Those Memphis Blues Again

His name is Tyre Nichols.  Was Tyre Nichols.  Five Memphis cops murdered a black man.  Again.  Another.  Again.  The cops are being charged with second degree murder.  I guess that’s progress, of sorts.

 

In the year of our Lord 2022, last year, in the USA, cops killed 1176 civilians, up from a record 1055 in 2021.  While cops killed more white men than black men, black men were three times more likely to end up in the morgue (as there are many more white men than black men).

 

In the Memphis incident, the five cops were black.  As if black cops can’t be racist against their own race.

 

What makes a man (or a woman) want to become a policeman or policewoman?  First, an honorable desire to see good prevail over evil.  And an honorable desire to see evil punished.  Second, comfort with physical violence.  How can I say this?  The folks that live in my circle are a) over-educated, b) mostly sedentary, and c) don’t own firearms.  If you put any of us in a police uniform or a soldier’s uniform, we would tend to avoid situations that called for force or seemed dangerous.  Folks who enlist in the military or become police have a different orientation toward violence and danger.  Please understand me, I am NOT suggesting they are in any way inferior to sedentary folks like myself; indeed, every nation on Earth needs these folks to confront violent bad actors, aka criminals.  Put ME in a uniform and the best I could do for myself and my community is to go AWOL.  Police are more necessary in quasi-civilized society than folks like me.  If you have read my words about patriotism, you know that I place police very high on my list of patriots, as they go into a profession that is dangerous and whose calling is protecting folks like me from bad people.

View at your own risk!

But police are not above the law.  If a cop kills a civilian not in self-defense, he should be charged with murder.

 

1176 civilians were killed by cops in 2022.  That is a real problem!  But it also means that the odds of being killed by a cop in 2022 were .000354%, or one in 282,000 chances.  It is not close to being on the list of top ten causes of death in the USA!  In other words, being killed by a cop is really, really rare.  Most cops are not killers, even under duress.   By most, I mean way more than 99% or 99.9% or 99.99%.  In fact, 331 cops were shot in 2022 (“only” 67 were killed).  They have a dangerous job; but they all carry firearms, and that places a heavy burden on them not to use their firearms except in self-defense.  If a bad guy runs from police, that does NOT confer on the police the right to kill, or even to maim, or to use their firearm to stop the bad guy.  Not infrequently, a “bad guy” is running away from being captured for petty theft, not murder or rape (or treason).

 

What is my point in stressing these opposing ideas; that cops kill too many (black) men but that it is very rare, and that the vast majority of cops are innocent of these crimes?  Simple: It is bad enough that a few bad cops tarnish the good repute of police everywhere; good cops should stop defending the indefensible.

 

P.S.: 1176 is just a number.  But look at the names of a small number of victims and it hits home (here is an abridged list of “unarmed African Americans killed by law enforcement officers in the United States”).  Scroll.  Scroll some more.  Keep scrolling.