Paranoia from the PBA President

Over lunch today, the head of one of the NYPD’s powerful police unions* emailed a shrill “open letter” to the press, blaming the “armchair rhetoric” of columnists and pundits for the worsening relations between the police and the communities they serve.  Here’s the email:

To all arm-chair judges:

If you have never struggled with someone who is resisting arrest or who pulled a gun or knife on you when you approached them for breaking a law, then you are not qualified to judge the actions of police officers putting themselves in harm’s way for the public good.

It is mystifying to all police officers to see pundits and editorial writers whose only expertise is writing fast-breaking, personal opinion, and who have never faced the dangers that police officers routinely do, come to instant conclusions that an officer’s actions were wrong based upon nothing but a silent video. That is irresponsible, unjust and un-American. Worse than that, your uninformed rhetoric is inflammatory and only serves to worsen police/community relations.

In the unfortunate case of former tennis pro, James Blake, — who was clearly but mistakenly identified by a complainant — there certainly can be mitigating circumstances which caused the officer to handle the situation in the manner he did. Do they exist? Frankly, no one will know for sure until there is a full and complete investigation. That is why no one should ever jump to an uninformed conclusion based upon a few seconds of video. Let all of the facts lead where they will, but police officers have earned the benefit of the doubt because of the dangers we routinely face.

The men and women of the NYPD are once again disheartened to read another the knee-jerk reaction from ivory tower pundits who enjoy the safety provided by our police department without understanding the very real risks that we take to provide that safety. Due process is the American way of obtaining justice, not summary professional execution called for by editorial writers.

Sincerely,

Patrick J. Lynch
President

Here’s where that’s coming from:

1. Last week, retired tennis player James Blake was at the entrance to the (very nice) Grand Hyatt hotel in midtown Manhattan, waiting for a car to take him to an appearance at the U.S. Open. Out of the blue, an armed man in a white t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers attacked him, shoved him against the wall, then twist-slammed his body face-down onto the pavement.
2. The armed attacker was a police officer, James Frascatore, who mistakenly thought Blake was a suspect in a credit card fraud. Frascatore did not identify himself as a police officer until after Blake was in handcuffs.
3. Video of the attack surfaced (seen here). Frascatore was widely criticized for excessive and unnecessary force, word spread that he’s had a long record of overdoing it.
4. To stem the public-relations disaster, Frascatore was placed on desk duty while an investigation could proceed.
5. The public-relations disaster only got worse, with Blake calling for Frascatore to be fired, and many thought leaders joining in that wish.
6. Lynch is now responding to all that, saying that it’s too soon to judge Frascatore, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions until we know the whole story, he deserves the benefit of the doubt because police officers have a dangerous job, the people calling for him to be fired enjoy the benefits of policing without the wisdom that comes from understanding what police officers risk, and that Frascatore deserves due process before being tarred as an offender.

A lot of people are going to knee-jerk dismiss Lynch’s email as a load of horseshit at best, and at worst a dangerous defense of a dangerous man that exemplifies the corruption of police unions and the thin blue line’s blind eye to evil within its ranks.

A lot of people are going to knee-jerk cheer Lynch’s email as a necessary breath of fresh air, a much-needed skewering of those who god knows why insist on attacking the freaking good guys, who give aid to the enemy by fanning the flames of anti-cop sentiment, those namby-pamby assholes who put good cops’ lives in danger to further their petty political points.

I’ll try not to be too knee-jerk here, but Lynch is wrong. He’s hypocritical, foolish, and wrong.

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Look, nobody doubts that the police have a risky job. It’s nowhere near as risky as they sometimes think, with fewer cops being shot these days — despite there being far, far more cops and criminals on the streets — than there were more than half a century ago. (Sorry, that link was from 2013. They’re even safer now.) But the fact remains that police officers do sometimes, occasionally, rarely, get killed on the job. Even by people suspected of nonviolent crimes like credit card fraud.

You think I’m going to say that’s irrelevant. But it’s not. I’ll get to that in a moment.

But holy cow, the hypocrisy. Once again the refrain that “we can’t judge this officer until all the facts are in.” “Don’t rush to judgment.” “Don’t jump to conclusions based only on the evidence you’ve seen.” “Don’t ruin his reputation and career before he’s had the due process of a full and fair investigation.”

Oh, please.

When police officers start living by those maxims, maybe then they can expect to benefit from them. Rushing to judgment, jumping to conclusions based on limited evidence, is what cops do. It’s what they’re trained to do. It’s their blasted job description. And they immediately do their best to destroy the lives of those they’ve arrested, before any evidence is in, before any due process has even begun, by hauling their victims through perp-walks and holding press conferences specifically designed to condemn people who haven’t even been arraigned yet, much less been convicted.

Whenever a police representative makes any of these claims, you have my permission to vomit on their shoes in disgust.

That’s the hypocrisy, and it’s obvious. What’s the foolishness?

Lynch is foolish to attack the punditry in this way. The opinion writers and journalists of America have been the best friend of the police since forever. Including the lefty anti-establishment types who flocked to journalism after Watergate. Yes, them too. They’re the ones who made the police into heroes. It sure wasn’t the people on the street who actually interacted with cops and batons and TPF goons, and it certainly wasn’t the people safe in their offices and houses and dorm rooms whose only encounter with the police was a speeding ticket. It’s been the storytellers — the journalists, the screenwriters, the comic-book artists — who’ve reliably instilled the ideal of the noble police officer.

The exceptions used to be exceedingly rare, and only in reaction to exceedingly awful conduct.

What would a wise police establishment do? A wise establishment would co-opt these writers eagerly, and make sure that these rare exceptions were known to be exceptions, were disavowed as unpolicemanlike, and that real police officers neither behave that way nor tolerate those who do.

What the unions have consistently done, however, is to double down each time it happens. With every case of police brutality, the police back the wrongdoer. And each time they do that, the police themselves, turn the outcry, bit by bit, against the police themselves. By identifying with the wrongdoers, the police have gradually become the wrongdoer in many eyes. Some say the anti-police demonstrations in Ferguson last year marked a tipping point, and that anti-cop sentiment is becoming systemic. But they said that after Amadou Diallo, after Abner Louima, after Rodney King, a generation ago, and it never really snowballed. But if we are at a tipping point or near one, how much wiser to stop it by co-opting the opinion makers? Not antagonizing them and proving to them that everything they suspected and feared is in fact true.

Foolish.

Video is not the policeman’s friend, necessarily. It’s easy enough to edit out the bits that show the threat a police officer was reacting to, to make his reaction look senseless and out of the blue. There are plenty of videos making the rounds that do just that. It’s unfair when that’s all we see, and yes when we jump to conclusions based on such videos we jump to the wrong conclusions. But the solution to that is not the same old doubling down, locking arms, and spouting the same mindless defense of wrongdoing and hypocrisy. That only breeds more skepticism and cynicism. The correct thing to do is provide the rest of the facts, so the public knows not only what’s what, but also that someone tried to manipulate them. People don’t like that. You can do this without undermining an officer’s legal defense. He doesn’t have to say a word on camera. That’s what you union mouthpieces are for, right?

Video is also not always the policeman’s friend when viewed by an untrained eye. You officers on the job right now, how many videos have you seen of a justified shooting, where it all happened too fast or at the wrong angle for the camera to pick up on the gun? Happens all the time. Joe Public sees a video of a cop shooting an unarmed man for no reason. But if you defend the bad shootings along with the proper ones, how is he to know?

Foolish.

As Radley Balko recently wrote, “Once again: There is no ‘war on cops.’ And those who claim otherwise are playing a dangerous game.”

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So what about the danger, then?

Police training and experience can be pretty dysfunctional. In fact, it’s amazingly similar to the socialization and experience that trains street thugs to behave the way they do.

You take a kid being raised in the inner city by a young, uneducated, single mom. Surround him with those who would hurt him or take advantage of him. He learns not to trust the people around him to have his best interests at heart. When someone tries to make him do something, the best response may well be to deny that person any authority over him, to fight back. The world is a dangerous place, in which he must assert himself forcefully if he is to survive. The other guy doesn’t count. All that counts is getting home okay, and if he can make a little money all the better. [For more on that, read this (or listen to the authors’ Freakonomics podcast or this unrelated Ted talk), or pick up any recent textbook on delinquency.]

In the Academy, police are trained that they are surrounded by those who would hurt them or take advantage of them. On the street, they deal almost exclusively with the violent, the broken, the unpredictable. They very rarely get asked directions by kids out of a Norman Rockwell painting. They learn to assert their authority immediately and forcefully. Otherwise a perp might fight back, and they might get hurt. The perp doesn’t count. All that counts is getting home okay, and if the officer can make a little overtime along the way, all the better.

Dysfunctional? You bet.

But that explains why Frascatore did what he did.

You or I or James Blake can look at the arrest of someone like, say, James Blake, and see a shocking unnecessary use of force. We wonder aloud “why didn’t he just show his badge, explain that Blake was suspected of a crime, and make the arrest peacefully, and only elevate the force used if — and to the extent that — the other guy first made it necessary?” (What, you don’t say sentences like that aloud?)

The dysfunction of a police officer’s training and experience explains why you or I might think that, but it would never even occur to an officer.

His automatic, learned behavior is to attack the suspect with overwhelming force and subdue him above all else. This may be perfectly rational when dealing with a violent or crazed thug. But when dealing with a perplexed honest citizen, the citizen’s confusion gets misinterpreted as resistance, and the officer’s reaction just gets worse.

This dysfunction is what Lynch is trying to defend when he accuses the punditry of ill-informed armchair quarterbacking. If they only knew the realities, they’d understand why this was no big deal, why this was understandable and indeed proper arrest behavior. (Hypocrisy, again. Somehow the police themselves have been granted a dispensation not to have to understand the behavior of those they are arresting.)

The solution, of course, is to think. To take a second and decide whether this person needs to be jumped with shouts of authority and a gun in his ear, or whether a discreet arm on the shoulder and a word in the ear might suffice. To take a second to figure out whether this well-dressed man at a swanky hotel is resisting your authoritah (do people still quote Cartman?) or whether he is in fact frightened and confused by an apparent armed assault.

It seems to work with violent anti-authoritarian inmates (see the above-linked study). Who knows, it might work with cops, too.

But what won’t work is more of the same knee-jerk hypocrisy and paranoia from the PBA.

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*The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which represents uniformed patrol officers. There’s a different union for uniformed sergeants, another one for detectives, and yet another one for lieutenants.