My recent article on the death of Patrick Lyoya at the hands of former officer, Christopher Schurr, led me to the thoughts that I wrote about in this article. It’s more a story of nostalgia in the face of changing times, but is as relevant now as it was when my memories of a much less complex world were being formed back in high school.
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When dad was growing up in the 1950s, there were certainly violent crimes – murders, even. But they were sensational and outrageous, that news of these instances traveled far and wide, and scared the crap out of the entire country.
Moving forward a generation, when I was growing up, we heard of violent crime as well, and many of us even experienced it first hand. This is because, with the increase in population, also came an increase in cases of violence. I’m sure there are several contributing factors to this, but a presiding assumption from my own, humble perspective is that the cases increased with population, of course, but also for a complex number of reasons. And I think that’s because society as a whole has become more complex between my dad’s generation and my own.
And the word “complex” that I keep using here, is specifically to identify that the structure and imperatives of society as a whole have grown complex at a rate that exponentially surpasses our society’s ability to adapt to that cadence and scope of change. In other words, I don’t think that our ability to cope with change is evolving at a speed necessary to keep up with the social changes and expectations that we are placing on ourselves.
And we see examples of this all over the place, where, in the past, there would be, for instance, the Vietnam War and people would protest about that one conflict until they saw results. Or there would be a women’s lib movement and women would dedicate years to the effort. Today, we have wars piled on top of financial crises, on top of mob-style riots following an unjust court ruling, on top of huge fires made worse by global warming, followed immediately by a season of ultra-violent mass shootings, right on top of a terrorist event somewhere in the world.
If you add concentrated efforts at internal conflict like Incels and Antifa, on top of aggressive groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, and then consider all the terror events that are making more headlines lately, there’s just too much for most people to keep up with.
Perhaps someday I’ll write about my experience in an active shooter scenario in my school when I was in third grade, and my brother was in fifth grade. That experience shaped both of our lives, and is a prime example of an increase in both statistical probabilities of involvement with violent crime changing over between my generation and his.
Columbine also marks a moment in American history when crime took a front seat in the news and frightened a nation for the sheer determination of the murders and killers in question. I’ll suffice it to say for this conversation, that crime encroached further into personal experiences as I grew up.
The next generation has seen shootings and violent crime rise even further, making Columbine look more like a stepping stone than an isolated incident in recent history. And shootings became more prevalent outside of schools as well. Community organizations, places of religious congregation, places of commerce have all literally come under fire by those attempting to perpetrate a great deal of harm and horror on their neighbors.
This is one aspect that separates my generation from my father’s – the sheer intentionality of acts of violence. These acts were intended to either provoke some kind of localized response, or simply to exact carnage before committing suicide. There were a lot of other intentions behind mass killings, of course, but I’ve covered some of the research in previous articles you’re welcome to read up on for that.
Ever since 9/11 when the world was shattered by the crumbling towers, nothing has ever been the same. A new era of anti-trust was ushered in. And a culture that was once free to assume innocence before guilt, started down the path of a paradigm shift that’s resulted in what we see today – long waiting lines at TSA checkpoints for commercial flights, metal detectors at courts and police stations, and a flurry of new background checks and interview points for otherwise innocuous jobs and general access.
These days, you finally have to take the news seriously…
Here’s an anecdotal comparison that drives my point: within a couple years of first getting my license, I got a flat tire. I was pulled over on the side of the road, in the middle of changing it when a cop pulled up behind me and put his lights on. I was alerted to the situation, but I wasn’t necessarily alarmed. In other words, I was cautious of an interaction with a police officer, but I wasn’t altogether worried about what would happen.
In fact, I was right to be both calm and also concerned and also calm. As was part of his job description at the time, the officer had stopped behind me to ensure that passing vehicles did not steer into me. stopped to help. These days if a cop stops you have a measurable, statistical probability of that interaction ending with you being shot.
These days, police have absolutely no obligation to assist anyone in any way, even if that effort could result in saving someone’s life. And there are examples all over the world where proof is available. Thankfully, we haven’t descended into the depths where all officers remember and exercise their freedom to refuse lifesaving services. But the difference between my experience as a new driver, and the experience new drivers are having on the road today with police officers, is very telling of how trust in law enforcement is rightly diminished.
In fact, one has but to Google terms like “police involved shootings” to see seemingly endless pages of results of officers being fired or even charged with murder and murder-related crimes for Worse yet are the cases where officers should have been charged, but weren’t – often as a result of technicalities stitched into the law to protect officers and grant them additional rights over the citizens they serve.
Things shouldn’t be this way. That complexity that I referenced before: it has contributed to issues on both sides of this debate. And while it may be true that there is a knowable solution lingering out there in the ether, it’s certainly not known to us right now.
Case by case, we’re seeing charges either dropped or refused for bad officers entangled in extremely questionable violent crimes, where convictions for good officers are also easily found on headlines around the nation.
The only easy answer that covers all the chaotic rubble of the debate is that there is no easy answer. There’s no one way to sum it all up, while simultaneously including both sides of the argument and also offering a semblance of peace to the victims that find themselves in the fray.
I’ll go on record once again and say that we absolutely need good cops. I for one have always supported the work of good officers in defense of, and service to, their communities. But I think that, as a result of the exposure that cops have had lately for their involvement in killing innocent victims, young men these days are a lot less likely to choose policing as their career.
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Images in this article came from ABC news.