How has America got policing so wrong? 25 US police chiefs toured Scotland. What they saw left them visibly changed

This article promises more than it delivers.  The lesson learnt from Scotland seems to be more emphasis on de-escalation techniques. But such techniques are already a big part of police training.  Still, seeing examples of de-escalation working was probably beneficial.

What the article glides over is that America is an armed society whereas Scotland is largely a disarmed society. So the risk of an officer being shot is very different -- leading to much more caution in the USA.  An American cop can often not afford to give a villain a break


It is a late Saturday afternoon in Washington, DC, and Chuck Wexler, one of America’s leading police reform strategists, is at his office desk, a cotton scarf bunched around his neck ready for quick deployment as a face mask, a sign of these strange times.

The streets of America’s major cities have been awash with Black Lives Matter protesters for a fortnight. Incredibly, news has just broken that another unarmed black man has been shot in Atlanta and the city’s police chief will soon be forced to resign.

A former right-hand man to Boston’s police commissioner, Wexler has led the country’s foremost crime strategy think tank, the Police Executive Research Forum, for 26 years. He is one of the architects of the city’s Community Disorders Unit, known nationally for successfully prosecuting and preventing racially motivated crime, and is the man America’s top police chiefs call for advice when facing complex or volatile situations in their jurisdictions.

Wexler says that his experience working with police in England, Scotland and Ireland, where police are not routinely armed, was instrumental in his thinking — and continues to help him push for change in the attitudes of the US police hierarchy.

“It was something of an epiphany for me, around the time that the Ferguson (police shooting in St Louis) incident happened in 2014 … I was at a police recruit graduation ceremony in Scotland and I asked a young constable how he’d handle someone with a knife and not having a gun. There was a knife epidemic in Scotland at the time. He said, ‘No problem … I have my baton, my spray … first, I would step back.’ I thought how is it that when police handle it one way, someone dies, and in another place where they handle it differently they live.

“We knew from our studies that 40 per cent of the fatal officer-involved shootings in the US involved persons with knives, rocks, bricks — not guns. I went back to DC excited, full of ideas of how we could train our officers differently, emulate the UK models and see if we could reduce the 400 or so deaths that The Washington Post had identified could be prevented each year. Perhaps I was being naive, but nobody paid any attention. Then I had another idea: I thought I’ll show them first-hand.”

Wexler ended up inviting 25 of the top police chiefs in the US to come to Scotland with him to try to show them how officers in other countries were doing things differently. He insisted they pay their own way and made clear “there were no hotels or fancy food and they’d sleep in police barracks”. He says he watched attitudes visibly change during the trip, learning also that exposing the leadership group to each other led them see that they were already doing significant work individually in their jurisdictions but simply didn’t know it.

For example, he says, SWAT teams from Houston, Texas, already were working on “slow down” protocols, using time and distance to de-escalate. In New York, $21m had been deployed to retrain officers: “If I told them about Scotland, they were dismissive, but when we could show them other big US forces were responding and changing, they thought: ‘Well, we can learn from them.’ ”

Also accompanying Wexler to Scotland was American philanthropist Howard Buffett, son of respected investor Warren Buffett. Howard Buffett immediately took an interest in police de-escalation practices and, with the support of his foundation, PERF turned its guiding principles into a police training program called ICAT: Integrating Communications, Assessment and Tactics.

“Chuck Wexler pushes the limits so others can see the benefits of change,” Buffett told Inquirer.

Wexler has since led several major projects including a new strategy to encourage police to deal with the opiate epidemic in the US as a health rather than law enforcement issue.

PERF has campaigned to encourage all US police forces to adopt body cameras and has written new guidelines for police handling of sexual assault allegations along with a slew of recommendations and strategies aimed at fostering police-community trust. Last year, PERF developed a new protocol to help train officers to identify and defuse the toxic epidemic of “suicide by cop” situations in which people, often mentally ill and affected by drugs or alcohol, create violent stand-offs that lead to their death at the hands of the law.

Recent calls to ‘‘de-fund’’ the police, he says, are a reaction to the anger many citizens feel about the use of excessive force. PERF supports and has long advocated efforts aimed at reorganising resources, perhaps creat­ing different networks of first-responder teams to triage emergencies. In some cases, this has meant turning to mental health and drug and alcohol crisis teams first rather than police. But, Wexler says, police reform needs investment to accomplish real change.

In Camden, New Jersey, where 40 per cent of residents fall below the poverty line, officials with the help of PERF and its leadership disbanded its police department and replaced it with one under county control, guided by progressive policing techniques and leadership. This has resulted in a reduction in violent crime, and police were photographed marching alongside protesters in the wake of Floyd’s death.

Wexler says one of his team’s most difficult jobs is the constant review of body cam and citizen phone footage of violent incidents involving police. But the team uses the videos as teaching lessons in its ICAT program.

“The most awful part is to see someone’s home, to see their child there on the second floor, who has not taken their medication and is standing there with a knife and the officer is trained to issue orders and then, if necessary, use deadly force,” he says.

“Once again, I’m reminded of while I was in Scotland, when a constable asked me why a US officer had said that the most important duty he had was to ‘get his officers home safe at night’. She said to me: ‘Why do they say that? We would never say that. For us it is about getting everyone home safe at night. It’s a human right.’ ”

Floyd’s death, says Wexler, is a watershed moment and he wants to ensure that the momentum for change in US policing is not lost in the wake of the chaos and suffering created by the COVID-19 crisis.

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The spectre of censorship and intolerance stalks today’s left

Says moderate Letist, Nick Cohen, writing in  "The Guardian":

The attacks on the signatories of a letter fearing the future of free speech proved the letter’s point

The usual Leftist view

The task that appears most urgent today is the destruction of the authoritarian right. Not because the authoritarian right is more malicious than the authoritarian left, but because it holds power across the west. Liberal-minded people making an informed calculation must surely decide to avoid distractions and concentrate their fire on the enemy that matters. Or so a seductive argument goes.

If you are an American voter, your sole priority should be the removal of Donald Trump. If you are British, you must concentrate on building a viable opposition to a Conservative party whose neglect and stupidity have wrecked the economy and killed tens of thousands. The slogan “no enemies to the left” is never more appealing than when it can be dressed in language that appeals to those who pose as tough-minded.

The usual view is wrong

But it won’t wash, and not just because the motives of those who scour the web to find evidence of the sins of others are those of the inquisitor and stool pigeon. In the world of practical politics, refusing to confront leftish authoritarianism leaves you with two options. You will either lose and deserve to lose, for you should have known that every time the far left has taken on the authoritarian right in the west it has lost. Or, and this may be worse, you will win and repent your failure to check that your new bosses were worthy of your trust.

According to the supposedly tough-minded view, signing a letter to Harper’s protesting at the stifling of debate can only weaken “our side”. A defence of the signatories should begin by noting that they were telling the truth when they complained that “writers, artists, and journalists … fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement”. Note the precision. The signatories were not saying it is wrong for people to lay into others: freedom of speech is the freedom to criticise or it is nothing. Their point was that many live in fear of campaigns to destroy them if they don’t mouth the right opinions.

I’m surprised such a statement of the obvious could be controversial. No honest observer can deny that the dominant factions in the modern progressive movement reject freedom of speech. They punish opinions they disagree with when they have power; and the more power they have, the more they will punish. You may think the censorship justified, but to deny its existence is absurd. Tellingly, few bother to deny it now. Occasionally, you can see them raise the exhausted excuse from the grave that only the state can censor. On this reading, Islamists killing cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, or CEOs firing whistleblowers, are not censoring because they are not civil servants. More popular in the past week has been the claim that writers with the reach of Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, JK Rowling and Salman Rushdie cannot take a moral stand because no one can suppress their thought – even though their critics give every impression of wanting to do just that.

Panic at the fear of denunciation and bad faith posing as rectitude can be found across the west
Leave aside their belief that ad hominem and ad feminam attacks can refute an argument, and consider that the worst of the old elite directed its attention to silencing the marginalised because it knew that their voice was often the only weapon the latter possessed. Then look around. Now as then, people without access to lawyers and influential friends suffer the most.

To take an example of that encapsulates the cowardice of our times: the Washington Post, a newspaper I admire and have written for, went to enormous lengths to destroy the life of one Sue Schafer, a middle-aged woman who made a mistake. She turned up to a Halloween party at the home of one of its cartoonists in blackface. She did not mean to insult African Americans but had come dressed as a ghoul in the guise of a conservative morning show host who had defended whites blacking up. The joke didn’t work, as several guests forcefully told her. Because the words “Washington Post” and “blackface” could be said in the same sentence, and because several guests looked as if they might go public two years later, the paper gave 3,000 words to the “story” – the amount of space normally reserved for a terrorist attack or declaration of war. Her employer, a government contractor, fired her. Everyone’s back was covered except Schafer’s and, frankly, she was a woman of no importance.

Panic at the fear of denunciation and bad faith posing as rectitude can be found across the west. A comparison with the right shows how deep the decay has reached. Conservatives know there are thoughts they cannot whisper – Brexit is a mistake comparable to Munich and Suez, anti-black and anti-Muslim racism are tangible evils, poverty makes a nonsense of equality of opportunity. Likewise on the liberal left, the canny careerist takes care to avoid being caught on the “wrong side” of arguments about trans and women’s rights, leftwing antisemitism, and bigotry in ethnic minorities. The canniest decide the best course is to say nothing at all.

The British ought to know the dangers of thinking there are no enemies to the left. Because Labour members failed to confront the crankery and racism of the Corbyn movement, they drove millions into Boris Johnson’s clammy embrace. I doubt the same will happen in the US. Joe Biden has his faults, but he is no one’s idea of a commissar. That is not to say there won’t be a heavy price to pay. The nationalist right is determined to police opinion. In Hungary and Poland, the media are becoming its propaganda organs. Trump incites hatred of reporters who tell the truth about his administration. Johnson threatens the independence of the BBC and Channel 4. Yet they can pose as the champions of free expression because the loudest strain in progressivism has embraced censorship. The practical danger in giving up on freedom of speech is that the day will come when you find you are lost for words just when you need them most.

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Terrified Academics Withdraw Study Showing White Cops Aren't Killing More Blacks

The authors of a 2019 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that examined “917 fatal police shootings of civilians from 2015 to test whether the race of the officer or the civilian predicted fatal police shootings” was withdrawn by the authors after being cited by noted conservative author and essayist Heather MacDonald.

Psychologists Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland say they stand behind their work, which concludes there was “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by the police.” But they objected to its “misuse.” MacDonald cited the study in congressoinal testimony last September and again in an article for City Journal. But it wasn’t until her June 3 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that cited the study when there were “complications” on campus and outraged wokesters demanded that the profs be flogged — or something.

Wall Street Journal:

My June 3 Journal op-ed quoted the PNAS article’s conclusion verbatim. It set off a firestorm at Michigan State. The university’s Graduate Employees Union pressured the MSU press office to apologize for the “harm it caused” by mentioning my article in a newsletter. The union targeted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for Mr. Cesario’s research. MSU sacked Mr. Hsu from his administrative position. PNAS editorialized that Messrs. Cesario and Johnson had “poorly framed” their article—the one that got through the journal’s three levels of editorial and peer review.

Mr. Cesario told this page that Mr. Hsu’s dismissal could narrow the “kinds of topics people can talk about, or what kinds of conclusions people can come to.” Now he and Mr. Johnson have themselves jeopardized the possibility of politically neutral scholarship. On Monday they retracted their paper. They say they stand behind its conclusion and statistical approach but complain about its “misuse,” specifically mentioning my op-eds.

“Publish or perish” is now passe. It’s “Publish and pray you don’t offend the snowflakes” that matters now.

The authors don’t say how I misused their work. Instead, they attribute to me a position I have never taken: that the “probability of being shot by police did not differ between Black and White Americans.” To the contrary, I have, like them, stressed that racial disparities in policing reflect differences in violent crime rates. The only thing wrong with their article, and my citation of it, is that its conclusion is unacceptable in our current political climate.

You want to tell the spineless academics that they deserve whatever they get from the mob but the realities of today’s academic world make conforming to orthodoxy an absolute career necessity. Even at the cost of being intellectually dishonest and groveling before the mob, it’s not like liberals are bucking a conservative academic environment.

If that were the case, the liberal professor could dramatically hand his resignation to the president of the university, make some grandiose statement about academic freedom, and then make the rounds of Sunday talk shows and even late-night TV, all in preparation for the blockbuster book deal he would sign.

I have faith that the small cadre of conservative thinkers and writers on and off campus will keep the spirit of open scholarship alive. Otherwise, the history of the world will look a lot different in 100 years than it does to us today.

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And Then They Came For the Left. And the Left Began to Eat Itself

What’s become known as “The Chomsky Letter” that was published in Harper’s and criticized those on the wacky, loony left for going cancel-crazy has generated a subculture of opposition that should mystify anyone with more than two brain cells in functioning order.

The Spectator columnist Cockburn marvels at the stupidity on display. He takes as an example Matthew Yglesias, a longtime liberal commentator, who signed on to the Chomsky letter.

The amusingly named Emily VanderDerWerff, a trans woman ‘critic’ at Vox, went furthest fastest. She penned a hilariously obnoxious letter to her editors, which she then generously excerpted on social media.

‘I don’t want Matt to be reprimanded or fired or even asked to submit an apology,’ she wrote. ‘Doing any of the above would only solidify, in his own mind, the idea that he is being martyred for his beliefs.’

As someone who is sometimes a woman, Cockburn would like to take their hat off to VanderDerWerff for her absolute masterclass in passive aggression. She should be promoted, perhaps given Yglesias’s job, if only to solidfy, in her own mind, what Vox stands for.

“Some acts require retribution; this is not one of them.” Such compassion for the man she just threw under the social media outrage bus!

Indeed, many liberals appear to be talking out of one side of their brain while the other side says something totally different. They’re not against free speech! Until they are.

The letter caused conniptions elsewhere. Among a certain sort of blue-check progressive, it became instantly fashionable to accuse the letter writers of being predictable and – drum roll – fragile! Karen Attiah at the Washington Post, for instance, ventured that ‘too many folks…are afraid of losing power. Exhibiting symptoms of status anxiety because too many have refused to keep up with the times. Coddling intellectual laziness and harmful rhetoric is no longer a moral virtue.’

Gee — remember those days when coddling intellectual laziness was a moral virtue? Feels like yesterday. Cockburn can only sympathise with the poor sap at the Post who has to edit Karen’s copy.

“Keep up with the times” — as if principles were a matter of style, not substance. If liberalism is truly a “riot of conceits” as R. Emmet Tyrell penned in his book The Liberal Crackup, and not a set of immutable beliefs, then in 20 years or so, today’s cancelers will, themselves, come under attack for being insufficiently woke — or whatever the equivalent will be then.

Too bad I probably won’t live to see it.

One of the signers of the letter, Jesse Singal of Reason, points out that those objecting to the sentiments in the letter are not liberals.

The leftist writer Freddie de Boer’s take nicely clarifies the obvious: The people furious at this letter largely have genuine ideological problems with liberal norms and laws regarding free speech. “Please, think for a minute and consider: what does it say when a completely generic endorsement of free speech and open debate is in and of itself immediately diagnosed as anti-progressive, as anti-left?” he wrote. (Emphasis his.) “There is literally no specific instance discussed in that open letter, no real-world incident about which there might be specific and tangible controversy.” He goes on to explain, accurately: “Of course Yelling Woke Twitter hates free speech! Of course social justice liberals would prevent expression they disagree with if they could! How could any honest person observe our political discourse for any length of time and come to any other conclusion?”

To the “fragile left,” this too, shall pass. It’s not even a blip on the monitor. But perhaps, if there be honest historians with access to forbidden texts in 100 years, I wonder what they will say?

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Exposing the Leftist Myths About Race, Racism, and Justice

As an addendum to my column this week, “The Left’s Deadly Blame-Shifting Charade: ‘Racist Cops,’” what follows are two of the best current rebuttals to contemporary leftist assertions about racism. Both are compiled by Ben Shapiro and his team of researchers.

Regarding “Leftist Myths About Race and Racism In America,” Shapiro notes: “Racism is the greatest divide in American history. To deny the nasty history of racism in America would be foolish. From slavery to Jim Crow, black Americans were treated brutally, their opportunities withheld from them in immoral, evil, unconstitutional fashion. And racism isn’t restricted to black Americans, of course — Japanese Americans were interned during World War II, Chinese Americans were treated horrifically in the late 19th century, Jews were victims of discrimination.”

However, Shapiro adds: “But the Left suggests that because America has been replete with racism and bigotry historically, that means that racism pervades American society now. That’s not only untrue, it’s a cruel lie. Furthermore, we cannot acknowledge the racism that swamped America for two centuries without also acknowledging the central natural law principles that eventually led Americans to fight against that racism — that led hundreds of thousands of white Americans to die for the freedom of their black brothers in slavery, that led whites to march with blacks and legislate on behalf of blacks to end Jim Crow, that has created the most successful multiethnic democracy on the planet. Insulting our fellow Americans by calling them racists and blaming them for the problems of the past, or slurring America as a country with racism baked into our DNA, isn’t just counterproductive, it’s false.”

In short: “Myth: All white people are inherently beneficiaries of ‘white privilege.’ Fact: The Left’s ‘white privilege’ narrative is false, used to divide and silence, and promotes racist assumptions. …

Myth: Social justice must be pursued. Fact: Social justice is injustice. …

Myth: Talking incessantly about racism decreases racial inequality. Fact: Exaggerated focus on "institutional” racism exacerbates racial inequality. …

Myth: ‘Diversity is our strength.’ Fact: Commonality of values is our strength. …

Myth: Disproportionate minority poverty is a result of institutional racism. Fact: Poverty in America is chiefly a result of decision-making, particularly about marriage and education. …

Myth: Government was required to end racial discrimination in private business. Fact: Government was required to enforce racial discrimination in private business. …

Myth: Affirmative action benefits minorities. Fact: Affirmative action is racist and causes higher dropout rates and serious problems in hiring. …

Myth: Minorities are turned down for loans at banks because of color. Fact: Banks turn down loans over financial factors.“

Regarding ”Leftist Myths About Criminal Justice,“ Shapiro notes: "In an effort to explain away continuing wealth and lifestyle differentials between racial groups, the Left has hit on a new narrative: the criminal justice system is to blame.

The logic states that minority men are being rounded up for little reason by a white-run criminal justice system dedicated to the eradication of a burgeoning minority middle class. If it weren’t for the dastardly system, all would be well.

As we will see, that’s simply not the case. Criminals are being arrested nearly universally because they are criminals. There is no widespread evidence of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. The best solution to criminal justice imbalances remains obeying the law and inculcating the value of doing so to children.”

In short: “Myth: The criminal justice system is racist. Fact: Individuals commit crimes, and criminals are not equally dispersed by race. …

Myth: To stop crime, we need to stop ‘mass incarceration.’ Fact: To stop crime, we need to incarcerate criminals. …

Myth: If you let criminals out of prison, they don’t go back to crime. Fact: A huge majority of criminals go back to crime once released. …

Myth: A huge number of people in prison are there because of drug possession. Fact: Only a tiny portion of those in prison are there for drug possession. …

Myth: More police officers endanger young minorities. Fact: More police officers protect young minorities. …

Myth: ‘Stop and frisk’ is racist. Fact: ‘Stop and frisk. statistically undertargets minorities, prevents crime and saves minority lives. …

Myth: Police pull over black people for 'driving while black.’ Fact: Police pull over people for speeding. …

Myth: Unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was murdered in cold blood by a white cop while holding up his hands and saying, ‘Don’t shoot.’ Fact: Michael Brown strong-armed robbed a store and attacked a cop, who shot him in self-defense. [He did not hold his hands up and say, ‘Don’t shoot.’] …

Myth: Trayvon Martin was shot by a racist white man for the crime of being black. Truth: Trayvon Martin was shot by a Hispanic man who was acquitted after witness testimony and physical evidence showed he likely shot Martin in self-defense.”

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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