Political Correctness: The Root Cause of the Michael Brown killing

Vincent J. Curtis

 

4 Dec 14

 

My hometown newspaper served as the audience for some thoughts on the Michael Brown and Eric Garner deaths.  I agree with Mark Steyn that police training is such that the killing of Michael Brown occurs all to often in the United States, but also in Canada.  Such training, I contend, is the logical consequence of forcing smaller and weaker people onto police forces out of political correctness, as indicated below.

 

 

Sirs;

 

The United States is suffering an outbreak of rioting from the deaths of two black men, Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner of New York City.  Both men were killed by police officers in the course of their arrests.

 

The police procedures which led to the killings of these two men are directly traceable to the cause of political correctness which was foisted on police departments decades ago by well-intentioned people.

 

It used to be that police officers were, as a rule, physically large, strong, and intimidating people.  One respected the police officer because of the consequences to you if you gave him guff.  But the regime of political correctness thought it wrong that small, physical weak, and unprepossessing people could not make it onto police forces.  Political pressure changed that.

 

The street did not change, however.  To compensate for the physical weakening of the average police officer, police training had to change.  Weaponry was added, and police were trained to use weaponry of various kinds in automatic response to a failure to comply on the part of a member of the public.  The old-fashioned punch in the mouth was replaced with a Taser, often from multiple officers.  You can’t expect a female police officer to physically overpower a male who is resisting arrest, and so she has to use a weapon to subdue the perp.  Thus the tactics of the weak gradually came to be the standard operating procedures of police forces under the rule of political correctness.

 

Michael Brown was three hundred pounds, and tall.  The police officer who tried to arrest him said he felt like a child next to Michael Brown.  Physically, he proved to be no match for Michael Brown when the latter assaulted him and resisted arrest.  The police officer used a weapon to subdue Brown, just as he had been trained to do.  There is no telling what would have happened if the police officer had been taller and stronger than he was, and had looked upon Brown as an opportunity for practice with a night-stick instead of a Glock.

 

Eric Garner was a street vendor who sold untaxed cigarettes for a living.  He could make a living because New York City taxes cigarettes at over $4.50 per pack.  Garner had over 31 arrests for this non-violent crime.  Like Michael Brown, Eric Garner was physically large and intimidating, and he resisted arrest.  Video of the arrest show Garner being set upon by four or five police officers, one of which had him in a chokehold.  That chokehold, and the pressure of several police officers on top of him caused Eric Garner to suffocate.  The Grand Jury in the Garner case refused to press charges against the police, much to the surprise of outside observers who would normally support the police.  (I put it down to jury nullification, New Yorkers who are familiar with the Eric Garner type and have no use for them.)

 

The police officers who arrested Garner looked tiny in comparison to Garner, who was physically larger than most NFL linemen.  However, two linebacker-sized police officers should have been enough to subdue Garner.  Instead, four defensive-back sized officers set upon him.  Police training, combined with a lack of confidence in their own physical prowess caused these officers to use more physical force than was necessary to secure compliance.

 

Something similar happened in Hamilton recently in the Steve Mesic case.

 

It may have been thought a good thing to have police forces more closely resemble the community they police.  More women, more minorities, and fewer big white guys.  Perhaps that is so.  However, cases in which police kill the perpetrator in the course of arrest point to the advantages of having a police force that more resembles a football team than the cheer-leading squad.

-30-