Watch and Pray: When the Police Action Comes to Your Neighborhood

I returned home from a very moving Good Friday service, organized my music for Easter, and turned in for the night.

Somewhere around two o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by the sound of yelling from the park kitty-corner from our corner house.

“Dang rowdy teens,” I thought, actually smiling to myself, and ventured to the window to take a peek out.

A glare of headlights was coming up my street, and there were police calling orders to a man who was standing in the shadow of an oak tree beloved by every kid in the neighborhood. The man seemed to be trying to melt into the bark of the tree and become invisible.

This was not a dream, folks; this was an unexpected drama. No more smile for me.

Officers called out to the man. “We’re police. We’re here to help. If you can hear us, please answer or put your hands up.”

The man did not respond, for whatever reason. I could not actually see him, as he was behind the tree, and there was an SUV partially blocking my view.

Suddenly, the words of the Taizé chant, which I had been singing only hours before, played through my mind:

Stay with me; remain here with me. Watch and pray. Watch and pray.

So, that’s what I did.

***

This is the kind of scene we have all too frequently read about in the news paper or in electronic media – mainly because the results have been horrific. True confession: I am a contract transcriptionist for a major police department in the area, but not for the town in which I live. Because I have transcribed descriptions of scenes just like this many, many times, I thought I would take you, the reader, through this experience with me…

Because, what happened in my real life witnessing, and often what happens in those IAD (Internal Affairs Department) cases that are OIS cases (Officer Involved Shootings), is really textbook, although the outcomes vary. The scenarios are taught in police academies throughout the nation, and are handled in a fairly standard way. These scenarios are drilled endlessly during police academy. And I do not know if this is standard to every police department, but the department for which I transcribe interviews has mandatory extra, bi-annual training in such things as Use of Force, Tactical Training, Robbery Apprehension, Crisis Intervention (for substance abuse, domestic violence, gang violence, etc.) shooting range recertification every six months, and I could go on. I can honestly say that officers are rigorously trained and the training is ongoing throughout the career.

So, in these early morning hours, I was seeing unfold, in three-dimensional reality, the kind of story I’ve been transcribing for years. 

And, at this time, I felt the need to Watch and Pray, to hold space for the best possible outcome.

***

It all begins with a call for service. In this case, someone called 911 and reported seeing a man with a gun near the park. I don't know who that person was, but I heard this fact from one of the officers on scene, the one who was trying to get the suspect to comply with verbal commands.

[Note: Verbal commands are the second level of the commonly understood Use of Force Hierarchy. The first level is Officer Demeanor (open stance, ready stance, defensive stance, calmness, agitation, etc.). The third level is Physical Control (escort holds, pain/pressure compliance, passive counter measures, active counter measures, etc.). The fourth level, Serious Physical Control, is mostly not allowed in our local jurisdictions (such as carotid control holds). The fifth level of control is use of Impact and Less Lethal Weapons (such as pepper spray, baton or even taser). The sixth level of control is, of course, Deadly Force.] 

  

***

“We’re police and we’re here to help. Someone called us and said there was a man with a gun. Please let us know you can hear and understand; put your hands up.”

Still, the man did not answer. Thinking that he might actually have a hearing problem, the officer hit the switch on the patrol car P.A. and repeated the command a second time, followed by a third time.

Then, I heard a male officer yell frantically, “Don’t put your hands to your waistband!!! We need to see your hands!!!! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!!!!” I could not see what the officers were seeing, but that seemed to me like an escalation, rather than a de-escalation. Observation 1: I know men who are constantly adjusting their trousers, whether or not they are wearing a belt; this is a habitual and self-conscious action. Observation 2: An officer yelling such a statement might raise the adrenaline level not just of the subject, but of everyone in the area, and possibly falsely cue other officers who have drawn weapons to shoot.

Next, a patrol car silently rolled up on the cross street, and an officer, holding a revolver at low ready (this is with the muzzle pointed downward toward the ground), exited and was soon crawling through my neighbor’s bushes to see if he could get a bead on the subject. Two other officers with long rifles also came into view.

I still heard no word from the suspect, who seemed to be trying to melt into the bark of the oak tree he stood beside.

Eventually, officers from the direction the commands came from deployed riot shields and advanced toward the suspect. Words were exchanged at closer range, and finally, the man who did not appear to move with an aggressive demeanor [in IAD interviews, the subject/suspect’s demeanor is discussed, as well as that of the officers’] was either physically detained or complied with commands and seated himself at the curb. (This seated position is often referred to as a subject detention.)  I did not see whether the subject was handcuffed or not, at that time.

Next, one officer peeled off from the pack. That officer took the role of Primary Officer, conducted an investigation by asking questions of the detainee, such as name, date of birth, address, etc. Other officers advanced into the fenced park and, shining their flashlights all around, did a sweep of the entire area, to make sure there were no other subjects hiding in the park. They might also have made a cursory examination of the garbage cans and public restrooms. This is all standard procedure.

After an all clear is given on an area that has been sweeped in this manner, the officers come move back and form a tighter perimeter around the subject, while the subject is being questioned. The partner of the primary officer usually runs information about the subject through dispatch to see if there are any wants or warrants for the individual. If there are, that is the “Go Directly To Jail” card. The detainee is then cuffed and formally taken into custody, is now under arrest, and is taken to the nearest police station for formal booking. It will fall to the primary officer on scene to write an incident report, and the subject may be transported to a temporary holding cell or directly to county jail.

***

In the case I was witnessing live, the perimeter around this one man, who the beam of a street light revealed to be a man of color, was quite large, owing to the large number of officers (I counted nine, but there must have been more. One of my neighbors, who lives with a more direct line of sight on the area in question, counted eight patrol cars), and I was struck suddenly by the fact that all of these officers were white. It took this incident to make me aware that, although I live in a place that is highly diverse, where over twenty languages are represented in our public schools, our police department does not represent that diversity beyond the inclusion of a small percentage of women.

So, here is this non-white male subject, surrounded by a sea of white, armed to the teeth law enforcement personnel. I can only imagine the reason why he did not move or speak during the early part of this episode is because he thought his life might be over in the next few minutes, so why bother protesting or speaking or moving or not moving or, really, doing anything at all?

***

Now that there was a “secured perimeter” all officers present at the scene who were not the primary officers were just standing around. Their vehicles were all idling, sending up noxious fumes.

I had the sense that this was a weird sort of law enforcement version of “piling on.” I mean, how many police officers does it take to subdue and take into custody one unarmed man? The neighbor I contacted conveyed to me an opinion that surely all officers on the duty roster for this night must have rolled to this scene. Why were so many officers there?

Were they there to police one another? Or were they there to “get a piece of the action”?

The primary officer continued to interview the subject. From where I was, I could not hear much. I think I heard the man say he had a knife among his belongings. I can not be sure of anything else I heard.

***

Finally, the interviewing of the subject was over. The police were probably unaware that there were at least a few witnesses monitoring this situation.

The conclusion arrived in the form of two fire trucks, both superfluous (one appeared to be a gigantic tractor-drawn arial ladder truck – why? What purpose would that serve in this situation?) and the last vehicle to appear on scene was a paramedic unit.

Evidently, the subject was considered a candidate for medical and or psychiatric observation and/or treatment. The subject was, therefore, released from police custody into the care of the paramedic unit. A paramedic in a white shirt looked, to me, embarrassed to be parting this sea of police presence with his colleagues.

In the jurisdiction for which I do transcription, when a subject is released from police custody, no incident report is made. Why is that? Because no arrest was made. I do not know if that procedure is the same in this jurisdiction where I live. There will be a record of the call for service, and that information is often made public in the local newspaper or on-line. This is done both in the name of transparency, but also as a public relations measure; “we’re working hard for you so you'll fund us.”

The subject was given a cursory evaluation by the paramedics, on scene, then strapped to a gurney. The gurney was loaded into the unit, which was the first vehicle to depart the scene.

Eventually, all the loud, noxious vehicles and their operators went away.

I returned to bed, physically and emotionally drained by this strange event.

***

I can appreciate that an abundance of caution and care was being taken, but I wonder at what I consider to be an over-abundance, and how easily abundance of caution could have become (and I hesitate to use the word, but it is so apt) overkill.

This experience was, to me, a macabre spectacle, bordering on theater of the absurd.

I am extremely grateful that the subject was driven away, alive, to receive, I hope, a new lease on life, rather than to a morgue. I pray that this person will receive the care and real help that can make the difference and light a path of future for this individual.

Questions I would ask of my local police chief and mayor:

·      Why were so many officers deployed to this scene?

·      Why were so many fire vehicles deployed to this non-fire, non-emergency?

·      What would the tipping point have been to change this possible felony stop from an organized, by the book procedure, into a chaotic shoot-out? There were too many law enforcement personnel present. When one officer screamed, “Don’t put go for your waistband,” that could have well have cued  a hail of bullets.

·      What is the point of deploying two fire trucks and a paramedic unit when the later is all that was necessary? This is a waste of resources and personnel that probably should have been patrolling elsewhere. Surely, there can be better dispatch and scene coordination.

Perhaps more questions will occur to me later.

***

On December 1, 2017, officers of the San Francisco Police Department were dispatched in pursuit of a carjacking suspect, allegedly driving a stolen California State Lottery van in the Bayview District. The suspect drove into dead end, exited the vehicle and appear to rush at the stopping primary pursuit vehicle. One of the officers in that car fired a single shot with his service revolver. The suspect was killed instantly.

I relate this story, which I remember reading about in the newspaper and is a matter of public record, because it is the story of a single officer firing a single bullet at a single suspect. Point number 1: It only takes one bullet to kill someone.  Point number 2: It took a great deal of self-control on the part of the officer to fire only a single shot; the trigger on the typical SIG Sauer service revolver is a DAK (double action) trigger system, based on weight of the pull on the trigger.

When police deploy their weapons in deadly force, they are trained to aim and shoot at only one location, the rectangle that represents your central body mass. If they shoot, it will not be at your foot, your leg, your arm or your shoulder. It will be at your body mass.

***

This thing happened in my neighborhood.  This thing could happen in your neighborhood.

If it does, what will you do?

I hope you will Watch and Pray for the best possible outcome.

I also hope you will question anything that looks wrong, and report anything that seems really out of whack to an appropriate agency, perhaps your local District Attorney’s office. 

DO NOT insert yourself into a danger zone, and DO NOT EVER interfere in a police action. I realized later that being an observer was taking somewhat of a risk; a barrage of gunfire could easily have sent bullets into nearby homes. If you can observe safely, and feel okay doing so, fine. Otherwise RETREAT to as SAFE A POSITION AS YOU CAN.

___
1. 23 Police Officers Fire 377 Bullets at Two Men With Zero Guns
http://blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1462246167395686511#allposts

2. Why Do Police Shoot So Many Times?
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/03/police_shootings_nopd_jpso_eri.html

Security State: All Deposit, What Return?

War economy gave birth to the security state and the promotion of endless fears. Terrorism without borders is the latest on the war front, very possibly aided and abetted by international cyber-crime.

Billions of US dollars have been spent annually to put our soldiers in harm’s way and weapons in the hands of foreign armies, both allies and their enemies. To some extent, United States foreign policy has done more to destabilize than to stabilize the Middle East. Our involvement there has been more about oil and money than the advertized promotion of democracy, much less human rights. By contrast, our involvement in Africa has been next to nil, never mind that human rights are being trampled all over the place and genocide is on the march. There isn’t, apparently, enough money in caring about what happens in Africa. This American disinterest in the plight of African nations has been a boon for China, which has all but moved in to mine the minerals and themselves, bringing their own workers, to the impoverishment of each local populace where they make an agreement with the local despot.

On the home front, billions of US dollars are spent annually to incarcerate people and to militarize our domestic law enforcement agencies. To some extent, United States domestic policy has done more to destabilize than to stabilize our inner cities. The law has seen fit to uphold many of the most egregious cases of police brutality. In large part, allowing civilians the opportunity to stockpile small arsenals has promoted the notion that police have the right to shoot at “suspects” in the kill zone, and ask questions only when the bodies are on the slab. Frequently, what looks like a brandished weapon is no weapon at all; sometimes it actually is a weapon, at others there is absolutely no weapon. The militarized police are claiming, and taking pride while doing so, that they are being “frightened” into what is later called “effectiveness,” and the courts are upholding that position in many, too many cases. While the police are “looking out for their own,” are they also looking out for the rest of us? Shall we bring race relations into this discussion?

Police and Fire unions are among the biggest supporters of local government officials’ election campaigns, followed closely by big development companies. Police and Fire contracts, with heath and pension benefits, take a huge chunk out of any municipal government’s general fund. Some contracts allow officers to become vested in their pension within between five to ten years of service. Some officers “retire” after they are vested. Some of these officers apply for lucrative contracts in other municipalities. Double-dippers, sometimes even triple-dippers abound in a pay and pension system that is not regulated and is completely unsustainable. You have only to look at the rising number of municipal bankruptcies to know that this is true.

Taxpayers contribute most of the money that supports the security state, but are we more secure? My thought is that we wouldn’t need to have “Security Officers” posted outside our grocery stores, if we were really secure. Too many of these jobs are just for show. How can it not be so? Most of the security officers I have seen lately weigh in at over three-hundred pounds, and are attentive mostly to their electronic media. Would such a person be able to apprehend a fleeing wrong-doer? You can’t just be dressed for the part; you actually have to be able to deliver something that recruiters, these dates, call “proven effectiveness.” The world of privatized enforcement seems to include anything in a spectrum defined at one end by the small, well-armed private army (working sometimes outside the law) to the $13/hour actor from central casting, at the other.

There have been too many high profile cases, of late, where people had been arrested, tried and convicted of crimes they did not commit. Better late than never to be exonerated, I suppose, but these costly mistakes would never have been uncovered if it had not been for the growing database of forensic DNA. Meanwhile, innocent lives have been broken and wasted, and some have died before the truth could be uncovered.

The average person’s notion of how police do their work comes from the television. From what is shown on TV, most people would think that every law enforcement agency works methodically from an extremely strict set of protocols. TV police protocols say that you cannot arrest someone and hold them in custody without strong probable cause including evidence. In my town (in real life), two people were arrested for committing a string of arsons. The two do not know one another, and one was at work at the time the fires he is accused of were set; one has jobs and family and ties to the community, the other is a transient. The evidence the police have to bind these two people over has yet to be disclosed in the courtroom, but Columbo would never arrest two people just because someone said they saw the person or because a surveillance tape showed a figure that might just look like the person someone said they saw near one of the fires, if there weren’t so much shadow. There might well be a number of people on the street, if there is a fire in the neighborhood, observing. I do not know how this particular situation will play out; only time will tell. But I find it disquieting that the police do not need evidence and probable cause to bind a person over for trial. The person can be arrested, and the police then conduct their investigation while the one arrested is taken off the street, and isolated from contact with family. I would put a question forward: Does it serve justice and does it prove “effective” to set bail nearly twice as high for the transient as for the workingman? There will be no person raising bail for the transient, so what is the purpose and what does it achieve? Meanwhile, to some extent, the men have been tried in the press: the Mayor of the town has promised to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. The Mayor is up for reelection. The Mayor’s platform is, of course, “proven effectiveness.”

Where did I get the information for this blog entry? I read the newspaper everyday. I hope you do, too.  Much of what we see is a theater, a masquerade meant to imply order, which may not exist, at all. All of the issues and stories I touch on here are related; they do not occur in one-off or in isolation. We need to ask the hard questions about the money we pay for “security.” We need to have better determinations about deadly force. We need to get guns off the streets, period. We need to vote for people who might really do something about all this, rather than shoo in the incumbent rubber-stampers, whose campaigns are paid for by security unions and big business interests. Only today, the new head of the FBI, James Comey, said in interview that cybercrime is the biggest terrorist threat to our security. An argument could be made that it is the biggest threat to world order, but no one wants to go that far. Those claims will only come when economies topple, and then it will be too late.

There is a lot of investment being made in armed security. There is not nearly the same investment being made in people and justice. Major infrastructure changes needed to insure greater electronic security are “too expensive” for big business; it is cheaper for big business to send out new credit cards and pay off insurance claims than to invest in better, more secure systems. What investments are made benefit big business and all the trappings that support big business, including “security guards.” This investment maintains a crippling status quo of economic divide, but what are the returns?

Things will not change until big business gets hurt, and hurt badly. In the event, politics will not be able to save big business, and neither will security guards. For all that we may want to change the balance power, we do not want to see what happens when the hackers bring down the firewalls.

Dragon Slayers, Ancient and Modern

The recent massacre of children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT has led to renewed speculation and discussion of modern gun culture, as well it should. This was an unspeakable crime, and unfortunately not an isolated one. That there is a growing body of such bloody incidents in the annals of crime is a curse on the so-called “free world”.

It has been said, by people on both sides of the gun ownership issue, that the root cause has absolutely nothing to do with gun ownership and everything to do with media and/or mental illness trends. Others, of course, say gun ownership with a “might as right” attitude is the root cause of these tragedies.

I will go out on a limb and assert that these approaches, nay, these excuses, are inherently and completely incorrect. My proof resides in the whole history of the human race, as encapsulated within the ancient literary formula:

HERO [WITH WEAPON] SLAYS DRAGON

This literary formula extends from the Ancient Hittite, Vedic, Persian, Greco-Roman, Baltic, Celtic and far Northern European traditions. Scriptures of all traditions are filled with stories that follow the same formula. Histories, myths, charms, prayers and victory songs contain this same formula, over and over again.

Aside from the interesting philological implications, this formula indicates a more basic sociological truth: humans have always used violence to overcome adversaries and other adversities.

Violence in society is nothing new, but perhaps the purposes and reasons for using violence have changed.

Our ancient literary evidence indicates that the hero’s purpose was to return or create order from chaos.

HERO SLAYS DRAGON = CHAOS INTO ORDER

In essence, maintaining order is what the modern police person is supposed to accomplish. A sense of social responsibility lies at the heart of our best readings of this formula; the hero is the person who has the courage to attack a monster (whether that be a dragon, a tyrant, an anti-hero, or some other) that threatens the equilibrium of the community. Not everyone is cut out to be a police person, not everyone is capable of being a hero, in that ancient understanding of what heroism requires.

What we are seeing, in these modern massacres, is the aberration of the formula:

ANTI-HERO KILLS INNOCENTS

This version of the formula is also present in ancient literature, generally within the context of a larger literary expansion that shows the following:

ANTI-HERO/MONSTER KILLS INNOCENTS; HERO KILLS ANTI-HERO/MONSTER

or

SPOILER WREAKS HAVOC; HERO RESTORES ORDER

If you think about it carefully, you will realize a great deal of modern literature, not to mention film media and games, contain this very formula, more or less.

The point I make is that human beings are violent, no less so now than in past epochs. We like to think that we moderns are more sophisticated, more rational, more urbane, more prone to desire tranquility and peace, more likely to follow rules with a sense of social responsibility and obligation. This assumption is incorrect, even to the point of tragic delusion.

The National Rifle Association (NRA), in proposing that institutions such as schools invest in armed guards on patrol, clearly suggests that its membership populates the hero category. “Arm all the good guys,” is the new refrain. Parents and educators look on this proposal, as well they should, with revulsion. Do you want your child attending a prison in order to obtain an education? What sort of social value does it impart, that our schools might become army garrisons?

The second amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as ratified by the states and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, reads as follows:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

When considering this statement, two essential bits of information are almost always forgotten, in the deafening volleys of rhetoric that abound within the public discussion of this issue of guns and gun ownership. First, the population of the United States, at the time this amendment was ratified, was sparse and widely spread over enormous territories; in such times, the need and ability to raise a militia against foreign enemies was only a sensible precaution in an era of colonization and empire-building. Guns, in addition to providing a modicum of frontier protection, were important tools in bringing food to the table.  Second, the American Constitutional amendment bears direct relationship to a clause from the 1689 English Bill of Rights, one that disallowed the monarch from disarming Protestant subjects—thus restoring a right that had previously been available equally to all free male subjects and making amends for what a Catholic monarch had done due to a perceived threat of uprising. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were clearly trying to make it impossible for a federal overseer to have power to disarm the populace.

While grocery stores and farms are more congenial modern ways of bringing food to the table, guns are still used in the subsistence lifestyles of rural and indigenous peoples. Semi-automatic and automatic weapons, whose design and engineering are for war and for the indiscriminant killing of people, not wild game, are inappropriate for use as tools for the modern hunter.

The United States has an Army, a Navy, a National Guard, a Coast Guard, States police and highway patrols, County Sheriffs, and local law enforcement, as well as an astonishing array of privatized bonded security agents. With all of that firepower, why would the public need to raise a militia? Conversely, the United States does not have a centralized database for arms and ammunition sales, nor does it have a single federal code for the registration of weapons. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) does not have any authority to do what is necessary to aid all areas of law enforcement in the necessary regulation of firearms.

The following formula is illogical and is a social anathema, but is being bandied about by gun advocates:

MORE WEAPONS = GREATER SECURITY

The NRA continues to issue its disingenuous rationalization:

GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE; PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE

If this is true, and certainly a great deal of our world literary traditions bear it out, then what is needed is regulation and enforcement of responsible ownership of firearms.

Killing is an irrational response, and has always been.

The NRA wants to sell the following formula to the public:

GUN OWNER IS HERO

When so much of our newspaper is taken up with this reality—

ANTI-HERO [WITH AUTOMATIC WEAPONS] KILLS INNOCENTS

—I wonder that anyone can imagine the NRA vision to be correct.

Meanwhile, I think we need to work on a different equation, completely, one that has nothing to do with weapons, their ownership and regulation:

HERO SLAYS DRAGON = HUMAN SUBDUES VIOLENT IMPULSES

If humans want a peaceful world, this is the formula we need to work out. If few are cut out to be police, and not everyone is capable of being a hero, then we need to start working on the root causes of violence as a natural, if irrational, human impulse, for the sake of our children, and our children’s children.

We need to write, and come to revere, an entirely different kind of story, all together.

___________

To explore the literary traditions to which I have referred, and the poetic formulae I have shamelessly borrowed, see this fascinating book:

Watkins, Calvert, How To Kill A Dragon; Aspects of Indo-European Poetics. Oxford University Press, USA, 2001