CopThink
Tyre Nichols was murdered by the culture of policing.
I have a frightening history of behavior as reckless as it is absolutely legal: mouthing off to cops.
Once, at 17th and E in Washington, I was approaching the White House grounds, where other drivers ignored the lights and jammed the intersection as the police indifferently looked on. Me, to cops: “Are you gonna step in or just fucking stand there watching?” [Answer: B]
In the early 90s, while walking with my elderly parents through their apartment-building parking lot, a cop sped by us, literally inches away. Me: “SLOW DOWN, you imbecile!” The cop slammed on the brakes, exited his cruiser and approached me. Him: “What did you say to me?” Me: “I called you an imbecile. You’re going 40 mph in a parking lot for seniors. Are you out of your fucking mind?” Him: ”I happen to be on the way to a call.” Me: “An emergency?” Him: “Yes, as a matter of fact.” Me: “But not such an emergency that you didn’t have time to play tough-guy for a random pedestrian.” Him: “Do you know what ‘interfering with an officer in the execution of his duties’ is?” Me: “Yes, I do. It’s not this. Just go to your emergency. You’ve got dome lights. Try using them.” Off he went. My mom was really mad. At me.
Year 2007: I’m slowly cruising a busy DC entertainment district on a Friday night, looking for a parking space. There I see a policeman, parked at a meter, working on a report. Me: “Seriously? You’re taking up meter space when there are yellow zones everywhere? Do me a favor and move your car.” Him: “OK, just gimme a sec.” Miracle.
And this Golden Oldie, my very first copburst, at 2 pm on December 7, 1972, at the age of 17, alongside Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia, to a policeman who didn’t like me blasting my horn at him for failing to move through an intersection. With obvious irritation, he, too, exited his vehicle and walked in my direction with his game face on.
Me, out the window: “You know what, asshole? My father died 20 minutes ago [pointing to the hospital] right there. I don’t need any fucking shit from you. Just move your car so I can go home.”
He did, as a matter of fact. Wordlessly and immediately.
That’s just a few examples. There have been several more, which I don’t recount out of sheer embarrassment. I’m not entirely unhinged, but let’s just say that sometimes the gate swings a little wobbly. Yet in none of those episodes was I arrested, beaten or shot to death. Am I really that lucky? Hold the thought.
Through my checkered personal experience as a citizen, and my professional acquaintance with hundreds of cops early in my journalistic career, I have drawn some inferences about the police mind. Those insights begin with the central question, as in, who wants to be a cop to begin with? Ah, some categories:
Boy scouts who idealistically want to protect and serve.
Big, not especially bright guys, who grew up throwing their weight around, and now can do it with impunity, authority, cuffs and weapons. Bullies, in other words.
Insecure, generally unimpressive guys who want, for the first time and almost instantly, to command the respect and even the awe that a 9 mm confers.
True losers who have to make the choice at the age of 18 between criminality and a sustainable lifestyle. Decent salary and benefits plus no prison. Usually.
Born Nazis.
Some of the less savory of these characteristics can be substantially mitigated by training, which is on the whole rigorous and thoughtful. It is also too brief and too finite. Not enough time is spent after the Academy on in-service training, wherein experienced cops and data-endowed experts teach more about strategy, tactics, psychology and sociology. In the vacuum, policing habits are cultivated on the street. And who do cops encounter on the street? A lot of victims, a lot of suckers and a lot, lot, lot of creeps. This is where training is often counterproductive. So conditioned are officers to be wary of everyone in every encounter, the most innocent contact can suddenly escalate into tragedy. (Is he pointing a gun, or getting out his smartphone?) Furthermore, because training teaches that lethal threats be met with overwhelming force, there is no such thing as disabling a suspect with, say, one crippling gunshot to the leg. Or just keeping a distance until he calms down. The protocol is to empty your magazine.
But it’s not just those self-defense hair-triggers. Such hyper-wariness over time mutates into contempt, making the threatened (or merely insulted) cop himself or herself as likely to be triggered as any irate citizen — especially, especially, when the episode involves backup. When two cops or more get involved, mob psychology can take hold. “Us against them” is a different starting point than “How can we defuse the anger, aggression and danger of this situation?” And hostility is contagious.
In these circumstances, smart-mouthing or (alleged) refusal to comply with orders or the most benign sudden movement may as well be aiming a sawed-off shotgun at the cops, because a blue onslaught is apt to follow. That happens whether the encounter was precipitated by a real threat or not, whether the detained citizen still represents a threat or not, whether violence is necessary to end the incident or not and — incredibly — whether it’s all being videoed or not. Once the crazy starts, cooler heads seldom prevail.
And all of the above, by the way, is colorblind. Add the element of racial profiling and the threat of violence grows exponentially — malice3 — because … well, you know why because. Running away from the police may be suspicious, or it may be the reasonable response to reasonable fear, but it definitely is not a capital crime. It may be instinct to frantically pursue, but it’s not always wise. Most of the time you can grab the suspect later at minimal tension and risk by simply waiting for them to leave the house. Yet, again and again, when letting a suspect flee is the rational course of action, the cops take the flight personally and switch into predator mode. That’s when the switch is thrown and “protect and serve” mutates into “judge, jury and executioner.” For minor crimes or no crime at all, in the name of law and order comes lawless mayhem. Such as the 2021 deaths of two unarmed Maryland men, Dominique Williams and James Johnson, shot in the back after being interrupted in the middle of a car break-in. Or Roderick Brooks, shot through the back of the head in Houston this summer for shoplifting from a dollar store. Or an agitated Quadry Sanders, shot to death a year ago in Oklahoma for brandishing a baseball cap in the direction of police. Or Jonathan Price, unarmed and gunned down in late 2020 for trying to stop a stranger from abusing a woman at a Texas convenience store.
And as a new incident every week demonstrates, the N-word needn’t be on their lips to be in their heads. Which is the definition of profiling. It is why you know the names of the late George Floyd, the late Michael Brown, the late Breonna Taylor, the late Tamir Rice, the late Freddie Gray, the late Eric Garner, the late Tyre Nichols.
If we’re discussing the feeling of impunity — and we are — let’s return to me. Again and again, I have exercised my First Amendment rights in telling policemen exactly what I think. It’s not that I did so entirely without risk. But there was no risk of me suffering the fate of Tyre Nichols. Because I was, indeed, very lucky. I was lucky I’m white.
Good one, Bob - it all rings true.
A remarkably dim-witted screed. A smattering of anecdotes. Have a care, Mr. Garfield. You and your fellows should know you are feeding the wrong wolf.