Law Enforcement and Guns

The total number of law enforcement deaths by gunfire for 2016 came in at a very grim total of 63. More than 200 other officers were shot, but thankfully survived. A toddler shoots themselves or another sibling on average of once a week in the last two years. Road rage shootings are on the rise, and an average of 40,000 gun-related suicides occur each year. An armed society is a polite society? This doesn’t feel polite to me.

Why doesn’t law enforcement have more to say about this issue? Can’t we, for the sake of non-political, reasonable discussion, resist the temptation to fall into the traps of political theater and really talk about what we can do.

We’ve all been to too many police funerals and lost too many friends to remain silent. Our tears alone will not help if we do not also acknowledge the many flaws in our system that allow criminals and mentally ill individuals access to guns. Not to mention the folly of ignoring the proliferation of guns in our society, coupled with the levels of incivility, anger and intolerance in our country right now. Everyone is frustrated, short-tempered and armed. Somehow, we must acknowledge this combustible mix that is taking a toll on us all in too many bloody tragedies.

Forget the war on terror, we’re terrorizing each other in this country every day.

This is not about Constitutional rights. Cops know there are practical ways to impact gun violence. We just have to agree not to allow our thinking to immediately jump into a defensive posture or all-or-nothing scenarios about 2^nd Amendment rights. Let’s start by agreeing we don’t want to take guns from law-abiding citizens. Let’s also reject the defeatist premise that says there are so many guns that there’s nothing we can do. Cops solve problems.

So, let’s talk reality and common sense from a police perspective. For me, it’s not about the debates raging about whether we need more laws or more guns, etc. It’s about ignoring the noise and getting down to what can help us do our jobs better and improve our safety on the street.

Of those 200 cops shot on the job in 2016, tragically, 63 were murdered by gunfire. The vast majority of those murders were committed by criminals (mostly felons) and mentally ill subjects. Many factors dealing with these subjects have little to do with the cop on the beat, but ignoring them increases the danger for every man and woman wearing a badge.

Investigations: Once the crime is solved, we should be tracing guns more thoroughly, all the way to the source, really examining their paths. NYPD recently traced firearms used in multiple police shootings of officers to the same gun shop in Georgia. Some agencies are becoming more proactive but this needs to become the norm. If we consistently investigate deeper, patterns will develop in criminal activity and more crimes will be solved. More guns off the street. Less danger for cops. Safer communities.

You say funding? Cops ought to be angry that the very federal agency tasked with helping our firearms investigation has deliberately been underfunded for decades. There is no excuse for hamstringing the ATF. Local law enforcement needs greater federal assistance in order to solve more gun crimes.

Mental illness? We express outrage and shock when an unstable person shoots an officer or civilian, whether mass incidents or not. We decry the ability of these folks to get their hands on guns, yet stand idly by while politicians fail to take more aggressive action to prevent it.

Terrorist watch list? I’m told that law abiding citizens might erroneously get put on a list. I’d respond that law enforcement routinely relies on databases for arrests or other action on virtually every aspect of our job. Do some people get detained or even arrested by mistake due to clerical error? Yes. Do we say we should shut down every NCIC, State or DL database? Of course not. Then why would we not use this same technology to keep guns away from individuals flagged as terrorists or mentally ill?

Domestic abusers? Violent felons? Same thing. Are we doing enough to proactively ensure they no longer have guns in their possession? Laws prohibit offenders from having guns. We need proactive strategies to use those laws to remove guns before the tragedy happens. Are we going to their homes and removing them before the next crises?

Last week, congress voted to remove a procedure to “flag” folks identified as having mental disability. The bill didn’t automatically call for taking their guns, merely to notify the FBI database of status. Opponents say it is wrong to flag people who have mental illness, dementia, or other issues. Consequently, a whole class of people who are possibly erratic and maybe dangerous can now keep their guns because we don’t have the courage to act.

How many cops will this place in danger on the next call to a home about a family member who’s become violent?

My brothers and sisters in blue, it’s time for us to speak up in the plain and simple language of a street cop. The ones in the line of fire. The first responders to every horrific crime scene, whether a suicide, murder, or the accidental shooting of a child. You carry this burden. You know that slogans and politics are never going to fix this. It’s time to weigh in on how to reasonably put a dent in the issue of criminals, mental illness, and guns. Law enforcement must speak out for good laws, but even more important, advocate for smart, proactive enforcement. Aggressive prevention that we know will save lives. Maybe even your own.

Be safe.

What the nobility of policing requires

“We are rightly critical of journalists and members of the public who misrepresent what we do as police officers. Do we not, therefore, owe it to ourselves to be equally critical of fellow police officers, whose actions misrepresent the work we do?”

~Paul Grattan, Jr. One Police Project

This quote is very important in the context of our ongoing national struggle over police and public relationships. We do a lot of talking about how we feel under appreciated or maligned, but what are we doing about cleaning up our own house? I think we owe it to ourselves to do some serious soul-searching about this.

I realize that when we look at policing through our personal lens, we see only a few egregious cases of misconduct splashed across the headlines in any given period of time. We are right that the misconduct numbers are a small number of the thousands of calls handled each and every day. The problem comes when you look at the bigger picture.

Step back and look at the numbers nationally and the instances of misconduct start looking more widespread. They are not the norm, but trust me they are too numerous to ignore. We do so at our own peril because every instance that gives the profession a black eye affects your safety. Yet, we refuse to meet this internal challenge head on.

I know there are many checks on officer conduct and Internal investigators do a good job at identifying the worst cases. What I’m talking about is a culture of minimizing bad conduct. We cannot be okay with that.

Whether it’s a willful blind eye or an increasing tendency to conjure up some false equivalency in our collective hearts, we have created a situation where bad behavior lives within our ranks. There will always be criminals and criminals behave in deceitful, treacherous ways, but that can never be an excuse for any law enforcement professional to violate any code of ethics or standard of conduct. We are the professionals.

Let me give you a current example. The Pennsylvania State Police are currently dealing with a scandal regarding cheating at their academy. According to the final report, there was an ongoing practice of instructors giving exam answers to cadets. It had gone on for years. Dozens of cadets from the current class either resigned or were fired. The real problem is that not one instructor or full-time trooper was disciplined, let alone fired.

As a trainer and later supervisor, I personally experienced a number of cases in which I detailed misconduct of either recruits or tenured officers and those individuals were not fired. In two cases, the officers I had identified as being character-deficient, they ended up doing far worse things and embarrassing the agency. One is now in prison. So, why are we so ready to keep these folks in uniform? They are cancers in the community and cancers to internal morale. Purge them.

And before you tell me these are isolated incidents, explain why only four states in this country require decertification for misconduct. How many cases do you know where the officer was allowed to resign in lieu of firing? A little digging into a few of the high-profile cases of the past couple of years will show you that many of those officers had troubled histories prior to the one that made national headlines.

These are the dirty little secrets we don’t want to talk about in mixed company. I know. But we must find the courage to address this. I don’t say this to air dirty laundry. I say this because I care about policing. I care about the tens of thousands of you who are honest and out there doing a great job. Every single bad cop allowed to stay does damage that makes you unsafe. It’s that simple.

I’m calling on police leadership, unions, and everyday cops to insist we do better. Stop saying it’s all about the media or BLM or whoever. Those groups would have nothing to say if we eliminated those who do not embody the ethical code we swore an oath to uphold. If we stood up and publicly said we will not tolerate less than the highest standards, then we would gain so much more trust in the public eye. Some chiefs and sheriffs are exemplifying this approach and their departments enjoy above average public support.

These law enforcement leaders prove we can do this. We must. We owe it to the community we serve. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to every kid who looks at our shiny badge and dreams of being a hero one day. The nobility of policing requires it.