Observing service and costs

As I posted yesterday, it is astonishing to me how incoherent are the protests and riots at this time. There is no problem being identified which needs to be solved. There are no solutions being advocated. Simply rioting and protesting a tragic death.

We can all agree that the death was tragic and should not have occurred. It is of course way too early to determine culpability though initial and incomplete evidence suggests both officer culpability and departmental culpability.

Was it a preventable accident? Seems like it but we won't know till we have the complete picture. The fact that the victim was experiencing or had had Covid-19 and also had trace remains of multiple powerful drugs in his system complicates the picture further.

But unarmed deaths of civilians occurring during arrest are rare. Some nine African-Americans and nineteen Whites from memory in 2019. And most of those were transparently justifiable, the perpetrators physically attacking police with objects at hand, even though unarmed. Given patterns of crime commission, there is no disparate impact on African Americans.

The number of civilian fatalities remains too high, 1,000 if I remember correctly in 2019. But again, these are not police initiated but civilian initiated. We are asking police to subdue and take into custody armed and violent perpetrators without injuring or killing them. It is the right goal and it is hard to achieve. Since 2014, we have gotten much better at it and the numbers are down pretty dramatically from in the past but it is still a work in progress.

So George Floyd's death was a tragedy. Possibly an avoidable tragedy. And we should mark that tragedy as appropriate.

But it is not evidence of systemic racism or an indictment of the police as they continue to drive down civilian deaths.

So what is being protested exactly? This was a police caused death in a blue city in a blue state. Is it systemic racism as being claimed? Seems improbable. Is the protest to speed up improved training? Plausible but that is not a demand that is being articulated.

It looks entirely like a political operation.

Meanwhile, the reverse is not covered at all by the mainstream media (MSM). We want no civilians to die at the hands of police and we also want no police to die at the hands of civilians. The press rarely covers the tragedies on the police side of the equation.

From 6 officers have died in the last 10 days. The media has barely said a word. To be clear, these are not police killed in the riots. This is the marking of the passing of six officers to whom we have delegated extensive authority and responsibility to do an inherently dangerous job.

Two of the officers died from causes unrelated to their service. Three died in the line of service. One in hot pursuit, one during a traffic stop, one from a heart attack after a prison shakedown. One died from Covid-19, presumably contracted in the line of service given the impossibility of maintaining social distancing while policing.

For those obsessed with race - Two Hispanics, two Whites, two African-Americans.

For those obsessed with gender - Four men and two women.

Their stories are not told by the mainstream media.

And what of the police murdered and injured in the riots so far? I know of two retired officers working security who were assassinated. The right leaning blogs are noting their passing and honoring their service. Both African-American. The mainstream media seems not to have noticed them. I see many reports of serious police injury but I have not seen any effort to acknowledge the rapidly accumulating physical cost.

And civilian victims of the rioters? I know the Dallas shop owner beaten by Antifa has died from his injuries. I have seen many reports seemingly indicating other deaths but I have no sense of the number of civilian dead and injured from the rioters.

We are left with some unknown but real number of dead police, injured police, dead and injured civilians from rioters. The MSM seems not to notice or care. And we still don't have a known reason for the protests and riots other than social mayhem. There is no focused problem that those involved seem to want solved.

And if this is all for political effect? The mind boggles at the evil.