I was a reporter at four different cities in two states during the decade of the 1960s, and I saw plenty of examples of bad cops.
To say that the criminal justice system in those days discriminated against blacks is a gross understatement. Until the federally-mandated reforms began to take hold as result of the Civil Rights movement, it wasn’t just the lawmen discriminating against those whose skins weren’t white. State law that they enforced did so as well.
Anyone, black or white, who thinks racism and brutality among police forces these days is worse than it ever was is badly mistaken.
Obviously there is too much of it, as evidenced by what’s being reported in videos that repeatedly are shown on television.
What often isn’t shown, or downplayed, is aggressiveness against police officers to the point that some are shot and killed as well as being cursed and spat on.
Not all cops are bad guys. The vast majority of them, in fact, are the good guys who put their lives on the line to serve and protect the rest of us. Many of them are themselves black or brown.
I remember a conversation I had with a citizen of Pike County sometime back in the late 1960s. This gentlemen, well-known among the power-brokers of the day, was low-key in his public profile.
But he maintained relationships with influential individuals in both the black and white communities and knew how to push buttons behind the scenes to affect the outcomes of local political races and public policy.
There are some men in Mississippi, he said, who would work as a deputy sheriff or constable without a salary. “Give them a gun and a badge with a little authority and they will survive.”
The implication was that they would survive on favors and/or extortion; but it also implied that there are some who love the work of law enforcement.
I don’t know that his assessment was totally accurate, even then, but it may have been close.
But there always have been officers more like former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant than those my late friend described.
Bryant, who was once a deputy sheriff, has said in interviews that as a young man his heart was in law enforcement. “I just wanted to be a deputy sheriff,” said Bryant in an interview. “I grew up admiring law enforcement. I wanted to be the guy out there fighting the bad guys and protecting the innocent.”
Let’s hope the movement in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis does result in some meaningful and beneficial justice reform.
But proposals to defund or do away with police departments are ridiculous.
Maybe some of them need reorganizing and weeding out of some bad officers, but if anything, police, in general, need more funding for salaries and training, not less.
Get rid of the police, and the ones to suffer will be the innocent poor, many of them of color. The rich will hire their own security.
The Minneapolis City Council has pledged to dismantle the Police Department, promising to create a new system of public safety.
Good luck with that. It’s an experiment that the whole nation will be watching with interest.
As for criminal justice reform, those calling for it should also listen to Jason Riley of The Wall Street Journal.
Asked by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday if the current promises of reform, following violence in the streets, will turn out like the past when “nothing much happens,” Riley, who is African-American, responded:
“I hope not, Chris, but I fear that it will be. I — partly because I don't think we’re looking at this in the right context, or in some cases in any context. We can talk about, you know, reforming police tactics, we can talk about reforming police unions or doing a better job of rooting out bad cops and so forth. I’m all for that. But that’s only going to get us so far because at the center of this problem is not police behavior, but criminal behavior.
“You know, something like around 7,000 — more than 7,000 black homicides take place each year. Police are involved in about two, three, 4 percent of them, Chris. So where — where is the — the outrage and the protest and the anger over the 95, 96, 97 percent of black homicides in this country that do not involve police in any way whatsoever? So even if the protesters are successful in ending police violence against blacks, as they’ve put it, they’ve solved about 2 percent of the problem here.
“So, again, I think we need to — to put this into context and I don’t see that being done in — in the media or among our political leaders.”
