You Say You Want A Revolution

It's been over a month since George Floyd died while being subdued by four police officers, one of them kneeling on Floyd's back, apparently suffocating him. Since then there have been daily protests, sometimes erupting into full-scale riots with burnings and looting. Statues have been defaced or pulled down. Demand have been issues.

This goes way beyond George Floyd. The police involved were fired and charged with murder almost immediately. It is reminiscent of the Arab Spring where one person burned himself to death in protest and that led to massive regional protests. Some governments fell during the Arab Spring. This is what many of the protestors are hoping for - a revolution.

The strange thing is that this is a fight between the establishment left and the far-left. Conservatives are off on the sidelines.

The establishment left is represented by big-city mayors and city council members. This also includes Democrats in Congress and the last two Democratic presidents.

The far-left demonstrators wants to "defund the police" which, depending on who you ask, either means slightly reducing the police department budget to completely replacing them. Demonstrators in several cities have also called for the resignation of the mayor, the police chief, and other officials.

This dove-tails with other demand from the AOC left. That includes abolishing ICE, ending detention of illegal immigrants and eliminating bail (already done in California and New York). AOC herself has also voiced support for defunding the police.

The protests have caught the establishment left completely by surprise. Many of the policies they supported are now considered the problem. For decades, Democratic mayors have promised to put more police on the street to improve public safety. That and crack-downs on drug trade are at the top of the protestors' lists.

The last two Democratic presidencies have also featured strong police support. One of Clinton's signature achievements was to put 100,000 cops on the street (actually this was funding for 33,000 for three years and the money didn't have to go for beat cops but he billed it as 100,000). Drug laws were strengthened under Clinton, too.

Obama presided over militarizing the police. Under his administration, police were given surplus military equipment. This is expensive to maintain and gives the police departments an incentive to use it in order to justify the maintenance costs. Police were also given para-military training under Obama. This led to a drastic increase of no-knock raids.

There's also the support for qualified immunity and review boards that tend to take a police officer's side in a shooting investigation. The establishment left has a close relationship with public service unions including the police unions.

When the protests first began the big-city mayors were marching in the street alongside the protestors. That didn't last long.

The problem for conservatives is that the mayors are still trying to convince the mob that they are on the same side. That means that they are acceding to demands for things like tearing down statues. This has added fuel to the already-nasty Cancel Culture where anything not considered to represent the values of the mob is judged to be racist. Our history is being rewritten by the establishment left in the conviction that if they just give the mob one more thing, they will be satisfied. That's not how mobs work.

What Actually Needs to Change

Forget defunding the police, unconscious bias training and the other things that are being suggested in the wake of the death of George Floyd. What needs to change is the culture within police departments across the nation. It's not racism that's the problem although the way it manifests itself may seem like racism at times.

Let me start by going back nearly four years to the Pulse Nightclub shooting. The police stood by for 45 minutes until armored SWAT members arrived and the officers who were not in armor were not allowed to participate. Why did they take so long to respond to an active shooter? The police chief explained it as "We're not like the military. We don't have acceptable casualties."

That's the big problem and I've seen it expressed similar ways from police across the country. There are no acceptable casualties for police officers. That means that they are justified in taking whatever measures they feel necessary to protect themselves, even if it means shooting a stopped motorist who was reaching for his driver's license because there was a chance he was reaching for a gun. Or telling a kid with a pellet gun to drop his weapon then shooting him before he could respond. Or putting a knee in someone's back until he asphyxiated. It's all part of a "take no chances" mentality that excuses police for fatal over-reactions because there are no  acceptable casualties.

This attitude means that police lives matter more than civilians. It's accepted within the police community and defended by the unions. It's argued in the courts in the few cases that make it there and enshrined in the legal principle of qualified immunity.

This is not inherently racist. Police can and do kill whites and non-black minorities with impunity, also. But the news media pays more attention when a black man is killed and that skews our perception. Yes, black men are killed out of proportion with whites but blacks also commit way more violent crimes leading to police shootings. Once that's figured in, blacks are killed at a slightly lower rate than white violent offenders. Regardless, too many people of all races are killed by police out of an abundance of caution.

So the culture has to change. Police need to be less cautious about shooting anything that moves. There should be an implicit contract - we give you a gun and we trust you to wait until you see an actual threat before using it rather than reacting to a possible threat.

But no one is talking about this so nothing will change.