Them Intertubes Process

The Interwebs Process:

On the posting of any idea, concept, or invention, the web reaction will be as follows:

1)  There's no problem.  There's no need for this.  This is just the reaction of (insert group you hate here) trying to (insert nefarious intent here).  You're an idiot for disagreeing with (insert group you respect here)

2)  Okay, there is an issue, but it won't work.  You don't understand the (science, cost, politics, mechanics, will of the divine) regarding this.  Who's gonna pay for this?  You're an idiot for disagreeing with (insert group you respect here).  You don't have the (money, skills, education, credits, cajones) to do this.  If this would have worked, someone else better than you would have already done it.

3)  Okay, it might work, but They (the government, the corporations, the police, the illuminati, the bankers, the reptilians, the minorities, the people with hamsters taped to their foreheads) won't let you do it.

4)  It'll work just fine.  It's brilliant!  I've always said so. You and me, buddy!

Mungo's Epistle to the Preppers

Okay, so this has been coming a long time.  I apologize in advance, this is going to seem like an attack. It honestly isn't meant as one, but I think it's something that needs to be said.

The world has it's problems, I'll freely admit.  Governments are corrupt or stupid, corporations are out of control, the climate is out of whack, the seas are polluted, everywhere, it seems, there is crime, want, violence, disease, and general weirdness.  I get that.

Your response is entirely logical.  You want to create a safe space for you and your family, fill it with food and medicine and guns and whatever else you think you'll need to deal with what is out there, and survive.

The question, in my opinion, that you don't seem to be asking is:  And then what?

And then what?

Then do you crawl out of your shelter with your camouflage and assault rifle and eke out some miserable existence in what is left of the world?  Do you see yourself, somehow, and the leader of some Mad Max future by virtue of having the foresight to "prep" for it?  Have you thought about it at all, about what happens when the freeze dried food gives out and the Kero for the lanterns is gone?  And then what?

Let me make a suggestion.  You may not like it.  It's not romantic, it's not macho, it's rather pedestrian and lame, but here it is.  Why not use your capital, your considerable talents, and your inventiveness to help fix the world in which we're living, to help make it a better place?  I know you probably won't be able to do it alone, but if you do and I do and a bunch of us do, then maybe, just maybe, we can avert the horrible future for which you are "prepping".  Maybe we can image a world as we would like it, set our sights on that, and work toward it.

I know our visions would not match, but some parts of them surely would, and those are the ones most likely to come true.  We could make a future, you and I and everyone else, for ourselves and our kids and the planet.  We could do that.

Just a suggestion.

M

Of a Trip to the Grocery, Lurking Police, Ferguson, Lord of the Rings, and the Ghost of Robert Peel

Sir Robert Peel was one of the powerhouses of 19th Century England.  He was Home Secretary, twice Prime Minister, legislator, and was all round hip deep in the issues of his age.  I mention him because, among other things, he was responsible for the reform of the London police force and was the father of what is often called "Policing by Consent".  If you've ever wondered about why London police are called "Bobbies" or "Peelers", he's your answer.

Sir Robert Peel.  If you don't know him, you should.

What brought Sir. Robert to mind at all was a walk this morning to my local grocery store.  It's a walk I make a lot, down a couple of back streets, then down a busy highway.  This time I noted, lurking behind a building some distance from the road, a patrol car, radar at the ready, laying in wait for speeders.  They do this all the time along this strip, but today, something about it irked me, got under my skin, got me thinking about American Policing, about things like Ferguson Missouri, and about Robert Peel.

Here's the thing:  Speeding is bad, and it happens a lot around here.  If you don't drive on the East Coast, you may never have experienced this sort of mix of aggression and inattention we seem to have out here.  Speeding is stupid, it's dangerous, it's a public safety concern.  Where I grew up in Ft. Walton, Florida, in summer when the tourists were in, the city used to park a disused police car--I'm not even sure the thing ran--in the median strip with a dummy in the driver's seat.  It worked.  The touri took one look at it and dropped their speed before hitting the main drag of town.  The public safety aspects were met, simply and inexpensively.

But this officer behind my grocer was far too far off the street for anyone to see.  There was no deterrence.  Instead, he was there to "catch" a speeder.  To apprehend and ticket a law breaker.  As opposed to preventing a law from being broken.  One of Peel's "principles" (gleaned and collected from his writings by others, I should note) was: "that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them."  In other words, a police department with a lot of fines, tickets, arrests, convictions. . . .that police department was one that had failed, because they had failed to prevent the crimes from happening in the first place.  I realized that it had been YEARS since I'd seen an officer of the law parked in such a manner to deter speeding.  All of them had been lurking like trolls under bridges and overpasses, just past the crests of hills or around bends, waiting to "catch" someone.  Why?

Perhaps the term, "troll" I just used has some information here.  Mythologically, a Troll was a powerful, dangerous, often stupid supernatural creature that lurked under bridges and the like and extracted fees for passage from the unwary, 'troll' and 'toll' sharing some of the same linguistic roots.  That "fee" concept may lurk at the heart of this.

With the release of information from Ferguson, Missouri, a lot of people were shocked to discover that the second largest source of the City's budget was fines.  That amount was high, but by no means remarkable in the area.   The Police Department Emails from Ferguson made it clear that they were being pressured and judged on their ability to rake in funds. 

To look for who is responsible for this, one only has to look at the current crop of chest thumping politicians who proudly proclaim that they will "never raise your taxes."  They won't.  Taxes tend to come from property holders, large businesses, and folks with large incomes.  You know, the guys who write big checks to political campaigns come election time.  What they WILL do is crank every usage fee, license fee, and fine on the books to make up for the shortfall.  So the $25 fee to apply for a variance for your back yard fence is now $150.  The $50 speeding ticket is now a $250 fine, plus $150 in court fees, plus a requirement that you take a privately offered traffic safety course for $500 (and the company that offers them is a major political contributor to the mayor, you can bet, as are companies who do now mandatory drug tests and background checks).  This transforms every Policeman, Safety inspector, Code inspector, and Clerk from being a public servant seeking the public safety and public good into being a part of a shakedown squad, and these fees and fines fall disproportionately on the poor and middle class.  The working poor are often ground up and spit out by this system, left with massive ongoing fees and payments, arrest records, and destroyed lives.

The second and equally pernicious problem is the increasingly macho and aggressive nature of policing.  I'm reminded of the line in "Bladerunner"(or "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" for you literary types) in which the Chief tells an unwilling Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford in the film)"There's two kinds of people in this world:  Police and Little People.  Which do you want to be?"  I lived in Los Angeles when Chief Darryl Gates (for my money one of the authors of this mess) declared LAPD to be "the biggest, best armed gang in the city," and ran things that way.  The attitude is as diseased as it is contagious.  In my distant youth, police looked like well groomed citizens in uniforms, very much along the lines of what Peel had in mind.  They approached policing with an attitude that said "I'm here now, you're safe now, how can we help?"  Now, shave-headed and tattooed, they more resemble a marine combat unit, and come swaggering in carrying enough firepower to take on the NAZI hoards and a "comply or die" attitude that says "mess with me and I'll kill every fu*king thing in this building."  I should be noted that Peel even insisted that the London  Police have special pockets in their uniforms for truncheons so they were not visible and threatening to the public.  Ironically, armored and very heavily armed, the excuse used by most police when using deadly force was that "they felt threatened."  Apparently, there is very little that doesn't threaten them lately, including unarmed, nonviolent offenders walking away.

It's a mess.

So here, dear reader, are my ideas on how to address this.  How to clean up America's Police Forces and restore to them their good name and rightful place in society.

First of all:  Robert Peel.  Before we go any further, stop over and read about Peel's ideas of policing, particularly the "peelian principles" of policing.  I'll post that list at the bottom of this, but if you have the time, drop over to Wikipedia and read the full entry.  You may be amazed how far we have drifted from these ideals.

Then, in terms of practical legislation:

At the Federal Level:

1) Support legislation making it illegal for any municipality, county, or state to acquire more than 15% of it's income from fees, fines, and licenses.  If you want community services, man up, tell the public how much it will cost, and what it will accordingly do to their taxes.  You want lousy roads? Fine.  Vote for them.  This will give the public a far more accurate idea of the expense of civic projects and governance, a better idea of where the money comes from, and it will stop governments from using police as the equivalent of schoolyard bullies shaking kids down for their lunch money.

2)  Direct the Department of Justice set forth a universal set of national standards for the use of physical restraint, pain compliance including tasers, and deadly force.  Make the guidelines conservative and clear, and make it clear that violations will be investigated by DOJ at the Federal level and vigorously prosecuted.

3)  Make sure that all Federal funding for local policing is responsible, including an emphasis on crime prevention and peace keeping; making sure the police departments are not too dissimilar in racial makeup from the public they serve and setting careful standards for programs for police training that have a component of taxpayer funding at the Federal Level.

4)  Stop the unfettered transfer of military equipment from the Federal Government to Law Enforcement agencies, making such equipment available only to special units within law enforcement and including periodic review of the recipients to make sure the use is appropriate and controlled.

5)  Require that instances of deadly force or complaints of violence against police be investigated by citizen panels independent of the Police Department, Prosecutor's Office, or Local Government.  This assures confidence in the integrity of such investigations, and makes their findings far more palatable to the public at large. Make sure that the collection of accurate data on police use of force is possible  and readily available, so that we will know when departments are developing problems.

On a local Level:

1) Insist that your local politicians hold Police--since they have a position of high public trust--to a higher standard of competence, honesty, and performance.  Hold supervisors and office holders responsible for police with a history of violence and complaints remaining on the force.

2)  Make sure that the police in your community LOOK like your community, and not just in racial makeup.  Police should look like the people they serve, not like hired killers or shock troops.  An effort should be made to recruit police from all walks of life, not just from the ranks of the military.

3)  Develop non-policing alternatives as an adjunct to traditional law enforcement.  New York's Guardian Angel movement or the Burning Man Festival's Black Rock City Rangers, (full disclosure, I was a Ranger for a time at Playa Del Fuego, one of the regional "burns") while not perfect, may serve as a model for a controllable, non intrusive way to increase public safety and security without further stressing already overstretched Police departments.

And on a Personal Level:

Step up.  Film bad policing, call your mayor, the chief of police, the press. . . .refuse to tolerate bad police, bad police policy, and those who place our Law Enforcement officers in no-win positions where the honest performance of their duties are at odds with official policy, political convenience, or monied interests.

Police should be deserving of our respect and admiration, a trusted and reliable resource for the entire community.  If we're willing to all get busy, raise our voices, and do the work necessary, we can restore them to their deserved and lofty place in the pantheon of those that make a civil society work.

M

The Peelian Principles

Nine Principles of Policing

The following nine principles of the role of police were set out in the 'General Instructions' issued to every new police officer in the London Metropolitan Police from 1829.

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.