In case you missed it, over the weekend police in Madison, WI kept up a growing tradition in the U.S. of not letting more than a few weeks pass without shooting an unarmed black teenager to death.
Tony Robinson, depending on who you choose to listen to, was either a loving son and attentive student on his way to business school, or a convicted felon and a danger to everyone you know and love. Only one of these representations can be true, because as everybody knows humans aren’t complex beings with multiple, even contradictory layers of behavior, personality, and beliefs, and of course we all totally had our shit together at 19 and never made any mistakes, so pick whichever one best fits your preferred narrative and discard the rest, as well as anyone who chose a different focus than you.
Anyway, as has become the custom after one of these tragedies, people on both sides of the cultural divide have taken to the streets and social media to make their opinions heard. Here are some of the most popular arguments or statements made by the sorts of folks who tend to rally to support the status quo, and why I think they all fail on the merits.
1) Let’s wait for all the facts:
The main thrust here is instead of taking to the streets immediately, protestors should just hold their fire for days, weeks, or months until we know everything there is to know about the case and can form an educated opinion. Sure. Sounds reasonable, prudent even.
Here’s why it’s bullshit.
In the era of the 24 hour news cycle and viral content, nothing stays in the public conscious for very long. Days if you’re lucky, weeks at most. As much as Mr. Spock would disapprove, it’s the initial intense emotional reactions to an event that captures public attention, not a dry reading of the news weeks after the fact. So to wait is to starve a story of the oxygen it needs to reach the public and create awareness of the issue at hand. Without awareness, there can be no change and the status quo remains intact.
I understand why otherwise smart, cautious people would want to hold tight before voicing an opinion when they don’t have all the facts. I certainly do under most circumstances. However, there’s a fault in this line of thinking, a tendency to try and see each individual case in isolation, separate and distinct from any similar cases that have come before, or will happen in the future. But in so doing, they miss the forest for the trees and effectively ignore the larger trends. And the larger trend is this shit keeps happening.
2) Officers have to protect themselves:
Again, here we have a perfectly reasonable sounding statement. In cases where the police meet physical resistance, or even violence, such as was allegedly the case with Mr. Robinson, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown, the police need to be able to protect their own lives and the lives of the citizens they’re sworn to protect. Obviously, right?
Here’s why it’s bullshit.
No one, anywhere, is saying the police shouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves from harm. That is not the conversation that’s being had. It is a strawman argument being forwarded by people who don’t understand something called the Use of Force Continuum.
This model of self-defense training has been in use among many Police and Department of Corrections groups at all levels of government since the 1990′s. Crucial to it is the idea of a proportional, phased response to the threat level an LEO is facing. An officer is, as a general rule, always expected to escalate to one threat level higher than they face. If somebody slaps you, shooting them dead is not a proportional response.
So, again as a general principle, if a suspect is trying to punch them, they can escalate to using their baton to neutralize the threat and force compliance. If they are facing a suspect with a baton, out comes the pepper spray or taser (if equipped). A knife or other potentially deadly weapon is met with a sidearm.
There are any number of exceptions, and the level of threat is entirely dependent on an LEO’s own perception of the situation. But here’s the problem. It is an indisputable fact that LEO’s across the nation apply higher levels of physical violence to minorities, especially African Americans, and apply it far more frequently than they do to white suspects.
For whatever reason or reasons, when faced with a black suspect, LEO’s perceive the threat to be higher, escalate to violence faster, and to higher levels on the continuum than they would otherwise. The end result is a far higher percentage of black suspects being injured or killed during their interactions with police. Nor does the state-sponsored violence stop there. Black suspects face longer prison sentences, and are disproportionately targeted for the death penalty, even when committing the same crime as their white counterparts.
Which is why the impulse to try and see each case in isolation is such a bad idea. It completely misses the larger trends, even if in a specific case an argument could be made that violence was justified such as in Ferguson. The folks who want to focus on the Justice Department failing to indict Michael Brown’s killer on civil rights charges have generally failed to read or appreciate the other bombshell the same people released that day; the DoJ report on systemic racism on the part of the Ferguson PD.
3) Why is no one protesting criminals:
I’ve heard this one a lot. Usually, it’s something along the lines of why aren’t people protesting black-on-black crime, or gang shootings, or criminals shooting police officers?
Here’s why it’s bullshit.
Because we should be holding police to a higher standard than criminals. I really have a hard time understanding why I have to explain this to adults, but here goes. When a criminal commits violence or takes a life, it is a tragedy, obviously. I would even go so far as to say that when a criminal takes the life of an LEO, the tragedy takes on a new dimension. However, the reason people don’t take to the streets to protest their crimes is because criminals are acting on their own. They do not represent anyone but themselves, and are acting without the sanction of the society they prey upon.
Police are an entirely different matter. When the police use violence, they are doing so as agents of a representative government. When the police take an action, it is our collective sanction that grants them the moral and legal authority to do so. We grant them exceptionally broad powers and discretion to work in our name.
When police kill, they do so as representatives of all of us. We all share in the responsibility for the behavior of the agents of our government. And since it is violence in all of our names, we have the responsibility as citizens to hold them to the highest standards of conduct.
4) People shouldn’t make it about race:
Usually this one comes across as a genuine concern that focusing on the race of the people involved will only stoke more racial animosity and ratchet up tensions unnecessarily, creating an atmosphere of mistrust. So we should just focus on the facts of the case and do our best to leave race out of it.
Here’s why it’s bullshit.
The fact white people across the country don’t seem to know there’s a racial problem within our law enforcement and justice systems is not a reason to pretend there isn’t one. What these cases have done is finally brought into the mainstream consciousness what black Americans have known for their entire lives. They are not treated equally by the police or the courts.
All of the statistics available point to the same systemic problem in municipalities across the country, even in ultra-liberal Madison Wisconsin. Yes, it’s an uncomfortable, embarrassing truth for white America to face, and it’s an even more difficult conversation to find ourselves in. But let’s be clear, protests, speeches and op-eds over the unfair treatment of the black community are not creating racial animosity, they are revealing it.
If you don’t like what the conversation is uncovering about America, the answer isn’t to stop talking. The answer is to do what you can to change our nation into the place you always thought it was.
Thank you.
Thank you for reading it. Pass it on.
thank you. This extremely thoughtful and to the point.
Thank you. This sums up my thoughts and feelings much more eloquently than I could manage myself. Okay to repost and refer to constantly in the next few days? I live in this community. Thank you.
Excellent article Very well written good explanations Thank you !
Well, at least you are honest that the truth is entirely irrelevant when you protest these incidents. Case in point: you acknowledge that Eric Holder’s Justice Department, out for blood, with essentially unlimited resources and every motivation to justify the Michael Brown protests, had to admit all evidence exonerated Darren Wilson. None of the testimony that formed the basis of the “hands up don’t shoot” myth was credible or consistent with the forensics. The entire Ferguson protest was based on a lie! Yet instead of being chagrined, learning from the mistake of destroying businesses and looting because of fabrications, you urge people to continue to leap to conclusions and protest regardless of the facts. I understand leftists believe the ends justify the means. The end of destroying the system justifies lying about its endemic racism. But I wonder how your protesters won’t get tired of your protests. After a few nights of chants and marches and then reading in the morning that the story they had been told by their march leaders was all a lie. People won’t march very long when they learn they’re being lied to. Soon there will be no more marchers.
Ted. You are confused on several important points. First, I did not say that facts don’t matter. If you could have been bothered to read the entire piece, you would have understood that the facts of individual cases need to be considered within the context of larger societal trends. Understand those trends and you’ll understand why people of color are so upset every time this happens.
Secondly, The DOJ did not exonerate Darren Wilson. They simply found insufficient evidence to charge him. Not exactly the same thing. Further, you appear to be precisely one of the people I mentioned later in the article who’s focus on the guilt or innocence of Michael Brown is blinding you to the rest of the story. Which of course was the DOJ report outlining systemic racism in the Ferguson PD against its black population, which of course were what the grievances and emotions underpinning the protests were actually about, even if Michael Brown’s shooting was an imperfect rallying point for them.
There will be many more protesters in many more communities until people like you stop finding ways to miss the point.
I don’t think you read this article. Or your viewpoint overrode listening to what the author was saying. He was describing institutional racism, which underlies the statistically relevant fact that many more blacks are killed or injured by the police. This is what needs to change.
Tony had previously been convicted of armed robbery. He is not as innocent as the media is trying to drum him up to be.
So you didn’t even read past the first paragraph.
I see you have a habit of using that line to evade defending your thesis.
No, I use that line to point out that you aren’t saying anything that I haven’t already addressed in the original article. If you want me to say something new, so do you.
How does that matter? He deserved to die? At the end of the day, he was unarmed. And you should read the whole article, it goes deeper than that.
WE SHOULD SHOOT ALL PPL WHO HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY CONVICTED, I COULD NOT AGREE MORE DUDE *HIGH FIVE*
Yes Punching someone definitely deserves a death sentence. And only those of us that are perfect and have never ever broken a law should be protected by the police.
Thanks for posting this, Patrick! As a psychologist, as a soldier & veteran (of IDF) and a wife of a veteran (Vietnam); as a WI Dept. of Corrections (Ethan Allen Boy’s School) – I totally agree! Self defense is NOT killing unless you consider your job to be killing; unless you don’t feel that ANY life matters and unless you consider your weapon a means of self defense – not a killing toy!
Any one who took the time out to write this is obviously stupid . The hell with opinions or statistics. The death was in humane we are human beings .leathal injection is not that brutal . And I need your job if someone this simple minded can do it go hug a tree get a job in s soup kitchen humble yourself
Anyone who took the time out to write this was probably black-out drunk. Come back when you’re coherent.
A testament to Lysol. That’s all!
‘Murica!
nice piece here, Patrick. sometimes it takes comedy to speak the real truth.
Thank you. It’s not easy to find humor in some things, but it’s my job to try.
As someone who lives and works near Ferguson, it certainly would have been nice if you idiots would have waited for the facts to come out before you burned parts of my city down. You know, since you were in the wrong and Wilson was justified and Mike Brown was a violent felon who attacked the police.
I also find it extremely cute that you have never been involved in a violent, high trauma situation yet your are sitting there trying to tell the people that do how it is supposed to work.Do you offer advice to nuclear physicists on how they should run their reactors too?
“Black Lives Matter”? Oh really? For every one unarmed black kid shot by a police officer in this country, there are over 1500 black people shot by other blacks. Which makes your point #3 ridiculous. If “Black Lives Matter” then we should be focusing on things that would do the most harm reduction.
It shouldn’t be about race. It is utterly ridiculous for people like you to look at criminal justice outcomes and claim that it is racist without considering all the other factors that led to those outcomes. You only focus on race. When you speak of “equality” you want equality of outcomes an not equality of opportunity. You want us to stop prosecuting black criminals unless there are an equal number of white criminals to go along side. “Sorry, we cannot arrest that black murderer because too many blacks have been arrested this year and people might start to look at the stats and think we a racist.”
Now let’s see if you’ll allow this comment on your page or if you will hide it so people cannot see that there are other, less emotional, less biased opinions about this matter.
Wow. You managed to repeat almost every single nonsense argument in the article. I don’t even have to waste time refuting them, because I already did. Thank you.
And here’s your comment, right where everyone can see it and judge for themselves who is being emotional and biased.
Btw, you know nothing about me or my history. You don’t know whether or not I’ve been in any violent situation or had my life threatened. Turns out I have, twice.
I also know a thing or two about nuclear physics, but I’m not the guy you want running a reactor.
Awesome! Well written.
Great article though it should be noted that so called “black on black crime” is protested regularly. It is just not covered by the press but there have been several large conference, marches and summits on it in the past year alone.
Good to know. I will look for them in the future.
I’ve not been aware of your blog or your writing before reading this. I’m beyond impressed with your scythe-like ability to cut to the pith of all the arguments you proposed and to which you responded so eloquently.
Not only do you write/express yourself with exquisite precision but your content is clear, rational, believable and sorely needed.
I look forward to reading much more of what you have to say about the issues affecting our lives in Madison and Wisconsin.
I’ve lived here since 1959 and have witnessed many events and changes over the years. It’s so refreshing to know that you are here. And finally a clear-headed person is commenting on the things that really matter in our lives.
Thank you.
Judith A. Rubin
Thank you for reading it. Can’t do much good unread.
I agree with you multiple points, although I’m a little skiddish when it comes to the 1st point. I’m reminded of the Duke Lacrosse players and the protests that followed them. They were tormented at school and there were calls from people in the protests castrate them or murder them. When in the end the evidence pointed toward them being completely innocent, not just insufficient evidence. The accuser is now in jail,for other crimes. I live in Madison and I have to say, Madison isn’t Ferguson. Ferguson had a large amount of racist issues going on with their police force and I will not argue against that at all. However Madison has a very progressive police force. It was the first one to allow dual partnership health insurance before homosexuals could get married, making it so they could be on each other’s insurance without being married. They have extensive training in use of force and there hasn’t been any incidents with violence previous to this. When something like this happens in Ferguson, or Florida, or any other state where racism is a huge problem. I would already believe yes racism was involved. With Madison, I just have questions because this isn’t the norm in this city.
The only problem I ever had with Wisconsin police has always been the state troopers and that is a different story all together.
Duffy wrote: “there hasn’t been any incidents with violence previous to this” in reference to Madison police and use of force.
That is simply untrue! Last year Madison police shot and killed two people and it has happened in prior years too.
I believe the two last year were a Latina-American woman and the other might have been an African-American man who had stabbed two neighbors to death.
The facts DO matter — but in the current situation we will have to wait for more facts to come out. What we know so far is that the police officer on Friday night was responding to at least two 911 calls reporting that the deceased young man had battered one person and entered another person’s home and attempted to strangle someone there. From reports to date, the officer arrived and heard sounds of a disturbance in the residence, entered, was struck by the young man and fired his weapon in return — all in a matter of seconds.
In the meantime people are in the streets expressing raw emotion, pain, and hurt — and also there are a lot of folks making allegations left and right that may or may not be accurate.
Which is the kind of thing that happened in the Duke lacrosse story and so many others…
I agree with the article and have been stating such for quite some time now. I am in favor of the protesting (to a degree). Protesting helps get the issues to the table. The problem stems when these protests turn to acts of violence, destruction, and looting. This is when it no longer represents a voice of resolution, but leads to increased support of racial tensions. We cannot, as any race, express that we are good people and act out in this manner. As in the days of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we must express our discourse in peaceful protest, not in a manner that supports that all members of a race are evil.
My thought is, why are there no protests when a white officer shoots a Asian or someone who is Hispanic? Or when a black officer shoots a white man? The statement ‘Black lives matter” should be “ALL lives matter”
This is why I feel everyone gets uptight about these issues.
Yes, black lives matter, But so do white, asian, Hispanic, Latina (and every other race) lives.
Someone I talked to the other day (who was military and spend a lot of time in a lot of different countries) make an extremely valid point, that the United States as a whole makes race out to be a huge thing.
Other countries use more generic terms for race. In Sweden they are European, in France they are European, in Germany they are European… We are all Americans and that is how we should be labeled. We are all human and our graves will all be the same size when our time comes.
We have to say Black Lives Matter because society already knows white lives matter. There’s no confusion on the subject.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! It’s all about equality and people don’t see that. Just see and hear what they want. They don’t realize the constant double standard that is always held. Case in point the young white man pointing an armed gun at police got talked down a month or so here in the Madison area, But an unarmed black man gets shot and killed-because naturally you are more afraid or a fist fight then possibly being shot down yourself. I personally feel that my life would be more in danger when someone is pointing a gun at me NOT when someone is trying to fist fight me. Because I’m an officer of the law and should have been trained to take down an attacker in a non lethal manner. It bothers me to think that our police are afraid themselves so act irrationally in the heat of the moment
In a close space, as was the case here, it’s possible someone without a gun can be life threatening. You don’t need a weapon to kill or critically injure someone.
While that is true, it’s expected of our police officers that they have received and mastered self-defense skills that will, if not ensure success in every situation, drastically tip the scales in their favor.
And that is why we continue to be divided with that generic answer. That is why I throw up every time I hear hands up don’t shoot and black lives matter. That is why racism will never go away because of answers like that.
Black lives matter. Sorry for the vomit. I hope you feel better.
Yes, it’s common knowledge that lives matter. No one will ever dispute that. Unfortunately, with the disproportionate number of black lives taken by the hands of those expected to “serve & protect”, we’re on a mission to remind the world that “BLACK LIVES MATTER” and if that offends you, you’re part of the problem.
How many weeks have passed since a black teenager has been killed by a black teenager?
How many weeks have passed since an incident of black on white violence?
How many weeks have passed since a preborn human child has been killed because it was in the wrong place at the wrong time?
I see you didn’t make it past #2.
EXCELLENTLY written article. Sharing it now …
Thank you for reading it.
Thanks for crystallizing some of my though so much better than I ever seem to be able to. I have shared via FB and Twitter.
*thoughts… sorry
Excellent and thank you
This is a fabulously written article. Straight to the point, supported facts and honesty. Thank you for writing this…I will share it with the masses.
Please do, and thank you for reading it.
Mr. Tomlinson: thank you for writing such a thoughtful article. Regardless of what side of the issue one identifies with, there’s no doubt that EVERYONE has strong emotions and opinions tied up in these incidents, and the greater issues at hand. The power of your article is that initially I was prepared to find fault in your arguments but you gave me a moment of pause. I have many friends and family in public safety, AND I also understand that insitutionalized racism has deep roots in this country. There is no easy answer. But until we agree on those answers, a civil and peaceful discussion is the best for all of us. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you Patrick for this article, and even more so you responses to the people you were writing for. Much respect.
thank you patrick. sometimes the words aren’t always easy to find to sum up some of the things you bring to light and you did it beautifully. in solidarity and struggle.
Your points are very well taken.
And I would add to #1. “Waiting for all the facts” will allow the other side to relentlessly slant and bias the message while reasonable people remain silent.
They say that a lie will circle the globe before the truth has tied its shoes.
Wonderful article, Patrick, and I’m equally impressed by your calm and intelligent responses to comments. So many articles turn me off because they just spout viewpoints without any thought of ‘why’. I enjoyed reading this even though I think some of what you say leaves out important counter-arguments for why immediate protests can be a problem. I think immediate attacks and protests against LEO without facts are just as unjustified as immediate defense of them. Go ahead and protest racism in general, use these incidents to raise awareness of a systematic problem (such as what seems to exist in Ferguson). I see way too much, “hang the shooting officer” immediately in these protests without any evidence. That’s already happening in Madison, and it happened in Ferguson also. So if people want to protest immediately, that’s fine. But those supporting this should make it clear the protests should be about the general pattern of racism in law enforcement and not the specific incident, because there is not enough info to address the specific incident yet.
I do agree with your underlying belief that this happens way too often and there’s good reason to get pissed about it ever happening. The concept of turning the story to be about the alleged victim is becoming too common in murder, rape, and many other crimes. I honestly don’t care what Tony Robinson, Michael Brown, or any of the others did in the past. I want to know why they were killed that day. If they didn’t do anything to warrant deadly force (or even if they did), their past is completely irrelevant because the LEO involved certainly didn’t know it and didn’t base the decision to shoot on facts related to the person’s past. In fact, bringing up their past is in a sense justifying racism. Almost like, “see, the LEO was right to be more afraid than justified.” That’s the problem we’re facing and it needs to be addressed.
Stop committing crimes
stop having the police called to deal with you
stop confronting the police
It’s called taking responsibility. Something that I am sure none of you young people have ever had to do. It’s not your fault, it is the world you were brought into.
One day, as you get older you will realize that what you are pushing now, is no the way the world works. But that is expected of young people. When you start paying bills, when you own a home, or you have to get a job that actually brings in an income for your survival and the survival of your children you will change.
When you have to make sure your kids are safe walking to school, or playing on the play ground, or working in their first job, your attitudes will change.
But for now, you can live the make believe world you have entered. Older more educated with life people know how this will all change.
I’m 34, Bob. I’ve been paying bills since I was 16, and have held one job or another for that entire span. What does any of that have to do with the verifiable mistreatment and bias against black Americans by our Justice system?
Mr. Tomlinson: Though you’re article does bring up some good points, I disagree with it on some levels. The largest of these being number two. I don’t think you understand the use of force continuum. Firstly, a subject wielding a baton would never be met with pepper spray. A baton is considered a weapon and would be most likely met with deadly force unless there were multiple officers. The only reason a baton is not considered deadly force in the hands of an officer is officers are trained to target knees and elbows with baton strikes.
Also, the justification behind the use of deadly force is behavior that has caused or imminently threatens to cause death or great bodily harm to a person. At the top of your force continuum chart it shows assaultive behavior (causing serious physical injury/death) is met with deadly force. Is does not simply state an armed person. There are instances when an unarmed person could pose that type of threat. There are some wonderful documentaries on the science of fighting that prove that.
While I do agree that officers do need to be held to a higher standard, your average citizen does not understand the training an officer goes through or what a potentially life threatening situation is like.
(edited by moderator to merge split posts)
I am not your average citizen, Carson. And while I am not a LEO, I have quite a bit of training on self-defense in hand-to-hand, edge weapons, pistols, and have a CCW permit. I have twice had to fight for my life against armed opponents, (which is far outside the statistical norm, I understand), I understand threat assessment and use of force. And the one thing your comment does not address is by far the most important point; that police use more force, more often, against black Americans, even when accounting for all other factors.
That is the problem. Ignoring or obfuscating it is no longer a solution.
That is impressive as far as a threat assessment resume so based off your resume I would think in regards to the Ferguson shooting you would see that the officer was justified in the original shooting.
I do agree that you are right that numbers of black Americans are involved in some form of the criminal justice system a extremely disproportionate amount than white Americans but I would also argue a lot of that has to do with socioeconomic issues just as much as it does with race. Are there racial issues in law enforcement? I agree one hundred percent. The DOJ report on race related issues in Ferguson proves that.
Racism is alive today and to say otherwise is ignorant. Unfortunately, racism isn’t the only problem that these situations bring up.
I did mention at the beginning of my comment that I agreed with you on some points. Unfortunately it’s difficult to type out a complete review of your article on my phone.
Being an LEO who is training to be both a professional communications and firearms instructor, I look at these shootings critically and try to base them on a case by case basis. I realize that a major point of your article is looking at the big picture of racial inequality.
Patrick, that is a remarkable fine thoughtfulo piece. I think you may have spent a lifetime in thought to produce it. You perhaps give Madison too much credit as very liberal. Tony was killed this weekend and there was scarcely a word in the papers.