Police Accountability versus Virtue-Cloaking

Rachel Lu at the Federalist has a powerful and well-written essay on police accountability, "You Don’t Have To Be Black Lives Matter To Support Police Accountability".

After the two incidents involving two black men shot by police in the last two days, it is time to at least consider how we can deal with situations like this, and Rachel's assessment of this situation is both thoughtful and provocative.

 One of the things Rachel mentions is "virtue-cloaking", with two of the most powerfully rational paragraphs I have read in quite awhile:

When a profession commands our respect, we often feel tempted to “virtue-cloak” it, insisting against all opposition that members of that profession really are what we know they should be. This is a natural impulse, especially in a fractious society where political narratives dominate public life. We understand how easily cops can become scapegoats for progressive liberals with an agenda. They deal daily with the grim effects of social breakdown, and when those confrontations take a tragic turn, liberals would much rather blame the “racist” police than acknowledge the bitter fruits of the sexual revolution and the welfare state. 

We shouldn’t allow that sort of scapegoating. Still, that’s not the only relevant danger. Virtue cloaks can be perilous in their own way. They give cover to real and serious misdeeds, particularly in professions (like policing) where people already have a strong, natural tendency to circle the wagons and protect their own. When alarming police shootings occur, that should prompt us to ask: Are these rare aberrations? Or have we, by reflexively defending law enforcement at every turn, helped create conditions in which corruption and brutality can proliferate unchecked?

Read the entire editorial here.

In order to hold police accountable, we first must remove "policing the police" from the realm of our current justice system. A prosecutor, who has to work with police daily in everyday crime justice, cannot be entrusted with the job of having to accuse a police officer of any kind of infraction. Either we have to allow for public defenders to prosecute police, or have a special prosecutor for such incidents.

Secondly, police must also know the people they are policing. Alton Sterling might not be dead if the Baton Rouge police actually knew him, and if he knew them. Cops should be forced to walk a beat, so they can get to know the people in the community. The police might not meet everyone, but they will at least get to know most people. Nowadays, the only time cops get out of their cars is to give someone a ticket, or to make an arrest. The police cars should only be used to get from point A to point B, and not as an excuse to avoid talking to people. It is long past time to break down the wall between cops and community. "To protect and to serve" has two parts, and the "to serve" part gets ignored frequently. Nowadays, too many police departments are encouraging too many Barney Fifes and not enough Andy Griffiths.

Finally, there is the point that Rachel made: "...liberals would much rather blame the “racist” police than acknowledge the bitter fruits of the sexual revolution and the welfare state." We need to hold the progressive politicians accountable for their policies which have failed. We need to take government in a different direction, away from socialism. We only have to look at the mess known as Europe to understand the failure of socialism. Also, the black communities have become hotbeds of crime, and the fact they are usually in Democratically-controlled (read: socialist) areas is no coincidence. Consider:

1. Alton Sterling was killed in Baton Rouge. The mayor of Baton Rouge is a Democrat.
2. Philando Castille was killed in Minneapolis. The mayor of Minneapolis is a Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (which is basically the Minnesota Democratic Party).
3. Eric Garner was killed in New York City in 2014. The mayor was a Democrat.
4. Freddie Gray was killed in Baltimore by police in 2015. The mayor was a Democrat.

And yet blacks continue to vote for Democrats overwhelmingly. The black community needs to come up with a better solution than "vote Democrat". Virtue-cloaking Democrats like they have done is proving suicidal.