Whither Police And Policing?

     Now that videos of the atrocity in Uvalde, Texas this past Wednesday are emerging and contradicting the statements of Texas’ police commanders, Texas’ governor, and the mainstream media, this question must be asked.

     The Right has been nearly unanimous in its support of the police and its condemnation of the various “defund the police” movements these past few years. How do most conservatives feel about the police this morning? If you’re not yet up to speed, Tucker Carlson will brief you:

     It boggles the mind that the police authorities should have been so free with outright falsehoods when it was virtually certain that contrary testimony and videos of the event would emerge. It doesn’t speak well of their trustworthiness. (It certainly doesn’t speak well of their intelligence.) Yet after the carnage had ended, voluminous “pro-Blue” statements were swift to be issued and repeated by the major media. Governor Greg Abbott got right on board with them too. Now all of that has been refuted by incontrovertible witness testimony and video evidence.

     Meanwhile, Washington is using the atrocity as a reason to impose even more restrictions on private gun ownership. I didn’t need further proof that “politician” is synonymous de facto with “scumbag.” Did you, Gentle Reader? Yet there they are, right out in front of God and everybody. As William S. Burroughs famously observed, in the aftermath of a shooting, the authorities always hustle to take the guns away from everyone who didn’t do it.

     High-ranking police officials are egging them on.

     In historical terms, public police are a relatively recent phenomenon. It’s illuminating to read up on the history of public policing, both in Britain and here. We of the Anglosphere owe the concept to Sir Robert Peel. You might be surprised by what you find. In particular, back then they were not popular with the common folk.

     Whether public police are a desirable thing is an open question that deserves to be openly discussed. Certainly, public police who do nothing as children are mowed down by a rampaging gunman are not a desirable thing. Yet that’s the sort that converged on Robb Elementary School. Not only did they hang back as Salvador Ramos slaughtered defenseless children and teachers, they did their level best to prevent anyone else from entering the building to deal with Ramos. Ultimately, Ramos was stopped – shot and killed – not by the police but by a Border Patrol officer.

     We hear constantly about how the police are underpaid. That’s a plaint you’ll hear from anyone who draws his salary from a government – regardless of its veracity. Yet police departments bristle with equipment, including items originally deployed to military units. Police are allowed to retire after twenty years. Police benefits and pensions are on a par with the arrangements for any public employee. And police routinely lord it over civilians in any encounters between us, often to the extent of issuing orders backed by the threat of force that are demonstrably outside their proper authority.

     We also hear that We the People have no need for firearms, that the police will respond to any threats better than a badgeless citizen. Until recently, that was a left-wing political mantra…but we’re beginning to hear it from supposed conservatives as well.

     Incidents such as Uvalde, Texas and Parkland, Florida are souring a great many people on the police. The saying has become commonplace that a policeman’s highest priority is preserving his own life. Whether or not it’s correctable, the trend appears to be real – and that is not good for the police or the communities they’re hired and dispatched to serve.

6 comments

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    • ontoiran on May 27, 2022 at 11:03 AM

    you already know that scotus says the police have no duty to protect anyone. so now the question is “what ARE they for?”

    • NITZAKHON on May 27, 2022 at 11:17 AM

    At our synagogue they’re planning a seminar / lecture by the local constabulary.  I plan to bring some handouts from JPFO entitled “Why Jews Must Learn How to Shoot”.  That should be festive.  They’ve got some other good ones too… in the past I’ve brought a couple to, say, doctors’ offices and surreptitiously left them mingled among the other magazines.

     

    As soon as my next paycheck hits – cash is far tighter than I’d like right now due to home remodeling – I plan to buy some more and also a dozen or so of their book “Dial 911 and Die”.  Also for handouts and to send to people I know who chant The Police Will Protect Us.

     

     

  1. Tucker’s opening dealt with the inability of the Uvalde LEOs to explain adequately what they were doing for over an hour as 21 people were murdered.

    Still, I noticed something revealing. Four officers initially went in. However, after getting shot at, they withdrew, deciding to wait for backup. (Are hostage negotiators considered backup, or even needed, in a live fire situation? LEO spokesman included them.) Apparently, Solzhenitsyn was right.

    …but had [the future gulag prisoners] understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

    There may be one or two readers here that needed that excerpt to understand. But all the usual suspects obviously understand all too well. Those craven cowards immediately sought to use the tragic events as leverage to take away your self defenses. And this headline tells us we may be on our own: “McConnell, Other Republicans Consider Concessions to Democrats on Gun Legislation.”

     

    • NITZAKHON on May 27, 2022 at 1:08 PM

    I have a recurring nightmare that some Islamic terrorists take over one of my kids’ schools, Beslan-style, and while the locals are waiting for the hostage negotiators, etc., those inside are raping and killing… and I’m screaming at the police to look up Beslan and DO SOMETHING.

     

    Granted, that’s not likely where I live, but it’s a fear that keeps coming back.  Similar here.  Action speaks.  And if the killer is engaged with, or having to react to, the police… they’re NOT shooting kids.

     

    On a local talk show I heard that President Potato just issued an executive order that police can’t get surplus military stuff.  Including body armor.  I checked.

     

    Biden Bans Federal Agencies From Supplying Police With Military-Grade Equipment | The Daily Caller

    • steveaz on May 27, 2022 at 7:12 PM

    Whither Policing?  The problem with ‘Safety-ism’ is it saps all the masculine trades of their essential bravery.

    All our unionized civil service are obsessed with Safety.  “Safety First.”  An entire, multi-billion dollar industry of mandatory training and gear-buys, most of it forced on municipal taxpayers by the Safety Bureaucracy, has sprung up like Kudzu to grow on this nervous substrate of Fear.

    COVID, the rise of the Karens, and the annoying “Be Safe” bromide that gained currency in COVID’s wake, all indicate the systemic spread of the Safety First Virus in the American bloodstream.

    In the Safety-ist’s mind, the Police are perfectly warranted in waiting.  They’re only playing it Safe, after all.

    • Butch DuCote on May 28, 2022 at 10:04 AM

    Police are what they have always been; Historians. They arrive and try to document what happened. They are also tax collectors. They protect what? Only the politicians who pay them.

    I wish the public would look into their skill with firearms. I think the public would find most departments very lacking. That alone should be a wake-up call when you need an armed response.

    We need to return to “peace officers”. When was the last time you have heard that term used?

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