Foxholes

The nation is sadly turning black and blue. What can we do?

The deaths of Wenjian Liu, Eric Garner, Rafael Ramos, Micheal Brown and so many others has caused a sad phenomenon to rear its ugly head again. Once again, Americans have run to their respective foxholes and lob grenades. Here in America, and to be fair, maybe everywhere, we seem to love conflict. We have abandoned all of the obvious and reasonable middle ground between the foxholes in favor of the foxholes. We choose to pick up our torches and pitchforks, assemble into opposing angry mobs and take to the metaphoric streets, and sometimes to the actual streets.
    We have all spent much of our lives on that obvious and reasonable middle ground. Imagine if the response to signs that proclaim that “Black Lives Matter” was “Of course black lives matter. Now how can we all work together to be sure all lives are safer”. How would things be different now? Would the fuse that was lit and set off the horror in the mind of Ismaaiyl Brinsley have been extinguished? Reports that his Internet postings appear to show that he wanted revenge for the deaths of Brown and Garner. But we were so busy running to our foxholes, that no one paid attention to that secondary fuse that was ignited as they were racing for the foxholes. Do you think that was the only secondary fuse? If you do, if you think there won't be more explosions on both sides, I have some wonderful waterfront land that might be of interest to you.
    Since the middle ground seems to be vacant and available, I'm going to go ahead and occupy it for the next few minutes. First, since people in foxholes seem to love slogans, but seem also to have an aversion to taking a few moments and then offering non-incindiary responses, I'm going to try to do that. Then I'm going to offer some solutions. My proposed solutions will not be perfect, maybe not even good (I'm not always very smart), but what they will be is a place to start thinking and talking where no one is tossing grenades. First, let's address these slogans:

Black Lives Matter -  Of course black lives matter. All lives matter. If there are officers on any police force anywhere in America that feel that anyone's life is less valuable based on the color of their skin, then they need to find some job other than that of police officer.

Blue Lives Matter " Of course police lives matter. It is their job to keep us safe and that job is a difficult and often frightening job.

I Can't Breathe " You should be permitted to breathe. If an officer wants to take you into custody, or handcuff you I know that can be a frightening prospect, but make that easy for everyone involved. Often police want to search us or detain us for a few moments and after some questions or conversation, we are sent on our way.

Breathe Easy, Obey the Law " Yes, as I have stated above, being pleasant and amiable always makes police/citizen interactions go much better. Also, in addition to the enforcement arm of the law, we have the judicial arm. This is where punishment is to be decided by juries and judges, punishment is not the jurisdiction of officers on the streets.

    Now if I may, I'd like to offer some suggestions regarding some of these incidents, some of our reactions and ways to reduce the fallout in the future. As I stated above, I don't offer these ideas as be-all, end-all solutions to these heartbreaking circumstances, but as a place to start.

I think that all police should be equipped wit body cameras. Not only will they offer the chance to expose some of our less honorable police officers, but they will provide photographic evidence in the trials of those who interfere with or assault officers. Further, I believe that police dash cameras and these body cameras should include (if possible) a remote feed to some other organization or agency other than the police. This will remove the temptation for anyone on or affiliated with any police force to bury, alter or delay the acquisition of the video by anyone with questions about police conduct.

Questions of police misconduct should never be investigated by the offices of the very same district attorneys that work with those police forces on a daily basis. Those two departments should, by definition, be close and very friendly with one another. Judges who are close and friendly with one side or another in a case, are expected to recuse themselves from sitting in judgment. This should be the standard in these cases. It is patently unrealistic and unfair to ask prosecutors who are expected to work with police every day to make unbiased, sometimes heart rending judgments on them. Special prosecutors should be the standard. I believe that each state should have an office staffed with dedicated special prosecutors.

Police often grow understandably frustrated with communities in which the citizenry is unwilling to provide information that will help the police make safer the very neighborhoods in which these same people live. Though often it is out of fear of retribution from criminals, it can be very frustrating to police, police are only human. We need to find a way to make it safe for citizens to help the police help them. I believe that this will help to defuse some of the tension that exists between the police and members of some communities.

    Lastly, I'd like to offer a story about my favorite hobby (Writing is not a hobby, it is an obsession). My favorite hobby is fishing and I remember when I first became interested, I bought every magazine I could about bass fishing. These magazines, obviously loved to put pictures of big bass on their covers. At that time, the largest bass were always caught in Florida, in lakes that were very similar to one another. They were all relatively shallow lakes that were covered with lily pads. Lily pads, for you non-fishermen, are large (sometime plate sized), round, green, floating plants. As a result of always seeing big bass and lily pads on the same covers, whenever I went fishing, I went immediately to the lilly pads. Often I was casting in water that was four to ten inches deep, hoping to catch fish that would be too large to even be fully covered by the water in which I was fishing. Even when the water was deep enough, I would sometimes sit in the boat, casting to the lily pads, and going fishless, while my buddy was facing in the exact opposite direction, fishing in deep water with no lily pads, catching fish after fish.
    I was not considering all of the variables. I wanted fishing to be that easy … find lily pads, catch gigantic bass. Often we are guilty of the same thing in our dealings with people. We want assessing people to be easy …  blue uniform, honorable good guy. Clearly we have all thought about race and sadly, some of us still choose to believe negative stereotypes. I don't need to address myself to that unfortunate reality here. We all know the particulars and the people who hold to those negative stereotypes are unlikely to be convinced to let go of them. What I want to address here is positive stereotypes, or what I will refer to here as “The Lily Pad Error”. I eventually learned that while lily pads often are excellent places to catch large bass, this is not always the case. Similarly, Police officers are often (I would even say “overwhelmingly”) good and decent people who bravely come to work every day with the intent of keeping us safe. While this is absolutely true, much like there are lily pads that hold more frogs than fish, there are some less honorable police officers who have allowed the power that they are trusted with to corrupt them. Consider the following …

Gerard John Schaefer, Jr. - a murderer and suspected serial killer from Florida. He was imprisoned in 1973 for murders he committed as a Martin County, Florida Sheriff's deputy.

Craig Alan Peyer - a CHP officer, was convicted of the 1986 strangulation murder of motorist Cara Knott, a student at San Diego State University.

Drew Peterson - Drew Walter Peterson - a retired Bolingbrook, Illinois, police sergeant who first received national publicity in the United States in 2007 when his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, disappeared without warning. Suspicion of foul play grew within the public and law enforcement, fueled in part by the untimely death of Drew's third wife just three years prior. Stacy was never found, and Drew has not been charged in her case. In 2009, Peterson was indicted for the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, after a second autopsy gave evidence to a struggle. He was convicted in 2012 and received his sentence of 38 years on February 21, 2013.

Arthur Seale - a former police officer, along with his wife Irene was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Sidney Reso, the Vice President of International Operations for Exxon on April 29, 1992, in Morris Township, New Jersey.

Jeff Pelo - a former Bloomington police sergeant was found guilty of raping four women and stalking a fifth.

    While there have been many more law enforcement officers found to have committed terrible crimes than I have listed here, the majority of officers are good and decent. My point here is, if we try to make judgments based on positive stereotypes, we are probably just as likely to make tragic mistakes as we are when we trust in negative stereotypes. Another example is the military. We see camouflage, and our knee jerk reaction is to think “hero”. We like this because this relieves us of the need to actually think. Because if we take a moment to think, we come up with names like …

Charles Whitman
David Berkowitz
Timothy McVeigh
Terry Nichols
Howard Unruh

… we realize that wearing camo does not automatically make someone a good guy. I urge you, friends, to avoid falling into the trap that the media sets. Be it intentionally or otherwise, the media tends to run stories that are dramatic and exciting. Furthermore, they couch these stories in a manner that will promote ongoing viewer interest. Nothing piques our interest like conflict. This is how they make their money, so it is good for them. But it's not necessarily good for you and me. We have to live in the conditions that are created by this conflict.
    I urge you, no, I beg you, the next time you feel the inclination to run to your foxhole, take a moment to think, is there a way to make this productive instead of lobbing grenades? Ask yourself how you might feel if your son or brother were killed while unarmed, ask yourself how you would feel each night watching your father or brother put on his uniform and go out to work, not knowing if he would come home safe. I guess, in closing, I am asking you not to be so fast to abandon the middle ground. Consider the words of the Late Sen. Robert Kennedy, who said …

“We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force …

… But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. ”

Reviews

[Kristina Moulaison]

This is a GREAT article! As someone who was born and resides firmly in the middle, I so appreciate your tone and sound reasoning here. It is like a balm to the heart when all around clangs calamitous nonsense. This is why I love you, my friend! It is sad that this voice who cowers from the conflict ridden world is silenced by the noise. But I hear you. So many other silent people hear and agree with you. And it matters that we do, even if we are not the loudest voices. Higher truth remains, though it must lay fallow in the ground. The years will bear it out and grow fruit, sweet and sustaining.