“Partulian!” the Master cried weakly from the tower window, “Come here for a moment? I need you.”
Partulian sighed quietly and laid down his quill. The stoop-shouldered badger levered himself up from his stool and shuffled carefully between the stacks of musty books piled on his desk. He glanced briefly at a fanciful collection of elaborate laboratory glassware and the particolored liquid bubbling inside; patted the top of a cage holding a sullen ball of fluff that snapped at his hand. The Master, a gaunt but still imposingly tall panther, stood gazing out of the window.
Partulian cleared his throat. “Yes, Master Kal?”
Kal glanced over at the interruption. “Ah, Partulian. Come here, come here.” He placed one gnarled, grey paw on Partulian’s shoulder and gently led him to the glass. Partulian looked out at the bustling cityscape below; magnificent golden and azure towers whose tops were wreathed in wisps of cloud, gleaming arrows of gravcars zipping in and out of the spires, a rippling carpet upon which rode an imposing tiger calmly smoking a churchwarden pipe. Partulian glanced over at Kal, who was staring out at the scene, once more lost in thought. Partulian cleared his throat once again.
Kal closed his eyes and squeezed Partulian’s shoulder. “Lad, how long have you apprenticed under me?”
Partulian looked curiously at the Master. “One hundred and fifty two years, Master; ever since I completed grade school.”
Kal opened his eyes again, blue and filmed with age but still piercing when he fixed them upon you. “One thousand years ago, magic returned to our world after countless millennia of absence. Our kind has adapted and evolved magic to coexist with and complement our technology and industry, and a new golden age dawned. For seven hundred and twenty of those years, I have been studying the arcana and occult and its intersection with science and engineering. But still there are mysteries that elude me.” He took his hand from Partulian’s shoulder and rested it on the one piece of modern technology in the room, a small silver flex-tablet, and looked at his apprentice sadly.
Partulian sighed wearily. “You can’t get your sudoko game to run, can you?”
Kal shook his head and turned away. “Be a good lad, will you?”
Honestly, this is the least graphic image you’ll see; and it’s been cropped. Keep that in mind before moving forwards.
NOTE: I *highly* recommend following the links in this essay, both to my own and others’ work, on a variety of topics; for the bigger picture and more exposition on the topics presented.)
By now, almost everyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock (literally or Fox news metaphorically) has heard about the death of Tyre Nichols; and has probably seen the video footage released by the Memphis Police Department. If you haven’t seen it, and you’re already over-stressed by the world we live in and its injustices… don’t. It is heinous to anyone’s eyes, and just knowing a summary of what happened is traumatizing enough. I will not link to the videos, but I may use still frames from them to illustrate my points. Be aware.
However… if you are currently or were in Law Enforcement, then you absolutely need to watch the videos. All of them. And do not fucking look away. Especially if you were or are part of a “crime suppression unit”. And if you’re wondering who the fuck I am to cast judgement, I was one of those “jump-out boys” at one time.
This is a sad tale of the drug war, the militarization of the police, us vs. them, dehumanization of the bottom rung of society… and, yes, the Prison Industry, and the inevitable results of decades of this.
January 7th, 2023, at approximately 8:24 PM CST, Memphis PD SCORPION Unit members initiated a traffic stop on 29 year old Tyre Nichols for reckless driving. SCORPION, standing for “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods”, was a crime-reduction effort by the Memphis PD focusing on auto thefts and gang-and-drug related activity. Nichols, according to the official police report, actively resisted being detained and ran from the officers. After a search of Memphis neighborhoods, police found him and attempted to arrest him again; but he once again resisted and responding officers had to employ a number of measures to restrain him; including physical force, OC spray, and TASER. Nichols died three days later in the hospital.
That sounds sort of… clinical, doesn’t it? Dispassionate? Like it was an official summary report?
Well, that was intentional. That’s what official LE press summaries sound like. Hell, just read the MPD’s official press summary after the incident happened:
As officers approached the driver of the vehicle, a confrontation occurred, and the suspect fled the scene on foot. Officers pursued the suspect and again attempted to take the suspect into custody. While attempting to take the suspect into custody, another confrontation occurred; however, the suspect was ultimately apprehended. Afterward, the suspect complained of having a shortness of breath, at which time an ambulance was called to the scene.
That is entirely typical. And had the agency tried to stonewall, refuse to release the footage of the event, might have been all we heard.
But it is a farcically abbreviated version of the truth that paints a completely different picture; and exposes a festering boil that we, as a country, should not have been surprised to find after countless similar incidents over the past few years. What really happened saddens and enrages me…
…but does not surprise me. It’s happened many, many times before, and those incidents garnered this amount of attention… but it still happens.
The initial reason given for the traffic stop was “reckless driving”… but MPD has yet to explain what that driving behavior was, and, indeed, seems to want to forget about the initial stop. Let’s say Nichols WAS driving recklessly… would that warrant the response we see?
No. Absolutely not. Was there a serious safety risk to the officers, they would have utilized a “felony stop” approach. I talked about what that consists of in an earlier article here. I suspect, however, that the most reckless thing Nichols did was probably fail to signal a turn, or perhaps nudged the centerline… if even that. All the officer needs is the slightest infraction to initiate a traffic stop; a simple pretext to give them a reason to pull this person over- a pretextual stop. And, let’s face it, absent any video evidence of the offense, proving that the officer is lying is going to be next to impossible.
So, what did they do, if not a felony stop?
They charged out of their cars, yelling “You gonna get your ass blowed the fuck up!” and “Get your ass outta the fucking car!”
Nichols, not surprisingly, is confused and frightened; and, given the number of different commands being shouted at full volume at him, is slow to comply. The officers continue shouting “Bitch, put your fucking hands behind your back before I break it!”and for him to lie down. Nichols replies he IS on the ground, and they proceed scream “On your stomach!” Then one of them decides to pepper spray him.
Folks, trust me, when you pepper spray someone, it doesn’t just hit the target. It hits everyone nearby, and these guys were crowded on top of Nichols in a group. So it’s no surprise that they all flinch off of him, and Nichols takes that opportunity to get off the ground and run.
“A-HA!” I hear someone yell triumphantly. “He’d be fine if he hadn’t run!”
Convicted Shitbag Dinesh weighs in with a predictable opinion. There’s gonna be a lot of this crap, folks.
OK, fine citizen, let’s put YOU into this scenario. You are pulled over by un-marked vehicles, and, when you stop, find yourself surrounded by people twice your size, pointing guns at you and screaming that they’re going to shoot you. When you do your best to comply with their confusing orders, they shout even louder, threaten to break your arm, and then pepper spray you. Do YOU feel like you’ll be OK if just do what they say… even though that’s what you’ve been trying to do?
No. No, you wouldn’t. You have no idea what you’ve done to piss these guys off, you’re being calm, but they’re growing increasingly more agitated. I’d be terrified that I was about to be killed by a gang of crazy psychos. And keep in mind this all happened in the space of 40 seconds… that is not nearly enough time for the average person, who is suddenly thrust into this situation to process what’s happening.
Side note: One of the officers gives chase as Nichols runs off, but can only make it HALF A BLOCK before having to huff and puff back to his car. For an “elite” unit, I really would have expected them to be in better shape.
But, they do catch up with him again, and here’s where it goes even more egregiously wrong. He is pepper sprayed again, several times. He’s punched in the face with a closed fist. He is kicked in the side and the head repeatedly. And he’s beaten with an expandable baton, several times, while the officer yells “Give us your hands!”
When the show’s over, the officers stand around and talk exultantly about their triumph. They tell each other several times “He tried to go for my gun”- despite their not being one shred of video that shows him trying to do that, or any of them struggling to keep his hands off of their gun. They know the bodycams are recording; this is all post-hoc justification in court.
“A-HA!”Oh, christ, not this idiot again. “He was resisting; if he hadn’t resisted, he’d be OK!”
That is an expandable baton. And the only reason it’s here is officer rage.
Sparky, you sound like you need a refresher on Use of Force,and the response certain levels of resistance call for. For starters, Nichols’ behavior is between Passive and Active resistance… clenching up, moving his hands towards his face instead of putting them behind his back, pulling away. So, Mr. Hypothetical Sealion, allow me to punch and kick and pepper spray the fuck out of you for a few minutes. I guarantee you you will try to protect your face with your hands, no matter what I’m yelling at you.
“But but but, you said he was resisting!”
I see you still haven’t read up on Use of Force. For someone who is merely resisting- not assaulting– you use pressure points, join manipulation, locks and holds, possibly TASER or pepper spray. You are absolutely NOT to use closed hand punches, strikes, or kicks… and ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NOT use an impact weapon like a baton. Assuming- and it’s a big fucking assumption- that they had a legal right to detain Nichols, these fucking thugs COULD have gotten his hands behind his back and gotten him cuffed if they’d paid attention to the simplest defensive tactics and handcuffing techniques they assuredly learned in the Academy. That they couldn’t speaks to me not only of their incompetence, but also of their bloodthirsty nature… there was no need for things to have ever gotten to this point if this was just a traffic stop for reckless driving.
“You’ve never worked the mean streets of the big city, brah; you have no idea what it’s like out here in the Urban Jungle.”
Aaaah, Officer Studly weighs in. No, I have never worked a major metropolitan area like Memphis or Atlanta. But I have been by myself with a bunch of methed-out tweaker good-ol boys in the darkest corner of a rural county with the next Deputy 20 minutes away; and you know what I learned? Fighting your way out of every situation is a fucking stupid thing to do and really shortens your lifespan. If you get in a fight in every encounter with the public, maybe it’s not the public that’s out for violence; maybe it’s you.
So, we’ve seen why this response was brutal, unnecessary, and extremely excessive. Is the only encounter like this the SCORPION unit has had? And, WHY was it this way?
For the first part… I guarantee you it wasn’t. For them to be this callous, this violent, you know they’ve gotten away with it many times before. As for the second… well… let’s take a look at special “Crime Suppression” teams.
Take any jurisdiction that is experiencing a rise in violent crime, gun crime, and illegal drug activity. There will be an outcry- sometimes universal, sometimes only
He was a neighbor. But he was viewed as a target.
from the people who have just read about in their safe enclaves- for the police to “do something”. Police have limited options in combating this “epidemic” of crime; they can’t change to social inequities that led people to choose the illicit drug trade as the easiest way of making cash; they can’t provide safety nets and housing; they can’t provide health care. All they can do- and one that meets the expectations of more well off population- is act proactively. “Go forth and arrest everyone you can for guns, for drugs, for violence!”; all with much fanfare and media attention. It’s a quick and easy “solution” to create a specialized unit that exists only to police high crime areas… that tend to be inhabited by the poor and POC.
And, since these are the “mean streets”, these teams need to look aggressive and act aggressively. If you did read that earlier essay on Use of Force, you know that Officer Presence is the beginning of the continuum. You’re dressed in all black, BDUs rather than (what used to be) the normal cop uniform, and ready to respond to violence with violence. You gotta get the jump on these scumbags before they jump you, after all. Law Enforcement already has a problem with the “Us vs. Them” mentality, and the longer you’re in- if you have that outlook constantly reinforced by your Sergeant, your FTO, your peers- the deeper your distrust of the public you are serving becomes. “Protect and Serve; bullshit… I ain’t no Waffle House waitress!”
And- until you fuck up so bad that your unit gains national notoriety- the middle-class suburbanites will applaud your efforts. “Look at how many guns they took off the street! How many drugs! How much money, taken from these scumbag thugs!” All is right in the ‘burbs; the SCORPION unit is keeping the animals at bay. And… you know… the PD sure can use those seized assets… they’re so chronically underfunded… In fact, the Sheriff is having trouble staffing his jail, and running that thing costs the taxpayers so much money… Why don’t we house all these ruffians in the new privately run CoreCivic prison that the Governor and my state Senator brought in?”
You know who isn’t so happy that the crime suppression unit is in the ‘hood?
While I was at my second LE agency, the citizens of the county- well, the well-off vociferous ones, who voted for things like Sheriffs- were very concerned about drugs- meth and crack- and gun violence. To them, the mantra was “Drugs mean guns”; and that was the mantra of Law Enforcement as well. We had home-grown meth labs in the rural part of the county crack being slung in the projects of Winder and Statham, Mexican Mafia members with huge grow houses, even an underground cocaine processing lab; obviously, something’s got to be done! No, no, not legalization and harm reduction programs; that’s too easy.
So, the Narcotics unit worked overtime, snagging low-level users and getting them to flip on their dealer as a confidential informant; and then flipping that dealer to nab his dealer; and so on and so on.
But, you know what? They never got very far up the ladder. A parade of dime-bag dealers who were actually lured from outside the county, and not much else. The public was growing restless. The City of Winder wouldn’t do much in their housing projects; and the dealers on the corner shouted jeers at them when they passed. Obviously, they needed a lesson in respecting authority.
I had the same CSU on my SWAT BDUs as I did my Traffic Unit.
So… let’s take it a step further and create the CSU, Crime Suppression Unit. Made up of members from the Narcotics Unit, the SWAT Team, and the Traffic Unit (gotta get those pretextual stops in somehow), most of their initial activity was supporting narcotics investigations, highway interdiction, and high-risk no-knock search warrants. Random stop-and-talks in high-crime neighborhoods weren’t really on the RADAR at that point; but soon that itch was begging to be scratched. However, there weren’t really neighborhoods out in the rural areas where methamphetamine and oxycontin were an issue; so the whole stop-and-frisk approach wasn’t really viable out here.
But, you know where there was a denser population of higher gun and drug statistics? In the two aforementioned cities; in neighborhoods that were almost exclusively black and poor, and the drugs of the day were crack and marijuana.
So CSU became HEAT; Heightened Enforcement Action Team, and the street-level interdiction began in earnest. Now, this wasn’t a full-time unit- this was a 200-person Sheriff’s Office; we didn’t have the resources for a full-time squad doing nothing but this. But, whenever it was decided that it was time for some Heightened Enforcement, we’d set up an evening and break the unit into 4 or 5 cars to go looking for people to “stop and talk” to. Cruising around the neighborhoods, looking for anyone out after dark, and then pull up, jump out of the car, and ask to talk to them.
That’s all consensual, right? No coercion here.
“Hey, what’s going on? You haven’t seen any illegal activity out here, have you? Hey, can you keep your hands out of your pockets, it’s making me nervous… Say, have you got any ID? You sure are acting suspicious; I’d better frisk you for my safety.” Nine times out of ten, the guy doesn’t have anything; but that tenth might have some weed, or powder, maybe even a weapon… Or they’d run, which was exciting for everyone and you could get in a merry foot-chase that you’d all laugh about at the end of the night… and, more importantly, they knew the Jump Out Boys (as the residents began calling us) weren’t like those pussy City cops; and they’d best respect us.
Respect is earned; and respect from the end of a gun or an ASP baton isn’t respect.
We were always a microscopically thin hair from- if not over, at points- violating civil rights. But in this era of the courts allowing almost ANYTHING to support a Terry Stop, it didn’t matter what you knew; only what you could get away with (“articulate”). I do want to make it clear, we NEVER went to the point of the aggressiveness seen by the SCORPION unit; and, in fact, rarely had to use force (other than that officer presence) at all; beyond the reasonable amount needed to place someone in handcuffs (again, not that SCORPION shit-show).
But if this had been a larger department, with a different culture; and had it operated long enough with impunity…
We might have become them. To be honest, the mentality was already there.
Sometimes these jump-out sessions were spur of the moment. We (the SWAT team) had just gotten finished with an evening search warrant and were about to leave the scene and head back to the SO, when the Captain (who was the team commander) had a flash. “Hey… let’s split up in a couple of cars and do some jump-outs before we call it quits.” Most everyone enthusiastically agreed (as for me, I was tired and ready to head to the house); so we piled into an unmarked car and a dual-cab pickup and headed for the ‘hood. I got into the bed of the pickup- I outranked the other 3 passengers, but at that point I just wanted to take in the air- and lay down amongst the assorted tactical tools.
Just the Jump Out Boys relaxing after a long day of flirting with the 4th Amendment.
I was really tired.
After 30 minutes or so of cruising slowly down city streets, still fully clad in our tactical vests and BDUs, the Captain finally found someone to stop; choosing this time to pull up alongside and question him from the window. The guy was hesitant and resistive- not really surprising, is it?- and I could tell the Captain was about to jump out with 3 others and get to the frisking part. The guy was slowly backing down the side of the truck and had reached the bed when I popped up.
He jumped back and his hands went in the air, eyes as wide as saucers. “Oh, shit! You damn guys are everywhere!”
Yeah, we had a good laugh about it later. Hah-hah, high-fives.
And I’m NOT proud of it; not then and even less so now.
So. What can we do to keep a tragedy like Tyre Nichols (or George Floyd; or Breanna Taylor; or Eric Garner; or Freddie Gray; or…) from occurring again?
That’s a good goddamn question. And not one that I can answer in this essay, without making it a novel, literally.
But we’ll take a stab at it in a future post. Stay tuned…
…Well, that should be enough of a hot-take title to garner some angry retweets on Twitter,
Obviously, this guy didn’t grow up with 3 older sisters.
A couple of mornings ago, as I entered the bathroom stall at work to begin my morning paperwork conference call on the white porcelain phone, I noticed that some nasty-ass slob had left the seat down and sprinkled the pristine white surface with urine. Normally, that’s not an issue; as the custodial staff generally cleans this bathroom before it’s time for the Brown Line to leave the station.
As I stood there looking at the amber droplets (someone needs to hydrate!) drying on the rim, my gaze traveled upwards to the these days ubiquitous container of flushable paper toilet seat covers. I would have just grimaced and wiped the seat dry with some toilet paper, but a stray thought leapt unbidden to my mind:
MONKEYPOX!!
It’s not that unreasonable a thought. Shit, we’ve been living through three years of rotating pandemics; a thought like that is be expected.
So, little flap situated in the bowl, I gently nested my derriere on the barrier and thought about the first time I’d ever seen a toilet seat cover, around 1989.
Became a member after completing HazMat Technician; and I still think it’s a badass patch
At the time, I was working as a dispatcher for the UGa Public Safety Division. It was, in those days, a “Division” rather than a “Department”, as it incorporated Environmental Health and Safety as well. Located in a two story building, the bottom floor housed the Police Department; and the top, EHS and Administration. Needless to say, the bathrooms were much nicer on the second floor; so if I was working after business hours when all the whiteshirts had left for the day, I’d do my business up there.
And it was there that I saw my first toilet seat cover. I knew they were there; there had been a memo circulated a few months prior where we were all informed that a member of EHS had been diagnosed with AIDS- but it was OK, because they were providing these covers.
Did those covers do much, if anything, to protect against getting AIDS from a toilet seat? Can you, in fact, get AIDS from a toilet seat at all?
No. No, you cannot. But this was still relatively early days of the AIDS epidemic, and Reaganite misinformation still persisted (Thanks, Nancy!)… as did the stigma of having AIDS or HIV. You don’t think there was speculation over just who in EHS had AIDS? Of course there was. “What about that John, guy? He looks queer to me”. And those seat covers wouldn’t have done anything even if you could get HIV from a toilet seat; other than as a psychological balm for your jangled, misinformed nerves.
“I checked with epidemiology before calling you back, just to be sure,” said Sharon Greenman, environmental health services supervisor with the Seattle/King County Department of Public Health. “She agreed with what I thought, which is that they probably do absolutely no good whatsoever other than psychological.” I’m pretty sure she meant the toilet-seat covers, not epidemiology. (see second link)
And, even though I dried the seat before applying the cover, it probably wouldn’t help against monkeypox, either; even if you could catch it from a toilet seat- a myth (catching diseased from a toilet seat) that persists today.
So, why do we still have toilet seat covers?
Psychological nerve-soothing. No matter that it still perpetuates the catching-AIDS-from-a-toilet-seat myth (or swimming in a pool, or standing next to an HIV+ person) that made being HIV+ a social death sentence.
OK, so that’s toilet seat covers; WTF are “S&A” cards?
Aaaah, there’s me with hair; and that dot-matrix NCIC printer
Remember I started my eventual Law Enforcement career as a “service officer” (read: unarmed security guard working for the DPS) and then dispatcher. And in 1989, dispatch was a different place than it is today- paper call logs, a dumb terminal for writing reports, another for the NCIC/GCIC terminal that let us check for warrants, a double reel-to-reel recorder that recorded phone calls and radio traffic… we even monitored some alarms for campus buildings; the monitor was a bank of peanut bulbs with labels and a buzzer. And we were considered fairly high-tech for a southern PD of the time!
Anytime an Officer encountered another person, we would fill out a “Service and Assistance” card with that person’s information, description, and a summary of the call that would get stored in a bank of card file drawers. If an Officer was out with someone they thought might be a repeat customer- for example, on a traffic stop and they thought they remembered the name- they’d ask to “check the S&A”. The dispatcher would open the correct alphabetized drawer and flip through to the last name, and check how many cards there were for the person and why they were filled out. “10-4, 845; two warnings for running a red light on 10/23 and 9/1 of this year.” The Officer would then scratch out a ticket after informing the driver that he’s already had two warnings for the same thing and this is the third strike.
There was also a space on these cards for hazards: “Known to carry weapons”, or “Suspect in several B&Es”, or “Has fought with officers before, dispatch 10-78”.
Or… “Universal Precautions”.
First responders reading this will immediately grasp what “Universal Precautions” means. These days it’s usually called “Personal Protective Equipment”; or PPE. But no matter what you call it, it means latex gloves…
…and it means the person is known to have an infectious disease.
“Well, what’s so bad about that? Shouldn’t the Officer know that information about someone they’re going to have to put hands on?”
Well, HIPAA wasn’t passed until 1996… But, even then, it only applies to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers; NOT Law Enforcement. And, believe me, there are times that you really wished you had this information…
…Like the time I had an arrestee in the back seat of my squad, before we had cages separating the front and back seats (because we were a University PD and cages were deemed to look too aggressive), who had been coughing non-stop on the trip to the jail. While I was in booking, filling out my paperwork, I heard the jailer asking the arrestee the usual health questions…
…And heard him say he had TB.
Yeah. Vaccination or no, that’s really a damper on your evening, learning you’ve spent 20 minutes in an enclosed space with someone who’s been hacking up a lungful of TB.
BUT… there was one little tick mark that got added to the end of “UP” that indicated something special. It was a little + sign, and it meant the person was HIV positive. And when an Officer heard that in 1989, they immediately shrank away and started donning as many pairs of gloves as they could, and repeatedly dousing their hands in antiseptic gel.
Yes, it’s true that the myths of HIV were still strong in 1989; and the fact that if the guy’s not bleeding onto your own open wound, the chances of contracting it were virtually nil, were still largely unknown. That’s a fault of public health messaging and the (sometimes) unconscious biases of the public against homosexuality; especially amongst Law Enforcement.
But that little + continued to bias LE for YEARS after this. It really wasn’t until HIPAA passed- thanks to misinformation about who was subject to HIPAA that persists today- that the UP marker was removed from S&A cards, and their digital equivalent, at that agency.
But everything that’s old is new again; especially in an era of ultra-conservatism that makes Reaganites look like the Weather Underground. Monkeypox has become the latest far-right “gay plague” (although that idea probably won’t get much traction as it isn’t primarily a sexually transmitted disease- wait ‘til DeSantis catches it).
And lo and behold, we’re drug right back around to toilet seat covers and my fears of monkeypox; and the stigmatization of homosexuals over a disease.
Police use of force is certainly a popular topic these days, and a source of criticism when that force is perceived to be excessive or unnecessary. There have been plenty of examples of excessive and unjustified force in the news cycle over the past few years; along with a lot of examples of justified use of force that are unjustly decried because of the public discourse surrounding police brutality we are currently experiencing.
But what exactly is justified or necessary; and what is excessive and unnecessary? Let’s look at how police officers are trained in use of force.
(Please note: While what I’m going to talk about is more or less standard across the US, my training came at the hands of the State of Georgia; and will reflect the laws of that state. I am also by no means an attorney or qualified to offer any sort of source of legal wisdom; so none of this is to considered legal advice of any kind. Or any kind of advice; period- honestly, I’m a hot mess; anyone who takes my advice is gonna be disappointed. Also, I have not been active in Law Enforcement for 10 years now, and terminology has no doubt changed.)
Me, enjoying my chance to tase a Lieutenant
First and foremost, any use of force is about one thing: Control. The police officer or sheriff’s deputy is trying to exert a level of control over the scene and the people in it. The need for control may or may not be justified; but to use force is to exert control, usually over a person. Our Courts have established some level of control by police is necessary, to preserve the life and safety of all involved, to determine the facts of the crime committed, and to bring the persons who committed the crime to answer for it. This isn’t a blanket license for law enforcement to exert total control over everyone they encounter, however; constitutional rights limit and guide what control is allowed and when. However, this essay is strictly about what use of force is, and what it entails. Believe me, reams and reams of paper have been written on this topic, and it is subject to constant wrangling in courts of law- as it should be.
Use of force is a very fluid, very dynamic situation. Moving from just showing up to a scene and then ending up putting some guy in a joint lock may happen gradually, or it might happen immediately, depending on the situation. The force used will generally flow from one level to another, and possibly back down again. Rarely is it a formal, set series of steps in a predictable order… but that’s how it’s been portrayed in training sessions for decades. It might be given a fancy name like the “Integrated Force Model”, complete with impressive jargon; but, honestly, it’s the same stair-step diagram, and it looks like this fancy IFM diagram. Compliant subject on the left, cooperative controls by the officer on the right; stepping up to Assaultive, serious bodily harm or death by the subject, use of deadly force by the officer.
The simpler model, the one I learned back in the 90s, looked like a staircase, with mere Officer Presence at the bottom, and Deadly Force once again at the top.
No matter how you look at it, the concept is simple: you match your force with the level of resistance given by the subject; or one step above. You don’t have to start at the bottom and work your way up- if the subject is swinging a bat at your face, you’re not going to start with “Sir, please don’t”; that would be stupid. And, you can- and should– move both up and down this continuum as their resistance changes.
In fact, de-escalation should be your goal;to resolve this incident with the absolute minimum use of force necessary. It may start out looking like it’s gonna be a knock-down, drag-out, knuckle-duster of a brawl; until someone de-escalates and ends up just being some harsh words and later apologies. Ego and macho have no place here.
Except Deadly Force. You never jump to that one without meeting some specific criteria. But more on that later.
So, let’s match the levels of resistance with the levels of force.
Lowest on the scale is compliant subject, matched by officer presence and verbal commands. This guy is cooperating based solely on the fact that you are a LEO. The best situation, and it’s gained by your presence and your communication skills.
But let’s think about that presence. The middle ground is Officer Dogood Squarejaw, who steps from his gleaming cruiser with his hair perfect, his shoes and leather gear polished to a high gleam, his uniform immaculately creased. He approaches calmly and confidently, and when he speaks his voice is calm and comforting. What sort of reception do you think he’ll get?
I mean, Slobheart’s probably a nice guy, but GAWD DAMN son!
Well, almost anything, really; the subject could be in any state of mind. But without even saying a word, he radiates competence and confidence, his body language speaks of his legal authority but not in an overbearing, authoritarian manner. He’s much more likely to gain compliance, or de-escalation, just by his presence alone.
What about Slobheart McCheesedoodle? The guy that leans heavily on the door when he gets out, uniform smudged with grease marks and bits of fried chicken, who smacks his baton in his palm as he approaches?
Well. The subject is probably gonna think he can get the better of this tub of shit, and he’s probably right. Even if he isn’t thinking of escalating just because he can, he certainly isn’t going to believe he’s going to get any help from this guy; and Slobheart’s attitude will probably match his appearance.
Then there’s Chad Tactical, who leaps from his cruiser festooned with black tactical gear and immediately begins asserting his authority. This is an escalation in action, without any words having been spoken. Multiplied if there other officers of his ilk swaggering their way onto the scene. And, sadly, there are a lot of Chads these days.
In other words, just because “Officer Presence” is at the bottom of the continuum, it doesn’t mean it can’t have an outsized effect on how the rest of the encounter turns out.
Next up are Verbal Commands, and Passive Resistance. Simply put, this is the uncooperative but not actively resisting subject; and verbal commands are… well, just that. “Place your hands behind your back”. And, of course, how these commands are given- volume, phrasing, tone- can have a great impact on whether or not this situation escalates or de-escalates. Shouting in “command voice” at the wrong time can be just as bad as lackadaisically suggesting that he, you know, put his hands up; if it’s not too much trouble. And it often works in concert with that officer presence mentioned before.
But what if verbal commands don’t work; and the guy continues his passive resistance? You may have to move up the continuum another step- physically move this person, or get them to unclench from the steering wheel. No, no; not whack a baton across his knuckles; that’s three steps above where we are, Mr. Trigger-Happy. Back off.
(Quick story time, because cops love to tell “war stories” to illustrate some point or another. Second agency, short, unassuming deputy we all called “Gunny” because he had been one in Vietnam. Much older guy, perhaps 5 foot 6, grey flattop, very soft spoken and gentle. But he had seen quite a bit in his day; according to stories others had told- he himself never spoke of Vietnam- he should have won the medal of honor for rescuing other soldiers while seriously wounded himself. You’d never know it by talking to him.
But I watched him talk down a guy 6 foot 3, drunk, and very angry; who swore if got out of these handcuffs he’d kick all our asses, and was trying his hardest to do just that. He was gonna be a real bitch to get in the back of the car, handcuffed or not.
Gunny walked very calmly up to him, put one hand on his back, and whispered in his ear, having to stand on tip-toes to do so..
The guy immediately stopped struggling. “We’re not gonna have any problems on the way to the jail, are we?” Gunny asked softly. “No, sir” the man said, and proceeded to calmly seat himself in the back.
Gunny never did say what he whispered in the man’s ear, but, small and unassuming as he was, he could always de-escalate a situation.)
Storytime over, back to standing on your heads. Active Resistance– the subject is actively trying to pull away or resist; but short of trying to land blows. This is met with “Soft Hands” techniques; usually in the form of pain compliance- joint manipulation, pressure points, etc; or less-lethal devices such as OC spray or TASER.
Whoa, whoa! You cry. Pain compliance? What medieaval torture crap is this!?
Seriously, guys, work on it. We thought it was the TASER; but nope.
Well, until we invent a Star-Trek stun setting on our firearms, it’s all we got. And, frankly, for a great number of people, pain is an effective motivator. You perform an action and it causes you pain, you stop doing it; for fear of injury to yourself. But, this person isn’t actively trying to harm you; they’re just actively resisting you. We’re assuming you are justified in controlling them; so… how? With methods least likely to cause them injury?
Joint Manipulation is exactly what it sound like- manipulating joints in such a way as to either immobilize them or hyperextend them to the point of causing pain (but not far enough to cause injury, if done correctly). Pressure Points are nerve clusters that pressure can be applied to to cause pain, and hopefully stop the person from resisting. Mandibular nerve, infraorbital nerve, hypoglossal, clavical notch… all places pressure can be applied and produce pain.
What about OC and TASER? Well, because they are unlikely to- not impossible to- cause death or injury, they fall at this level. And on paper, they seem ideal- relatively high level of compliance with very little risk of injury to subject or officer? Hell yeah; sign me up! But, as we’ve seen, there are no magic bullets. I won’t say much more about them here as they are subjects of an essay in their own right, with a lot of nuances. And one thing to remember here is that once the resistance stops- so does the use of force. Continuing to arm-bar someone who isn’t resisting is excessive use of force; as is jumping up the continuum when the subject’s actions don’t warrant it.
Whoops- now the guy is assaultive; and trying to punch, kick, and hit you. Now the soft-hands gloves come off (or on, if you’ve got lead filled sap gloves; that are a step above this as impact weapons, and are banned by most all police agencies… or should be.) This active assault may be met with strikes of your own… or various impact weapons such as ASP Batons or “less lethal” impact rounds such as super-sock munitions or so-called “rubber bullets”, if the subject is also employing impact weapons. BUT- you must realize that you are now getting very close to lethal force; as these weapons have a much greater chance of causing serious injury or even death if they are misused… which we have all seen before, especially lately. These “hard hands” techniques are used when the attacker could cause bodily harm, but not great bodily harm. What is great bodily harm? “Visible bodily harm” involves visible injuries- bruises, cuts, etc- while “great bodily harm” is more serious- “injury to another person which deprives him or her of a member of his or her body, renders a member of his or her body useless, seriously disfigures his or her body or a member thereof, or causes organic brain damage which renders his or her body or any member thereof useless.”… in other words, the type of injuries likely to occur when impact weapons are used improperly; and the difference between the two may be the difference between hitting someone on the thigh or hitting them in the sternum.
Which brings us to Deadly Force; which, as you might expect, is described in deliberate terms.
OCGA 16-3-21a:
A person is justified in threatening or using force against another when and to the extent that he or she reasonably believes that such threat or force is necessary to defend himself or herself or a third person against such other’s imminent use of unlawful force; however, except as provided in Code Section 16-3-23, a person is justified in using force which is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm only if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or herself or a third person or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
A forcible felony, by the way, is armed robbery, rape, etc.
Well, that seems pretty clear; doesn’t it? Not much wiggle room there.
…Welllll, except for the words “reasonably believes”. What is reasonable? There is some “guidance” in case law with Graham v Connor, but… well… it starts to get very complicated again. In this first part, I’m just going to explain what the law is; in the second part, we’ll look at how it gets complicated.
Graham v Connor, in a nutshell, says that any use of force must be viewed in the lens of what a “reasonable” officer would have used; the force must be reasonable necessary when viewed by an officer of the same experience based on the totality of the circumstances. This is about the extent of the training cops are given on Graham v Connor; a simple paragraph that’s glossed over and usually a question on an Academy exam:
25: “What case established the Reasonableness Doctrine with regards to use of force?
A: Eugene v Debs
B: Graham v Connor
C: Tennessee v Garner
D: Terry v Ohio
But the background of the case, the make-up of the Supreme Court at the time, the numerous back-and-forth cases both before and after it… they all play a part. Which is why they’re in Part 2.
A good shorthand for judging such use of force, and taught in the Academy- and endlessly debated on internet forums- is Ability, Opportunity, and Jeopardy. As in, did the assailant have the Ability to cause death or great bodily harm; the Opportunity to do so, and was I in imminent Jeopardy of receiving the same?
Let’s say you’re standing on the corner of a very busy 6-lane street. On the opposite corner is a big, burly, 6 foot 5, 280 pound bruiser in a stained wifebeater staring straight at you, brandishing a switchblade and yelling “I’m gonna cut you wide and deep, boy”! Does this scenario meet AOJ?
Well, he certainly looks like he has the ability to gut me like a fish. However, he doesn’t have the Opportunity to do so… he’ll be run over six times before he gets across one lane of traffic. And I’m
God I love Google image search.
not in imminent jeopardy of that; so, no… deadly force is not justified here.
Now, what if that same guy is standing right next to you, but he’s calmly cleaning his fingernails with the knife and haven’t said anything threatening to you, or even acknowledged your presence? Well, he still has the Ability; and all he has to do is turn and stick you, so he has the Opportunity…. but you are not in imminent jeopardy. Should he turn to you and tell you to meet your maker; well, then, all three are met.
There is a fourth leg to that stool that comes and goes in Law Enforcement training depending on the era; and that is Preclusion: the idea that deadly force is the only answer to protect yourself, and that all other options have been exhausted. Is there anything you could have done in that moment to avoid using deadly force without being hurt yourself? For example, if a robber says “Give me your money or I’ll hurt you”, is giving him the money a viable option? Unless you have some reason to believe he’ll hurt you regardless; then yes, it is. What about a car driving deliberately towards you? Is the better course of action to get out of it’s way? (hint: yes, yes it is. Because even if you hit that ol’ medulla with a perfect cranial vault shot, your bullet won’t stop that car, and you’ll wish you had spent your time getting out of the way instead of believing what movies told you.)
“Preclusion”, when it was introduced, was met with moans and groans from the LE audiences I taught. As for the reason why Preclusion has gone in and out of favor, well… just look at all the “stand your ground” lately.
So, there it is… what use of force is, and how it’s taught to Law Enforcement. Again, until we invent a way to safely and harmlessly incapacitate another person so that they cannot inflict harm on another, policing will always involve some use of force in order to control… the person, or the situation. The real question is in what is reasonable and necessary, and what is excessive.
But before we move on to Part 2, and take a more nuanced look, let’s add another, more human element to this dry, classroom explanation; and one that results in a lot of excessive force: Fear.
Fear is a system overload stimulated by the perception of danger or threat.
Fear is an emotional response to perceived danger or threat.
Fear is an autonomic emotional response to a perceived threat/danger.
Fear is an alarmed response that is characterized by a high negative effect (or emotion) and arousal.
Fear may be reasonable- that huge guy with the switchblade is a reasonable threat; hell, I’m afraid of him. I’d be afraid of him even without the knife; he’s got 5 inches and 60 pounds on me. The fear becomes unreasonable when, in scenario 2 of our little AOJ exercise, I whip out a gun and start blasting.
Pretty sure this is unreasonable fear at work here.
Fear can also be unreasonable right from the get-go, when you perceive a threat that doesn’t exist; from racial, cultural, or societal differences. Fear of a black man, based on stereotypes that have you believing that any black guy on a street corner wants to rob you. Fear of a Muslim, because you’ve been told they’re all jihadists looking to blow something up. Fear of that panhandler, because those filthy beggars will stoop to nothing to get your money. Other fears, such as fear that your training and skill isn’t up to the task. Fear of not being accepted by your peers, who may use excessive force because they can and they get away with it.
And let’s face it, there’s a lot of fear in this country right now.
So. Part One introduced you to highway drug interdiction and what it typically looks like. On the face of it- if you’re a straight white male who’s lived in a straight white
This guy gets it.
male world your entire life-
Well, then, it’s pretty cut and dried. Yup, drugs are a scourge that should be eliminated by any means necessary to protect our society, so you can safely raise your kids and those kids can grow up to have more kids and so on and so forth. Sure, there’s lots of clever defense attorneys who’ll throw every technicality in the book at your case in order to let this evil scumbag go; but you’ve been trained by the best. You’ve seen a thing or two, and you know EXACTLY how to articulate this case to thread it around the traps those godless attorneys will throw at you. You sleep well at night knowing (and I mean this honestly) that you’re protecting society from these evils.
If you’re seething while reading this, just remember you haven’t been in this world. There are thousands and thousands of cops who chose LE as a career because they honestly wanted to protect their fellow man. There are plenty that saw it as an opportunity to further their grade school career as a bully, yes; but that’s not what I saw amongst the officers I worked with. Most of us got into it with the noblest of intentions; and while I may have been lucky in the agencies I worked for, the sort of scandals you see at agencies like Minneapolis, Portland, NYPD, LA- even Atlanta PD- were unknown in the ones I worked. I don’t know how I lucked out in that.
But the longer you’re in- especially if your agency doesn’t have a strong ethical and moral center- the idea that you’re “losing the war” grows ever larger and more influential. Every case that you busted your ass on, that you crossed every T and dotted every I on, that you lose on a “technicality” or through the foibles of the judge, is another strike in favor of juggling the odds in your favor. As a very minor example, I once had a municipal court judge dismiss my Obedience to a Traffic Control Device (running a red light) ticket because “it’s Valentine’s Day, and everyone should go free on Valentine’s Day.”
Now, that’s very minor, yes; but it pissed the ever-living fuck out of me. Where’s the case law on Valentine’s Day being an automatic get out of jail free card for traffic misdemeanors? Judges are Gods in their courtrooms; what can you do? What about that evidence you found on a search warrant that’s thrown out because you didn’t describe the instruments, articles, or things which have been used in the commission of a crime exactly right in your affidavit and your evidence is determined to be outside the scope of the search? Never mind that the whole system, through countless cases and appeals, is pretty firmly tilted in your favor. Pretty soon, you get tired of following every rule to the letter; every policy to it’s exact wording; and you… cut corners.
And these “acts of omission” pretty soon become “acts of commission”, and before you know it, you’re deep into unethical behavior that you’re convinced is the only way to do your job.
And, almost every time, you get away with it. And you get bolder, and lazier, confident that the prosecutor and judges and city or county officials will give you, the cop, the benefit of the doubt; and let you get away with it in the name of “public safety”.
And the body of “case law” gets deeper and deeper in your favor; and you get even more fat and lazy and complacent.
DRRRAGGING this conversation back to the point; what does that have to do with the interdiction stop of the DSU Lacross team bus recently?
Well, the stop itself was a TEXTBOOK presentation of how to conduct a highway drug interdiction stop. Each and every one of the deputies involved comported themselves in a professional and polite manner. It was all recorded, even if the Sheriff did spout off his mouth before he had the facts and, politely speaking, stepped on his dick. The investigation revealed no drugs and all parties were free to go on their way in a reasonable amount of time.
So, what’s all the hubbub, Bub? Why are all these bleeding-heart LIBRULS making such a stink?
Because they came from a very different background than these deputies; and they’ve seen this sort of “this is for your own good”, “I’m on your side, honest; if you ain’t done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to worry about” invasions of privacy based off of eggshell-thin probable cause before. Far, far too many times.
Well; maybe not Megabus; they tend to catch on fire a lot.
The video starts as the bus is stopped. Busses on the interstate are are particularly prized target amongst interdiction officers, because of the people who travel on them. Long-haul busses like those annoying Megabusses or, even better, busses that run from Mexico to various parts of the US, are juicy targets. They got a lot of “those” people on them- you know, poor, shiftless vagrants who just flit between cities; with no doubt nefarious ambitions once they alight in a new location. If you were an honest citizen; wouldn’t you be able to fly or drive your own car from place to place? Poor folks are always committing crimes; and drug mules can use this transportation vector efficiently. A Mexican bus? Anything from south of the border is suspect; and even if they’re not transporting drugs for some hazy Mexican cartel, they’re bringing people to take our (white male) jobs.
Am I saying every cop has this thought foremost in their mind? No, of course not.
But… The job DOES tend to promote these sorts of ideas into the back of your head; where they slowly work on you.
So you see this unmarked charter bus pass you and you get behind it, looking for any reason to pull it over. Lo and behold, the driver travels in the far left lane; a technical violation that you’ve probably never written on a normal basis (unless you’re a truck trooper), but gives you the opening you need to pull it over. A pretextual stop; remember those? Light ‘er up.
You’ve already got a posse of backup units with you; including that important K9 unit. That’s your ace in the hole. So, while you talk to the driver, the K9 sniffs the luggage compartment. Take your time; bring the driver back to your car and make small talk with him to give the K9 time to provide your PC to go further. Normally, you’d need a warrant to make such a detailed search of a vehicle; but being a vehicle, and “inherently mobile”, gives you some warrantless exceptions. Be sure to use all the good-sounding boilerplate phrases, like “they did a study a long time ago that showed how dangerous this driving behavior is” and refer to the “number of crashes and fatalities on this highway”. Hey, I’m the good guy here; just keeping the highways safe.
My favorite bit of verbiage along these lines had a modicum of truth- “Ga 316 is THE MOST dangerous highway in the state of Georgia based on fatalities”- was, actually, true. When it opened, because of it’s shitty, cost-saving design that had uncontrolled intersections every couple of miles, we racked up a truly obscene number of fatality accidents; the images from which will be imprinted on my brain forever. But save that for the guy that’s doing 110mph in heavy traffic.
Well, dang, it’s not a busload of mexicans running dope for a cartel. BUT, it IS a bunch of black college students; and you know how they love their weed. I listened to Busta Rhymes once, you know. Maybe you’ll get something after all. And hey! The K9 hit on the luggage area, so you’re good to go. Maybe you’ll dig up something. Be sure when you talk to the students on the bus that they know you’re looking for SERIOUS things… why, these busses are sometimes used to TRAFFICK CHILDREN as sex slaves.
Yes, that was said on this video.
Now, where have I heard that logic before?
They could have shortened their time on the side of the road by having the dog sniff the luggage after it was out of the bus; but I saw no evidence of that. We’re on a fishing expedition here, one with a limited timeframe of reasonability, so let’s fish quickly.
Whoa, what have we here?A plain package wrapped in brown paper? That got some pulses elevated. Alas, it turned out to be a still shrink-wrapped book safe that was a gift from an aunt to one of the students.
The expressions on their faces say more than I ever could.
(A BOOK SAFE?!? Why, those are used to hide CONTRABAND! Believe me, I got to know every variation of this theme- fake 2-liter cola bottles, cans of baked beans, you name it. This deputy didn’t pursue it much further, to his credit, when he saw it was still shrinkwrapped and unused; but you KNOW he was thinking “she’s gonna store her weed in here when she gets back”)
The one thing that I saw that made me think about the bigger picture in this little slice of interdiction reality was the expressions of the faces of the students on the bus. All black females, all with a resigned “this is bullshit, but what can I do about it” look on their faces. They’ve seen this from LE their entire lives; on every traffic stop or encounter with the police- or well-off white society- their entire lives. It’s an inescapable reality for them that those of us who have never lived it don’t understand. The idea that the cops are always there, always looking for some reason to snag you and make you pay for your “crimes”.
That they don’t seem to snag too many middle or upper class white folks at the same time is just another knife in the back. Does make you wonder how many busses full of retired white folks headed to a Senior’s Casino Vacation get stopped and searched, though… and of those that are, how many were done just to get some “clean stops” on their record in case some smartass defense attorney asks.
“Whoa there, skippy”, you heatedly interject. “Are you saying these deputies are racist?”
Now, how can I possibly know that? I’ve never met them, that I know of. I have no idea.
But I spent 20 years in LE in Georgia, and I’m pretty sure the undercurrents there are the same as they were for me. No one comes out and SAYS the n-word; but euphemisms are OK. If someone said they just broke up a house party full of “democrats”, they meant black people. “Wetback” was still an acceptable slur, but “chink” was a bridge too far. Poor whites busted for meth related crimes were “dirtlegs”. A photo recognition book of various homeless people frequently encountered was named the “Skinnies Final Solution Book”. Being poor was far more likely to make you a target than skin color; but being poor AND a minority generally led to harsher treatment.
By “harsher treatment” I don’t mean having someone kneel on your neck until you’re dead; although that has obviously happened, and happens more often these days. “Harsher” is the difference between going to jail or being given a warning; when going to jail will utterly crash your world to the ground. Most of the officers I worked with would not label themselves as racist, and would loudly proclaim that they treated everyone equally… because they didn’t even see how their disparate treatment was a problem. Most of them likely didn’t recognize it in themselves.
But it’s a pervasive, low-level rot; that slowly seeps into the consciousness and very fabric of an agency, and gradually changes you over a long period of time. And the “us vs. them” mentality that is hammered into you day after day, seemingly reinforced by your daily experiences, doesn’t help. If you looked back on those reinforcing experiences and critically dissected them, from start to finish, you’ll see that it’s your own conviction that the public is out to get you and therefore your enemy that made that interaction turn out the way it did. Is some of the public out to get you? Of course. There are very real dangers. There are countless stories of officers killed because they let their guard down for a mere second.
But there’s also millions of interactions on a daily basis that don’t result in bloodshed… and others that wouldn’t, had the police not treated everyone as a threat.
And in this corner of LE- the one tasked with eradicating drugs and drug use- has done more to reinforce all of the things I’ve mentioned and coalesce them into one messy package than almost anything else. Even the popular name for it- the war on drugs- implies that this is combat on a daily basis and only warriors can fight it.
So, yes, this was a textbook interdiction stop on a bus. Calm, courteous, and professional.
It’s also an assault on individual freedoms for a vague, unending war that could be better fought by addressing root issues than with guns and “investigative detentions” or jump-outs. A war that was declared for very shaky reasons and has resulted in punishing disparate numbers of minorities, forcing them into becoming a permanent underclass. A war that has even further tarnished police officers who fought it and antagonized the divide on either side of the “thin blue line between order and chaos”. A war, and the ensuing mentality, that has “us vs. them”’d us to the point that reforming law enforcement is going to take decades and drastic measures.
The interdiction stop itself was perfect on the face of it… but rotten to the core, nonetheless.
I met Jim 30 years ago, when I was a college freshman. He had been living with one of my older sisters for five years by then- it was really a marriage in all but name- and at one point I roomed with them for a couple of months in one of those typical college rental houses in Athens- 50 years old at best, and can only be described as “quirky”. Jim was a few years older than my sister, and I wondered what sort of person matched so perfectly with her.
I found out quickly he was a highly intelligent, very well read; a man possessed of an extraordinary amount of talents and interests.
Jim would freely admit to being a hippie, growing up in Chattanooga in the ‘60s; and we talked a lot about the racial tension he grew up in as compared to our situation today. He loved music and, even though he truly lived modestly, would save for the best equipment he could get. And not just music, he was a cinephile as well; and sought out the best gear he could here, as well. (I inherited a laserdisc player from him at a time when rental stores still carried that format.) He was a firm believer in seeing movies in the theater, and we had many long discussions about movies we liked; with him recommending genres I’d never heard of. In this day of streaming series, we spent more hours divining out the plot of Westworld and giving critiques of Game of Thrones vs. the books. More than once I was glad of his encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel and DC comic books- he was the first to show me the Tank Girl comic- when it came to tying the myriad characters and storylines in the Marvel movies together. Many more hours were spent talking about philosophy and religion, world events, books…
It would seem to some reading this account that Jim was an aging hippie geek with a rather large DVD collection, but that would be vastly underestimating the man. He was a quite competent mechanic of cars and motorcycles and worked for a time as a mechanic and auto body repairman. He was fond of motorcycles and had owned a number of them, including a BMW R60/5 and a Ducati Monster. Not surprisingly, he loved to travel and thought nothing of 24 hour drives across the country.
And some of those trips were on a bicycle. He was a bicycle mechanic as well and worked for a time for a bike shop in Athens, who sponsored him in amateur races. He followed the Tour de France religiously and could talk knowledgeably on each racer and their bikes. At age 67, he rode an hour each way to work; not because he HAD to, but because he WANTED to. I hope I’m halfway as healthy as he was at that age.
But cycling wasn’t the only sport he enjoyed; in his younger years he was also an experienced caver. He loved the region around Blacksburg for the caving and became a cave rescue responder. That skill with ropes also lent itself to a love of rock and ice climbing that remained strong- he took a week vacation this January to drive to wherever the ice was so he could climb it. At 67.
At 6’5” tall and with a deep, radio announcer’s voice, he cut a pretty impressive figure despite his lean frame. But you wouldn’t want to try and taunt him about it; because if he didn’t take pity on you and only verbally eviscerated you, he knew plenty of ways to do it in other, less pleasant ways. He taught me a lot about shooting and was proficient in handguns, rifles… even bows. And, being a movie aficionado, martial arts and other weapons interested him, too… he held black belts in Aikido, Jiu-jitsu, and Kashima Shin-ryu- a primarily sword-based art. Pile that on top his intellect, mechanical skills, and education and this isn’t a man I’d want holding a grudge against me.
But if you hadn’t pissed him off past the point of no return, he was a genuinely warm character. I hired him to work for me- he also has, not surprisingly, had a lot of experience with armed security- and I can think of no greater testament to his character than the fact that not only did my employees come to him for advice, a number of the plant’s employees did too.
When it came to his own health, the only word I could use to explain it is “stoic”… and possibly “stubborn”. While he worked for me, he had a deer run into the front tire of his Ducati… as in, the deer came from the side of the road and headbutted his front tire, knocking him and the bike over. He came limping into work the next day with one knee swollen to the size of a basketball and relayed the story. Go to the hospital? What for? I was a paramedic, I’ve already done what needs to be done.
And indeed he had, because it wasn’t long before he was riding the bicycle to work again, just to keep in shape.
I could continue for pages and pages more… What about his time in Oman caring for horses? His participation in the Society for Creative Anachronism? Love of fine wine and whiskey, as well as food? The stories of hunting rats in the warehouse he was guarding? The harrowing car trips and cave rescues that very nearly ended in disaster? His love of sailboats and catamarans? The number of near-misses, angry shouts, thrown beer bottles he received while riding? How dedicated he was to the environment and his seething anger at how we’re ignoring the climate crisis?
I could. And I wish I could tell you about his future exploits.
On Friday, March 4th, 2022 at 1:03 am I received a gasping, plaintive call from my sister asking me to pick her up at the hospital.
James Vivean Jones was killed while riding home from work by a drunk driver.
The second memory, the satisfying one, happened at my first agency. At some point in my early career, Georgia did something sensible for once and passed OCGA 17-4-20.1, a law that overhauled domestic violence response by law enforcement.
This law did some good things; but laws can’t fix all things. More work to be done.
Historically, domestic violence was treated as a pain in the ass by responding cops. Cops got attacked at DV scenes; there’s a whole body of policy around safely responding to a DV call. And no one wants to be stuck in the middle of two partner’s heated argument.
And a whole lot of misogynistic attitude, yes. A lot of DV calls ended with no one going to jail, both parties in the same house. Or, “One of you has to stay somewhere else tonight.” Or, “If I have to come back here tonight, I’m gonna arrest both of you.” And even if the abused spouse agrees to press charges and it’s cut and dried- a lot of the time she will back out and refuse to testify. For a lot of complicated reasons- afraid of losing the support, sure he’ll change his mind, all of the reasons that an abused person will choose because of their situation; and this can be fatal to the case. 17-4-20.1 took a lot of that ambiguity away.
And that made this story one of the best moments of my career.
We are now late 1990s. The University had married housing units for students, set up as brick-and-cinderblock apartment blocks. “Charlie-1” and “Charlie-2”, in our radio code. Hm. Quasi-military indeed… and initially unintentionally racist; but that’s a story for another time.
ANYway, Family Housing rarely gave the police any trouble. Maybe a burglary every few months; maybe an odor complaint. But domestic violence calls… those were more frequent. And one evening, I get dispatched to a 911 hangup, domestic, physical. Code 3, arrive with backup to find both parties separated. Wife is clearly terrified; bruised face, holes in the drywall, broken items on the floor, bedroom door damaged. Husband is a little bigger than me; angry, scratches on face. We get husband and wife separated, away from sources of weapons, etc.
I get husband’s story first. They had an argument, see, and she clawed his face, and he pushed her away, and she hit the door and that’s how she got those bruises.
Yeah. A lot of times it IS just like those cop dramas. I swap with my backup and get her story. She is still shaky. She says they had an argument, he got loud and physical, throwing plates and pictures; she ran for the bedroom and he smashed her face into the door. He stalked off and she called 911.
What 17-4-20.1 did that I greatly appreciated in this instance was state that if police could identify the primary aggressor in a DV case, they could arrest them and be the charging entity. And it was pretty clear here who was the primary aggressor; it couldn’t be clearer.
I put the husband in handcuffs. He didn’t protest too much; he knew his story was shit. But he was still trying to think his way out of this. As I drove him to the jail, in the back seat, he was silent. After a few minutes he pipes up- “Say, officer… if she don’t press charges, I go free, right?”
I knew what he had in mind. Bail out, slap her ass around until she agrees to drop the charges; the cycle begins again. But by making the arresting officer the charging entity, the State didn’t need the wife to testify.
I looked at him in the rear-view mirror and said (probably paraphrased to make me sound more movie-hero dramatic):
“No. She’s not pressing charges. I am. And I’m not going to drop them.”
Probably one of the best soundbites from my career. And most definitely the best moment.
Thinking about the bad ol’ days again, and reminded myself of a couple of stories; one disturbing, one satisfying. So cast yourself back to the mid 2000s…
This story starts with the Georgia State Patrol(God’s Special People, GSP)… Or, rather, the chase they initiated. I don’t remember why they had initiated this pursuit; but it had come in to my county from a neighboring one, and ended up in a dead-end cul-de-sac in an unfinished subdivision. The driver had turned around and come face to face with the Trooper, who blocked the road. Troopers aren’t normally known for their restraint (ahem), but instead of charging in, this one approached cautiously. The driver yelled out that he had a gun and he’d shoot anyone who got close. (Nice of him to get blocked in on a deserted cul-de-sac; no one to evacuate.) So the other chase units are here and have the car roughly surrounded, the driver is still crouching in the car and occasionally waving the pistol around.
Barricaded gunman, something I had to deal with quite a lot in this county. I get called in with the rest of the SWAT team and the negotiators. Car dude still isn’t talking to anyone, says he won’t leave until we do. Meanwhile, we’ve got a good perimeter set up if he runs, a contact team, and a marksman in place. If we have to force a removal, I’ve got a 40mm launcher with a barricade-penetrating OC round loaded. A barricade penetrator will either breach the glass and dump it’s payload of pepper irritant inside the car; or will go through and rupture on the roof of the car. Yes, we had tested it.
(Note on militarization of police: Yes, I agree it’s happening. Yes, those launchers have been misused by cops. But when you’re in a hostage rescue or barricaded gunman situation, having that barricade penetrating option is really handy. I don’t have an answer.)
It wasn’t THAT hard to tell the difference, in this case
ANYway, at one point I’m using binoculars to see what else I can see in the car; and I pay attention to the gun… And it’s a BB pistol. Dammit. This guy’s bluffing us with a BB gun.
I key up the radio. “Hey, that’s a BB gun. That’s not a real gun.” The guy next to me slaps my shoulder. “Hey, shutup! We might have to shoot him!”
Uh. What? It’s a BB gun, jackass. It might put your eye out if you raise those expensive Bolle goggles at the wrong time. WTF, over? Do you have such a hard-on to shoot someone that you don’t- want to lose your get out of jail free card? “We all believed it was a real gun, your honor, and were in fear for our lives.”
In the end, the guy agreed to give up, tossed the BB gun out the window, and the contact team cuffed him. Another successful op.
But that mentality seems to have exploded in LE since then. And that wasn’t the last time that county made me wonder what the hell I was doing.
(Posts with “From Twitter:” are multi-part Twitter posts from my account that I felt should also appear here; if only so I can annotate and expand on them without the restrictions of Twitter’s formatting)
So with the rise in violent far-right rhetoric and nut-jobs coming out of the ground everywhere, you might be thinking about getting a firearm to protect yourself with. What model? What caliber? What color?
Seriously, color is important when you’re tarting up a .22cal fake MP5SD for your 7 year old daughter. And yes, that’s what this is.
Before you even get to that,there are three questions you need to askyourself first. You don’t have to answer right away, but you need to seriously understand and consider them. And if the answer to any one of them is “no”; that’s not a reflection on your character, it’s just self-honesty. But if it is… do NOT get a gun.
Question 1:Could I kill another human being if I had to?
Some of the people reading this will say “Yes, if I had to” and be absolutely serious about that. Some of them have shot another human.
But I guarantee you it was an act that lives with them for the rest of their life.
It’s not the movies. It will be the most agonizing decision you ever have to make in your entire life, especially if you’ve never been in that situation before. Many people, when they reach that critical moment, will hesitate. Or will have convinced themselves that they can bluff; that no one’s stupid enough to charge into a gun pointed at them. Maybe not…
But worst case is they’re shot with their own gun, taken from them by the assailant.
8% of police fatalities have been by their own gun… and these are people who have been trained for this very moment. If you cannot honestly say that you could kill another person, even to save your own life or a loved one’s, that doesn’t make you a bad person. But it does mean that you shouldn’t buy a gun. The odds of having it used against you are too high. There is no bluffing with a gun.
“But I could just wound him!” Good luck, Annie Oakley. No, seriously; you will NOT shoot the gun out of the bad guy’s hand unless he’s a mannequin. People don’t stand still for you OR give you time to line up your shot. Take a minute and watch another person walk towards you. Their legs move, natch; but look how much their arms move. Their hands. Their head. And they’re relaxed. Not charging you. Not scaring you shitless. And if you’re lucky enough to hit them in the leg, or shoulder… they’re not going to drop like the movies. Humans are both amazingly fragile and ridiculously strong at the same time, and mindset makes a huge difference.
The ONE place that remains relatively still compared to the rest of the body AND offers a greater chance of stopping their aggressive actions, in the usual cop legalese, is the upper chest. (we’re intentionally not talking about the pelvis; that’s for another time). Heart, lungs, diaphragm; a cornucopia of vital organs, lots of blood vessels that can be severed.
Was that graphic? So is shooting another human being; thus the mental image.
In other words, the only target you’re going to be able to hit under insane levels of stress is very likely going to kill this person. There are no magic bullets and fewer one-shot-stops, but odds are high this person is going to die. There is no such thing as “shoot to wound” in the civilian world. You will likely kill this person. That’s what guns mean; that’s what they do against living creatures; and you can never forget this.
Well, that horse is dead; but it leads in to the next question:
Question 2:Will I dedicate the time and expense to become safe and proficient?
I just described what accurate shooting under stress entailed. That isn’t provided when you buy this gun. Guns are NOT “point-and-shoot”; despite what movies and Call Of Duty say. There is a LOT of instruction required to safely, accurately, and competently handle any gun (instruction that’s not required in far too many states). And this is COMPETENT instruction; not you and Skeeter shooting some tin cans with a .22. And you have to keep practicing that skill, which means range time and ammo, and realistic training. “Shooting ain’t like riding a bike”, my instructors taught me in between wads of Red Man, “it goes away.” Shooting is a frangible skill… Your muscles learn the memory, if you’re training enough; but they can lose it over time. “I’m rusty” won’t help you in that split second. (Oh, and Range Guru who confidently tells me he’s shot all his life and knows what he’s doing… No. No, you don’t; even if you have a Barrett .50 in your truck. I watched you load pistol rounds backwards and point the gun at your face when it didn’t fire.)
And the 3rd, and in some ways most important, question is:
Question 3: Will I safely and responsibly store this weapon?
There ARE ways to keep quick access to your weapon without worrying that your children will find them; but in 2017, 383 “accidental” shootings with children occurred. (BTW, there are NO “accidental” shootings; only unintentional discharges. A rather dry term for the horror it describes, particularly when it’s your gun and your child.) Not to mention the hundreds of thefts from houses, cars, and bags that occur each month in this country. And slapping a gun lock on it isn’t a solution. I was 11 when I jimmied the trigger lock on my mom’s .22 JC Higgins revolver, (bought from the Sears catalog; how’s that for old home week?) hidden in a closet, and tried to load it, out of curiosity. Luckily for me, I put the rounds in the front of the cylinder. This was discovered and later resulted in an ass-whuppin’… and a trip to a patch of woods with my dad to learn how to safely handle guns. Children will find a way.
It seems like I’m overplaying the seriousness of guns; but if anything, I’m understating it. This is a tool, yes; but a tool for a very particular purpose and dangerous as shit. This is a chainsaw with a megawatt laser on it and a hair trigger. It can be mastered and used safely and accurately, but it’s still hella dangerous. And the consequences of misuse are extreme and dire.
So. Think about these questions. Discuss them with your loved ones. And only then make your decision.
(By the way, if you’re the person who answered “Yes!!” to question 1 because you’re itching to shoot some *insert your favorite racial epithet here*, then no… No, guns are not for you. Not that you can shoot them worth a shit anyway.)
I took a little suggestive detour with this one. Having just completed the operation described below just before the prompt, it was readily in mind.
“So… you’ll do it?” She looked shyly at the floor before glancing up at him.
He sighed and sat down, spread-legged, opposite her. “Sure. But I warn you, I haven’t done this in a long time.”
She nodded eagerly and sat on her haunches. “That’s OK, I’ve never done it at all.”
“I know. We’ll take it slow at first. Now, first we’ve got to get the shaft good and lubricated…” He squirted some thick fluid from a tube and slathered it on. “That should be good enough… OK, I’m going to insert it; you be ready to guide it in.” He gently inserted the tip, wiggling it slightly, and began to slowly apply pressure.
Her brow furrowed as she concentrated, moving her fingers. “Uh… OK… Aaah, I can feel the tip!”
“Good, good, I’m going to push a little harder… Unf… it should go all the way in now…” He grunted with the effort, leaning into it. The shaft suddenly slid forward as far as it could and she gasped.
“It’s in! We did it!”
“We certainly did. Now, put that nut on it so it doesn’t slide out again.” He stood, wiping the white lithium grease from his hands with a rag, and leaned against the seat of the motorcycle. “Now you ought to be able to do that by yourself next time, but it is easier with two.” He tossed the rag at her playfully. “Now that we’ve got the axle shaft in, we need to put the brakes back on the disc. Torque that nut down good.”
