Black Lives Matter Redux

For the second (or third or sixth) time this year a Black person was killed by police officers during a routine incident; setting off peaceful protests and riots and counter riots in cities across the land. It's easy to say Black Lives Matter. It's easy to say there is systemic racism in our urban police departments and many other areas of this country. It's easy to say that this is or isn't a racist country. It's much harder to fix the problem.

First off, I don't know what happened in Kenosha when Jacob Blake was shot and seriously injured earlier this week. I know what the video taken by bystanders show and what the police department says happened. I don't know if the police used deadly force against Jacob Blake because he was black.

But I do know three things:

One is that the officers in Kenosha did not have body cameras. Just as police body cameras show what happened in Minneapolis to George Floyd they can't show what happened to Jacob Blake. Police body cameras protect police officers and they protect the public. I can't imagine that an officer would go on duty now without a working body camera.

Before our country moves on, the federal government needs purchase body cameras for all police officers, and require that they be worn and used at all times by all officers. Easy to say, hard to implement in an equitable fashion. The current President and Congress need to make this a high priority. If they fail the next President and Congress needs to take care of this.

The second thing is the answer to - "Did the officer have to shoot Jacob Blake seven times". The answer is Yes. Guns are deadly force weapons. When fired they are intended to cause death. I hope and believe that all police officers are taught that when the make the decision to use deadly force, use as much as you have until you are sure you have caused death. Fire all of your bullets.

I wish officers had more effective methods to subdue offenders without resorting to deadly force. Part of the "defund the police" movement is actually to disallow some of these less deadly tools such as flash-bangs and tear gars. How stupid .. they need more tools... not fewer

The third thing is that defunding the police is a bad idea. We live in a violent society, we need the police to protect lives and property. We need police officers to be well selected, well trained and to have available deadly weapons. This costs money. I don't think anyone would argue that the selection process for police officers is as good as it should be or that they are well enough trained especially with regard to racial issues.

There are a lot of things that police officers are asked to do that could certainly be accomplished by government employees who don't wear police uniforms and carry guns. Dealing with drug users, rousting the homeless, checking on the welfare of individuals, parking enforcement, are good examples. Even crime solving - detective work - could be accomplished outside of the police department. All of these activities could be moved to other departments, but It's going to take a lot of planning to change the scope of police department responsibilities. I don't see the public or elected officials stepping-up to take this on.