Equalizing the decision portfolios at a class level rather than racial grievance mongering

A reasonably balanced representation of the Brooks shooting. From Was the Shooting of Rayshard Brooks 'Lawful but Awful'? by Jacob Sullum. It also represents the missed opportunity of these tragedies.

They are getting buried by the swarms of victimhood merchants and the ravening packs of grievance jackals. They are most focused on turning tragedies into more diversity programs for middle class bureaucrats, financial settlements, set-asides, special dispensations. Even the holy grail of Reparations.

These opportunists are not interested in improving justice or reducing deaths or fixing broken systems. They are in it for the money. Often nakedly so. People turn away from the transparent evil.

The alternative is to recognize that we all share the same goal - no police killed by civilians and no civilians killed by police.

How that might be achieved is a matter of shared interest, empiricism and logic, and unpleasant trade-offs.

The opportunity for agreement between the hard left is in the article's subheading: "Every encounter with armed agents of the state has the potential to end tragically, which is a good reason to minimize such encounters." A great encapsulation of a common libertarian belief. Many, many classical liberals (conservatives) similarly share a concern about over-regulation, over-criminalization, over-charging, and over-policing. We can work in common respect towards mutual shared goals.

But that won't happen as long as the grievance merchants are in the mix. They don't share those goals and are not operating in good faith.

But such good faith efforts would get us closer to what I think is a common problem.

Most of the most dramatic encounters are between large black men and police officers. Being large and strong, they have an option of resistance not open to most. Secondly, most these men are a) poor, b) living reasonably chaotic lives, and c) have a raft of past charges, outstanding warrants or other issues which make an arrest the straw that breaks the camels back.

A skinny middle class professional who has taken a client out for an exhausting evening on the town, had too much to drink and stops for a burger and falls asleep in the drive-thru line. When the police rap on his window, his scenarios are expansive. If he is polite and compliant he might get off with a warning. Maybe he is allowed to call an uber, which he can afford. If he is issued a citation, it is an embarrassment and perhaps a few hundred bucks which he can afford. He can probably get it expunged from his record if he takes some classes which he has the time and money for. The net of the possible scenarios are essentially an inconvenience. He has virtually no upside to any sort of confrontation.

A day laborer stops in the same line after a long hard day, sore, buzzed from a few beers. The police rap on his window. He ten dollars in his pocket. He has six children by four women. His rent is due in two weeks. Covid-19 has put his how low wage job at risk. He has an outstanding warrant for failure to appear. If he is taken into custody, he loses is job, loses his apartment, can't provide for his children, likely spends a month or more wending his way through the court system before his case is addressed one way or another, all the time held in jail. If he can talk his way out of this, that is the best scenario. But if he cannot, then resisting arrest, though not legal, moral, or wise, is a risky but potentially valuable. The downside risks of arrest versus resist are both terrible. The upside benefit from compliance is terrible as well. The upside benefit from resistance is a very high; discounted by the probability of failure.

You can see that under these two scenarios, two citizens under the same laws administered equally, have two very different portfolios of choices, one portfolio far superior to the other. But they are not and cannot be the same consequence, even though treated equally under the same laws.

First - That is a class issue not a race issue.

Second - Think about what might be done to improve and equalize the decision portfolios so that there was not an inherent benefit to resistance for the poor underclass. It is very challenging to come up with specific solutions that are coherent and fair to all.

Third - Part of the solution is clearly to improve the trust of all citizens that an encounter with the police won't be a terrible disruption their lives. That can't happen when the grievance merchants are in the mix.

Fourth - Whatever you do end up doing, it is likely going to be expensive, perhaps only a marginal net improvement, and possibly with all sorts of potentially negative unintended consequences.

These are not simple issues. There is space for shared objectives and good outcomes. And there are way too many grievance merchants who only can benefit by proposing actions that benefit them and stand in the way of systemic reform.

We need strong leadership to seize the opportunity. But we don't have much quality leadership available.