How to Save Black Lives

By |2020-08-11T16:05:43-07:00June 18, 2020|Social Justice|

Black Lives Matter. Period. The deaths of black men at the hands of police are tragedies that we as a society must work to stop.  Demands for change are appropriate and necessary. But, I worry that anti-police and anti-government protests don't help us move forward. To me there is a difference between insisting on systemic changes and insisting that authorities are evil. In the 1960’s governors stood in the doors of schoolhouses to keep black people out, politicians publicly advocated segregation, and law enforcement openly planned how to violently attack marchers.  There is no 2015 -- or 2020 -- equivalent [...]

Meditations on The Thin Blue Line

By |2020-06-14T10:50:10-07:00June 13, 2020|Social Justice|

It's been 40 years since my dispatching days at Long Beach Police. Have things changed? I remember working the day shift and wondering why whenever a certain officer radioed that he was going to investigate a suspicious subject on his own initiative, a unit or two would immediately go to his assistance. He didn't ask for back-up, but units who were supposedly busy magically cleared and showed up at his side. Unit 7 -- or was it Unit 21? some details fade -- was rarely alone with someone he stopped. Other units investigated people and wrote tickets without other cops [...]

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