Coyote Blog

A good many of my conservative friends are in shock at the reaction to the killing of George Floyd.   "We saw the video.  We agree its awful.  No one we know is defending this."

Yes, that is likely true.  The video was pretty damning.  But you see, these things seldom happen on video.  And when they don't, Conservatives are generally in a "believe all cops" mode that is just as ignorant of due process and nuance as the me-too brigades were with Julie Swetnick's crazy accusations about Judge Kavanaugh.

I understand that a great many police officers are good, even laudable people.  But not all are.  And because there are bad apples, we need careful accountability systems for police particularly because we give them powers and responsibilities that go beyond those of ordinary citizens.

The problem with this accountability is that Conservatives tend to go past respecting and supporting police, to fetishizing them.  I get it -- police are really at the core of beliefs for many Conservatives, whose views turn around the fight between civilization and barbarism.  It's hard not to think of this with barbarism in the streets over the last 24 hours.   No matter how much we respect them and need them to be there, we still also have to impose accountability on them.  You Conservatives frequently stand athwart of this accountability (you Progressives too, but I will get to that in the next post).

I am not going to lecture serious Progressives on the arson and looting in the streets today -- if you don't understand that stealing iPhones is not an appropriate reaction to police brutality, then the rest of this is going to be lost on you.  But you guys basically represent my side in this thing and frankly you are doing a terrible job.  I will focus on BLM and it could apply equally well to the entire Progressive response.

1. There is a real problem with police accountability and police violence in this country, one I have been writing about since long before the BLM movement was even created.
2. The harm of these police accountability issues falls disproportionately, but not solely, on blacks and other minority ethnic groups
3. For any number of reasons, fixing racism is not the immediate answer.  Most obviously, because racism is super-hard to eradicate and has persisted (though improved, IMO) despite a lot of attention over many decades.   It is hard to point to any time and place in human history when some folks have not been seduced by in-group-out-group thinking.  The other reason is that the primary issue is accountability, not racism.  We give police special powers to use force that the rest of us do not have, but impose less accountability on them for the use of force than the rest of us face.  No matter how good most police officers are, this accountability problem is going to allow bad eggs to repeatedly abuse their power.
4. There are real, identifiable steps that can actually increase police accountability and transparency and reduce the types of police violence incidents BLM was formed to oppose.  Early on, BLM actually identified a pretty good list.
5. BLM did a fabulous job of raising awareness and putting these issues near the center of political discussion.
6. Having done so, BLM now has gone completely off the rails.  It appears to be entirely focused on virtue-signalling and disruption and support of progressive issues completely tangential to its initial focus.  It has no coherent action plan.  Colin Kapernick torpedoed his own football career to bring attention to BLM, but once he did so and had microphones thrust in his face from every direction, neither he nor any of his supporters had anything specific to advocate for, other than outrage and telegraphing their victim status.
7. Things are even worse today.  A middle and upper class white populace who was sympathetic two days ago may be turning against you.  If you display barbarism in the streets, barbarism that only the police can head off, then you increase sympathy for the police rather than support your narrative of accountability
8. Progress can be made on these issues, but what it will take is a hard city by city slog to change the rules that govern police discipline and transparency.   As I wrote before, BLM "could learn a lot from Conservative and libertarian groups like ALEC, that focus on creating model legislation and local success stories that can be copied in other places."
9. Republicans often oppose police accountability steps -- they don't just support the police, they fetishize them.  But the cities that most cry out for new accountability rules -- New York, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, Los Angeles -- are have Democratic super-majorities and governments whose officials almost to a one have come out publicly in support of BLM.  So why no progress?  One big barrier is the Democratic Party's unwavering support for public employee unions, and it is police unions that are the biggest barrier to implementing the steps BLM should be demanding.   If you are not diving in and challenging police union contracts on their next renewal, then you aren't doing anything useful on this issue.