Is it a pendulum or a wheel?
What is happening?
There are a couple of theories that describe the cycle that historical events seem to go through with the passage of time. In a very simplistic description of complex theories, two are the pendulum and the wheel. The pendulum theory sees politics swinging like a pendulum, up to a high point on the liberal left and then being dragged back by gravity through a balancing point to a high point on the conservative right, and then being pulled back through the balancing point again to a high point on the liberal left, and back to the conservative right, over and over again.
The wheel, on the other hand, takes place over a longer period of time, but continually revolves. It starts out with a strong man in charge of society (king, emperor or dictator), breaks down into an oligarchy (small group that exercises control), which breaks down into a democracy as common people secure more rights (republic, self-rule), which breaks down into anarchy as people lose respect for the rule of law (riots, mob rule, rampant crime), which results in the strong man reasserting control because the people want peace more than freedom. Napoleon and Hitler are two examples of the strong men who benefited from the wheel. And then the wheel continues to revolve back to an oligarchy, etc. The anarchy stage is always filled with violence and death.
Some thought that the pendulum had reached its height on the left side of its journey a few months ago when the drive to change the statutory use-of force law was initiated in Sacramento after numerous protests. The use of force law was changed, not to the satisfaction of the ACLU because of League resistance, but the law was changed with the idea of making it easier to prosecute law enforcement officers. The recent riots contradicted the belief that the pendulum was swinging back down toward the balancing point. It was actually accelerating higher on the left.
After the George Floyd incident in Minneapolis, a Guardian/Opinion Research poll found that 91% of Americans consider racism to be a problem and 89% of Americans think police violence is a problem. Facts do not matter.
In 2019, LAPD in handling 1,692,351 documented public contacts had two officer-involved shootings resulting in the death of black subjects. One subject was about to strike an officer with a machete, and the other was a wanted murder suspect who fled on foot with a gun.
In spite of the fact that officer-involved shootings had declined 21% in 2019, and were at a 30-year low, the unchallenged myth in the media was that LAPD was out of control, along with every other law enforcement agency across the nation, in the deliberate killing of black citizens.
The vilification of law enforcement officers has had real-world effects. In Paterson, N.J., the top 60 candidates for police officer compromising people who scored 99% on tests and were in great physical shape were offered positions. Twenty-five (42%) of the candidates turned the offer down after the George Floyd incident. It is difficult for departments to get recruits nationwide.
Police One did a survey of 10,000 officers nationwide. When asked if they would recommend police work to their son or daughter, only 7.5% said they would. In New York, NYPD officer retirements increased by 411%. Crime, of course, has skyrocketed in Los Angeles since the riots. Murders went up 250%, and persons shot went up 56%. Our mayor referred to officers as “killers,” and the local politicians jumped on the defund LAPD bandwagon. About $150 million was slashed from the LAPD budget. It will reduce our staffing to a 2008 level and restrict cash overtime.
California State Assembly Member Gonzalez is introducing legislation that will severely restrict less-lethal projectiles from being used in crowd control. Assembly Member Holden’s proposed legislation will make it a criminal offense for an officer to fail to intercede in an unlawful use of force, place all information releasable on AB 1421 on a name searchable internet database, and ban an officer from being a police officer if the officer has three incidents of excessive force on his or her record. Assembly Member Weber’s legislation repeals the language in the law that says an officer need not retreat. Senator Bradford’s bill would eliminate qualified immunity, creates a process for “decertifying” officers for violating numerous listed laws and/or moral turpitude issues on the state level regardless of a Board of Rights decision. Senator Skinner’s legislation would expand the release of personnel records to nearly everything, including non-cat uses of force.
Federally, the same thing is happening; proposals to eliminate qualified immunity, national databases for misconduct, banning of chokeholds and so on. So, where do you go from here?
At a minimum, you must recognize that officer safety has a new dimension. In addition to physical safety, you must now add a very real concern about you and your family’s personal well-being. The possibilities of criminal filings, civil lawsuits and Department discipline have exponentially exploded, and political support has evaporated. Notice that the coverage in the media between the two persons running for Los Angeles District Attorney involves which candidate will be the most likely to file criminal charges on cops. Community safety is no longer the issue. The true feather in the cap is how many
cops you have prosecuted.
This is also the national conversation. This month, an Anaheim officer was criminally filed on with felony charges. He had stopped a vehicle, searched it and found narcotics. He wrote in his report and testified that he had consent. The body-worn video showed that he did not.
Being an officer subject to arrest can get tricky. Take a Fort Meyers officer who was arrested after he failed to contact the Department of Children and Families (DCF) in regard to a young child’s safety. Last January, the officer had pulled over a car for speeding. A child in the car did not have a car seat. Apparently, the officer was supposed to notify DCF. The violator had her license suspended. A month later, the violator crashed her car and she was high on narcotics. The child again was not in a car seat and was killed. The state attorney general issued a warrant for the officer, and he was arrested for a
third-degree felony charge for failure to report child abuse. Yeah, you must know and follow the rules.
As I write this, three LAPD officers are being booked for 59 felony counts based on writing field interview cards that allegedly did not match the body-worn video. I will say it again, watch your videos before putting pen to paper! Accuracy is our most important product.
Civil plaintiffs’ lawyers have always considered the Los Angeles Police Department to be a large, slow-moving target. Now it is not even moving.
There is movement, however, to make officers personally liable for civil damages. In Colorado, officers are now responsible for 5% of damages in a lawsuit up to $25,000 if found not to be acting in good faith with a reasonable belief that their actions were lawful.
Punitive damages have been rare in Los Angeles because most lawsuits are settled. If the suit does proceed to trial, however, punitive damages against individual officers are possible and have been given. The City Council can pay them at their option. Any bets on how that option will be handled under the current environment?
And finally, the Department is under extreme pressure to discipline officers, especially in use-of-force situations. There are 70-plus investigations currently going on regarding uses-of-force into complaints connected to the recent riots. Stand by.
And so, you check out that black and white. What to do? Well, first, make sure those cameras are working. They are now your best friend. You are likely to be presumed wrong, and it is good to have video proof on your side.
Of course, this is not helpful if you are wrong. My advice is don’t be wrong. Easy for me to say, I know.
Knowledge, articulation and accuracy are the three legs to the survival stool. Know your search and seizure, articulate your grounds for an arrest or detention, and most of all, watch the videos before you write a report or participate in an interview and be accurate.
Understand that the public, or at least the loud public running the politicians, does not want you to become involved in a use of force. They do not want you to do observational ped stops. They do not want you to make traffic stops. All these things in their mind are connected to systemic racism. If you do any of these things, you better be right and follow all policy and training or there will be hell to pay if a personnel complaint is alleged.
That does not mean that you do not do whatever you can to protect the public. Just be aware that proactive policing, at least for Patrol, is a high-risk activity. You engage in this type of policing at your own risk. Persons engaged in illegal activities are far more likely to resist or run under the current political atmosphere than they ever have been. This means you will have to use force and that force will be under a microscope and you will be presumed wrong, if not by the Department, at least by the activists and the media.
Knowledge, articulation and accuracy are vital. If we are in a pendulum, gravity (read: high crime rates) will eventually pull the pendulum back down toward the center. However, if we are in the wheel, we are headed into the anarchy stage. The rule of law will be destroyed by the mob. Citizens will arm themselves because their government cannot protect them, and society will break down.
Those who wish to burn down the system, and there are many, know that they must first destroy the police. You can see that effort happening all around you, from defunding to restrictive laws on your activities, including criminal filings and personal liability. Law enforcement is the thin blue line between the rule of law and anarchy. That is why you must be defeated for the mob, anarchists and Marxists to attain their goals. And that is why you must not be defeated for the good of society.
Officers must still do their job of protecting and serving to the best of their ability, but you need not walk out on a limb with so many people willing to saw it off. If the community, as reflected by the politicians in power, want to change the engagement rules, that is their prerogative, no matter how foolish. Let the experiments play out. If they work, great. If not, they will have to be changed by these same politicians, when the citizens wake up and force them to do so. You need not be a casualty in this process.
The League is fighting for you in City Council, Sacramento and in Washington, D.C. Judging by the number of “police unions are evil” articles in the media, they must be making progress. Your Board of Director members are being personally attacked in the media, doxxed on the internet and flooded with hate phone calls.
That is how the Marxists and the anti-First Amendment thugs work. Alinsky Rule #13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Give the target (law enforcement) a face (a person) and attack it on a personal level. Just attacking an organization is too abstract, Alinsky says in his book Rules for Radicals.
A lot of rule changes will be coming at you as policy is changed and laws are implemented. Know the rules, follow the rules, and be able to prove that you did. Let’s hope for the pendulum, not the wheel.
Be legally careful out there.
