Recent events remind us of Americans’ deep ambivalence and internal contradictions about policing:
Americans often say they want community policing, emphasizing de-escalation and outreach over proactive crime reduction and assertive policing. Many also oppose what they see as the “militarization” of police, rejecting the notion that American law enforcement should procure and train with tools such as sniper rifles and bullet-proof vests, let alone other more specialized equipment.
America in recent years has suffered a wave of anti-policing rhetoric, with the “Ferguson effect” beginning in 2014 and reaching a crescendo in the riots of 2020. Some radicals seek to defund them altogether.
But when an incident like Uvalde occurs, the public expects members of law enforcement to conduct what even America’s most elite special operations forces consider among the most challenging tactical tasks: a solo dynamic entry, room clearance, and structure search against a heavily armed perpetrator or perpetrators.
And the public is right to ask for this.
But few agencies select officers based on ability and willingness to perform this extremely high-impact/low-probability mission. Few agencies train officers to the high levels of proficiency required. The reality is that most law enforcement agencies require only the minimally mandated firearms qualifications, and at standards that are insufficient to meet the level of the challenge, in the event the worst should happen. Only a select few officers seek outside training and acquire the right tools, often at their own expense, to make themselves ready, lest they be called and found wanting.
Beyond bureaucratic training requirements, the task requires a certain mindset, a comfort with aggression, and a drive not doled out to all people in equal measure.
There are around 700,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the United States. As much as it may pain us to admit it, not all of them will be warriors, a word that is overused in certain circles but nevertheless remains apt. And, of course, police work requires many other interpersonal skills and training, some of which are 180-degree opposite from the psychological traits required to storm into a room alone against a determined and heavily armed gunman.
As historian Victor Davis Hanson eloquently writes, America possesses a deep discomfort with those who truly epitomize the combat virtues. While America loves the action hero, we breathe a sigh of relief at the movie’s end not only because the villain has been dispatched, but also because the hero rides away.
If we are honest with ourselves, most Americans don’t want this type of highly capable and dangerous man (and most of them will be men) doing our policing. Not on the good days, when the sun is shining and the birds are chirping.
De-escalation is fine, but at the end of the day, I want someone who can take care of business.
The folks on patrol are not running a day-care service nor are they the neighborhood concierge. They are there to evaluate and handle threats and problems, hopefully in a civil and professional manner. Don’t start a fight. We pay them to not loose fights. They probably handle things better than I would.
Two John Wayne movies come to mind: Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Fiction captures our desire for such a man.
I have come to the same conclusion, though by different reasoning, as has BLM/antifa: De-fund the police.
First, I see video from less-developed countries whose inhabitants summarily manage their criminal element with speed and efficiency. Thieves are beaten by a group of neighbors or shop keepers as a matter of course. If they survive the punishment, they are no longer welcome. Child rapists and homosexual groomers are dragged into the street and punished unto death by whatever means at hand: blows, edged weapons, incendiaries, or defenestration. In the West, we have corrupt process. Elsewhere, they still have an imperfect justice.
Second, from a white background I see the police as the primary obstacle to white self and neighborhood defense. This has been the case since before the race riots of the 1960s. Up to that point, white ethnic neighborhoods could manage black and brown and other criminals well enough to maintain peace and safety in the neighborhood. During and after the riots, police, national guard, and other law enforcement made the target of their enforcement whites who dared self & neighborhood defense. It is this that led to white flight and destruction of ethnic white neighborhoods. White ethnics could beat back black and brown invaders, but not while the government’s power was arrayed against them.
Kyle Shideler: “But when an incident like Uvalde occurs, the public expects members of law enforcement to conduct what even America’s most elite special operations forces consider among the most challenging tactical tasks: a solo dynamic entry, room clearance, and structure search against a heavily armed perpetrator or perpetrators.”
“Members of law enforcement” were fully equipped and eminently willing, however, to heroically “tackle”, “throw to the ground”, and “pepper-spray” fathers attempting to conduct that exact tactical task.
Back The Blue, Baby.
Thin Blue Line.
LBGTQ.
Roo_ster: “Second, from a white background I see the police as the primary obstacle to white self and neighborhood defense. This has been the case since before the race riots of the 1960s. Up to that point, white ethnic neighborhoods could manage black and brown and other criminals well enough to maintain peace and safety in the neighborhood. During and after the riots, police, national guard, and other law enforcement made the target of their enforcement whites who dared self & neighborhood defense. It is this that led to white flight and destruction of ethnic white neighborhoods. White ethnics could beat back black and brown invaders, but not while the government’s power was arrayed against them.”
More pithily, you might say that the police state swept in and dissolved the bonds of the neighborhood as the welfare state swept in and dissolved the bonds of the family.
This was entirely by accident, I’m sure. As I learned in the public schools, conspiracies happen in faraway places ruled by totalitarian dictatorships, like Russia or China.
Call it the Chauvin effect.
The public abandoned the Defenders to the fates we abandon you to your fate.
I’m a military veteran, we frequently went through the backstabbing machine called investigations, some were unlucky enough to be tossed to the media and the public and precious social media. We train with police and of course the military, police, veterans and National Guard are all the same people from the same families. Then there’s the ROE and the constant threats from JAG, CID, OSI, NCIS….F*** all of you.
You did this to yourselves. The Vote has very little real power, but who commands Force is a direct vote – Mayors, Presidents, Governors, Sheriffs. You chose them, you chose this fate.
You.
Are.
Faithless.
You.
Are.
On.
Your.
Own.
No one took an Oath to go to jail or have their lives ruined for public relations. Or to be sacrificed by their faithless, false and allegiant only to themselves ‘leadership’ that you chose.
“And the public is right to ask for this.”*
You abandoned us to the fates we abandon you to your fate, you deserve nothing more ‘public.’
*nice link Isegoria, this guy “Kyle Shideler’ Mr. Shideler specializes on Islamist groups operating in the United States…’ and has never served a day as police or military.
By the way to actually do the duty requires ….disobedience of orders, contempt for JAG, contempt for the laws and a spirit of utter lawlessness that can only be called the thrill of crime. Been there, done that, led same.
The Border Patrol agents who took down Ramos in Uvalde disobeyed orders. It will take time but their careers just ended or stopped at their present rank.
The conspiracy is cowardice and that reflects the ‘public’. F*** YOU.
You abandoned us to the fates we abandon you to your fate, you deserve nothing more ‘public.’
‘Community Policing’ is an old Anglo-Saxon tradition; specifically antedating the Napoleonic French both inventing the term and practice of a state run ‘police’ force (which was subsequently gleefully adopted by many other post-enlightenment states of the age).
Which form such tradition took of course being royally commissioned marshals whose primary job was the organization of all upstanding men in the local community in training the arts of mars, and lead posses of those same men in dealing with any particularly thorny problems.
People who say ‘defund the police’ in the 21st century naturally are not saying this because they desire for property owners to gain greater power in organizing the utilization of force, but because they want to remove any vestige of impediment to their depredations of their desired victims – however tentative, intermittent, or inconsistent they may be.
Echos of this adaptive tradition can still be felt in more rural areas of the state, where the deputies of the sheriff’s office are also all your neighbors. City cops, of course, are products of the city machine; zogbot only club.
The ‘criminal justice’ system is made to provide exactly that: justice for criminals. The only reason felons are not dying in droves left and right is because the Whig state has been working very hard for generations to stop citizens from killing them.
“If we are honest with ourselves, most Americans don’t want this type of highly capable and dangerous man (and most of them will be men) doing our policing. Not on the good days, when the sun is shining and the birds are chirping.”
Americans absolutely want this type of highly capable and dangerous man; the only people who don’t are people like rat faced movie producers who get anxious over the idea, because on some level they instinctively sense that in such a state of affairs, it would not be out of the realm of possibility for them to find themselves standing on the wrong end of such a man’s gun.
Oh, no need to defund the police.
Or do, it doesn’t matter.
The police are Divesting themselves of you.
So fund or don’t, you’re alone.
The police are gunmen and will have no trouble finding better paid employment with much better backing from the Boss, who wants to live.
That’s why there’s been a hiring explosion since January 2021, go to https://www.watchdogjobs.com/ and see…
off the charts. Domestic more than foreign.
You wanted a 3d world country and you’ve got one.
Yes, you did. Every GOP voter is for sale for HUD grants – but no diversity please – every GOP contractor is for war – but not them of course.
Every GOP politician gets their real orders from donors or the contractor class [you're government is a contracting brokerage].
Every widdle Karen including especially GOP Karen’s are against police brutality, nods that Chauvin committed murder, tsk tsks at bad pictures from Iraq..
Every Dem voter is honest and just wants swag and power, and diversity as long as they don’t live there…
Everyone wants ‘good schools’, you damn sure can’t stand to have the widdle monsters at home.
Everyone wants safe communities but every election cycle – now every 2 years – we fluctuate back and forth between safe streets vs police Brutality.
As if Brutality wasn’t the core of safety.
Brutality is the core of safety.
no Brutality then live in fear.
Not one of you precious voters isn’t for sale, and ye wonder that ye have no liberty.
A liberty none of you would risk a hair or a penny for, but you’ll betray those that did.
By all means, defend yourselves. I’ll believe it when it happens.
You wanted this, you got it.
You don’t have me, and I warrant you don’t have us.
Have fun with your varied and diversified pets.
You are getting what you wanted, all of it and it’s just what you deserve.
“But when an incident like Uvalde occurs, the public expects members of law enforcement to conduct what even America’s most elite special operations forces consider among the most challenging tactical tasks: a solo dynamic entry, room clearance, and structure search against a heavily armed perpetrator or perpetrators.”
Yes. That’s the job. Don’t like it? FInd another line of work.
Honestly, if I’m ever faced with such a situation, even with full understanding of the fact that I have literally zero training and have no idea what I’m doing, I would at least try. Some things aren’t worth living with.
If all that happens is that the kids get a 15 second reprieve while the perp is shooting at me instead of them, then so be it. It’s someting. It means I don’t have to live with the fact that I chose my own life over those of children that needed my help.
But the reality is that the majority of these cowards off themselves as soon as they face even half-assed resistance. You’re not going up against a spec ops SealRangerDelta Operator, here, you’re going up against an 18 year old neckbeard that has spent his life in his grandma’ basement. Given that reality, I’m going in, even if all I have is rocks to throw back. The chances are just the token resistance is going to have him eating his own glock and the situation is over.
You can phrase it however you want, there is literally zero excuse for what the Uvalde cowards did.
Those who by instinct identify with the kshatriya classes in America in later days can often find themselves in an increasingly uncomfortable situation; on one hand, you have people accusing them of serving as the muscle of a satanic regime which hates them, the active element in keeping anarcho-tyranny enforced around the world in general, and at home especially; on the other hand, those same modern manichaeans are now themselves throwing their own enforcers under the bus to get status points in their officially unofficial state religion.
“You abandoned us to the fates we abandon you to your fate, you deserve nothing more ‘public.’”
I can most certainly understand this sentiment and respect it, but any cop who feels this way should immediately resign and find another line of work.
VXXC, if you self-proclaimed sheepdogs really were leaving us supposed sheep to the live or die among the wolves, that would be one thing. But you’re out there vigorously shutting down and punishing any sheep who dares fight back against the wolves. I understand perfectly well why you don’t want to enforce the law on the criminals and the scum, but to compensate you get extra enthusiastic when the opportunity arises to stomp a decent law-abiding person. I’d prefer anarchy to the anarcho-tyranny you guys operate.
VXXC, on one hand I want to empathize with your class experience of being harried and harassed by lawyers. Who doesn’t hate lawyers? Even lawyers hate lawyers. On the other…
Chill out, bro. Realistically, it’s unlikely anyone died at Uvalde.
Contaminated NEET: “I understand perfectly well why you don’t want to enforce the law on the criminals and the scum, but to compensate you get extra enthusiastic when the opportunity arises to stomp a decent law-abiding person. I’d prefer anarchy to the anarcho-tyranny you guys operate.”
Honestly, show me the stats on how many cops disobeyed orders to enforce municipal mask mandates.
It was eye-opening.
Contaminaed NEET:
You’re very close to realizing the truth of the matter, which is this:
the “sheep vs sheepdog” thing is complete bullshit. We “sheep” don’t need protected from the wolves. We’re perfectly capable of doing it ourselves, thanks much. We ‘ve just agreed to outsource that duty to the “sheepdogs” because that’s what you do t create a more just, even, and fair society. You see, we sheep, when compelled to protect ourselves in the past, we’ren’t terribly concerned with ideas like “justice” and “fairness” and such. We’d generally just string the wolf up and call it a day.
We agreed to give up that ability because vigilante justice isn’t justice, and is a very ugly thing. So we hired men to specialize in administering true justice, in a fair, balanced, and even way. In short, the police exist, and were created in very large part, TO PROTECT THE WOLVES, not the sheep.
The “sheepdogs” are there to protect the wolves from the excesses of the sheep’s vigilantism. That’s why you see the wolves prosecuting the sheep who fall out of line so vigorously, and why they don’t seem to be as motivated to searching out the wolves anymore.
What happened at Uvalde is exactly what this “sheep vs sheepdog vs wolf” narrative leads to eventually, and it’s also what causes the whole system to break down. As soon as the sheepdogs stop punishing the wolves, they’ll find out that the sheep are, and always have been, perfectly capable of punishing the wolves themselves, thank you very much. It’s just not very pretty, not very balanced, and not very fair or just.
We’d all do well to remember this.
I do not need the police. I’ve agreed to cede my duty to protect my things to them in return for a more civilized society. BUt if the police don’t hold up their end of the agreement, I absolutely intend to take my duty right the fuck back.
To all you police out there, if you honestly think that your 3 weeks of training makes you somehow capable of superhuman feats of justice that nobody else can do without your input, I think you’re about to get a lesson, real soon.
We don’t need you. The criminals do. We agreed to allow you to take on the duties that you’re eschewing on the agreement that you would actually take them on. Keep neglecting them, and you’ll get your lesson.