Deep breath.
Here is an incident from last Sunday that had escaped my attention:
An unknown vehicle allegedly driving at high speeds toward Minnesota National Guard personnel and their police counterparts was shot at three times in Minneapolis on Sunday night, the state adjutant general said during a Monday press conference with the governor.
“Our soldier fired three rounds from his rifle in response to a perceived and legitimate threat to him and the Minnesota police officers he was in direct support of,” said Minnesota National Guard commander Maj. Gen. Jon Jensen. “The vehicle changed course and fled the scene. At this time no injuries have been reported.”
Jensen said the vehicle’s driver refused to slow down after both “verbal and non-verbal” signals were given and “non-lethal methods” were employed. He did not elaborate on what those signals and methods were, but added that an investigation is underway.
Multiple civilian drivers died in Iraq for being surprised by or unfamiliar with “verbal and non-verbal” and “non-lethal methods” when they turned a corner onto a street full of soldiers or private security teams with automatic weapons.
Baghdad has come to Minneapolis.
The driver “fled the scene”? Well, damned right she/he fled. Proving, of course, the driver was a hostile. Why else flee? We’ve graduated from warrior cops killing civilians to actual warriors firing on them.
Not to mention that Attorney General Bill Barr has deployed squads of men in tactical gear to the streets of Washington, D.C. to put down protests. They bear no insignia and refuse to identify their units, commanding officers, or governing authority. One might reasonably assume they have none, and are simply “open-carrying, white militia members cosplaying as survivalists,” “boogaloo bois,” or brigands. Gun clubs with uniforms.
Bill Barr responds with his signature fuck-you grin.
“He thus took a page from the dictator’s handbook, threatening force without any accountability,” the Washington Post Editorial Board wrote.
Police murdering a black suspect in Minneapolis sparked the nationwide waves of protest that have become about much more than the death of one man. They are now about addressing centuries of systemic racism as well as decades of violent policing that leads year after year to the deaths of civilians.
Stuart Schrader writes in the Washington Post:
As protests of police violence against black Americans roll across the country, we are witnessing the convergence of three trends in response: new urban-warfare theories developed by military strategists; the recent practice of outfitting police with the most intimidating and sophisticated warfighting gear possible; and an even longer trend among police of treating demonstrations and protests as tantamount to revolution. This militarization of the police has contributed to the very conditions that have led to the protests — which then create a feedback loop, as they feed a desire among figures like Cotton and Trump for the actual military to step in.
In other words, counterinsurgency breeds insurgency.
This shit’s gotta stop.
We’ve discussed this here before, but it’s time again. This prescient article is from Oct. 2019:
It’s not a major political campaign issue, but it ought to be: Domestic policing in the United States needs to be reinvented from the ground up.
“From their earliest days in the (police) academy, would-be officers are told that their prime objective, the proverbial ‘first rule of law enforcement,’ is to go home at the end of every shift,” Seth Stoughton notes in the Harvard Law Review. Policing experts call this me-first approach the warrior mentality. “Officers learn to treat every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making.”
In the real world, America’s streets are not a war zone. Ninety-five percent of police officers go through their entire career without ever having to fire their weapon. But many cops are military veterans, and vets are 23% more likely than non-vets to draw and shoot.
Increasingly concerned about police shootings and the eroding of trust between cops and the people, some leaders are trying to promote a guardian mentality instead. “The guardian mindset prioritizes service over crime-fighting, and it values the dynamics of short-term encounters as a way to create long-term relationships,” writes Stoughton. “As a result, it instructs officers that their interactions with community members must be more than legally justified, they must also be empowering, fair, respectful, and considerate. The guardian mindset emphasizes communication over commands, cooperation over compliance, and legitimacy over authority.”
The priority for cops shouldn’t be that they get to go home at the end of every shift.
Their priority should be to make sure civilians do. But that’s not what they’re trained for and it shows, doesn’t it?
Because police suit up for war and train to treat civilians as enemy combatants, every encounter becomes a potentially deadly one. Plus, for a host of historical reasons, if you are black that possibility is even higher.
Imagine you are a black man or woman stopped for a traffic violation as trivial as a missing front license plate and, based on recent events, consider the possibility these might be your last moments on Earth. What does raw instinct demand? Fight or flight?
Choose either (as if instinct is a choice) and the warrior cop may take it as proof you represent something much more threatening than an expired tag. Fleeing imminent death becomes proof of malice, the way floating in a river once proved an accused woman guilty of witchcraft.
This is what’s now considered modern policing.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.