6/17/23

 Saturday, June 17, 2023

In bed by 9, unable to stay awake watching "Vera" on BritBox, and up at 6:30.  56℉, high of 72℉, sunny, wind WNW at 4 mph, 2 to 9 mph today, gusts up to 15 mph.  The sun rose at 5:11 and will set at 8:34, 15+22.  No rain, none expected for the next 10 days.

LTMW at a bright, warm, sunny morning.  One chickadee after another flies to the niger tube, and squirrels and chipmunks search the ground under the feeders for spilled sunflower seeds.  A huge bluejay works on the suet cake. A house finch perched on top of the shepherd's crook with the orange is passing a morsel from his (?) beak to the other's, as cardinals do.  It's the first time I've seen this behavior in birds other than cardinals.  An aggressive English sparrow lands next to them and drives them away.  I wonder if the finches are Barkis and Peggotty.  The chipmunks are climbing the shaft of the shepherd crooks again, desperately trying to figure out how to get past the squirrel baffle.

My Pandora Boxes.  I looked through some more photos this morning and found a Christmas card from "Mary and Bob Hillary." I couldn't read the postmark to ascertain the year it was sent, maybe 198- or 199-.  [It must have been 1999 when first class postage went up to 33 cents.)  Hillary, from Los Angeles, was a good friend of mine both in Yuma and in Vietnam.  He wrote me after we were back in the States and I never returned his letter.  I let our friendship go by the board just as I did with my friendship with Iowan and good friend Ron Kendall, much to my regret.  I was not in good emotional shape after my reutrn from Asian service, some of it from culture shock, some from what was happening in the country, and some from personal challenges. I  made some big mistakes, among them not maintaining good friendships I had enjoyed during active duty and earlier in life.  Andy Furlong from NAS Glynco, Larry Stack from Leo H.S., Cathy Semrau from childhood.  How foolish and self-defeating.  My fault.  I'm reminded of both Ed Felsenthal and Cam Wakeman telling me during our Notch House reunion on Marco Island how "aloof" I was thought to be during our college days.  I'm inclined to blame all of these problems on childhood pains with my father after the war and after the crime by 'Jimmy' Hartmann, and with feeling out of place with contemporaries with more settled backgrounds, but ultimately the responsibility for my own choices, my own behaviors, is mine.  I have lots of regrets and Bob Hillary's Christmas card and Ron Kendall's letter reminds me of them.

Cops.  The lead story in this morning's NYT is Consent Decrees Force Changes to Policing. But Do They Last?  It's a follow-up to yesterday's news of the DOJ report excoriating the Minneapolis Police Department.  "The Justice Department said on Friday that the Minneapolis police routinely discriminated against Black and Native American people, used deadly force without justification and trampled the First Amendment rights of protesters and journalists — damning findings that grew out of a multiyear investigation and may lead to a court-enforced overhaul" i.e., a consent decree. 

 Consent decrees involving modern American police forces have become almost commonplace.  They exist, e.g., in New Orleans Police Department, Puerto Rico Police Department; Seattle Police Department; Portland (Oregon) Police Department; Detroit Police Department; Virgin Islands Police Department; East Haven (Connecticut) Police Department; Warren (Ohio) Police Department; Albuquerque (New Mexico) Police Department; Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department-Antelope Valley; Cleveland Division of Police; Meridian (Mississippi) Police Department; Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff’s Office.  Additionally, Los Angeles and the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Departments have recently concluded operating under DOJ consent decrees.  There are ongoing investigations of the Chicago and Baltimore PDs.

I haven't researched all these cases but it seems a fair wager that they all, or almost all, involve the use of excessive and often lethal violence against racial minorities, especially Blacks.  And, not surprisingly, when racist Jefferson Beauregard (political mentor of racist Stephen Miller) Sessions was U.S. Attorney General, his last act before being fired by Donald Trump was to sharply limit the use of consent decrees as enforcement mechanisms for civil rights protections.

The thoughts that this story prompts in me are (1) with America's history, including very recent history, how can there be any doubt that at least our urban police departments are infected with SYSTEMIC racism, (2) why is this so, and (3) can heavy-handed, bureaucratically-enforced consent decrees really affect the root causes of systemic racism in policing.  The second question is the most important: what are the causes of the racism, all the causes, individually and socially?  Do police academy cadets bring with them attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions that are racist, or do those attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions develop from their experiences on the force, or both?  What kinds of persons want to become cops?  wants to carry a deadly weapon while on the job and to perhaps be called upon to kill another human being?  What is it about urban policing that attracts people to the job?  I don't think the answers to these questions are easy and certainly are not uniform from one police officer to the next.  What is it about the job requirements and the job experiences in the community and within the police department that may create or reinforce racist dispositions in police officers?  If we don't realistically address and answer those questions, why should we expect federal consent decrees to fix the problems we have.

We (I) fall so easily into categorical thinking about the police, into painting with brushes that are way too broad.   Lefties start out at least distrustful of them.  They represent authority.  They exercise great power, even over life and death.  They are employed on the side of the Establishment against promoters of healthful progressive changes.  They represent corporate America against 'the little guy', management against labor, government against protesters, etc.  They carry guns and batons and tasers, cuffs and shackles, and deploy them against unarmed persons as well as dangerous criminals.  Those on the Right talk of cops as if they are all heroes, first responders who serve and protect law and order, who prevent crime and keep 'undesirables' from debauching our society, our culture, our 'American way of life.'  The Census Bureau tells us that in 2021 there were 725,000 full-time law enforcement officers in the U.S., about 3/4th of a million.  It's easy to think that some or most are 'good guys', some or most are 'bad guys.'  On the other hand, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.