We can't 'solve all murders' because 1 unpunished dirty cop can cause as much damage as 10 violent drug dealers
Misguided slogans are not the real problem
I read this piece in the Atlantic over the weekend: “Criminal-justice reformers Chose the Wrong Slogan.”
The author of the piece, Conor Friedersdorf, believes my reaction to the piece means I disagree with him.
It’s not that I disagree with many of the points he made, just that I disagree with his focus. To me, it reads as though it is giving into the recent rhetoric that has grown up around the increased crime rate in many cities and the survey data that suggests “Defund the police” is a political loser. I’ve seen liberals and conservatives alike use the “black lives matter” mantra to scold people who aren’t suddenly singularly-focused on 1) acknowledging there is a “crime crisis,” as Fox News puts it, and 2) that more cops are needed to solve it. They tweet out headlines about little black boys and little black girls being shot and killed, victims of crossfire in gang-infested areas, pretending to care about people they’ve never even noticed before, all in an attempt to score political points and force everyone to believe the same old myths about cops, that they are and should only be seen as heroes.
I don’t much give a damn about that scolding, particularly coming from people who seem to care about or even notice black pain and struggle and death only when it becomes a convenient political talking point. It’s just the latest version of “But Chicago!” they scream every time there is potential progress to be made against police brutality. That’s why, if I’m to be frank, they can kiss my black ass. I know they aren’t serious. They are political parasites, this time feeding off dead black bodies. I’m beyond trying to reason with people like that. It’s an absolutely fruitless endeavor. And they can’t shame me into following their lead because I know what I’ve done in professional and personal life to deal with the issue of crime. I can’t stop dealing with it even if I wanted to. I’ve lost loved ones to violence, some to the grave, some to the prison cell. I can’t not think about that, can’t not hope and pray, can’t not keep endeavoring to find ways to solve this problem.
I’ve even put my family’s gut-wrenching pain on display hoping it might inspire something in the right person or the right people to help lead us to a better day in My Brother Moochie: Regaining Dignity in the Face of Crime, Poverty and Racism in the American South.
After his brother commits murder, a journalist revisits their childhood.
I have not shied away from this issue, even when writing and reporting on it triggered a PTSD I developed in childhood but wasn’t officially diagnosed for nearly 25 years.
To be clear, Friedersdorf is not one of the folks who have ignored this issue. He’s not one who uses it only as a convenient political talking point. He is a long-time advocate of serious reform. But the piece he published this weekend felt like an attempt to respond to the rhetoric of those for which this really is just a political talking point, and I’m just not in the mood for it.
Politically-speaking, it makes sense for long-time critics of the criminal “justice” system, which Friedersdorf is, to try and reorient the conversation just enough, to find a way to hold onto what had been a consensus - or seemed to have been one - for this country to finally deal seriously with systemic problems with policing in the U.S. Coming up with a better slogan that might - might - beat back Republican fearmongering, as well as defunding the war on drugs and stop-and-frisk makes sense, things for which Friedersdorf rightly advocates for in the piece.
He also quoted from the critically-acclaimed Ghettoside, by Jill Leovy, a book I have used in classes at Davidson College about criminal justice reporting and may again this upcoming semester:
In the 2015 book Ghettoside, she summed up the lessons she learned from years of such reporting. “This is a book about a very simple idea: where the criminal justice system fails to respond vigorously to violent injury and death, homicide becomes endemic,” she wrote. “African Americans have suffered from just such a lack of effective criminal justice, and this, more than anything, is the reason for the nation’s long-standing plague of black homicides.” In her telling, if every murder against a Black man were investigated with energy and rigor, “investigated as if one’s own child were the victim, or as if we, as a society, could not bear to lose these people,” the violence would not be so routine nor the victims so anonymous.
This is where my agreement with Friedersdorf and Leovy end, not even because they are wrong, but because it spells our disparate worldviews more than anything else. If every murder were investigated as if one’s own child were the victim or if as a society we could not bear to lose these people is a wonderful thought in a vacuum. But it is the biggest of ifs. There is scant evidence that society has ever viewed young black people that way, or ever will. It’s why society has has been comfortable for such a long time either killing them slowly through systemic racist practices, or quickly through white mobs or well-armed police officers. And I don’t know how to fix that. But I know if we don’t, cycles of violence will continue.
But that’s just about me and my learned reticence. I’ve lost hope in the system because I don’t think enough people truly gives a daman about this issue. The bigger-systemic problem is that too many young black men - not all, not a majority, not even a large minority, but enough - know that society doesn’t give a damn about them. They know because society routinely accepts the daily disrespect they face from the police. And the daily beatings. And the occasional murder by police. They know society is perfectly fine with police officers routinely lying, and so is the Supreme Court. They know society has accepted cops planting guns on young black men and planting drugs. They know society has been perfectly fine with young black men going to jail or prison for things they did not do. They know society is perfectly fine with police officers digitally searching black women during traffic stops.
They know society has been perfectly fine with K-9 units being unleashed to maul young black men and young black women. They know society is perfectly fine with cops sending thousands of people to the ER every year. They know society is perfectly fine with prosecutors routinely abusing their power. They know fellow officers are perfectly fine with the actions of the “bad cop,” know prosecutors will back up that “bad cop,” know the judge will back up the decision to not or hardly punish the “bad cop,” know that the bulk of the public will be OK with it all because it might give them a sense of law and order. They know this because it has been documented time and again. They know police defenders are quick to tell you that Darren Wilson was innocent while ignoring the systemic problems in which Darren Wilsons operate.
And for those wondering, of course I know these things don’t only happen to black people, only that they happen more often to black people. I know about Daniel Shaver - and that a jury determined that the cops who killed him did nothing illegal. The young black dudes on the street know this as well.
They know all of this because they see and experience it more than the rest of us. They know it and see it and feel it even when there are no George Floyd-level headlines. And that’s why they know something not enough of us appreciate: The presence of one dirty cop who goes unpunished is worse than the presence of 10 drug dealers on the streets because they can - and often do - more damage.
They are more willing to face other young dudes with guns than trust the supposed criminal “justice” system because they feel they have a chance against the former but little to no chance against the latter. And on that count, they are not crazy. Just put yourself in their shoes. If you find yourself on a dark road late one night, who would you rather have to fight to save your own life. Some strange dude with a gun or knife? Or a dirty cop? Against the strange dude with the gun or knife, you know you may still be killed or maimed, but you know you have the right to fight back, to meet force with force to protect yourself and your family and loved ones. Against a dirty cop, you have to allow him to beat you to a pulp, hoping he doesn’t kill you, knowing that if you fought back you will automatically become the criminal, that chances are slim that the system will take your word over the cop’s either way.
That’s what it feels like to a lot of those young men on the streets. That’s why they’ve effectively come up with their own system of “justice.” That’s why street violence often comes in cycles. It’s that system in action. You hurt me or someone I love, I hurt you or someone you love. And I don’t bother with the criminal “justice” system because I know it is corrupt. How do I know it is corrupt? Because I see cops lie and commit crime and even kill people and still receive promotions and get hailed in newspapers and on TV news broadcasts as heroes. That’s why police violence is at the heart of this problem, because it convinces many people to forgo the criminal “justice” system altogether and to participate in what is essentially an extrajudicial one that they understand even if the rest of us don’t. You will never “solve all murders” until that is dealt with effectively because not even the best cops can solve murders without significant cooperation from those they are policing.
This isn’t just a theory of mine. This isn’t just based on what I’ve learned over the past quarter of a century as a journalist looking into these issues, though that reporting has deepened my insight. It’s also because I have mentored some of these young men - and because some of these young men are my own brothers. It took a long time for them to open up even to me about what’s happening, the distrust in the system is that deep.
I will never forget sitting through a trial for one of my youngest brothers. He had been charged as an accessory for an armed burglary that left one person dead. He did not shoot anyone. He didn’t even break into the house. He drove the two guys to the house who did the breaking in, and drove them away. Before the jury got the case, I got a chance to talk to him, to tell him to take a plea agreement to lessen his potential sentence.
“They ain’t got nothing on me, man,” he told me as confidently as he had ever told me anything.
I could not convince him that the evidence was overwhelming, especially because one of his partners - a nephew who was raised like one of our brothers - had testified in open court against him. He simply could not see what was obvious to nearly everyone else. More than 15 years later, he’s still in prison. He was in the prison in South Carolina where the deadliest prison riot in decades occurred - a prison named after Confederate Gen. Robert. E. Lee. (Thankfully, he was not hurt during that melee.)
Their thinking is so different than ours, it’s as though we don’t only live in different countries but in different universes. And it is largely because the constant presence of police violence that goes unpunished and is often rewarded. Seriously, think about what they see. They know cops have a no-snitching code. They know cops have been known to retaliate, sometimes violently, when one of their own has been harmed or killed. And they know cops are considered an integral part of what is considered to be a legitimate system despite all of that, or maybe because of that. Ask yourself if it is really illogical for them to look at that reality and decide to create their own system of “justice” based on similar concepts. It’s also why a lot of them love stories about the Mafia, where a similar system seems to be in place.
For a lot of people, it is blasphemous to compare the system of policing to street and gang violence or the Mafia. To the folks who have been on the wrong end of a cop’s nightstick one too many times, the similarities are impossible to miss or ignore. It is true that other systemic problems also fuel violence, including high rates of poverty and unemployment and a still-unequal educational system, all of which lead to “broken” homes and “broken” families that leave too many young men rudderless.
That’s why I say the focus should not be on scolding “defund the police” proponents. That’s too easy and takes the urgency off long overdue policing reforms that might - might - convince these young men that the criminal “justice” system could work for them, too. “Defund the police” is a product of frustration. It’s a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. You want to solve all murders in an effort to beat back cycles of violence? Then solve police brutality.
It says something profoundly awful about our system that many of us who have been dealing with these issues for decades doubted that former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin could be successfully prosecuted despite overwhelming-clear evidence. In that way, we were a lot like my younger brother. Each of us have grown to distrust the system so thoroughly we doubt overwhelming-clear evidence would actually make a difference. It hasn’t led to significant policing reform yet. Will it ever?
A course I took in college on the Middle Ages in Europe mentioned how guilds also provided protection to their members from thieves, etc. I thought to myself “oh, like gangs today”.
Now I’d say “like gangs, except the King’s men are also ready to stomp on you”