A Veteran Policeman Weighs in on the Walter Scott Shooting (Michael Slager/South Carolina)

Published by Nicholas Stix

Re my new VDARE report: “Here We Go Again: Walter Scott, Michael Slager, and Another Post-American Lynch Mob.”
 

All I’ll say for now about the powerful letter below is this:

1. Let’s wait and see what happens with the new report; and
2. The “reasonableness standard” is logically vacuous, and depends on having a reasonable populace dominated by the Anglo-Saxon outlook that America was founded on, and which predominated for over 200 years, because non- Anglo-Saxon European immigrants embraced it. An unreasonable populace is being selected to replace the American populace. What shall then be the new standard? Will it matter?
 

By Veteran Patrolman

For (hopefully) obvious reasons, I'm writing to you anonymously. I am a 12-year veteran of a medium sized police department in the West, all of it spent in patrol, almost all of it in ethnically diverse neighborhoods. As far as my general perspective is concerned, suffice it to say that the experience of becoming a police officer after decades of exposure to mainstream teachings about race and class is absolutely shocking. It's hard to overstate how much so. It is almost a daily shock to see the contrast between the pandemonium in black communities and the studied disinterest of the public. When you also notice that 90% of the people actively, in quantifiable ways (by which I mean to exclude endless speechifying) working to save black lives are the much reviled conservative, white heterosexual males who are reportedly the problem, bitterness begins to set in.

At any rate, regarding the shooting of Walter Scott in South Carolina, I have a couple observations. Regarding the political aspect, you are certainly correct that this would have been a much anticipated delight to the media even if they weren't still trying to ignore the utter collapse of their narrative in Ferguson. As a society, we long ago lowered the standard of behavior for black people so that we can more easily portray ridiculously unsympathetic characters as victims. (I recently joked that one of the greatest parts of white privilege is not having to reflexively defend white pieces of shit.) Without this, it's impossible to maintain the "it could happen to anyone" aspect that so much advocacy journalism depends on (see sexual assault, etc). Much of what passes for conservative media is now just clumsy attempts to turn the left's tricks back on them without seeming to realize that the point of those tricks is to obscure, not to clarify.

As aware as I am of the politics, though, as a cop I also watch videos or read about incidents with a professional ear & eye. Contrary to popular belief, it's very easy for police officers to remove race as a consideration and simply observe the behavior. I can visualize the scenario around that shooting as a training exercise or I can just relate it to similar incidents I've been in.

From that professional standpoint, it looks like a bad shooting. A tail light violation, a physical fight, flight, then shooting. Not many cops haven't been in an incident identical to that one right up to the point of shooting. The officer clearly faced no immediate threat and, so far, hasn't articulated a future, hypothetical threat. I am confident that if you showed that video, unedited, to cops who hadn't heard about it and got candid, non-public reactions to it, 95% would be shocked when the shooting starts. It is a complete non-sequitur. To put it offensively honestly, black people break the law a lot, they flee a lot, and they resist arrest a lot. Any cop, black, white or other, knows that. If I shot everyone who behaved like Scott did, I'd have taken a dozen lives, at least.

The "fleeing felons" justification may have at one time made sense and the fourth amendment case against it seems weak, but when you consider all the crimes which are felonies, it no longer makes sense. Which crimes ought I be able to kill for, absent an immediate threat? Writing a fraudulent check? Using someone else's credit card? Slapping your wife with your child watching? The difference between a felony and a misdemeanor is determined by politicians, not necessarily by a moral code. If a legislature determined that discrimination was a felony offense, what then?

The ability to summarily kill a suspect remains, though I can tell you from experience that it's shockingly difficult to do; self-defense is instinctive, defense of a third party requires an intellectual process. The classic example is confronting a man in an alley wielding a bloody axe, standing over a body, ignoring commands, then walking away toward a crowded area. Shooting and killing him are still clearly justifiable.

Police, and by extension the public, are well served by the reasonableness standard which currently reigns. If a reasonable officer in that position, etc., etc. The requirement that a suspect represents an immediate threat of some kind is a vital limitation on the ability of the state to take life.

There is an underlying philosophy here which is lost on many, or at least willfully ignored. That is that police violence should be a tool, not a moral judgement. Police have no business determining who "deserves" force; that is the function of courts. Police must determine what force is necessary to affect whatever end they are pursuing.

In an incident such as the one in question, that force can evolve from authority to pull them over for a broken tail light, to lethal force if they then try to kill the cop. It is as facile to propose that the low level of the original offence makes unjustifiable later deadly force as it is to suggest that a warrant for something severe justifies any later use of force.

Civil libertarians are often fond of the former ("he was shot for having a broken tail light"), but they ironically find common cause with those concerned more with who gets shot than why. Like you observed of conservative media, they ultimately will be disappointed when they find that police officers discouraged from activity that risks force against favored groups will, by default, both be more active against disfavored groups and leave those same disfavored groups on their own when they become victims of the favored group. Or in short: Better that you become a George Zimmerman than I become a Darren Wilson.

The South Carolina incident is important because, on the face of it, defending it is damaging to the legal standard (reasonableness) which best serves Americans regardless of race. The fact that that standard, equally applied, results in disparate impact on minorities, puts it in (good) company with a legion of social justice warrior boogeymen. We have to be honest and objective in our criticism if we're going to defend our culture. If that reasonableness standard goes, I'm afraid it will be replaced by something much more arbitrary and political. I think that a shocking number of people would already be supportive of a mathematical model (never a juvenile for any reason, less force against blacks, etc.) which is tyranny in the making.

Thanks for listening.