I’ve said for years, “people get the kind of law enforcement they deserve.” In a way, that distills down to the Talking Heads lyrics: “watch out, you might get what you’re after.”
I make this notation in reference to the NYPD’s firing of Officer Daniel Pantaleo on Monday, August 19th, resulting from the July 17th, 2014 death of Eric Garner on Staten Island.
NYPD fires Officer Daniel Pantaleo for chokehold in Eric Garner’s death
by David K. Li
An administrative judge had earlier recommended that Pantaleo be terminated. Garner’s death, which sparked national protests, occurred on July 17, 2014.
Daniel Pantaleo, the New York City police officer seen on video using a chokehold during Eric Garner’s deadly arrest five years ago — sparking mass protests and becoming a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement — was fired by the department on Monday.
NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill announced he’ll enforce an administrative judge’s recommendation, made this month, that Pantaleo be terminated over the July 17, 2014, confrontation as Garner was being arrested on Staten Island for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.
Pantaleo, who has been with the NYPD since 2006, was suspended as soon as that departmental verdict was reached, in keeping with long-standing practice when there is a recommendation for firing. The 13-year veteran had been on desk duty as his case made its way through legal and administrative circles.
“It is clear that Daniel Pantaleo can no longer effectively serve as a New York City police officer,” O’Neill announced.
It would seem to me that this is yet another police officer kicked to the curb due to politics. Please allow me to elaborate and elucidate. Because the implications then and now are rather massive. Here is the caveat:
Minutes after the police commissioner announced his ruling on Monday, Lynch said O’Neill had permanently lost the confidence of officers on the beat.
“The NYPD will remain rudderless and frozen, and Commissioner O’Neill will never be able to bring it back,” Lynch said in a statement.
“Now it is time for every police officer in this city to make their own choice. We are urging all New York City police officers to proceed with the utmost caution in this new reality, in which they may be deemed ‘reckless’ just for doing their job. We will uphold our oath, but we cannot and will not do so by needlessly jeopardizing our careers or personal safety.”
NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo has been through every horror-show ride imaginable. His actions have been examined by every city, county, state and federal microscope extant. Despite that, not one prosecution was recommended.
A Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo and, this summer, the Justice Department said it would not bring federal civil rights or criminal charges against him.
Why not? Because, after all, let’s admit that it would certainly have been convenient and politically expedient to recommend Pantaleo for every possible prosecutory venue imaginable. It would have satisfied any number of “communities” involved both local and national.
Let’s not forget that cops don’t just find themselves exposed to “double jeopardy.” Oh no. (this is absolute nirvana for Leftists) They can be tried criminally. They can be tried civilly. They can be prosecuted by the federal government — which pays attorneys to do so under 42 USC 1983. And they can be face entirely separate administrative repercussions. Like Pantaleo. Sounds like quadruple jeopardy to me.
For doing their job. For responding to calls for service.
Why didn’t all of these various potential prosecutions come to fruition? Could it be that the fact patterns extant have had something to do with that?
You see, the laws of physics still remain. Those laws exist on a physical plane and on a human plane. I would remind you of them.
- “A body at rest will remain at rest, and a body in motion will remain in motion unless it is acted upon by an external force.”
- “The force acting on an object is equal to the mass of that object times its acceleration.”
- “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
So true, we are now discovering. In a societal fashion, you see.
You cannot denigrate the importance of a civilized, organized, policed society advancing the rule of law and then complain when it becomes none of that. Nor would you ever want the proverbial “cop on every corner” because that becomes, naturally, Big Brother and “1984.”
There has to be — and there is — some sort of happy medium which now, unfortunately, is far from sight. We talk of pendulums and cycles in law enforcement. Because in my almost 70 years on the planet and 45 years as a Sheepdog in law enforcement, I have seen it all, done it all, watched it all, heard it all, experienced it all, paid for it in a marriage, blood, injuries, psychologically and with alcohol — yet I find myself actually a bit surprised and massively disappointed by today’s state of law enforcement.
I have to admit: I truly didn’t see law enforcement caving to Leftist politics though, of course, I truly shouldn’t be surprised. The gene pool for law enforcement and law enforcement administrators is no different from the one that surrounds every locale. If it is weak, you get weak cops. If it is Leftist, you get Leftist cops. Gene pool, baby.
Read my post about the limp-wristed and Leftist Berkeley Police Department here, the likes of which stood down in the face of Leftist Antifa rioting directly in front of their faces. Their chief told them to stand down, directed by the Berkeley mayor. No more, no less. And the abysmal Berkeley PD officers did just that. They disgust me.
For perspective, all we have to do is go back to LAPD and Rampart in the 1990s. That lovely time was acquired when hiring standards plummeted due to the dearth of appropriate candidates, and LAPD — like most every other California LE agency — lowered its hiring standards. There was a delay in corruption because, as indicated by the IACP — it took a few years for those persons to become sufficiently familiar with the system and feel comfortable with gaming it. Gang members. Minorities. Ties to Death Row Records. The Kingpin of Rampart wasn’t some Caucasoid. It was a guy named Rafael Perez.
Whoa. Hold up on that car wash. I guess that means — as I said — you truly do get the kind of law enforcement you deserve. Or accept.
Stop. Law enforcement agencies get sued due to three primary failures or exposures:
- Negligence in hiring
- Negligence in training
- Negligence in retention.
Are we starting to see that now? I respond: everything is cyclical. Everything.
The New York Times says:
Daniel Pantaleo Was Fired. We’re Still Afraid for Our Lives.
by Steven W. Thrasher
Five years after Eric Garner’s death, it’s painfully obvious that the daily anxiety black and brown people experience is justified.
Last week, while the officer who had held Eric Garner in a banned chokehold as he said “I can’t breathe” about a dozen times was still employed by the New York Police Department, I was thousands of miles away, in Arizona, where I found myself terrified by a different set of law enforcement officials.
Returning from visiting a friend near the Mexico border, I was driving up State Route 90 when all northbound traffic was diverted into a giant tent, where officers from Customs and Border Protection were performing cursory inspections of all vehicles. A menacing German shepherd was being led around each and every car, presumably sniffing for narcotics.
I was experiencing one of the legal checkpoints that the agency uses to search and potentially seize any vehicle within 100 miles of a border, without what would normally be called probable cause. And while I didn’t have any contraband, I felt a rising sense of panic as the officers and dog got closer to my car.
Stop. I vehemently disagree with checkpoints away from a border. But that’s a discussion for another time.
But as a black journalist who has reported as police officers lobbed tear gas and used sound cannons in Baltimore, Ferguson and New York, and simply as a black person living in America, my experience in Arizona reminded me of how very real the stress of living under occupation is for black and brown people. Such stress, of course, takes a mental health toll and likely contributes to rates of hypertension and heart disease that create “John Henryism,” a term Dr. Sherman James, an epidemiologist, coined while trying to understand why black men die younger than white men.
So blacks live “under occupation” in the United States of America?
Take a breath BZ. Then state: what a load of unmitigated bull.
I’ve been stopped by CHP a number of times, some for bogus reasons. I was an EVOC instructor, after all. I was stopped by SPD for no reason. I was stopped by a drunk CHP officer on I-5 in 1986 for going over the limit by two miles per hour. He reeked of alcohol, his hair was askew. He was a mess. I swear, the only reason I was let go was because my then-girlfriend had G-cup breasts in a low-cut blouse. Which he ogled. I’ve been stopped numerous times by law enforcement. And I’m as Caucasoid as the driven snow. So “I’ve been stopped”? Boo-damned-hoo. Get in line.
Do you know what I do that is different from most everyone else when stopped? I pull to the right cautiously and in an area that is safe for the officer. I don’t stop on the left. I don’t stop on freeway ramps. I roll down every window. I keep my hands on the steering wheel. I don’t make any movements. I let the officer set the contact. At night I turn on the overhead cabin light. I say “yes sir” and “no sir.” Lots of that. When I am armed (I am always armed) that is the first thing I say, with both my hands out on the driver’s side door sill. I stay in the car unless directed otherwise.
Today, could I get smoked? Of course I could. If I did something stupid. No one knows me any more. Melanin count means nothing. You act. Cops only get to react.
Chris Rock is correct.
It would seem that most deaths from law enforcement come down to a rather simple equation, much simpler than even Newton’s Laws. Compliance vs resistance.
And when a multitude of brackets, organizations, movements, political groups, communities, media, social mores and even the administrations of various law enforcement agencies insist upon resistance or tacitly condone it, we are discovering that this makes for a brew of terrible consequences, not unlike The Ferguson Effect.
Well, not unlike. Precisely like The Ferguson Effect.
And back we go to the NYPD. Let’s examine the Eric Garner case and why it’s critical not only to the NYPD, but to law enforcement in general. Because some decisions have to be made — not only in terms of law enforcement, but in terms of the overall thinking regarding the crafting of laws.
The background of the Eric Garner case is this.
You have a large, obese black man, Eric Garner, 6’3″ and 370 pounds, who is selling what the City of New York calls “onesies” (cigarettes sold singly, out of a pack, without tax stamps) outside of a store (known as a bodega) on July 17th of 2014.
When it’s written “without tax stamps” that means the City of New York is removed from the tax revenue stream it demands on cigarettes.
So here is a man selling individual cigarettes that folks can purchase tax free, specifically so that people avoid paying taxes. He is doing this directly in front of a store where the owner has to pay tax on every cigarette pack he sells. And the owner doesn’t get the luxury of selling them individually. That is clearly undermining the store owner who is abiding by the law. Paying taxes.
The City of New York not only declares that unfair, but illegal as well.
Here’s where I make one very critical distinction that will come into play in a moment. The cops didn’t create the law. The City of New York did.
At issue is the use of force by the NYPD in terms of an individual who was breaking the law, albeit not regarding a felony, but a crime nevertheless.
And let us not deal in generalities or phrases or SJW chants as Leftists and Demorats are wont to do, but actual issues at hand — real time and immediate solutions to problems cops find themselves facing on the street every day. Decisions that must be made in seconds. They don’t have the luxury of months of deliberation.
What Leftist organizations fail to disclose was that this was a common grievance for that area. NYPD just didn’t “happen” to be there. Citizens had complained about persons circumventing the law and, specifically, in front of their stores. The City of New York had decreed that it must have its own Tybalt-like “pound of flesh.”
Meanwhile, Eric Garner’s arrest record with the NYPD indicated a frequency of more than thirty times since 1980 for assault, resisting arrest and grand theft. Even The New York Times wrote that many of these arrests had been for selling untaxed cigarettes. What a shock to find that behavior continuing.
Here is CBS coverage.
But let’s examine things further. Much further than Leftists would care. Let’s look at the size of Garner as compared to the officers around him. They had options. Many options when people fail to comply. Chemicals. Batons. Striking moves. Even deadly force if he attempted to disarm the officers or acquire their weapons which, luckily, he did not do.
Unlike Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, upon which an entire lie was built — “hands up don’t shoot” — and “Black Lives Matter” was created. Yes. On a lie.
What they decided to do, instead, is utilize numbers. An attempt to overpower an individual who clearly was much larger than every other officer present. Further, positional asphyxia comes into play. This is something the suspect brought to the table. Not the officers. The suspect acted. The officers can only react.
But even before we get into those details, which are important, let’s examine the overall situation in the first place.
NYPD either made an on-view notice of a crime, the selling of illegal cigarettes, or they were sent there by dispatch. It really doesn’t matter which one.
They confront the person involved. He either complies or he doesn’t. The initial action is his to make. The officers gauge their reactions to his action. They only know that he’s big. Really big. And he isn’t complying.
Let’s say this is a misdemeanor. And let’s say Eric Garner resists.
If you’re in charge of NYPD, what do your officers do now in the face of resistance?
Do they — as many citizens seem to demand — simply evaluate his quotient of resistance and then determine not to engage? And walk away?
What if the officers write a citation and tell Eric Garner to sign? What if he refuses to sign a summons? Do they walk away in the face of refusal?
I mean, come on, these were cigarettes. It’s not like he murdered someone. They should have simply walked away, right?
“Stop selling cigarettes.” No compliance.
“Sign the citation.” No compliance.
“You’re now under arrest for NYC Code ___.” No compliance.
This would be the perfect time for the officers to turn around and walk away, wouldn’t it? Maybe take his name and submit for a later arrest warrant? Wouldn’t that be logical?
“Give me your name.” No compliance.
“What’s your date of birth?” No compliance.
“What’s your address?” No compliance.
“Give me some ID.” No compliance.
There. The NYPD officers should simply have walked away because, of course, everyone could see the potential escalation at that point.
By this time, everyone on the street is watching you. Do you back up your lawful demands? Do you engage? Or do you simply walk away?
Here are some examples of walking away.
And this.
Look. Let’s be real. Making the dousing of officers a felony may be impractical. Logic tells us, if enacted, the crime may be dropped to a misdemeanor.
So make it a misdemeanor that mandates an immediate arrest, no citation and, if they physically resist, depending upon the violence of resistance and substance, you could easily bump it up to a felony.
We know that, likely, at some time in the future some individual will get the bright idea of substituting, say, vinegar or gasoline or rubbing alcohol or bleach or some clear caustic chemical for water. It’s the nature of crime and criminals. Luckily, to this point, that has not occurred.
But the most important aspect of the situation is to react now. Not an hour from now. Not tomorrow or next week. Immediately at the time of the crime.
Governor Cuomo is correct. With a massive caveat.
Had the officers reacted immediately to their incidents and a “community outrage” ensued, you and I both know that Governor Andrew Cuomo would have been one of the first — after determining which way the prevailing political prairie winds were blowing, sticking his finger up in the air — to condemn the NYPD and those officers, kicking them to the curb. Guaranteed. Easy for him to say in retrospect. Isn’t it?
The streets of what I quaintly term “Urban Rate Cages” are not always filled with warm and fuzzy individuals. Sometimes they aim to punch, kick, rob, steal and murder.
Because in the lawless community — and oh yes, those communities do exist — to do nothing when law enforcement is faced with lawbreakers, simply engenders more lawbreaking and disrespect to not only authority but the entire concept of civility in general.
To do nothing — and watching various NYPD officers walking away from being assaulted — tells those persons in the affected neighborhoods that the cops do nothing and hence mean nothing.
Acting this way — acquiescing in the face of crime — tells criminals that they can do whatever they wish and emboldens them. It also makes the job of law enforcement infinitely tougher for cops who decide to actually enforce laws. They will now be the “bad guys” because “the other officers didn’t do anything.”
So, Leftists, Demorats and American Media Maggots: what are your answers?
Because essentially what you’re saying is that, in the face of resistance, just about any amount, law enforcement should step back.
One pause for a brief waft of sanity.
Had someone done that to me or any other of my fellow officers in the 70s, 80s or 90s, no matter their ethnicity, they would have found themselves handcuffed and under arrest. No one did that to me or fellow officers where an arrest failed to occur. Just as Governor Cuomo indicated. We knew where the line existed and we held that line.
The laws of certain jungles applied then as now. Either you rule the jungle or the jungle rules you. Lawlessness is either accepted or it is overcome.
Why officers don’t react that way now? Because they realize their very own departments won’t have their backs due to political pressure. And political correctness. The Ferguson Effect.
On August 1st of 2014 the Medical Examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide. According to the medical examiner’s definition, a homicide is a death caused by the intentional actions of another person or persons, which is not necessarily an intentional death or a criminal death. The five medico-legal rulings in every death are natural, accident, suicide, homicide, and undetermined.
The grand jury decided not to indict. DOJ? Nothing. FBI? Nothing. Attorney General? Nothing.
And earlier this summer, federal prosecutors ended their five-year-long probe of the matter and elected not to pursue any civil rights charges against Pantaleo.
That means: no 42 USC 1983 actions.
Officer Pantaleo was fired after Police Commissioner James O’Neill took a phone call from Mayor Bill de Blasio over that weekend. Politics, baby.
Did we ever see this?
At a May 2019 disciplinary hearing for Pantaleo, Dr. Floriana Persechino, who performed Garner’s autopsy, testified that Pantaleo’s use of a chokehold on Garner “set into motion a lethal sequence” that led to a fatal asthma attack.[167][168] However, the examiner conceded that even “a bear hug” could have had the same effect as the chokehold, given that Garner weighed 395 pounds, suffered from asthma and diabetes, and had a heart twice the size of a healthy person’s heart.[166] Moreover, during the trial at a hearing in June 2019, a defense witness, Dr. Michael Graham, St. Louis, Missouri’s chief medical examiner, testified Garner’s death couldn’t have been caused by a chokehold because, Graham said, Garner was never actually choked or unable to breathe during the arrest.[169][170]Graham attributed Garner’s death to heart disease exacerbated by the stress of the arrest.[169][170]
Imagine that. An excerpt from an article by Dr G Wesley Clark:
Having reviewed the video several times now, and being a physician who specialized in the surgery of the very obese, I believe that the cause of Mr. Garner’s death was not
“police brutality” or negligence, but rather the unfortunate synergy between his disease of morbid obesity and actions most police perform countless times with only transient
discomfort to the arrestee. The decision of the Grand Jury was reasonable.
Mr. Garner’s demise was the consequence of a confluence of many factors, most of which were beyond the ken of a policeman, and which occurred in devastatingly rapid
sequence.
Eric Garner was very obese, said to weigh at least 350 pounds. In fact, based upon his height and appearance, he very likely weighed more than that, but very few bathroom
scales read high enough to accurately measure weight of that magnitude. By simple observation, one could see that his abdomen was very large and protuberant. His chest
was similarly blanketed with a heavy layer of fat, and he had no visible neck – no indentation under his jaw, typically present in non-obese persons, which permits
application of a “chokehold,” to briefly arrest the carotid circulation to render him unconscious and manageable. The chokehold was ineffective as a control, but it served
to take him to the ground by leverage.
Guaranteed you didn’t read of this in any American Media Maggot venue. Then there is this:
The subsequent post-mortem examination is said to have shown no evidence of injury to either the larynx or the hyoid bone, which is almost always fractured in cases of
strangulation. Mr. Garner is said to have died from “chest compression” and associated heart disease.Few persons, undoubtedly including most police officers and even Mr. Garner, would understand the gravity and complex pathophysiology of this condition, and the rapidity
with which it can become irreversible, unless an airway and mechanical ventilation can be quickly administered – and establishing an airway in a very obese person is itself
extremely challenging even under ideal conditions, such as in an operating room, let alone on the sidewalk.Eric Garner’s death had essentially nothing to do with racism or racial animosity, particularly when one can see an African-American female sergeant, in charge at the
scene, standing and observing the arrest in the background. Ultimately, as the senior officer on the scene, she was responsible for Mr. Garner’s safety, although it would be
unreasonable to incriminate her, either, given the obscure physiology of the chain of events that led to his unfortunate demise.
But you didn’t hear that either, did you?
This is an interesting opinion piece from the WashingtonExaminer.com:
Despite Eric Garner, Daniel Pantaleo doesn’t deserve to be fired
by James Gagliano
Pantaleo, now 34, inadvertently became part of ground zero for the populist uprising of social justice activists during the summer of 2014. It was then that he was dispatched to a Staten Island street corner, directed to take a 43-year-old father of six, Eric Garner, into custody for selling single cigarettes from packs without a tax stamp, or “loosies,” outside a bodega.
Garner’s death is a vicissitude that should sadden us all. But only one person is accountable here. It is the man who broke the law, obstinately advised police he wouldn’t be held to account for same, and then placed everyone involved in a dangerous intersection of sworn duties and no-way-out choices. Garner caused this horrible incident to occur. Pantaleo will presumably pay the price for that poor decision-making, as well.
Oddly enough, precisely what I’ve been saying.
The tragic incident has undergone scrutinization from outside investigators. First, a Staten Island grand jury failed to indict the officer. Then followed a Department of Justice investigation into Pantaleo’s actions to determine if Garner’s civil rights had been abridged. This investigation spanned both the Obama and Trump presidential administrations and was overseen by four separate attorneys general.
And two excellent points by author James Gagliano, a former FBI agent of 25 years.
Broken Windows has been under fire in the woke days of 2019. But let’s not pretend that its employment has not saved countless black and brown lives when perpetrators and victims of homicides in New York City are overwhelmingly black and brown.
We may debate whether or not the sale of untaxed cigarettes should be considered an arrest-worthy transgression. But cops don’t make laws. When we have laws on the books, law enforcement professionals swear an oath to uphold them. Do we want to confront exactly what “selective enforcement” would look like in a country that already suffers from the belief that certain communities are treated differently with respect to the law?
After a while, having been told by various communities that law enforcement “over polices,” by their administrations that they “over police,” by the news media that they “over police,” by their local politicians that they “over police” and certainly Leftists, Demorats and the American Media Maggots that they “over police,” sooner or later law enforcement officers are going to take this clarion cry to heart.
They’re going to reduce their self-initiated activity or proactive responses. Simultaneously, this is occurring as well:
NYPD officer injuries spike as union blames anti-police lawmakers
by Sara Dorn
NYPD cops have a new reason to walk their beat on eggshells: Officer injuries are spiking.
Amid a spate of assaults on police, including a melee at Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects that left three cops hurt as well as a rash of water-dousing attacks, injuries rose 12.5 percent in the second quarter over the first three months of the year, NYPD data show.
That’s up 2.5 percent over the same time period in 2018 and up 3.5 percent through June over the first half of 2018.
With 1,120 total injuries, April to June this year was the bloodiest quarter for cops since the final three months of 2016, the earliest time period of publicly available data.
Injuries aren’t just knee scrapes; 35 officers were “seriously” hurt and 47 suffered “substantial” injuries, the NYPD says.
Police-union president Patrick Lynch — who’s been warring with NYPD brass and Mayor de Blasio in the wake of officer Daniel Pantaleo’s firing — blamed the uptick on “anti-police lawmakers and failed NYPD leaders” who have “emboldened criminals to assault cops and resist arrest.”
Absolutely correct. That is America’s current narrative with regard to law enforcement.
Cops are human. Their job is to do the job. Their job is also to go home in one piece at the end of their shifts. And like all others, they have to look out for themselves and their families. So they’re going to have to make some considered decisions.
NYPD Union Tells Cops To Ask Supervisor Permission Before Arresting Anybody
by Sandy Malone
New York, NY – The police union put out a list of guidelines for officers to follow on Monday after New York Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner James O’Neill fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo in connection with the death of Eric Garner despite the fact a grand jury and a federal investigation had exonerated him.
“Be advised that neither your Police Academy training nor the current Patrol Guide procedures reflect the precedent established by this decision,” Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch wrote in the memo, a copy of which has been obtained by Blue Lives Matter.
Lynch warned that Commissioner O’Neill’s termination of Officer Pantaleo set a dangerous precedent and “fundamentally changed the nature of our job” when he allowed politics to determine Officer Pantaleo’s fate without regard for the fact.
The memo encouraged officers to “uphold our oath” and continue doing their jobs but reminded them “we must remain united to protect each other from the toxic political environment in which we are forced to work.”
On Monday, the PBA accused Commissioner O’Neill of rolling over for City Hall and doing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s bidding.
In order to be in exact compliance with the patrol guide, officers will have to do a lot of things in a specified way that, in the past, was unofficially left to officers’ discretion.
The reasoning is, of course, to ensure they have authority to conduct business. They’re also saying that if they’re to be held perfectly accountable, they must act or react as the guidelines are specifically written.
“For every job involving a possible arrest situation, immediately request response by patrol supervisor and additional members to help control situation, pursuant to P.G. 221-02, ‘Use of Force,’” the PBA memo instructed officers in accordance with NYPD policy. “Await the patrol supervisor’s arrival before attempting to effect an arrest, except when immediate action is necessary to protect life and personal safety of all persons present (see P.G. 221-02).”
“Prior to effecting an arrest, confer with the patrol supervisor,” the memo said, and reminded officers to use their bodycams and “document in your memo book all instructions received from the patrol supervisor or other supervisors at the scene.”
Translated: CYA. Cover Your Ass.
The memo also reminded officers that anytime a suspect doesn’t voluntarily submit to being handcuffed, they need to request an Emergency Service Unit (ESU) before they can take that suspect into custody.
Officers should “attempt to isolate and contain the suspect” while they wait for ESU to arrives, as per NYPD official policy.
If those are the standards then they must be met, the PBA is saying.
“It’s very well known that for a majority of circumstances, the patrol guide is not followed to a T because you’d never get anything done,” the official told Blue Lives Matter. “It’s just too inefficient to do everything that way.”
The PBA memo to its members also reminded officers that they must call for an ambulance every single time there is a use-of-force, regardless of whether anyone has claimed to be injured.
“Do not transport the prisoner until he or she has been evaluated by EMS personnel,” the PBA wrote.
The memo also told officers to be sure and do their paperwork completely and as soon as possible for every incident.
When you’re under the gun as is law enforcement today, what other choices remain?
The NYPD official told Blue Lives Matter that most officers save paperwork to complete at the end of their shift so they can get back out on the street faster when they complete a call, but that the policy says they have to do all paperwork immediately after a call is completed.
I imagine you see the issues here. It’s called “back and forth.” No more. It’s now “one way.”
In Kalifornia, things got worse for law enforcement officers. From CalMatters.org:
Newsom signs landmark police use-of-force bill
California will soon have a tougher new legal standard for the use of deadly force by police, under legislation Gov. Gavin Newsom signed today that was inspired by last year’s fatal shooting of a young, unarmed man in Sacramento.
The governor contends that with Assembly Bill 392 in place, police will turn increasingly to de-escalation techniques including verbal persuasion, weapons other than guns and other crisis-intervention methods.
Under the new law, which takes effect January 1, police may use deadly force only when “necessary in defense of human life.”
That’s a steeper standard than prosecutors apply now, which says officers can shoot when doing so is “reasonable.” One of the most significant changes will allow prosecutors to consider officers’ actions leading up to a shooting when deciding whether deadly force is justified.
Some police administrators are saying “calm down, there is no difference.” Changing the word “reasonable” to “necessary.” And how will you determine “necessary”? Only at the end of the event. What is “reasonable” to the officer in terms of reaction is no longer of consideration — in other words, what would other reasonable officers have done in a similar situation?
The Ferguson Effect.
It would appear that, throughout all this, Leftists, Demorats and American Media Maggots are getting what they want. From Fox26Houston.com:
Significant drop in people wanting to become police officers
There has been a significant drop in the number of people wanting to be police officers. One officer says he knows why.
Please remember this: at the same time law enforcement is attacked and themselves handcuffed, the LDAMM are waging war against your Second Amendment rights and your ability to defend yourself. Who defends you if law enforcement is stymied and your rights are removed?
The entire point of the article is this: what do you want from your law enforcement officers? At what point do you demand they back down? Is it a sliding scale in terms of the initial crime committed? Is it a sliding scale of the resistance encountered?
Because you have to realize that in terms of any and every crime encountered by law enforcement, persons are going to resist. They are going to resist speaking to an officer, signing a citation, getting out of a car, refusing to submit to handcuffing and more.
Every law created has the potential for resistance. Including smoking in a bar. Vaping in a doorway. Onesies. Cops are called. What do you really want them to do when faced with resistance? Nothing?
Then why are you sending them to calls for service in the first place if you don’t intend them to enforce the law?
The bottom line is this: citizens, what kind of law enforcement do you really want?
After many decades in law enforcement, I do know this: people get the kind of law enforcement they deserve.
The Ferguson Effect is real.
Because cops are human just like everyone else. Unless you want RoboCop — perhaps it might not be that far off.
Good luck with that.
“Watch out, you might get what you’re after.”
BZ
