Wim Demeere's Blog

Martial Arts, Self Defense and a Whole Lot More.

Unintended consequences of the George Floyd protests and riots, part three

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I had an interesting discussion re. the post I shared a few days ago about defunding the police and unintended consequences. It was a good-faith discussion, but we were very much at odds in our POVs.

One of my points is that you shouldn’t tear down a fundamental structure of modern society without a) having a detailed plan to replace it b) have broad support for it the citizenry c) most of all, you don’t cut billions worth of funding before a and b are a reality.
This has not happened; the contrary has. The consequences, LEOs moving away from those cities, retiring en masse, etc. are happening too.

The consequences to that are best illustrated by a French proverb:

“Si tous les dégoûtés s’en vont, il n’y a que les dégoûtants qui restent.”

Translation:

“If all the disgusted leave, only the disgusting stay.”

That means less than qualified officers on the job, corrupt officers can more easily do as they please; lowering of hiring criteria because nobody wants the job (going on in my country as I write this), etc. Many people can’t realistically foresee the results of such a dynamic so I wanted to explore that here.

One of the points I made to my discussion partner is that people have been throwing around terms like “fascist police” for years now. My position on that is:

  • If there is abuse, I’m all for prosecuting it to the fullest. LEOs should be held to a high standard. Period.
  • In my experience, the vast majority of people have no idea what that standard is. As in, not a single clue, because they have never read a police training manual, nor do they know the law enforcement policies and procedures their city or town approved and demands LEOs follow. And then there’s the “everybody is a lawyer” mindset. Hint: along with your constitutional rights come a series of obligations. It’s a package deal. If you can’t name them by heart, maybe look them up before you claim LEOs break the law when they come after you for doing just that…
  • “Facsist” has been so overused and devalued as to become meaningless. Same thing for “dictatorial” and “corrupt police force”. You can look at things on a sliding scale; that is one way and I won’t deny that. But you can also look at what clear examples of those terms are and compare them with your examples to get some perspective.

Here’s one:

Look up the reasons why this happened and then read on…

To the best of my knowledge, this is not consistently happening anywhere in the US right now. Nor is it pretty much accepted as normal life and no longer headline news after a few days, as is the case here. In most Western countries, political heads would roll…

I’m open to change my mind if you have evidence to prove me wrong.

Before you do: if your response is along the lines of “But Kent State!!!” then I will assume you only selectively read what I wrote here above and are cherry-picking sentences to make a failed comparison. That would make you a bad actor and I would not bother responding. Been told…

I’ve been fortunate to travel the world extensively throughout my life. I was in a fair number of countries where there was no such thing as democracy the way it is viewed in the West. Law enforcement and the use of violence by the authorities reflected that. The citizens there lived with it because it was a part of daily life. E.g.: insulting a police officer, as is commonly done in the West, gets you an instant beating at best, a bullet at worst.

Does that happen in the West too?

Yes.

But it is not the norm, which is my point.

An often neglected follow-up point is to ask how do you get to that point?

There are multiple factors but one of them is to:

Demoralize your LEOs by painting them all with the brush only the corrupt ones deserve.

Defund your police, which makes sure standards go down and thugs will replace the honest cops.

Repeat this cycle for a while and eventually, the breakdown will be complete.

 

What I find striking is how the folks shouting ACAB not only fail to understand this dynamic, but how they apply their solutions selectively. In most other professions, the first response to sub-standard performance is more training, not vilifying, and people are fine with that. But when it comes to law enforcement, that suddenly doesn’t apply anymore. Which brings us back to people not knowing what the standards are:

First, guess how many hours of firearms and use of force training the average LEO gets in a year. I mean official training, not what they do on their own dime.

Write it down.

Then contact as many officers as you can all over the country to see what the number really is.

Then ask yourself who decides how much money is spent on LEO training.

Answer: politicians. Of all parties, I might add…

If you want good doctors, engineers, programmers, etc. you train them. Not just once, but throughout their careers. If you don’t want to do that, then don’t expect to have professionals on the job. The same goes for law enforcement.

Which brings us to the final question:

How much additional taxes are you willing to pay to make this happen?

Joe Rogan and Jocko Willink often say that a LEO should be a BJJ purple belt.

That’s a great idea. Some thoughts:

  • How long does it take to become a purple belt? How many hours? How much does that cost?
  • All training means the LEO is not on the job. Who covers for them while they train? How much does that cost?
  • If the previous bullet means daily service can’t be guaranteed, that means hiring extra personnel. How much does that cost?
  • How about all the other training LEOs have to do? Firearms, driving, First Aid, etc. Is that important enough to increase those training budgets too or do those things suddenly don’t matter anymore? How much does that cost?

I could go on, but the point stands: how much more do you want to pay in taxes to get the job done properly? Failing that, which programs do you want to defund to fund law enforcement training?

Just because the questions aren’t comfortable to answer, doesn’t mean they are invalid or unimportant. Welcome to life among the adults, where things are rarely simple and easy and almost always complicated…

 

Conclusion.

I’ve said it before: for many people, you could make the case that everything they know about violence is wrong. So then it is not surprising they come up with unworkable solutions to problems they can’t even begin to understand. There used to be a time people accepted it as a given you couldn’t be an expert on everything, let alone having even a basic understanding. Today, having an opinion on everything is seen as critical, regardless of how uninformed it is. Multiply that by many years and you get to where we are now: fundamental pillars of modern society are torn down…

History is an able teacher. Look to what mankind consistently did when society got rid of the watchmen. While you’re at it, also look into the reasons why modern policing was created a few centuries ago. Hint: community policing failed miserably once population size and density increased…

Actions have consequences and this will be the same. I don’t fault activists for trying to create a better world, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We’ll see where it all goes, but invariably, societies with a bad police force tend to be violent, dangerous places to live for the average citizen.

Which is the exact opposite of what the activists claim is their goal…

Unintended consequences of the George Floyd protests and riots, part two

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Read this first: Unintended consequences of the George Floyd protests and riots.

Then watch this:

  • A few things:
    She lies about not having a firearm on her. Breaking News! People lie to the police, in particular when they have done something wrong.
  • She is compliant, right up to the point where she isn’t. In the blink of an eye, the script is switched.
  • When she attacks, she immediately scales up all the way to lethal force. No slow ramp up, just skip straight to the killing part.
  • Notice how many times the officer has to tell the men to stay away. Why? Because they in no way help the situation and more likely than not make it more difficult to handle. E.g.: she immediately becomes verbally aggressive when they are close to her.
  • Despite being asked to hang back, the man stays close. When she runs, she runs in his direction. Notice how he then has to run for cover because suddenly, every bullet is coming in his direction too…

If you can accept the above in this case, apply the same logic to other incidents where you instinctively want to yell at the cops for not trusting the suspect, stopping them “without reason”, etc.

Why?

Because:

  • You don’t have all the facts. Unless you made the call, you don’t know why the police were called. In this case, the caller said the woman fired a gun. Unless you saw it yourself, you don’t know that. All you see is the police arresting a woman “for no reason”. You’d be wrong in thinking that. You’d be even more wrong in interfering because of it…
  • Even if she hadn’t fired the gun, she had an outstanding warrant for her arrest: you don’t know that. That “for no reason” narrative is only true in your own head.
  • There is no way to predict which incidents will explode into lethal force like this one and which ones will not. Rewatch the video. She is compliant all the way except for the end. Had she not pulled the gun, she most likely would not have been shot. Point is, what *looks* like compliance can *always* escalate in this way.
  • Re. the previous point: when an officer gives you a *lawful* order, follow it. There are reasons for this, including both their and your safety (remember the guy not hanging back when told and then bullets whizzing at him?) and not escalating a situation. There are procedures, no matter how imperfect, they have to follow for many reasons they don’t have to explain to you.

The folks at police activity do good work IMO. No drama, no outrage clickbait headlines, just (relatively) neutral presenting the video evidence, including the cases of bad use of force.

I wish PDs around the world would spend more time explaining what I just did here above, give examples of what they face every day, and why they do things a certain way. There is too much misinformation and delusional thinking about violence, as well as what it takes to handle it.

This is not without horrible consequences…

Which ones?

Let’s start here: [Read more…]

Unintended consequences of the George Floyd protests and riots

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UPDATE: Here is part two on unintended consequences.

Loads of stuff going on in the world since George Floyd was killed. Some of it is positive, some is neutral. But a lot of it is also very, very bad. I’ve written about that in the past here on my blog, but the last few years mostly for my Patrons here. This week I wrote 3500+ words on the current state of affairs. The main reason I pulled back from doing so publicly is that too often it was like talking to a wall. The people who understood already knew. Those who didn’t all too often didn’t want to see. There were exceptions, of course, but dealing with folks who only want to shout at you for having a different opinion is a waste of my time.

Fast forward to today.

The US is burning and so are many countries across the world. It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop soon. It seemed to fizzle out a bit, but I expect this to continue for a while. At best, it slows down enough for life to resume more or less. At worst it escalates. Either way, when the US elections happen in November, my money is on more violence.

I’m not going to argue over the validity of the protests. If you live in a country where you have a right to do so, then by all means go ahead. Personally, I don’t believe protests are effective and have many negative side effects too. I live 10min. from a city where every three out of four days, there are protests, year-round and this for years on end. From what I’ve seen, it never changed anything on a fundamental level except once. And even with this one is debatable if things turned out for the better. But if you feel different, that is your right.

The destruction, rioting, and looting? No. Just flat out no. Any justification you can come up with can be refuted by this question:

Is it OK if other people do it to you for reasons you don’t care about but they do?

If you answer “yes”, then I applaud you for being consistent. I also wish you luck when the mob comes for you. Remember to not stand in their way or defend what is yours. Because if the riots today are justified, then those are too. If you condone it in principle, the principle applies also when you have skin in the game.

If you answer “no” then you are a hypocrite. Shame on you. All you want is power and you don’t care who gets hurt. Shame. On. You.

Regardless of what you think or feel, the situation is what it is. And the actions of protestors, rioters, and looters along with those of the media, politicians, and celebrities have consequences. Some are good, others neutral and some downright frightening. I won’t go into all of them, but I will talk about unintended consequences.

Unintended consequences

Wikipedia mentions three categories:

  • Unexpected benefit: A positive unexpected benefit (also referred to as luck, serendipity or a windfall).
  • Unexpected drawback: An unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy.
  • Perverse result: A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution makes a problem worse).

This is a workable definition for the concept. Let’s go over these three categories with some examples as they relate to the current situation.

 

Unexpected benefit

At the very least, you can say that the issues of police brutality and racism are front and center. Everybody is talking about it. The news is full of it, politicians talk about it non-stop, it’s all over the place and this for weeks on end. I think that’s a good thing.  Police officers abusing their badge or being overly violent is wrong, period. If they are guilty of that, then they should be punished to the full extent of the law. In modern society, we place the monopoly of violence in their hands. The corollary to that is that they can’t abuse it and that they need to use it for our benefit, according to the law.

There are bad cops, just like there are bad doctors, firemen, nurses, lawyers, secretaries, painters, clerks, etc. until the end of time. All of my LEO friends agree with me on that. I believe it is in everybody’s interest that all LEOs police their own and weed out the bad apples. If not, then we can talk about being complicit in their crimes or at the very least, looking away. We saw with George Floyd’s death what that looks like for civilians. We’re also living with the consequences of it now…

So to all LEOs out there, don’t protect those who don’t deserve it. You know who the bad apples are if you’ve worked with them. Don’t look away because now more than ever, and for most of you undeservedly so, you are under the microscope. If there is anything good that can come out of this on your end, then this might be a part of it.

 

Unexpected drawback

There are a bunch of these,  I won’t cover them all but here goes:

  • People leave the cities. Apparently, 25% of Minneapolis homes and 43% of apartments hit the market after the riots there. I’m going to oversimplify things for brevity’s sake, but here is the snowball effect this creates: people leave – they take their income with them – the taxable base diminishes – the city has less tax revenue – taxes have to go up to keep the city running. Here’s another train of thought to follow: all businesses these people frequented lose revenue – if they aren’t fully insured, some of these will have trouble surviving as they try to rebuild their looted and vandalized establishments – losing revenue can mean they go bankrupt.
  • It’s not just Minneapolis. In San Francisco, people are also leaving and the same is happening in other cities. There are additional factors in play, but the riots seem to have accelerated this dynamic. See the previous for some of the consequences this creates for those who remain.
  • Companies leave. This is one example, but there are more. In short, businesses got burned to the ground or vandalized and looted. Many business owners feel the city let them down. Given the choice, they prefer relocating elsewhere. Which means a loss of jobs. During what might become the worst economic depression in a century…
  • Existing companies were already in trouble. Like I wrote above, there is a potential economic catastrophe brewing due to Covid19. E.g.: Starbucks is permanently closing 400 locations. A quick Google Maps search showed me about 20 locations in Minneapolis. When the company decides which locations to close, do you think they’ll take into account the situation I described in the previous bullets? It seems likely they would…
  • The police and policing are changing. I mentioned the potentially positive consequences before; here are some negative ones. Officers are resigning across the country, for a variety of reasons but many have to do with the protests and riots. Many people want to defund the police and allocate those resources elsewhere. Minneapolis will actually abolish its police force.  This will radically change how PDs work right now and in the near future. At a minimum, this will create chaos and uncertainty in the short term. Chaos in law enforcement tends to favor only one group: those who want to break the law. Case in point: in Los Angeles, the first week of the protests and riots saw murders increase 250%. Other cities also saw increases in crime.

I could go on but I’ll stop here. Let’s look at the perverse effects now.

Perverse result

Now we get to the really bad stuff.

  • Can cities survive? With over 400 businesses damaged or destroyed, the cost to Minneapolis is estimated at 500 million dollars. Even if the business is fully insured, it can take over a year to rebuild it. In the meantime: zero income and no jobs for the locals. Multiply this by 400 and then understand how the economy of the city is in ruins. This is a critical factor in making cities not recover for fifty years and eventually go bankrupt…
  • Who gets hurt? The perverse consequence of all the above is that minorities are likely to be hurt the most. The mom and pop stores of their local communities are either gone or will suffer in the near future and likely not survive. The often low-income jobs in all the restaurants, shops, stores, and other businesses: gone.
  • Minority-owned businesses are destroyed too. In the name of justice for black people, black businesses are destroyed. I fail to see how that helps black people… Here’s an example from (as far as I could find out) the Rodney King riots:

  • Generational setback. Look at the above video again and listen to what he says: he worked his way out of the ghetto and managed to start his business. I’ve no doubt he worked hard for it. Then the rioters and looters take it away. Here’s something you should know: poverty and marginalization are often generational. Breaking out of those is difficult, to put it mildly. One of the best ways to do improve your financial situation in your lifetime is to start a business, make it successful and then sell it. A second-best way is to pass it on to your children who then have their own lifetime to make it grow and prosper, lifting up the rest of the family along the way.  Do this right, and you have a chance to create generational wealth that is passed on into the future. So what the rioters did to this man was not only destroy what took him a tremendous amount of time and effort to build, they also destroyed his chance to pass it on to his children. His entire family is set back multiple generations. I again fail to see how this all helps black people.
  • Potential for violence. All the above, combined with an ongoing pandemic, means society at large will see a vastly increased potential for violence. The kind which affects everybody, likely black people and other minorities the most.

 

Conclusion

This isn’t meant to be a final analysis of anything. This is just me giving my opinion on what I see happening and what I don’t see the media talking about. It’s only a part of my opinion: I’m angry like I have rarely been before. Because history teaches us what comes next.  The things I have feared for years would happen are increasingly a reality. I predict it will all get a lot worse before it can get better.  Nothing I can do about it now, alea jacta est a long time ago. I’ll just keep on doing what I have done for the past few decades: write, teach and hope some people find it useful.

Stay safe.

Charlottesville and what comes next

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I didn’t watch the news yesterday evening so I only found out about what happened in Charlottesville this morning. I did some checking, saw what some of my friends were saying and decided to post this article. It’s from the Patreon Newsletter I wrote in March. I edited it slightly for clarity and added a few things.

Here goes:

******

Violence in Modern Society

For the last few years I’ve posted videos and articles, mostly on my blog and Facebook page, that weren’t about self-defense per se but more about trends in our modern, Western societies. Some of the feedback I got was along the lines of “What the hell are you talking about?” so I thought it might not be a bad idea for me to explain myself a bit. Here goes.

The last twenty years have seen many changes in not only the entire world, but in particular in Western societies and most notably in the US. I will focus on the latter, but have seen similar things happen in the EU where I live. I think it’s a universal trend as opposed to an isolated one. The picture is complex and I need to put several pieces of the puzzle on the table before it makes sense.

One piece of that puzzle is terrorism:

  • First and foremost, 9/11 happened some fifteen years ago and it changed the world as well as the American government, its policies and its society.
  • France and Belgium had their own 9/11 these last few years with the Paris and Brussels attacks.
  • Germany had numerous attacks in the Summer of 2016. Though there were less casualties in total, the frequency was higher and the attacks perhaps more brutal (though we can argue about that.)
  • The UK also had its share of terrorist attacks, with again, relatively speaking less victims but in a more personal (and therefor more frighting) manner.
  • Since then, numerous terrorist attacks have been thwarted in several EU countries. This information rarely makes the news and when it does, it is routinely ignored by the media because it scares the readers and viewers.

A second piece is the rise of social media and alternative media channels:

  • Facebook and Twitter became dominant platforms. They offer instant, worldwide communication via text, audio and video. This has positive and negative consequences, which I won’t go into here. The point is that news, fake or otherwise, goes global in an instant and can be seen by anybody with an internet connection, be they rich or poor, smart or stupid, etc. This is unprecedented in human history.
  • Any message can go viral, regardless of significance or time frame. For instance, one man live-Tweeted the raid on Osama Bin Laden. Only afterwards did he realize the significance of what he tweeted. Another example is the live video broadcast on Facebook of the torture of a young man. This led to arrests and a debate on racism, violence and society in general.
  • An argument can be made that humans have not yet figured out how to handle this flood of information and disinformation. We also don’t know how things will evolve in the future, but these issues are unlikely to go away.

The third piece is the advent of extreme positions in academia and lobby groups, in particular since the latest US elections: [Read more…]

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