A CHANGE OF PACE: A DOG STORY--MEETING MIRANDA

 After last week’s scolding, I think that a change of pace is in order.  I believe that most of you are almost as tired of reading (or discarding) my blogs on varieties of police force and legal community deficiencies in Las Cruces as I am of writing them.  At the risk of offending some, I am going to prune future distributions to those, public officials excepted, who I guess can accept the moral as well as the mellow of this and future dog stories.  If I guess wrongly, correct me, and accept my apologies.  All stories--some about cats, horses, and parakeets--I  take from my forthcoming book On the Same Team: Dog Owners Coaching Their Best Friends.

On March 6, 2015, Miranda and I met each other.  I was at the Animal Service Center of Mesilla Valley, the pound in Las Cruces, NM, to get a replacement license for another dog.  For a few years, I had had in the back of my mind a desire to get a female German Shepherd.  As on previous visits, while I waited for the staff to do the paperwork for the license, I went into the large-dog room with many pens to see if she was there.  She was not.  Instead, the dogs who were there either barked and whined for me to take them home or barked and growled for me to get away from their turf, with one exception.  One dog came to the front of her pen, sat, and looked at me with affectionate but appraising eyes which  unmistakably said, “you’ll do just fine.”  I looked at her and said, “I promise to try.”  While we waited on the additional paperwork, one member of the staff asked if she could take our picture; she told me that she could see something special between us.  I knelt on one knee with my arms holding Miranda snug against me; her tongue hung out—a sign of contentment—and her eyes had a different message: “I got my man.”  And I sometimes refer to her as my “girlfriend.”

 

It was love and bonding at first sight, but I checked my impulses against information in her jacket.  Miranda—I no longer recall her original name—was about a year-and-a-half old, weighed about 45 pounds, and labeled—wrongly, as I knew but kept silent—a Labrador/Shepherd mix.  She had been delivered to the pound by a middle-aged woman and her tween-age son two weeks earlier.  When I got her home, I accepted her age, knew that she was underweight, and rightly identified her breed.  At the pound, I recognized that she is a hound; at home, I identified her as an American Foxhound, a breed known in the horse-hound-hunt circles in Maryland and Virginia.  Breed characteristics are loving, sweet, gentle, energetic, and headstrong.  The word is that you do not give one of this breed a command; you make a request and hope for compliance.  Foxhounds are scenthounds (unlike Greyhounds and Whippets, who are sighthounds); when they fix on a smell, they disregard all else, commands or requests.  And, as my father would say, they can smell a small fart in a strong wind from a mile away.

From this information, I imagined Miranda’s life story to that date.  As a puppy, she was adorable and oh-mommy-please! irresistible.  Mommy was a divorcee and wanted a distraction for her son when she relocated from the Mid-Atlantic states.  Mommy went to work, sonny went to school, Miranda grew up and went to work on the apartment.  Thus, she was deposited at the pound.

Miranda was bonded to me—after all, she picked me out—and fit right into the pack at home.  To its credit, the pound had me fetch my other dogs, introduce them to her, and ensure compatibility, but I knew that all would be well.  That Friday evening and Saturday morning and evening, I walked her on a retractable leash with my off-leash dogs on the shorter loop around the floodplain and farm fields below my house.  For a moment on Sunday morning, I had her on leash until I realized that, though she did not know her new name, she would not run away off leash.  I was right and wrong.  When I unleashed her, she immediately raced off about 80 yards along the flood containment berm at the western edge of the floodplain.  There she stopped, turned to see where I was, and waited for me and the rest of the pack to continue the loop walk home.  To this day, she has her ways on walks.  Sometimes, she stays with me and the pack; sometimes, she goes off on jaunts.  Sometimes, if I sense her wanderlust, I call her to come with us; it is fifty-fifty whether she will.  Half the time, she comes along; half the time, she stops, makes it clear by look and body language that she knows what she is supposed to do but is not ready to go home, and goes off “mall shopping,” as I put it.  To save trouble for anyone who might catch her and call me, I put a tag on her collar which reads, “Let me be/Let me roam/Set me free/I’ll go home.”  She always does.

This story of Miranda and Michael has many messages and morals, but one message/moral should be clear above all others: our relationship of trust, respect, and love enables our arrangements.  I go easy on command and control, rely instead on coaching and, in her case, a bit of coaxing, and negotiate.  Within the limits of her headstrong nature, she seeks to please and comply .  We accommodate each other.  I would not change a thing about her, even if I could.

THE NEW NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH

A number of years ago, I wrote a blog “The Second American Civil War” (2013-02-16).*  It is a dystopian vision, more military than political, of an America divided into not only hostile camps, but also belligerent combatants.  The 6 January assault on the U.S. Congress is a fine scenario add-on.  But, like all such visions, it had its astigmatisms, most notably, an omission filled in by an autocratic Trump.  Neither I nor anyone else imagined that a former president would urge, and continue to urge, intimidated minions and deranged followers in the Republican Party to believe his lie that the election was stolen from him.  Although I saw state governments under its control enacting legislation crippling the right and the means to vote—nothing new here—I did not foresee federal and state Republican officials legislating to overturn elections of Democrats receiving a majority of the votes.

What do these neo-fascist Republicans imagine the response will be?  What can we imagine their response to our response will be?  Will Democrats and others quietly accept second-class political status?  Probably, but who knows?  My revised vision of the civil war would also pitch neighborhood against neighborhood and neighbor against neighbor strife.  Such conflicts in urban areas have been commonplaces in American urban history, especially in cities which have experienced large influxes of “others” by immigration or relocation.  For instance, fights between Irish ruffians and Jewish thugs on the streets of New York were almost daily occurrences in New York in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  They can be discounted as merely the energetic expressions of adjustments by newcomers in urban ethnic enclaves and minority groups.

But in this Second American Civil War, the battlefields will extend to the suburbs.  It will involve house-to-house hostilities, with many neighbors silently accepting attacks on the targets of the White Christian Republicans, even in Las Cruces.  A few doors down lives a couple of Trump-supporting bigots who do not like Jews.  Fine: I pass them by in contemptuous silence; they angrily berate me as an “arrogant shit.”  What they do not know is that I know that they are the anonymous callers who summoned police because, so they lied, I let my dogs out to run loose and let their feces pile up in my yard and stink up the neighborhood.  They represent the New Neighborhood Watch.

I am not going to regurgitate the details of the history of my case.  Instead, I relate the responses of my “neighborhood.”  Within a week of five false charges by a 10-year LCPD veteran who saw a Star of David over my garage door before he began his investigation, I did two things.  I filed a formal complaint with IA and sent an email suggesting an antisemitic motive to Councilor Gandara, Police Chief Gallagher, and two others.  I got no response.  In 21 blogs in the 22 months since, I mentioned antisemitism once and otherwise left this suggested motive to the LCPD to deal with by counseling.  So I pursued my complaint by challenging only the false charges to expose the LCPD for its shortcomings and trying to get them retracted and purged from my record.  To no avail.  Although an internal IA memorandum states that the charges lack evidence or proof of violations, the LCPD refuses to come clean and clear my record.  Instead, it uses specious rationales to justify spurious charges, to maintain them as if true, to keep them on file for some future opportunity to smear me.  The IA close-out letter says nothing about the false charges.  Meanwhile, I used blogs to keep my “neighborhood” informed.

An admission that the five charges are false would raise the question of motive, and, given concerted resistance to an admission, the answer of antisemitism looks irrefutable and looms large, ugly, and damaging to the reputation of the city.  Rather than deal with one antisemitic officer and isolate the stain, the LCPD, City Hall, and City Council, with the local media in cahoots, chose to resist or ignore the obvious and thereby strengthen suspicion of antisemitism.  In a meeting with the new City Manager (Councilor Bencomo and commentator Peter Goodman by Zoom), Pili said that I deserved a detailed apology, but, afterwards, Law Director Vega-Brown got him back in line and put the kibosh on it.  Bencomo and Goodman said and did nothing.

The “neighborhood” response supports this silence.  Neither the Mayor, Gandara, Bencomo nor other member of City Council has asked appropriate questions or taken appropriate action.  Peter Goodman, though he toyed with the idea of my appearing on his radio show to discuss my complaint and case in the context of police reform, did a bait-and-switch program to discuss dogs.  Only two of my “neighbors” have spoken to me; only one has spoken to Council, and it ignored him.  No one else wants to address what has evolved as a police cover-up and a “neighborhood” stone-walling.  This silent tolerance of likely antisemitism signifies its widespread support by my “neighbors” in the city of three crosses.

Now imagine those same neighbors—a new Neighborhood Watch—some time hence, when Republican neo-fascists are suppressing opposition, phoning in a complaint that I possess bomb-making materials.  You know what the ATF or FBI agents will do.  I shall let you finish the scenario.  Now imagine similar scenarios involving unreformed, even more politicized police targeting not only Jews, but also Muslims, blacks, Asian-Americans, LGBTQs, Hispanic immigrants; then “antifas,” Greens, Progressives; then members of ACLU, NAACP, NARAL, NOW, SPLC; and other “terrorist” or “un-American” groups, throughout the country.  These scenarios predict and depict local skirmishes in the Second American Civil War, the demise of democracy, and the death of the dream.

* Anyone wanting a copy of this blog should request one.

 

HOORAY FOR POLICE AUDIT PECULIARITIES

Not so long ago, Peter Goodman exposed the peculiarities of a contractor and a contract for animal rescue services.  As an animal lover, I say, “hooray for Peter.”  Now I hope for a “hooray” from him for noting peculiarities about the OIR contract for a police audit.

Peculiarity 1: The OIR proposal commits 20% of the time of each of five people, three of them principals, or a fully loaded, full-time equivalent, to work costing no more than $75,000 annually, or $37.50 hourly.  For most non-teaching professionals in any part of the country, not to mention California, these figures are suspiciously low.

Peculiarity 2: The contract requires a great deal of work, much focused on cases handled by Internal Affairs, “to ensure [IA’s] investigations were complete, objective, thorough, and fair and that findings and actions taken in response to the investigations were appropriate.”  For $75,000, OIR can review few cases thoroughly, and its report on IA investigations and reports can be neither comprehensive nor reliable.

Peculiarity 3: City Council wants both “detail” and “trends.”  Depending on how many cases OIR reviews, Council cannot have both for the cost.

Peculiarity 4: Council, by limiting cases for review to those completed since 1 May 2021, ruled out prior completed cases back to the last police audit in 2018.  It thus ruled out my case exposing IA and LCPD deficiencies in investigations and responses, despite the Mayor’s promises to me and to City Council that it would be included.

Peculiarity 5: Council’s stipulated date apparently is not an agreed-upon provision of the OIR contract.  The City Clerk’s responses to my IPRA requests, based on reports from the City Manager’s, City Attorney’s, and Police Chief’s offices, have denied any such documentation.  Any informal agreement by handshake or wink-and-nod would be an improper way for the City to conduct business with a contractor.

Peculiarity 6: OIR’s commitment to make comprehensive assessments satisfying demands for “detail” and “trends” of cases for little money is hard to square with its purported professionalism or quality of its work.

Peculiarity 7: So many peculiarities.

In tomorrow’s work session, Council will discuss matters relating to police reform and the police audit.  The discussion should be an interesting one.  Hooray?

PRE-NAZI GERMANY ALL OVER AGAIN

In the 1920s, German fascists on the right and German communists on the left fought against each other with roughly the same ugly tactics—propaganda and violence.  What distinguished the fascists was their focus on minority groups.  They attacked Jews (by blaming them for Germany’s defeat in the First World War), lesbians and homosexuals, gypsies (so-called at the time; rightly, Roma), the mentally and physically handicapped.  They attacked individuals—artists, writers, intellectuals—and institutions—newspapers, theaters, and museums—because they were cosmopolitan, modern, or un-German.  In part, these attacks reflected culture wars typical of rural-urban divides.  Once in power, the Nazis used police to imprison opponents on false charges and packed courts with Nazi or politically sympathetic judges.  They reorganized or reconstituted cultural institutions, seized and controlled the media, purged university faculties, and redesigned educational curriculums along politically acceptable ideological lines.  After a rigged election to confirm Hitler’s rise to the chancellorship, the Nazis held no further elections.  Obedient to Der Fuhrer, who ignored the restraints of norms, laws, and treaties, Germany under the Nazis embarked on wars which brought it to defeat and ruin.

That was then; this is now.  The Republican Party, its members, and far-right groups are repeating the conduct of the Nazi Party under the leadership of a would-be dictator like Hitler.  Parallels include verbal and physical attacks on minorities—Blacks, Muslims, Asian-Americans, Jews (consider American Blacks as a scapegoat structurally comparable to German Jews)—immigrants, LGBTQs, and women; judges and courts; professors and universities; the media; truth, science, and expertise; and, of course, government, the election systems, and democracy.

One difference between Hitler and Trump is that the former had policy purposes—elimination of the Jews and expansion to the East—and the latter has only the personal purposes of self-promotion and power.  In line with its leader, the Republican Party has abandoned all pretense of policy or principle; its 2020 campaign lacked even an anodyne platform statement.  Party officials at federal and state levels adopt any positions taken and adapt to any changes, including reversals, made by Trump.  They pledge their loyalty to an autocratic leader, accepting his wishes as their commands and his lies as their truth.  Republican legislators are rigging elections by gerrymandering, suppressing voting, and authorizing legislature overrides of election results.  More than ever, a majority of Democratic votes will not ensure the election of Democrats.  The record of the Supreme Court, which rigged the 2000 election of George Bush, signals that anti-democratic means ensuring Republican ends will withstand court challenge and receive court sanction.  In short, Republicans are replicating the same tactics to achieve and maintain power as the Nazis used.

*       *       *

In this context, the role and conduct of the police is critical.  In Germany, before Hitler’s rise to power, the police supported fascist rather than communist gangs.  During his rise to power, the Nazis had their own “police” force, the Brown Shirts, organized thugs who attacked opponents, damaged or destroyed their homes or stores, or beat or murdered them in the streets.  As the Nazi Party became more powerful, local police, sympathetic to its views about those accused of betraying or weakening Germany, increasingly supported the Nazi Party.  They progressed from standing by and doing nothing to deter Nazi violence or to arrest those who committed it, to abetting it.

In America, politicians of both parties have used the police to serve political purposes as well as public services.  Which means that politicians have used the police to serve partisan policies; which means that the police abuse people. The history of police abuses is, of course, a long one.  As more episodes of police misconduct become publicized as they never were in the past, that history makes it clear that modern police misconduct is an extension of past police misconduct.  Recent episodes of police misconduct, especially racist killings of Black men and women, have attracted attention and prompted demands for police reform.  In the larger scheme of things, these disturbing individual episodes are symptomatic of bigger problems with police departments.

The police have always been used to obtain, increase, or maintain political power and protect political policies.  In rural areas and small towns, police departments have acted as the muscle, “the long arm of the law,” extending government power.  There were close ties between Democratic, racist city councils, racist police departments, and racist groups like the KKK in southern, south-central, and other “red” states, or in racist areas in states like Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where emigrants from the South and immigrants from third-world countries have settled.  There are close ties between Democratic city councils in major metropolitan cities and their police forces.  Many know of the “police riot” unleashed by Democratic Chicago Mayor Richard Daley against anti-Vietnam War demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Over time, many cities and states have relinquished power to the police by state or local law, or union contract.  Governments have thereby reduced or relinquished their responsibility for oversight and control, and police departments, largely controlled by police unions, have become semi-independent agencies answerable mostly to themselves, beyond transparency and accountability.  Police misconduct protected from government oversight and control ranges from false charges, false accounts of their conduct, and perjury (“testilying”), to extortion, larceny, and murder.  The myth of the “few bad apples”—the rest of the adage is: “spoil the barrel”—is evident in the fact that the so-assumed “good apples” know who the “bad apples” are, know what they do to be bad, yet, out of greater loyalty to their colleagues than to their oaths to uphold the law, say nothing and thereby give them tacit consent.

All of this police behavior which violates their obligation to safety, security, and safety is old hat.  Nothing new about it.  What is new is the increasing tendency of police leadership and police officers to accept and act according to current political issues in disregard of the law and the courts.  Maricopa County, AZ, Sheriff Joe Arpaio ordered harassment, profiling, and arrests of anyone resembling Hispanics, and refused to obey court orders to desist.  Notably, Trump pardoned this outspoken political supporter; Republicans said and did nothing.  Several New Mexico sheriffs declared that they would not enforce the governor’s legitimate restrictions to deal with the spread of covid-19.  Some LCPD officers publicly refused to enforce violations of those restrictions, even when called to do so.  Kenosha, WI, police officers let Kyle Rittenhouse, an armed white man carrying lethal weapons, through police lines before and after he killed two marchers protesting the shooting which paralyzed Jacob Blake.  They also provided water, and expressed appreciation, to members of a right-wing group of armed counter-protesters.  The besiegers of Congress on 6 January 2021 reportedly included several police officers.

Alarming is the disproportionate numbers and unequal distribution of those arrested and the disparity in the disposition of their charges.  Relatively few right-wing protesters were arrested, but most had their charges sustained.  A comparatively far larger number of left-wing protesters were arrested on trumped-up—that is, false—charges in deliberate violation of their Constitutional rights of free speech, assembly, and petition.  In almost all of hundreds of such cases, the charges were quickly dropped or dismissed—clear evidence that the arrests were legally unsupportable.

This record of arrests strongly suggests that the truth of police charges mattered little; supporting their political interests mattered much.  This devaluing of truth in making false arrests is an essential fact about police conduct in dealing harshly with those whom Trump has attacked severely.  By accepting Trump’s false accusations of criminal behavior by groups which he has targeted for verbal attacks and physical abuse, Republicans imply tolerance of false charges and police violence.  Their acceptance of lies about big things like “stolen” elections implies acceptance of lies about lesser things, like targets of bigotry or opponents of policy.  They are signaling tolerance of police misconduct if it serves their shared political interests.

The increasing convergence of the political stances and sympathies of Republican politicians and rank-and-file police officers must raise concern that convergence and conspiracy will evolve into collaboration, with the police acting as the party’s enforcer.   Because Republican have accepted the denial, disregard, or distortion of truth, police forces know that already well-established practices of police misconduct—improper stops, illegal searches, excessive force, and false arrests—will go unpunished.  They will continue to use them to intimidate, inconvenience, or incarcerate people viewed as opposition.  Republican rule will lead to a police state.

*       *       *

Dishonesty and the tolerance of dishonesty, measure the moral rot in a society.  German civilians, themselves antisemitic in all the little ways, readily accepted the big antisemitic lies of the Nazis which led to book burnings, the Nuremberg Laws, and the concentration camps.  They heard speeches, watched newsreels, and saw violence against Jews.  In a famous picture, an officer pointing a pistol at his back, a young Jewish boy holds his hands up; German sidewalk onlookers watch with callous indifference.  Soldiers sent their families photographs of atrocities against Polish and Russian Jews.  Only after defeat and disclosure did millions of German civilian onlookers—some of whom betrayed Jewish colleagues or neighbors to the Gestapo—claim to have known nothing about the fate awaiting the Jews in the Final Solution.  The self-praising pretense is that, if they had only known, they would have resisted.  Still, the lie: they knew, they did nothing when they could before the Nazis took over, and feared doing anything after they did.

Las Cruces has its own variants akin to pre-Nazi Germans, the people indifferent to or tolerant of police dishonesty and misconduct.  City Councilors have talked little and done nothing about, and local media have done little to address, police reform after local demonstrations responding to George Floyd’s murder.  “Eight Can’t Wait” got the gate.  Only after a long struggle did City Council get a police auditor under contract to exonerate the LCPD—hardly a step toward reform.  They have chosen to avoid details of, and learn lessons from, LCPD dishonesty and misconduct in my case.  In one instance, Councilor Johana Bencomo and columnist-commentator Peter Goodman showed their affinity for avoidance.  I invited both to zoom a meeting between City Manager Ifo Pili and CoP Miguel Dominguez, and me; both heard Pili assure me of an apology detailing LCPD misconduct and Dominguez say that he wanted to follow up with me on reforms; and both learned that neither man kept his promise.  Both knew that LCPD and Law Office personnel lied at almost every opportunity.  Yet neither followed up with me or has said or done anything about these broken promises and lies.  Bencomo has offered no resolution or ordinance for police reform, and Goodman, who interrupted me to assure me that Pili had met my demands, has ducked having me discuss the issue on air.  Neither cares that Mayor Miyagishima has broken his promise for me to present my case to the OIR exonerators.

Such indifference to truth and promise-keeping prepares for lies, first little, later big, and their consequences.  Switch perspective: Pili and Dominguez know that these and other pillars of the Progressive Council and the Progressive caucus are indifferent to dishonesty and misconduct in the city’s legal community.  They have been thus assured that police reform is mere political bark without political bite.  If Trump Republicans elect themselves to control the country, it will be too late to matter if the Bencomos and the Goodmans of the country come to regret their part in the demise of democracy, with “oh, if we had only known!” self-exonerations.  Going along with it dying, they will get along just fine with it dead.

Fortunately, other city governments in more important cities are making some effort to reform the police.  That effort has to do more than confine attention to lethal bigotry in police departments and officers.  At a time when democracy itself is under threat from the Republican Party, reform must emphasize the depoliticization of the police, the claw-back of authority from police unions, and the re-establishment of government control and oversight, through legislated requirements for honesty, transparency, and accountability.  For its part, Las Cruces will be content with CoP Dominguez’s blather.

WHAT IS THE LIFE OF A (BLACK) PERSON WORTH?

   Derek Chauvin defined the market value of a Black man’s life when he killed George Floyd in response to a storekeeper’s complaint that he had used a counterfeit bill to buy cigarettes.  Thanks to Chauvin, we know that, without slavery and auctions to establish a market value for Blacks and their labor, the value of a Black man’s life in Minneapolis is worth no more than $20, the face value of the bill claimed to be counterfeit.  That claim is unconfirmed, and it is too late to ask whether, if the bill was counterfeit, Floyd knew it to be so.  But the police rule of engagement is: escalate the encounter and kill the Black man first, skip the questions later—unless the murder gets videoed and goes viral.

What Chauvin did, police elsewhere do every day.  They demonstrate the low value which they place on the lives of people, any of us—white, yellow, red, brown, black—, whom they are supposed to protect and serve by killing us for misdemeanors, allegations of misdemeanors, or no misdemeanors at all, merely harmless behavior.  They kill people for having an outstanding warrant for a misdemeanor, selling “loosey” cigarettes, driving with an expired license or a broken taillight, sitting in a parked car, playing with a toy gun, and, perversely, even obeying a police order.  In these cases, public safety was not at risk; private lives were at risk.

The police know that the offenses are trivial.  To get to killing, they initiate, escalate, then execute.  The critical step is escalation.  The police are abusive and aggressive; they provoke resistance, often just their victim’s avoidance or self-defense responses as a pretext for more violent exertions to subdue and apprehend their victim, and charges of resisting arrest.  Many episodes like Chauvin’s murder of Floyd reflect “street justice” by which police punish people before they get access to the judicial system.

Police street justice mocks the legal system which boasts two basic principles: the proportionality of punishment and crime, and equality under the law.  The disparity between legal principle and police practice is too great to take the boast seriously.  These many episodes show us police street justice mismatching death and misdemeanors and, under color of law, inequality reflecting biases based on skin pigmentation or other deviation from a white, male, Christian norm.

Police street justice is Orwellian, as in Animal Farm, in which ruling pigs declare that all pigs are equal but some more equal than others.  Police are more equal by virtue of “blue privilege.”  When accused of misconduct, they benefit from special investigative procedures and prosecutorial inhibitions.  The rarity of legal accountability enables street justice by shielding police who dispense it on the job.

If we are not blinded by quasi-patriotic appeals to the heroism of those wearing the blue, we see that the “overkill” of street justice is a moral and legal regression to early barbaric practices, when disproportionate vengeance was the usual response to a crime.  For example, if a man raped a woman from another village, her family or village would retaliate by killing everyone in the man’s family or village.  Likewise, police street justice whether or not a misdemeanor has been committed is disproportionate vengeance.

The civilized principle of justice which replaced disproportionate vengeance is the principle of proportionate compensation, the Jewish principle underlying most legal systems throughout the world today.  Christians often mistakenly interpret the phrase “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” as a law of revenge, like the Roman lex talionis, also used by other early societies.  No Jewish court in Holy Scriptures or Jewish communities ever applied it but, instead, awarded material compensation deemed proportionate to the damage inflicted.  In cases of murder, judges were duty-bound to find a legal reason to save the life of the accused—in effect, no death penalty.  One court caused a scandal when its failure to find such an excuse led to an execution; it was known thereafter as the “Bloody Sanhedrin.”

Reforms to end police street justice should address rules of engagement.  One, police should not use force or weapons in the enforcement of non-violent offenses, whether felonies or misdemeanors.  Two, police should not use a weapon until the suspect uses or attacks with a weapon (brandishing a weapon does not count).

Other reforms should address investigative procedures and prosecutorial decisions.  One should eliminate special investigative provisions for police.  They should not be allowed a multi-day delay between episode and interview, and they should be required to establish a reasonable basis, not a mere perception, that a suspect posed an immediate threat to his own, another’s, or the officer’s life.  Another should require an independent review of a prosecutor’s proposed decision about charging police.

Reforming recruitment qualifications might minimize police misconduct.  Shortages should not justify recruiting those less likely to exercise self-restraint or good judgment.  The LCPD seeks recruits at least 19 years old with at least a high school degree (23 July Bulletin).  Lower standards for recruits are possible, but these are as close to bottom as it gets without hitting bottom.  In contrast, insurance companies charge their highest rates to drivers under 25 for good reason; they pose high risks to themselves and others, even without the police swagger.  Guns in the hands of inexperienced, immature teenagers wearing badges and uniforms should scare everyone.  Why the Police Chief seeks such recruits for the LCPD is a question for the City Manager and City Councilors.  It should recruit only those at least 26 years old and with at least an associate degree in a relevant discipline.  Better higher salaries to attract suitable recruits and retain proven veterans than expensive settlements for the dead and continuing fear and distrust of the police by the still living.

SHOW SOME RESPECT: DON'T CALL PIGS THE POLICE

No pig has ever lied about or to me.  LCPD Codes Officer Juan Valles lied about me when he falsely charged me the five violations.  LCPD Chief of Police Patrick Gallagher lied to me when he falsely accused me of maligning Valles by lying when, in fact, I had told the truth about those five lies.  Police dishonesty in trivial offenses is not a novelty in Las Cruces or elsewhere.  (The hired police auditor will ignore this actual dishonesty because it will find that the LCPD has an excellent policy on honesty.)  Not to be left behind in lies for serious offenses by the police in big cities or small towns, White LCPD Officer Christopher Smelser threatened on camera “to choke you out bro,” then claimed in court that he did not intend to kill Latino Antonio Valenzuela by a choke hold.

In the past three weeks, not one pig has shot, strangled, or killed a single person.  But in that period, police have shot, strangled, or killed on average of three people a day, over half of them Black and Latino.  These facts, with a long record of comparable facts, signify an occupational culture of violence and, in many incidents, pervasive, vicious racism in police departments.  Not all police offenders are White; some are of color.  These minority police offenders act as they are trained—all target silhouettes are black—and seek to earn or retain the approval and support of their fellow White officers.  But in sties, pigs of all colors get along just fine so long as they are fed their slops.

A few people think that pork is not kosher, most like bacon, but none divides pigs into bad and good.  Police offenders are often labeled and discounted as a few “bad apples.”  The problem, like that of pedophiliac priests in the Catholic Church, is that the many “good apples” shield the “bad apples” with unbroken silence or tacit support.  So just how good are the “good apples”?  Are they not sympathizers, if not accessories, after, if not before, the fact?  Nowhere is the problem more evident than in the positions taken by their unions.  Like the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, police union officials defend their members, and their members, most of them “good apples,” approve their positions.  The most extreme instance is a recent one in Chicago.  CPD union leader John Catanzara said Officer Eric Stillman, who shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo when his empty hands were lifted in response to his order, acted “heroically.”  In the eyes of the police, it is easy to be a hero: shoot an unarmed child.  No pig ever did such a thing.

The list of police shooting-killings and other lesser violent abuses is long and growing longer.  A notable incident in a rural, not urban, setting is the police stop in Windsor, VA, during which Officers Latino Joe Gutierrez and White Daniel Crocker stopped, harassed, threatened, struck, handcuffed, and pepper-sprayed Army 2nd Lt. Caron Nazario, half Black, half Latino, who was in uniform.  Police Chief Rodney Riddle initially tried the usual defense, blaming the victim to justify the officers’ conduct.  He claimed that the victim “created” the situation because he did not react “immediately” to the officers’ commands.  (I'm 81; I react slowly; do I qualify for pepper-spraying?)  Only when the public outcry overwhelmed him, did the Chief say—that is, lie—that he deplored the officers’ conduct.  What especially infuriates me is that police in uniform showed no respect for a soldier in uniform—a clear case of racism at work.

A comparison of zones of operation indicates the degradation of American police.  In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, American troops operated in a foreign county whose civilians spoke local languages and lived according to local customs, and whose loyalties were neither obvious nor certain.  When I was in Vietnam ’65-’66, almost every American soldier felt some fear for his life 24/7/52.  I am sure that most veterans there before and after me felt the same.  Few could be entirely sure that even a Vietnamese girlfriend was not a spy, a saboteur, or a soldier.  I was one of the few.  Fear often prompted feelings of resentment and hostility, and led to itchy-fingerness.  I felt the fear but responded atypically, with nonchalant fatalism.  Except for special operations and the moral, if not legal, abomination of “free-fire zones,” the general rule of engagement was to fire only when fired upon.  Of course, the rule was honored in its breaches, and many but not all went unreported or unpunished.  War is hell, not least in such environments.

By comparison to soldiers encountering people in a combat zone in a foreign country, police officers operating in peacetime are supposed to protect and serve fellow citizens with whom they share a language and most customs.  Police talk of wars on crime, drugs, or whatever, but none is a war or none justifies the stale rationales for shooting first and asking questions later.  In case after case, the officer initiates contact, escalates it, and executes the victim.  Then, in a U-turn, the police officer justifies the killing because he felt in fear for his life; he claims—a claim often later rendered doubtful or disproven—to have seen, or thought that he saw, the victim holding or reaching for a weapon.  Did the officer not know that his work might be dangerous?  Does he not know how to manage fear?  Does he think that civilians are enemies?  Whose or what interest is he serving?

One thing I know: training is no solution.  Training is another lie.  No pig tells it; only police officers and self-touting police reformers tell it as the easy way to placate public opinion.  It is ineffective; no police bigot has ever mended his ways or reformed his conduct because of sensitivity training.  And remember: pigs do not need it. 

HOUSES OF WORSHIP CAUSE THEIR "DISMEMBERSHIP"

The proportion of Americans who consider themselves members of a church, synagogue or mosque has dropped below 50 percent, according to a poll from Gallup released Monday. It is the first time that has happened since Gallup first asked the question in 1937, when church membership was 73 percent.  (The Washington Post, March 29, 2021)

This news is not big news.  Church attendance has been declining for decades.  Who cares and why?  Aside from sponsored charities, churches are making little contribution to the national weal.  Most are uninspiring or irrelevant; others, especially evangelical churches with substantial membership, contribute more than a fair share to dissension and division, to bigotry and abuse, and to the general dissipation of norms of social decency and personal respect.  Love your enemy—huh?  who said so?

Yesterday, during the mid-twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., vexed David Lawrence, publisher-columnist of U.S. New & World Report, because, so Lawrence opined, King did not know that his place was in the pulpit, not on the pavement.  King was not alone in his social activism; of white clergy, rabbis in disproportionate numbers, some leading Protestant ministers, and a few Catholic priests were also active for civil rights.  As notable as any was Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Jr., who led the Freedom Rides for Voting Rights in the South.

Today, almost all clergy notable for their views on social matters are from evangelical denominations.  Their message is not a moral plea for societal reform—at his best, Billy Graham was ambiguous about desegregation and opposed to King’s efforts—but a garble of Biblical snippets or interpretations almost invariably at odds with the meaning of the text—at its worst, Joel Osteen’s “prosperity gospel” claims that Jesus wants us rich—or, from a national perspective, political trivia about matters of gender orientation, sexual mores, or procreative choices.  To me, these preoccupations bespeak dirty minds.

The younger generations—I speak broadly, of course; most alt-right misfits are under 40—want or at least accept more in the way of diversity and equality.  The reason is not hard to seek.  The end of legal segregation and the fact of some integration has meant that many people, more urban than rural, have grown up in close(r) association with people different from themselves.  They are classmates, teammates, co-workers, friends, and lovers.  They may have some lingering taint of culturally present bigotries, but they talk as if they are trying to banish them from their lives.  When they seek guidance in dealing with moral issues like honesty, empathy, respect for others, etc., they rarely look to churches, synagogues, or mosques which do not preach or apply such messages to daily life.  Rev. William Barber is a notable exception.  Except for him, when was the last time a prominent man or woman of the cloth was seen leading a movement by organizing efforts at social reform?  So the younger generations have left or continue to leave once-respected institutions in search of something to address their needs.

Obviously, churches are not doing so or, in some cases, doing so for shabby reasons.  As the “rabbi” to my ex-step daughter, an Episcopal priest, I hope for revivals of the Episcopal and Lutheran churches.  I find the efforts of the National Cathedral, the closest thing which we have to a national church, deserving.  The Presbyterian and Methodist churches still have their work cut out for them in their struggle against racism.  Baptist and Catholic churches—well, let me move on.  Even so, the language of faith, grace, redemption, and divine love which fills most sermons offers comfort to some, but it is not the language of action, urges no action, not even self-scrutiny or self-criticism, and, to the modern mind, conveys little meaning and inspires very little.  Anyone aware of the harmful, hateful words and deeds of, say, Christian anti-abortionists, Christian anti-immigrants, or White Christian nationalists knows the signs of the anti-Christ.

One note in line with my previous blogs on matters of religion.  From my Jewish perspective, a defect of Christianity is its lack of a defined code of conduct.  The Nicene and Apostles Creeds speak of Jesus’s miraculous birth and his miserable death, with no word about his teachings, mainly moral.  This gap reflects Paul’s antinomian rejection of the Jewish Law.  Paul’s love is no instruction, guide, or even a restraint.  So Christianity has filled its moral void with locally acceptable cultural, political, and religious customs, norms, and practices.  Today, direction for the many nominally Christian is increasingly political dogmas, culture-wars issues, and alt-right cult causes—not sources of humane, never mind presumably Christian, values, principles, and practices.

Of many who have abandoned religion—I exclude DIY religions—and affiliated with the political extremes, moral atrophy is their distinguishing feature.  The farther one moves to the left, the closer one gets to the right, and vice versa.  Ardent Progressives are little different from ardent Trump supporters; both demand party loyalty, ideological or doctrinal purity, denigrate or attack opponents, deny or avoid facts not conforming to beliefs, and refuse discussion or debate.  Locally, Progressives have failed or refused to face the dodges, deceits, and derelictions of a Progressive-dominated City Council in matters of police reform.  They are wrong to think that causes are adequate substitutes for conscience and character.  Truth, honesty, and the courage of righteous convictions are everywhere in short supply.   I have seen Diogenes with his lantern walking the streets of Las Cruces.

So, in the absence of or silence from worthy moral leadership addressing these issues in churches, synagogues, and mosques, I fear a moral anarchy enabled by mendacious or anodyne media pundits and morally confused or politically opportunistic leaders in business, education, law, religion, and government.  I fear that individualism—“do your thing,” not do the right thing—has corrupted the social ethic, frayed the social fabric, and debilitated the communal impulses of civil society.  These deficiencies, which religious commitments worthy of the name can help remedy, are undermining American democracy.  Americans who do not come to think of themselves as a people, as in “We the People,” can expect to become first a mob, then an autocracy, in an apartheid America.