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Tag: police culture

  • RIP Officer Rafael Ramos

    RIP Officer Rafael Ramos

    NYPD Officer Ramos was just buried. Here is Commissioner Bratton’s

    eulogy.

    In honor of Officer Ramos, I’m reprinting some of what I’ve written about police funerals in Baltimore. I went to too many of them:

    Twenty months in Baltimore wasn’t very long, but it was long enough to see five police officers killed in the line of duty. And there were other cops, friends of mine, who were hurt, shot, and lucky to live. A year after I quit the force, my friend and academy classmate became the first Baltimore policewoman killed in the line of duty, dying in a car crash on the way to back up another police officer.

    Crystal Sheffield patrolled opposite me in the Western District. Occasionally I would switch my radio over to the Western District channel to see what she was up to. When she died, I returned to Baltimore, hitched a ride in a police car from the train station to the funeral, and stood in the cold rain at attention in my civilian clothes with my uniformed fellow officers. Police funerals are one of the few events that bring together law enforcement personnel. Funerals give meaning to that often clichéd concept of Blue Brotherhood. At an officer’s funeral, police-car lights flash as far as the eye can see. Thousands of police officers wearing white gloves and black bands on their badges stand at attention. Guns are fired in salute. Bagpipes are played. A flag is folded. The coffin is lowered into the ground.

    At the end of a Baltimore police funeral, a dispatcher from headquarters calls for the fallen officer over all radio channels. The response, of course, is silence. After the third attempt the dispatcher states the officer is “10- 7.” Ten-seven is the rather unsentimental radio code for “out of service.” Ten-seven usually refers to a car, an officer handling a call, or an anonymous murder victim on the street. To hear your friend and colleague described as 10-7 is heartbreaking. In this way the few officers left working the streets know the burial is complete.

    A few seconds later a routine drug call is dispatched or one bold officer reclaims the radio airwaves for some mundane police matter. A car stop. A warrant check. A request for a case number. The show goes on. Sometimes it just don’t make sense.

  • Police Shooting Kids

    Here I am on NPR’s “Morning Edition” flapping my mouth about the shooting of Tamir Rice (Cleveland kid killed by police while holding a realistic-looking BB gun):

    [Moskos] says mayors everywhere walk a tightrope between police and citizen outrage. He says the public needs to get more realistic about how the police work. And police need to be less tone deaf to how their actions can inflame the public. The fundamental challenge for mayors, Moskos says, is a willingness to make big changes when police shootings aren’t warranted.

    This also applies to NYC, by the way. But I really don’t like hearing myself speak (seriously, I think my voice is kind of high and nasal). The voice I liked hearing came from the Cleveland mayor:

    I do not want children to die at the hand of police officers. But at the same time, I don’t want a policeman killed on the street because he was hesitating because he didn’t know if he was going to be sued or fired. So I don’t want that either.

    Who’s got a problem with that? [And yet I bet you — and I really have no idea about him or Cleveland — but I bet you that most Cleveland cops hate their mayor. Why? Because he’s a liberal black mayor of Cleveland. But I really have no idea if he’s hated, liberal, or even black. I can’t even guarantee he’s he mayor.] Now I was pretty clear about what I thought about the shooting of Tamir Rice (good shooting in the legal sense; horrible and shameful shooting in the I-live-in-America sense).

    So if I had one word for police officers, who, for good reason, feel they need to defend officers in these situations (hell, I do), at least be enough of a human being to admit the obvious: “You know what, it’s really horrible that a 12-year-old kid holding a non-lethal gun got shot and killed in America.”

    Just say what you’re feeling. It would go a long way. And it’s not anti-police to feel a bit for a 12-year-old shot dead by police.

    And to those who can’t fathom how police could shoot and kill a 12-year-kid, consider that this kid was holding a fucking gun! (Or at least something that no reasonable person could distinguish from a real bullet-firing gun.) And then consider of the words of the honorable mayor of Cleveland: “I don’t want a policeman killed on the street because he was hesitating because he didn’t know if he was going to be sued or fired.”

  • Thinking beyond “the Thin Blue Line”

    Read my whole piece at CNN:

    Most citizens can be forgiven for going through their day without thinking of anarchy or barbarians storming the gates. But many police, especially in New York City, see themselves as a thin blue line besieged by both a liberal and criminal world, neither of which they particularly like or understand. Large protests, especially when they’re anti-police, solidify this belief because police see firsthand just how thin their blue line actually is.

    Police know they are outnumbered and sometimes outgunned, even while presenting a front of dominance and control.

  • “Right now there’s nothing I’d rather be than a Brooklyn cop”

    A friend (and former student) of mine, Officer Musorov, just posted this on facebook. You might see him on the streets of Crown Heights. He makes me proud!

    “When the Rhetoric of scandal — rogue cops, racist cops, and so on —
    becomes the received idea, when we are so engrossed by exceptions that
    they seem like rules, we still send cops out, in ones and twos, into
    angry crowds, fighting families, and darkened alleys, though stripped of
    a measure of defense” -Edward Conlon

    The above statement was
    written seven years ago, but it’s just as true today as it ever was. I’m
    not going to blame anybody for what happened today, except the person
    that pulled that trigger. But when you have had weeks of people on the
    streets chanting that they want dead cops, it creates an atmosphere that
    leads to just that. Nobody should kid themselves and think that
    rhetoric like that cannot possibly harm us. Anywhere in this city, if
    somebody calls us, we will come. That’s ALWAYS dangerous, but especially
    so when you have people literally calling for blood on the streets.

    But anybody who thinks they can intimidate any of us should think
    again. We will still answer every call for service as we always have. I
    work with some of the greatest people ever, and right now there’s
    nothing I’d rather be than a Brooklyn cop.

    Thank you to everyone
    who extended their sympathies, and thank you to my extended family in
    the 71, who I know I can always count on.

  • NYPD vs. DeBlasio

    Cops turning their back on Mayor DeBlasio.

  • “To say it’s all the fault of racist cops is letting the system off the hook”

    A quote from me in an interesting article by James Reinl in Al Jazeera. I go on to say:

    “Some people honestly believe that cops don’t shoot white people and don’t give tickets to white people for minor issues. This view is demonstrably false,” Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore lawman and academic at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Al Jazeera. “Let’s get the facts right and then talk about injustice – because there’s plenty [of injustice] out there, but police provide a [too] easy scapegoat.”

  • “The Police-Community Divide”

    Best 22 minutes you’re going to hear about the current state of policing. My colleague David Kennedy on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show. I can’t thing of anything he said that I don’t agree with.

  • “When Cops Violate Civil Rights, It’s City Taxpayers Who Pay”

    From Citilab.

    As a taxpaying city resident, I don’t like having to foot the bill for bad behavior. (I also don’t think cities should be so quick to settle.)

    My solution is give whatever money the city is now paying out to the police department budget. Raise the police budget by that much. And we’re talking millions. And then tell the police department: it’s on you. All future lawsuits will come from your budget. I guarantee you this would result in fewer lawsuits.

  • Right-Wing Lies (X): Obama has never honored cops

    Right-Wing Lies (X): Obama has never honored cops

    This is the tenth (or so) in my occasional series of “Right-Wing Lies.” Now I know there are some left-wing lies, too. (It’s not true that 1 in 5 college women are raped, for instance. Nor is it true that black teens are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than white teens.) But among my friends, I find there are many more simply false statements coming from my dear conservative brethren.

    One of the recently forwarded picture/meme involving Obama’s supposed disrespect for police officers.

     “794 law enforcement officers have fallen in the line of duty since
    B.H. Obama took office, with no special recognition from the White
    House. A man robs a convenience store and assaults a cop; the White House sends three representatives to his memorial service.”

    (Never seen this before? Then you, my liberal friend, really need to have a more diverse group of friends.)

    Of course the above is not true. At least not the part of Obama never offering recognition to fallen police officers. From politifact you can get six quick links to special proclamations. Obama has said things like this:

    Every American who wears the badge knows the burdens that come with it
    — the long hours and the stress; the knowledge that just about any
    moment could be a matter of life or death.  You carry these burdens so
    the rest of us don’t have to….

    The rest of us can never fully understand what you go through. But
    please know that we hold you in our hearts — not just today, but
    always. We are forever in your debt. And it is on behalf of all of us,
    the entire American people, that I offer my thoughts, my prayers, and my
    thanks. May God shine a light upon the fallen and comfort the mourning. May he protect the peacemakers who protect us every day.

    It’s kind of touching, to be honest. Politifact goes on to conclude, in part: “Archived information about these events was easily available to the
    public on the White House website, meaning that the meme’s creator was
    reckless in not taking them into account. We rate the claim Pants on
    Fire.”

    But… if you believed the lies when you first read them, my bet you will continue to believe them, facts be damned. Because well, if you hate Obama, then something like this just should be true. Even if it’s not.

    (Also, the number 794 isn’t right either, but whatever.)

  • The Courts

    Did I mention I met Sgt. Plantinga last time I was in San Francisco? Good guy. He bought me lunch.

    Here’s the last (for now) from Plantinga’s 400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman:

    You won’t feel sorry for many defendants. You figure they probably committed a dozen crimes before they finally got caught for this one. But it can give you a moment of pause when you’re subpoenaed for court and you look around to see how few people have shown up to support the defendant in his criminal trial. Sometimes it’s just one. An elderly woman, the defendant’s grandmother perhaps, who appears interested in the proceedings but a little disoriented. Then when that woman gets up and leaves, you realize that she wasn’t the grandmother, just some old lady who realized she was in the wrong court room. Back down to zero. The defendant may have gone through life largely alone and is now being sent to prison alone. If I ever got arrested, my friends, extended family, junior high art teacher and every member of the Polecats–my elementary school T-ball team–would show up with supportive banners and character references and exculpatory evidence. It is yet another difference between the haves and the have-nots.