.

Bernie Sanders is sick and tired of seeing unarmed black men being shot by police. One of the few things that he and Hillary can agree upon is that local police departments are unfair to black communities.

I didn’t watch any of the debate because I was working a night shift to supplement my already worked day shift, in order to be able to afford a decent, middle class existence for my family. I only saw snippets and read some recaps in the papers.

Maybe I missed mention of the six police officers who’ve died in the line of duty in just the last few days alone. Were these deaths mentioned at all?

It should be really interesting to see how low these two stoop in their bashing of the police to garner minority votes. The same police officers who are there to protect them and their families or shut down roads so that they can get to their engagements or debates or whatever safely have to stand in these auditoriums and listen to such drivel without snapping.

Police officers don’t make the laws. We enforce the laws made by people who are supposed to have the interests of the people on their minds when they do make them.

If the laws are so unfair to the black community, then talk to the legislators, local and state especially. If the sentencing of black people is so out of proportion, then talk to the judiciary about that. I don’t control who can afford a good lawyer and who has to use an over-burdened public defender.

All we do is arrest the criminals, black and white and every shade in between. If the number of arrests of blacks is so disproportionate to the number of arrests of others, then maybe the reason for that lies somewhere outside of the responsibility of law enforcement?

I know that where I patrol, most of the suspects described to us police officers by victims are black males.

That’s not racism; that’s a fact.

Many of the victims are also black, perhaps even most. I can certainly attest to my experience being that most of the victims of VIOLENT crimes in my area are black, homicides especially.

You gonna blame the police for that?

No. I don’t accept that.

Police officers are most concerned with violent crimes. Those are the ones we want to solve more than any other crime, so that the most violent offenders are removed from society. That’s who we spend a great deal of our time looking for. Of course encounters with those suspects are  more fraught with potential danger and violence.

I was given a gun the day of my graduation. I was taught how and when to use it in the months preceding that graduation for a reason. It happens.

I don’t have experience in patrolling rural America, so I can’t speak as to what goes on out there, but in urban policing, and I don’t suspect St. Louis is any different from other large cities, I am more hyper-vigilant about my safety in certain areas and around certain people. Any police officer who doesn’t develop that sense won’t last long.

It’s not racist for me to be more concerned about my safety when I patrol in North St. Louis than when I work a secondary job in the suburbs. There is more violence in one than the other.

A LOT more violence.

That’s not the fault of the police either.

Citizens of all colors want to be able to raise their families in relative peace and safety. I think a lot of people who’ve never lived in a violent neighborhood would be shocked to learn what lengths people go to because they fear being shot simply while sitting in their living rooms. I’ve been in homes where all the activities of the family, like watching TV, etc. are done on a second floor because of the fear that a stray bullet from the street might come through a first floor window or wall. There is often, literally, no furniture on the first floor.

That’s sad, but again, that’s not the fault of the police.

Violent offenders don’t normally just appear and then vanish after committing a single crime.  Run the record of people committing violent robberies or shootings, etc. and I guarantee you that most of the suspects have considerable arrest histories.

The system lets them back out onto the streets to rob and steal until they finally manage to kill somebody, where I work, that’ll probably be a young black man, until they finally get thrown in jail for life.

Again, that’s not the fault of the street officer. You think we enjoy having to arrest the same clowns over and over again?

No. And they’ll tell us to our faces that they’ll be out again. It’s frustrating, and they’re right, but we’ll keep arresting them.

That’s what police officers do. We arrest people who violate the laws that Bernie and Hillary and the Bush’s and people like them make.

Well, that’s not ALL we do. We’re also supposed to keep the roads safe and man large events in your town like ball games and street fairs and what not. All those events your cities and towns have that are so much fun? Yeah, most of your local cops can’t attend them with their families, because they have to work them. Nothing happens in a big city without the police having to be involved.

We’re also expected to psychoanalyze criminals and victims on the spot. Can you recognize mental illness in a stranger versus an LSD induced episode? Should it matter? If the person is dangerous, should I care that he’s bipolar or whacked out on drugs?

I sure don’t care initially. I care about going home safely after my shift ends, and I’ll not make any apologies for that. If a mentally ill person is allowed to get to the point where he’s on the street causing a disturbance and “in need of help,” whose fault is that? We don’t blame his family or his doctor or pharmacist for not checking in on him, nope. We wait until the person is out of control and then we call the police and demand they deal with the violent outburst without anybody getting hurt.

And that happens almost every single time, except for when it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, you hear about it and then you take sides. On the left are the police bashers demanding reform and criminal charges. On the right are the police apologists who support us blindly. Neither side is 100% right, and most of either side has never had to deal with the mentally ill while they’re having a dangerous episode in public. While in a police uniform.

Yeah, the uniform makes a difference. Almost always, it makes it more challenging.

The very legislators who bash the police are to blame for allowing mentally ill people to roam the streets of our communities because it’s too costly to address their needs in a proper facility. Many law enforcement officers around the country barely have a high school degree, let alone a Masters in Psychology. Many are paid under $15 an hour. Guess what sort of people are going to take a job with that much responsibility for such little pay?

Yikes is right. That’s a lot of responsibility AND power given to a person working for not so much reward. The end result of that isn’t always pretty.

The drug war belongs to the legislators as well. Make marijuana legal and guess what? Law enforcement officers will stop making marijuana arrests.

I’m not a police homer by any stretch of the imagination, but there has to be a stand made by the people who understand that the system is fucked up FAR beyond the police.

The police officer on the street is just an easy scapegoat for a system that fails to educate inner city kids or grant job interviews to people named LaQuita or Tyrone because of their names alone. That sort of racism is where society is really hurting the underprivileged.

Do you know who does give jobs to Tyrones and LaQuitas?

Large urban cities and police departments. This is why it pisses me off to no end that the implication is that it’s the black community versus the white police.

The law enforcement community absolutely includes blacks, and there are plenty of white criminals and their ilk who also hate the police.

I would challenge any private company in the St.Louis area to compare their minority hiring to the St. Louis Police Department’s. I work with great officers of every race, sexual orientation and ethnic background.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. Urban kids don’t want to listen to a 40 year old white dude, no matter how cool I totally am. A black officer from their neighborhood though? Yeah, that’s a person they can look up to and emulate and strive to be like, or even better, strive to be better than.

We have those men and women and they go into the worst communities every day and make a difference just by being who they are.

Do police officers fuck up sometimes? Absolutely, but it’s the exception and not the norm.

Black children getting second rate educations and limited opportunities at employment is the norm. Those norms are not police related, and I would argue that they are way more detrimental to the growth of minority communities than any threat of being shot by a white police officer will be in most of their lives.

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Posted in Police, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 27 Comments

Floods and shootings and happiness galore…

Posted on January 18, 2016 by donofalltrades

I’ve mentioned on this blog before that I like to sit down and just write whatever comes to me. If that’s nothing, then so be it, but if something does come to me, then I like to get it all out in one sitting. I don’t like to stop and then finish a post on another day. It’s why I have over 150 drafts of posts that were started, but never finished.

It’s just my way.

I mention that as an introduction to my apology for those of you expecting the part 2 of 2 from this post a few weeks ago.

I think I inadvertenly mislead you into believing that there was a subsequent encounter with the same kid mentioned in that post, but that wasn’t the case at all. That I’m aware, I never saw that kid again and I have no idea what he is doing with his life right now, if he’s even still alive.

My part two was going to be about how we police communities and why I think we could do a better job of it by getting police officers to take responsibility for certain neighborhoods, like we used to do. Somewhere in that point, the story about the kid in part one tied into it by showing how a responding officer who didn’t know that kid may have been quicker to think the worst than an officer who did know this kid and his issues and would be more apt to find a better outcome.

I still believe in this, but that post can wait for another day.

Shortly after that post, when I swear I was going to write the follow-up, we got stranded in our neighborhood by a pissed off Mother Nature.

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The river belongs at the bottom of that hill with the house on it, not on the road where this woman is standing.

We were stuck.

For over two days.

We almost ran out of beer.

Almost.

But at least we were dry, unlike much of the rest of our town.

Our main street through town was underwater, and the small businesses are mostly still closed, though they’re working hard to reopen.

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Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Lloyd Photography

In our very own hood, of course somebody had a medical emergency and paramedics had to try to get her from dry land through what would have been nearly a mile on the water to more dry land.

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It wasn’t working out, so she ended up being air lifted to a hospital.

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It felt a little weird being one of the people stranded instead of being one of the people waiting to get the call to help somebody.

I wasn’t complaining, because again, we never did run out of beer, but it was close.

Sometime on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, we were able to get to the store to replenish for the NYE party.

See? The road is back.

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Even Gman was happy to get out of the house to the grocery store.

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He’s standing in front of the donuts, so that may have had something to do with his “enthusiasm.”

Anyway, we survived the floods, but it distracted me from posting like I wanted to for sure.

In the meantime, I was contacted by a reporter from a local paper called The Riverfront Times.

He wanted to write a story about this blog, so I sat down and talked with him for a couple of hours. Once I get to talking, I go on and on, so I couldn’t even begin to tell you what I said. That makes me nervous. I’m sure I said some derivation of fuck at least ten times. Let’s hope that gets edited out.

We’ll see though. It comes out on Wednesday. If it’s not too embarrassing or damning, I’ll post a link to the Donofalltrades Facebook page. Otherwise, pretend I never brought it up.

I’ll wrap this post up with a shake of my head at the community I live in again, and of course, it centers around violence.

People waking up to the paper on this Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day were treated to the usual Monday full of news, including the shooting of a fourteen year old girl under suspicious circumstances, and the shooting of an armed robber by a police officer.

Ironically, the fourteen year old girl was shot (and killed) just a few blocks from Dr. Martin Luther King Blvd., and the robber was shot during an MLK march in South City.

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Of course the police related shooting is the one that’s front and center, because it’s more “newsworthy.” I know this because there are nearly 300 comments on the police shooting and fourteen on the article written about the little girl.

Again, a FOURTEEN YEAR OLD girl has been shot in the back and killed, but we’re going to have to hear about the seemingly justified shooting of a grown ass man caught in the middle of his attempted armed robbery of an occupied fast food restaurant.

The officer was flagged down by a witness who told him the restaurant was being robbed, and because he’s a police officer, he went immediately there instead of ignoring the person or driving somewhere else, and sure enough, there was a robbery in progress.

I can’t get into details, because I don’t know anything beyond what I’ve read in the paper about this incident. Maybe there will be video that shows what happened, I hope there is, and I hope it shows the officer did exactly what he was trained to do.

What’s he trained to do?

If he feels as though his life is threatened and in danger, or the lives of others are in danger, then he is trained to put a stop to that threat.

An armed person is a threat.

End of story.

Have a gun and an officer is in the same room with you?

You best be dropping it before the officer even has to order you to do so, and if you don’t do it immediately upon our telling you to then we’re going to go ahead and assume that you are plotting bad things in your head and will shoot you.

That’s just the way it is.

If you think I’m going to wait until you start to raise your arms while holding the gun, or get a shot off first, then you’re fucking crazy.

Absolutely FUCKING CRAZY!

You see, we have sons and daughters and moms and dads and grandmas and dogs and cats, and all these folks like to see us come home safely at the end of our shift, even if some of you out there don’t.

I’ll wait to see what comes out of this shooting with respect to evidence and community reaction before I judge too harshly, but it’s frustrating that there’s a rush to judgment by people with no clue, when a police officer does what he thinks/hopes is the right thing, but the death of a FOURTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL to gun violence is just another secondary article in a paper constantly generating articles about guns and violence and kids caught in the middle of both.

I pray we as a society can get our heads out of our asses pretty soon with respect to guns and violence and what we expect of our police officers, because the status quo just isn’t working for me.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Simple policing, (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on December 28, 2015 by donofalltrades

I was reminded of this call last week as I was talking to the new recruits about my opinions on policing. I’ll wrap it up with a point in a part 2 later this week.

 

At only fifteen years old, he was a good sized kid already, maybe six three or four and built solidly.

Most people would never guess the boy to be anything but a man, certainly eighteen at least, but that wasn’t the case.

We first met when his mother called about him trashing the front room of their quaint two bedroom duplex one day.

Trashed may have been an understatement.

He destroyed it, really.

I walked into the house to find the coffee table turned over onto its side, one leg was broken off completely and magazines and books had fanned out onto the floor. They were covered in red juice and unswallowed pills that were also victims of the overturning table.

A lamp in the corner still shone brightly, though it lay horizontally on the ground, its shade nowhere to be found.

Family and friends smiled happily from broken glass and busted picture frames scattered about the floor.

They were speechless witnesses to a man child’s tantrum.

The woman had summoned me into her home before I’d even reached the screen door. I’d heard the sound of crashing and breaking and yelling all the way from the street, but it was quiet now.

“Come on in, officer. He’s in the middle room. Please don’t hurt him,” she said as she wiped tears from a face that had clearly neared its breaking point.

She was staring at my night stick. It was over two feet long, thick and heavy wood with brass tips at both ends. It was an intimidating tool. A hole at the fatter end of the stick allowed for a leather rope to pass through. The rope allowed for twirling of the stick in times of boredom, and kept it from flying out of an officer’s hand in times of the opposite of boredom.

In the days before Tazers, night sticks or, “batons,” were the go to instrument to use where mace and hand to hand maneuvers weren’t going to do the job but deadly force was too much.

“Nobody is going to get hurt, ma’am,” I said with some trepidation while noticing an upside down recliner partially impaling some drywall.

I certainly  hoped that would be the case.

I peered around the wall into the middle room and saw the man sitting in a chair at a dining room table. His forehead was resting on his forearms and his eyes were closed. He was sweating and breathing hard.

Jesus, I thought to myself. Why are the craziest ones always so big?

By this time, another officer had arrived.

“This place is a goddam mess,” she exclaimed before she even said hello. I wanted to club her with my stick and tell her to shut the fuck up. She had more time on than I did, but she was, quite frankly, dumb as a bag of hammers and much less useful. I hated answering calls with her, but it was marginally better than dealing with disturbances alone.

I gave her a nasty glare that must’ve made its point because her smile disappeared instantly and she appeared more focused on the matter at hand.

I tucked my stick into its metal loop on the back of my belt, so it wasn’t the first thing the man would see when he finally looked up.

“What’s going on?” I asked the woman.

Even though I was relatively new, I’d handled enough calls in the busy Third District to know what was coming next.

“He hasn’t been taking his medicine,” the woman answered.

“AND I AIN’T GONNA!”

The man was paying attention now.

“Who is he to you?” The other officer asked. “Is he your boyfriend?”

The woman chuckled for a second before taking a deep breath and telling us that he was her son.

“He’s my middle boy. He’s fifteen.”

I peered around the corner at the man again. He wasn’t quite a man after all. He was a man child.

“He’s fifteen?” I said, probably sounding incredulous.

“He’s a big one,” the woman continued. “Like his daddy and brothers.”

We talked about his history and which hospital he normally went to when he lost control.

The woman mentioned that the boy liked football, so that’s what I talked to him about to earn a little bit of trust and keep him from flying off the handle. The Greatest Show on Turf was still a pretty great conversation starter for football fans back then, so we shared tales of our favorite memories of Warner, Faulk, Bruce and Holt. I really enjoyed that time talking to him.

With some persuasion from his mom and my two cents every now and then, the boy agreed to go to the children’s hospital for treatment.

EMS came inside and they went through much of the same conversation with the woman and her son again.

When the man child finally stood up to go to the ambulance, I noticed the paramedics look at each other with what I wouldn’t quite describe as amazement on their faces, but it was close. Disbelief was maybe a better word.

One of them looked at his chart and as he was flipping pages said, “I thought you said he was fifteen?”

“He is. He’s a big one,” the woman said.

Like his dad and brothers, I thought to myself.

I wondered where they were and why mom was dealing with this alone.

The kid was carted off to the hospital that day and I had several uneventful run-ins with him again during my time on that beat. I stopped and talked to him from time to time, and found him to be quite affable and pleasant when he was taking his medicine. He was always calm and easy going after that initial meeting.

And then one day he wasn’t.

This time it was a similar call as before, but a knife was involved. The dispatcher said that man child was waving a butcher knife around and threatening his family members.

I was the second officer on the scene this time, and sure enough, the man child had a knife.

He was on the front porch alone, ranting and raving about nothing to nobody in particular.

The first officer on the scene had his hand on his gun, but it was still holstered. He was standing in the street, with the car between him and man child for cover.

After a few moments, I noticed mom hustling up the sidewalk. Winded, and with the same defeated look as before, she said she’d gone out the back to the alley and came up to meet us in front.

“I’m glad I got here before you shot him,” she said. “Please don’t hurt him.”

I winced at those words.

“He needs his medicine, doesn’t he?” I asked knowing the answer. “You want us to get him to Children’s Hospital again?”

“Oh, I remember you!” The woman said as she caught her breath and looked at me. She seemed relieved a little bit. “You was here with that little black girl police officer last time he went off his meds.”

“I AIN’T GOING TO NO HOSPITAL!”

Man child had chimed in from the porch.

Without missing a beat, momma yelled back at him,”You put down that knife or you might go to the hospital with a bullet in yo ass! These boys ain’t here to fuck around wit you!”

I laughed a little bit. Momma’s tenacity was a thing to behold. I could tell she was a good woman. She was a good mom trying her best.

“He’ll be death of me that boy,” she said to us.

Man child put his knife down and cooler heads prevailed. We all talked about him playing high school football and he agreed to go to the hospital again.

“That kid was fifteen?” The other officer asked as we walked back to our cars.

“Yup.”

“Jesus,” he said. “I really thought I was going to have to shoot him.”

We parted ways in our separate patrol cars without speaking another word.

 

 

 

Posted in Police, Police Stories, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments

Murder and deadly force are different

Posted on November 24, 2015 by donofalltrades

I’ve seen murder.

I’ve seen dead bodies in cars, hanging out of cars, holding phones and other items in their hands even though they were dead, inside homes, on the street, in yards, some alone, some with loved ones nearby, murder just everywhere.

Dozens of dead bodies, all strangers, over the course of almost two decades of policing one of the most violent cities in America will forever haunt my thoughts and dreams until the day that I breathe my last breath.

I don’t recall every person who met their demise during one of my shifts, but many I do, and their last resting place before being zipped into a body bag remain vivid in my mind.

Murder.

Murder is heinous and cold and brutal and unnecessary. Murder is unforgivable.

When we charge somebody with murder, we are, for all intents and purposes, ending their lives as they’ve known it, because conviction will mean a good chunk of their life behind bars, if not the rest of it completely.

Police officers are charged with protecting people and property, and in doing so, we’re allowed leeway to use force, even deadly force.

Let’s repeat that.

Police officers can use deadly force, if necessary, to do our jobs. I was given a gun by the police department to wear on my belt. I HAVE to wear it to work. It’s expected, in fact. If an officer can’t be trusted to pull the trigger on a person who threatens their own life or the life of another officer or civilian, then that person should find other work.

They will get somebody hurt or killed.

Yup, police officers can and sometimes must use deadly force. That’s just a fact. A reality of policing in America.

But we can’t murder.

It’s rare that an officer’s use of deadly force is deemed murder, so I was curious about what happened in Chicago. I wanted to see what that “murder” looked like, so against my normal habits, I watched a police related video.

I normally dislike watching police videos.

I never liked watching COPS, and I don’t enjoy police related videos on YouTube, though I’ve felt more inclined to watch them for use in my classroom. They can sometimes be useful training tools.

I watched a video of the Chicago incident.

I watched for several minutes as a police officer traveled in his car to the scene of a call with his lights and sirens on, indicating there was some sort of urgency to the call.

I’ve been there before, lots of times.

Lights and sirens on a police car mean something is going down.

I don’t know what the call was for, but the young man was clearly doing something disruptive, because at one point, when the officer gets near the scene, a resident points him towards where the problem was. People don’t normally do that, unless they’re aware of a serious problem.

The officer and others arrived at the scene where an agitated, armed man is clearly not following directions, and then he is shot, many times.

He was “murdered.”

That’s what the state of Illinois says, anyway.

That’s also what thousands of people online say.

Thousands of people who have never put on a uniform and badge or carried the weight of a bullet resistant vest on their body for the duration of an eight or ten hour shift get to spew their opinions without knowing all the facts.

They will say that the police murdered this kid. They don’t have all the facts, outside of a seven minute video, but they will get on their Facebook pages or Twitter feeds and say, “Chicago police murdered an innocent boy,” and they will be wrong.

A human being who worked as a Chicago police officer used deadly force to end a person’s life.

That is what we know right now.

Chicago probably employs roughly ten thousand police officers. If that department is anything like mine, and I have no reason to think otherwise, then many of those officers are black and Latino and many are gay and then of course, many are white. Police departments are probably most large, urban cities’ best employer of minorities.

Ten thousand police officers from so many different walks of life didn’t murder that boy. The hundreds of thousands of officers in the United States not on that scene that night didn’t murder that boy.

No. Stop saying that.

One Chicago police officer used deadly force on that boy that night. And while we’re at it, let’s not pretend that he’s an angel. Be fair and admit that he was breaking the law.

He was armed, not with a firearm, but he was armed and on a dangerous drug, so he wasn’t an innocent boy shot on his way home from school or work or whatever. He was messed up on that night.

Did he deserve to die?

That is the question of the day for not only Chicago, but every city and every police department across the country.

It looks like a bad shooting to me, but I’ve not heard what the other side has to say about it. What was the officer’s reasoning?

If he says he was in fear of his life, who are you to say that he wasn’t?

Have you ever answered a call for a person high on PCP and armed with a knife? How did you handle it, if yes?

I’ve answered calls for people high on drugs or otherwise mentally out of it. They’re scary calls.

Maybe he knows this kid from prior encounters. Maybe this officer just took a training class and learned how fast a person with a knife can close a gap and put a blade into another person’s neck before the other person can react.

I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, but the truth is, I don’t know, and neither do you.

Same on the other side of the argument as well. Well intentioned people who support the police are doing the same thing, spouting off that the kid had a knife and was on PCP, etcetera etcetera. They’ll say he deserved to die because he didn’t listen to the police. It’s not that simple either folks.

Hell, I’m doing it with this blog post. I don’t know what happened to a full enough extent that I should be taking sides, but I guess I am.

I’m on the side of justice. I’m on the side of the law.

It’s my hope that we don’t start seeing police officers prosecuted to assuage the masses, because that’s bullshit.

Murder in the First Degree is pretty harsh.

There is a difference between grabbing a gun and intentionally finding a target to kill and then killing him and being thrust into a tense situation because it’s your job and using deadly force because you thought you had to.

This man will have to answer for what he did, and I’m okay with that. I am glad that there was video, the police department’s video I might add. He will have to go through what he was thinking and convince a judge or jury that he didn’t murder that kid, and honestly, he might be able to, because it’s a tough case to convince a jury that a police officer murdered an armed person.

It’s not impossible, but don’t be surprised if there’s a hung jury or acquittal.

I don’t want any of this to sound like I’m justifying what the officer did either, I’m sort of thinking out loud and hopefully, giving you something different to think about as well.

At the end of the day though, I don’t want to read that police killed this person, because I am police, and I didn’t kill this person, nor have I ever killed any person.

Remember that the next time you read or hear that the police are murderers. That’s a pretty insulting comment, and I’d appreciate your support in correcting that person’s train of thought.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments

It happens…another shooting

Posted on November 23, 2015 by donofalltrades

Counting my time as a recruit, I have been a City police officer for over seventeen years.

I was never one of those people who always wanted to be a cop. It wasn’t my lifelong dream for sure. Honestly, I don’t trust people who say it’s what they’ve always wanted to do, especially if it doesn’t matter where. Who dreams of working in an underpaid, under-appreciated position for 30 years of their lives, especially in a town or city where they have no affiliation?

In spite of my sometimes crusty personality, I do like some people, and I enjoy helping folks when I can, particularly those who need help the most, like kids or the elderly. I imagine most good cops feel the same.

The City was the only place I applied, and had I never been hired here, I’d have never been a police officer. I was born in the City and spent much of my childhood roaming the City streets. It’s where my loved ones still live, plus the blue uniform shirt really bring out the blue in my eyes, so it was a no-brainer.

In spite of this, I sometimes wonder what it must be like to work in a community where crime isn’t so rampant. I wonder what it’s like when a busy shift means a couple of calls about kids skateboarding where they shouldn’t be, or because somebody’s dog is barking too loudly next door.

My last post was almost three weeks ago. In that post, I offered words for the newest police academy graduates. They would be going to areas where there is no time to answer dog barking or kid skateboarding calls, because there are always more pressing issues to be handled.

In that post I asked the following:

Will they have the courage to pull the trigger to save another person’s life, if that’s what has to be done?

To save another officer’s life?

To save their own life?

I hope they never find out, but the odds are stacked against all eighteen of them going through even a short career without at least one of them having to use deadly force, or being the victim of somebody else’s use of deadly force upon them.

Three weeks after their graduation, one of them learned the hard way that I wasn’t blowing smoke up their asses when I lamented the odds of none of them being put into a deadly force situation.

Three fucking weeks.

And this just four months after another City officer was shot and saved by his vest.

Last night, one of the newest police officers was shot in his shoulder, just inches from his neck.

Inches from paralysis

Inches from death.

He learned that he did have the courage to pull the trigger to try to save his own life.

“XXX got shot.”

That was a text I got last night from one of my buddies I worked in north city with, probably not long after it happened. Thankfully, I was already asleep.

I didn’t see the text until I woke up this morning, or I wouldn’t have been able to sleep all night.

He was a good recruit, and will be a good officer, should he still have the mental fortitude to carry on with this job.

I trust he will.

This recruit was assigned to the sixth district. Those of you who’ve read my posts about any number of violent shootings will recognize the sixth as the same district where I most recently worked.

The district is a clusterfuck of indifference to human life. It’s an area of rampant depravity and me-first mindsets, interspersed with some commercial properties and small pockets of good and decent people living among all the chaos.

It’s for these people that we are able to will ourselves out of bed to go to work everyday. It’s for the people who want to say thank you, when they see an officer, but are too scared to be seen talking to the police for fear that somebody will think they are snitching.

Snitches get stitches.

That’s funny in some contexts, but it’s the cold, hard truth in North St. Louis. It’s a battle we fight every day.

The officer is a “Lucky SOB,” is what I was told by the sergeant who was with him when he was shot.

“He didn’t even know he was shot. I had to tell him,” the sergeant said.

Fear and adrenaline are good for that, at least.  The pain comes later, when it all wears off.

The sergeant is a good police officer and a good man. I worked for him and would go to bat for him any time, any place. I know he feels some guilt about what happened because he cares for his men and women. He would feel the same even if he wasn’t there that night. It’s the nature of the job to always question what happened and question what we could have done differently. Those are good questions to ask though, because that’s how we learn. That’s how we improve.

The bullet went in and out of his shoulder, catching nothing but some skin and tissue, it appears. That’s lucky, but it’d still hurt like hell, without all the juices flowing.

We harp on the dangers of policing for the entire six months of their training, and I sometimes wonder if any of it is sinking in.

The “it won’t happen to me” attitude is dangerous.

It won’t happen to me is what we’re thinking when we don’t use a seat belt or we drink and drive or we leave a loaded gun in a house filled with kids.

It’s a dangerous mindset, but we all have it sometimes.

It’s unfortunate that we don’t have a class of recruits in the academy right now, because this would be a perfect learning tool and reality check for them in understanding just what we mean when we tell them the job is dangerous, and that it can happen to you.

I’m sure the new officer used to sit in the back row of class and think, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a dangerous job, I get it…”

You can bet that he does get it now.

Thankfully, but for a couple of inches, he’ll live to get it another day.

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To the officer – you know who you are, and I recall you mentioning that you read this blog. Know that I am proud of you and thankful that you are going to be okay. Take all the time you need to get your mind where it needs to be to get back out on the street. The sergeant said you did a great job, and I had no doubts that you would, though I hoped you and your mates would never be put into that position.

Keep up the good fight!

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A word or several on the newest police officers…

Posted on October 29, 2015 by donofalltrades

Tonight we will send eighteen men and women into the streets of St. Louis as newly appointed police officers.

These men and women who woke up civilian recruits in training this morning, will go to sleep commissioned police officers tonight.

They will wake up tomorrow with the power to arrest law breakers.

At least as important, if not more so, they will wake up tomorrow with the power to not arrest law breakers too. They will have discretion, and learning to use it wisely will make them better officers.

They will wake up tomorrow as people who others depend on for answers and solutions, when those people can’t fix problems themselves.

Will these new officers have the answers those people need?

No, not all of them. Not right away. They won’t remember everything they learned in the academy; it’s impossible.

That will come with time and continued training and some trial and error.

What will they remember when they wake up though?

Will they appreciate that they were given an oath and a gun and a bullet resistant vest for a reason?

Do they understand that they’ve been tasked with the unenviable job of running to people in their times of crisis and that they will be expected to make the right decisions, and quickly, when they get there?

Do they appreciate that they are allowed to take a life, when the circumstances are such that it’s necessary? Will they make sure that it’s absolutely necessary and be able to explain that?

Will they have the courage to pull the trigger to save another person’s life, if that’s what has to be done?

To save another officer’s life?

To save their own life?

I hope they never find out, but the odds are stacked against all eighteen of them going through even a short career without at least one of them having to use deadly force, or being the victim of somebody else’s use of deadly force upon them.

This is especially true in today’s climate of policing.

This class of recruits signed up for the job knowing full well of the events in Ferguson and Baltimore and all the other places we’ve seen on the news.

They know of the animosity.

They know of the anger and the hatred.

They know of the mistrust and the violence and the danger, but still…

But still, they signed up.

Maybe they signed up to make a difference, to change things.

I don’t know that. I just know they signed up.

They signed up and sat in a classroom with others who signed up as well.

This class of recruits was diverse. There were men and women. There were gays and straights and blacks and whites and several recruits born in foreign lands. Most were young, in their twenties. Others were in their thirties, and even forties. All of them ended up together and supported one another, in spite of their differences, through the arduous task of graduating from the police academy.

They did their seven months of learning and training and role-playing, and they are all excited to move on to the next stage of their lives.

They have been preached to and yelled at and scolded and encouraged and they got through a course of training that not everyone can endure, mentally or physically.

Eight of their own classmates didn’t make the cut for one reason or another.

But eighteen did.

This was my first time teaching an academy class. I taught them Constitutional and statutory law.

I’m sure they hated it.

It’s not as fun as target shooting or learning arm bar holds and all that, but it is important, and I hope they will remember some of what we talked about.

Being a new police officer is tough.

There’s so much to learn, and the people on the street, especially the life-long criminals, know when they’re dealing with a “rookie.”

They will try to push their buttons.

They will be called racists and killers and hicks and crackers and Uncle Toms by people who don’t have a clue.

I hope they’re able to ignore the hate and not let it get them down.

I hope that they will never turn down a handshake or a hug, no matter how unclean the person offering either may be.

I hope they walk with their heads high and smile at people they pass on the streets.

I hope they remember that every time they step out of their car, they are onstage.

The uniform demands attention.

I hope they wear it with pride.

I hope they dry clean or iron their shirts and make sure their shoes and brass shine.

Looking their best is the least they can do to send a message that, “Hey, I’m a person who takes pride in my work.”

I hope they do what they can to bring respect to the police department.

I hope they demand justice and truth and don’t allow anybody to be mistreated in their presence, even especially by another police officer.

I hope when they see police officers caught on video doing something, good, bad or otherwise, that they remember it could be them next time, and learn from what they see.

Get involved in the community where you patrol.

Meet the business owners and the church pastors.

Talk to the people at the neighborhood meetings.

Talk to that guy you arrested last week, sometimes he’ll surprise you.

A man arrested on a Saturday night isn’t necessarily a bad person the next Tuesday. We all have bad days. He may thank you for arresting him. He may tell you he needed it, and that he appreciates that you treated him with kindness and respect.

People remember being treated with kindness and respect, so do that first.

If it reaches the point where you have to put your hands on a person, then do that too, but only do what needs to be done to make sure that you are safe.

Don’t kick a man in handcuffs. Don’t slap him or drag him or throw him down to the ground.

Don’t call people names.

Be the better person and set the example.

Not just tomorrow when you wake up, but every time you put that badge on your shirt to go to work.

I hope that at the end of every day, you can be proud of the person you see in the mirror before you go to bed.

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Fun with guns…let’s figure it out

Posted on October 21, 2015 by donofalltrades

I am whatever the opposite of political is.

Apolitical?

It’s not that I don’t care about what happens in the world I live in, no, I do.

I get enough argument and headache at work and with trying to carry on a conversation with my four year old, so the last thing I want to do is argue politics with people outside of work who, quite frankly, aren’t going to change their minds anyway.

When I do want to vent about a situation, I try to do it by writing, and even then, in a mostly non-confrontational way. An example of this is when I finally had to write about the whole mess in Ferguson, MO. 

That post was written during a tumultuous time in in the St. Louis area, but the media was blowing it way out of proportion. If you turned CNN on, you’d have thought that the City of St. Louis had become the Beirut of the United States. That was simply not the case, and it was my hope that by sharing my little story, people would understand that it wasn’t all as bleak as it seemed. Life was still happening. I tried to further that notion with this post reminding people who were angry about some of the better times we’d shared in the hopes that we’d not lose touch with them as we tried to move forward.

Those posts sort of turned this blog from a “humor” blog that was read by my grandma and four other people, into a blog more focused on my work life, but one where the posts were being read and shared by a lot more people.

It was bound to happen, and that’s why the name of the blog has always been “Donofalltrades.” I reserved the right to talk about whatever I wanted to, and that’s what’s going to continue to happen.

This blog has received more attention than I’d ever imagined it would or even could, and that has everything to do with posts I’ve written about my experiences working as a cop.

I know that.

Hundreds of thousands of people have read what I’ve written about my own singular experiences working what have become typical scenes in almost every large urban area. People seem to enjoy being let into areas of a crime scene where a journalist can’t take you, through no fault of their own.

My thoughts and experiences have made many of you laugh and cry. When I read that in a comment, it makes me happy. If you laugh, good. If you cry, good. It means you have a heart, and it gives me hope.

The stories really tell themselves, I’m just spewing words onto a page.

Whether it be about a mom getting shot while pumping gas or one of my simple car stops turning into a sweet moment, I want you to walk in my shoes a little bit and see that there is much good being done in law enforcement, along with some of the bad that does make for better headlines I suppose.

If you walk in the shoes of any working police officer in the City of St. Louis long enough, you’ll see plenty of shit that will make you want to throw your hands up in the air and just give up on humanity.

Many of those moments include gun violence.

Little boys riding in a minivan shouldn’t have to worry about being shot in the chest, but it happens.

Police officers shouldn’t have to worry that every time they put on their uniform, they’re inviting somebody out there to have a shot at them, but we do.

Gun violence is a very real problem in the United States.

We are so jaded in our high opinions of ourselves that we don’t recognize that when it comes to gun violence, the rest of the world is scratching their heads and wondering what the fuck is wrong with the United States?

Sure, gun violence happens elsewhere, but not like it does here.

I’m not even talking about the school shootings or the fact that you can’t take your family to a movie theater or other public gathering without worrying on some level whether or not some lunatic is going to show up and start randomly shooting people.

I’m more concerned with the everyday violence.

Thousands of people will be killed with a gun this year in the United States, yet nothing will be done about it.

Not a thing.

Why?

If we’re being honest with ourselves, we don’t care about it as much as we should because when we turn on the news and listen to the every day stories about another person being killed, it’s almost always in the “bad” part of town, far from where those whose opinions really matter live.

You know, those black neighborhoods.

Heroin is a hot button issue today in no small part because it’s mostly rural and suburban white kids who are becoming hooked and dying from its use.

If suburban kids were being gunned down at half the rate as inner-city kids, we’d be inundated with stories and ideas for fixing the problem.

Guns don’t kill people, Don.

I get that.

Even though some comments on my blog posts have insinuated that I’m anti-gun, I’ve never said that.

I’m not, even a little bit.

To infer that I’m anti-gun because I find it fucked up that more women and children are getting shot and killed right along with the young men who’ve always been getting shot and killed is absurd, and part of the reason that gun related discussions aren’t happening.

There’s a difference between gun sense and gun regulation.

I do have guns in my house, obviously, and I worry about them being found by one of my kids, in spite of the measures I take to keep it from happening, because kids are kids. They’re curious.

Every few weeks we read about a child finding a gun and accidentally shooting himself or somebody else.

That’s fucked up.

That’s a lack of gun sense.

If a three year old finds a gun in your house and hurts or kills another person or themselves, then you should be punished.

If your three year old isn’t a lemur or a monkey, then he shouldn’t be able to get it from the top shelf of your closet, or from inside the safe, or he shouldn’t be able to manipulate the gun lock I’m sure you’re using when the gun is being stored.

Gun sense is simply not being negligent with your very dangerous instrument.

Sure, guns don’t kill people, but they make it a whole hell of a lot easier.

Drive by killings with Chinese throwing stars or steak knives or rocks are much more difficult than they are with guns.

It’s just a fucking fact.

Guns don’t belong in the hands of people who can’t be trusted to make rational decisions.

If you’re drunk with your gun, you’ll get arrested.

Certain felons can’t have guns.

Folks who have been institutionalized because they’re mentally deranged can’t have guns.

Possessing a gun unrestricted, isn’t your God given birth right, in spite of your beliefs to the contrary.

Should those of us who are responsible adults be able to own guns?

Absolutely.

Any sort of gun we want?

Meh, probably not a great idea that we allow folks to own bazookas or aircraft cannons, but that’s not my call or my concern.

My concern is with the lack of respect people have for guns and their ability to end your life just like that.

My concern is that we aren’t talking about realistic ways to curb the violence and the death.

People making stupid choices with guns is my concern.

Gun suspects being allowed to plea to crimes that won’t prevent them from being able to possess a gun in the future is my concern.

I have many concerns.

My hope is that we can ignore the people on the extreme ends of this issue who won’t listen to anything contrary to their opinions and have an intelligent conversation among those of us in the middle, those of us who want what’s best for our kids and our society.

Whatever that may be.

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