De-Policing America: A Street Cop’s View of the Anti-Police State

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-68261-669-7

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-670-3

De-Policing America:

A Street Cop’s View of the Anti-Police State

© 2018 by Steve Pomper

All Rights Reserved

Cover art by Christian Bentulan

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York • Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

To my brother and sister Seattle police officers and to all of America’s cops.

Contents

Introduction De-Policing, Political Indoctrination, and Community Education

Chapter 1 De-Policing

Chapter 2 Social Justice versus Equal Justice

Chapter 3 Police and Society

Chapter 4 Police Oath

Chapter 5 Badge of Honor

Chapter 6 U.S. Constitution Behind Every Badge

Chapter 7 Guns

Chapter 8 Less-than-Lethal

Chapter 9 Discretion

Chapter 10 Guardians of Liberty

Chapter 11 Rudeness or Officer Safety?

Chapter 12 Intent versus Letter versus Spirit

Chapter 13 Riot Police

Chapter 14 Cops Affect Real People’s Lives

Chapter 15 Cops as Tax Collectors

Chapter 16 Militarization

Chapter 17 Federalization

Chapter 18 Liberty Cop

Chapter 19 Good Ideas versus Good Laws

Chapter 20 Why Cops Hate Hate Crimes

Chapter 21 So Many Laws, Too Little Time

Chapter 22 No-Tolerance Policies

Chapter 23 The Line Cops Should Never Cross

Chapter 24 Cops Must Speak Out, but Carefully

Chapter 25 How De-Policing Affected Me

Articles

Acknowledgments

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

De-Policing, Political Indoctrination, and Community Education

If you want to understand the police officer’s world, start by asking yourself this question: when was the last time someone looked you right in the eyes and with a straight face said, These aren’t my pants?

***

Will a police officer respond when you are having the worst day of your life—what could be the last day of your life if they don’t? Will police officers in your town hesitate to act out of fear of being fired—or worse, going to prison? You hear from experts but rarely from those directly affected by destructive political policies—cops. This book gives one street cop’s perspective on de-policing .

I was compelled to write this book because many American cities are forcing their cops to undergo leftist political indoctrination and squelching the free speech rights of officers who speak against it. Seattle has implemented its radical left agenda through the insidious Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI). In Seattle, and through similar efforts in other law enforcement agencies, this is a leading cause of what has led to what has become known as de-policing. Leftist anti-police sentiment from groups such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) has resulted in a growing phenomenon where American law enforcement officers are forced to avoid certain types of police work. De-policing is the provocative term used to describe that caustic, anti-police environment where cops shun proactive patrol. Proactive patrol includes self-initiated police work separate from answering 911 calls. Things such as traffic enforcement, pedestrian violations, and checking on suspicious people.

Liberal policies force cops into this diluted policing approach because the left shows little respect or appreciation for law enforcement. Often, they demonstrate outright animus toward police. Police officers get scant support from many city administrations. Even worse, some leaders within the police department take the anti-police side. What do you expect? Police chiefs are appointed by liberal politicians. Cops have to adopt a career-survival approach to avoid discipline, termination, even incarceration.

It’s no surprise that this leftist disease would infect police departments as it has already infected America’s education system. Consider The Evergreen State College, an über-progressive institution of higher indoctrination in Olympia, Washington. In 2017, amidst other radical leftist turmoil, flamed on in part by BLM, one liberal college professor, Bret Weinstein, had the audacity to describe a call by student groups for white people to stay off campus on a particular day a violation of American civil rights. Which, of course, it is. Well, the professor did stay off campus but on a different day for a different reason. The Evergreen State College police chief told Weinstein it would be better to hold his class off campus due to safety concerns. Because of his principled stance, and for daring to appear on the Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight, these students called for Weinstein’s firing.

Thank you, Professor Weinstein, for reminding liberals of their former commitment to civil rights, including free speech. The professor and his wife, who is also an Evergreen professor, initiated a court action against the college. They agreed to a settle with Evergreen for half a million dollars. The Wall Street Journal’s Jillian Kay Melchior wrote an excellent piece, describing the situation in detail via college emails she obtained through Washington State’s Public Records Act.

I don’t speak for all police officers. In fact, I don’t speak for any other officer. I speak for one officer: me. However, after speaking, emailing, and texting for years with officers from all over America, I believe my viewpoint reflects that of many if not most American patrol officers. Remember, it’s cops who are directly affected by the left’s destructive social justice policies and laws that officers are expected to implement and enforce.

Still, people, both cops and civilians, will not agree with me on every issue. That’s as it should be. That’s America. We can learn from our disagreements. But we need to have this discussion from a perspective different from that of the left-wing politics, academia, and media that demonize anyone who disagrees with them. We can disagree, but let’s do it respectfully. And if what I say bothers you enough, write your own book.

Now, as great as pro-police books written by conservative academics are (some from which I quote), I’m sure the authors would agree that police officers’ voices are essential in the conversation. This brings up a point: why should you care what an ordinary patrol officer thinks? Good question. Well, I hope I’m well-read, educated, and articulate enough on law enforcement issues and the politics affecting them to present a rational argument. Most police officers strive to stay objective on the job. If they’re doing their jobs well, people will have little or no idea of an officer’s political slant. So, my having been a conservative street cop with a libertarian bent (perhaps what radio talk show host Larry Elder refers to as Republitarians) should interest the average person who might not have considered that cops can and do hold strong political views.

Too many liberal academics are eager to turn police officers into social experiments, testing new policies to advance their own preconceptions based upon partisan political ideology. It’s similar to how they make their case with so-called, manmade global warming. If you don’t agree with the supposed scientific consensus, you’re called a climate denier. This derision includes dissenting scientists. It’s not much of a consensus, or even scientific, when you attempt to malign scientists who refuse to join it. Well, in a similar vein, if you don’t agree with the anti-police faction, you’re labeled a police brutality-denier. It’s a standard leftist tactic.

When something goes wrong during a use-of-force situation, it’s always the cop’s fault. In fact, it’s the cop’s fault anytime an officer uses force. Come on, people. I know it’s weird, but some folks just don’t want to go to jail no matter how much you think you can sweet-talk them into a cell. Regrettably, most people don’t understand the nature of law enforcement. I can help.

The public cannot be held totally responsible for the massive public ignorance about what police do. Political entities, cities, and towns are notoriously poor at educating the public about law enforcement. Instead of teaching the public about the complexities of a police officer’s job after a controversial incident, political leaders are prone to teach police officers what they did wrong even if it was right when it was taught. I don’t know another profession where more people think they know how to do a job better than those trained to do it.

If anything will stress a cop, it will not be the blood, guts, and vomit they see on the job, or the injuries, verbal abuse, or absence of appreciation. It will be the lack of support and outright antagonism from an officer’s own city and department leadership.

This book provides a recently retired street cop’s perspective on some of the causes of de-policing and their devastating effects on American law enforcement. I also try to convey some of the nuts and bolts of policing and why looking at law enforcement from a street cop’s viewpoint is crucial to understanding and evaluating police actions. You need to hear from street cops, the people directly affected by the liberal political decisions so damaging to police work in America. Street cops are the ones who show up at your door when you call 911. I might have stayed on the job ten years longer if not for the circumstances that lead to de-policing. Cops know the job better than anyone; our leaders need to let them do it.

Many police critics are people for whom progress toward an integrated, equal justice-based, and race-blind society amounts to their own demise. Appallingly, anti-cop agitators have fabricated a mythological rift between the minority community (leftist minorities) and their police officers. Hands up, don’t shoot never happened!

How can we blame young black men for feeling they are under attack by police and society when so-called black leaders such as former president Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and those in what Black Lives Lies Matter author Taleeb Starkes refers to as the Race Grievance Industry (RGI), teach them this every day? That they are victims of a currently institutionally racist society?

You know the old saying perception is reality? Well, these racialist crisis entrepreneurs make sure that when black people are denied loans or jobs, get Cs instead of As in school, or receive poor service at a restaurant, it’s every time and always because of their race. When respected people constantly teach this, some will believe it. And since the perspectives of black conservative intellectuals such as Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, and Condoleezza Rice aren’t widely disseminated in black liberal circles (in fact, they’re often denigrated), alternate points of view remain scarce.

Street cops tend to be conservative even in liberal cities such as Seattle, which explains an inherent conflict. Society has to confront this. Continual unwarranted criticism of the police will not be effective in improving police-community relations—especially when it’s as hysterical as it’s been. For example, take the police shooting of an armed black man, Keith Lamont Scott, in South Carolina. Anti-police leftists felt the officer should have been charged with criminal homicide. Why? Incredibly, because Mr. Scott didn’t actually point his gun at the officer. This view is head-spinning-around-360-degrees-stupid to every police officer who hears such nonsense.

I use scenarios, anecdotes, and vignettes to convey ideas and possible solutions. I tell some stories the way they actually happened, while others are composites to illustrate a point. Some of the allegories and anecdotes come from the Seattle Police Department (SPD), some from other local departments, and others from agencies across the nation. Mine is just another voice in the conversation—an unabashedly pro-police voice. But all accounts are based on the anti-cop reality in which police officers have to function today. As they say, some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent—and to honor my heroes.

It seems the liberals will always have it their way, and there is never room for dissent. If they’re for it, it’s right, and if they’re against it, it’s wrong. According to liberals, dissent is patriotic except when it comes from a conservative. Then it’s Hitlerian. After I wrote an article, the one that helped precipitate the idea for this book, people at every level of Seattle city government publicly attacked me for daring to question the city’s radical leftist, social justice agenda and the liberal political indoctrination of its police officers.

Before that article, I was an ordinary patrol officer with very few Internal Investigation Section (IIS) complaints, several commendations, and a solid reputation. I’d never had a sustained complaint in nineteen years. But that didn’t stop the mayor, police chief, city attorney, members of the city council, and even—get this—the director of the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) from coming after me publicly. Why "get this? Because the OPA director was the person responsible for objectively investigating my wrongdoing." And, not one of them spoke with me before either libeling or slandering me. Hang on a sec. Deep breath…okay.

I was surprised at just how smarmy this got. Like in a movie, an officer I know well called me during this investigation. He said some higher-ups had asked him to contact me. They wanted him to ask if I would be willing to stop talking and writing about my opposition to city social justice policies if I were offered an officer or detective assignment of my choosing equal to my rank. Think about this: this offer was posed in such a way that it could never be tied to whomever initiated the idea. He or she could easily deny making it, since they hadn’t made it to me personally. It was simply a casual question from a fellow officer. I said I wouldn’t accept such an offer, and the officer said, I knew you wouldn’t, but I said I’d ask.

Now, let’s look at how government-sponsored social justice, liberal political indoctrination camouflaged as law enforcement training, and the lack of public education about police work, have cops constantly looking over their shoulders. Let’s find out how leftist political laws, policies, and procedures create an environment where cops have to adopt not only a physical and mental survival approach to police work but also a career survival mode, which increasingly includes de-policing.

CHAPTER 1

De-Policing

De-policing is not about police apathy toward their jobs. De-policing is about liberal antipathy toward the police.

Officer Michelle Malken leans back in the seat of her patrol car. Michelle has worked a dozen years all on the streets. This cop knows what she’s doing. She observes a young man step into the crosswalk against the Don’t Walk sign. The jaywalker locks his cold eyes on hers, maybe a challenge or a dare, and strolls past. Is he looking for a confrontation? Is he fingering the cellphone camera in his pocket ready to record the event?

Michelle should confront him, but will she? Just last week two fellow officers got jammed up over a simple littering incident. A man waiting in line for a nightclub show threw a food wrapper into the street in front of two passing officers. What should have been a simple, Please pick up your litter, sir, turned into a melee when the man became combative after refusing police orders to pick up his trash.

Officers eventually subdued and arrested the man. Of course, news media reported that the police used excessive force and arrested a man for "only littering." No. Police arrested the man for refusing to follow lawful commands and then resisting arrest.

Should Michelle enforce the law? Yes, she should—in a perfect world. But cops do not work in a perfect world. Still, many people believe cops should be perfect. Well, they’re not. They’re what anthropologists call human beings.

The question should she becomes, will she? The answer has become, why would she? She doubts her superiors will support her if things go sideways. The officer subdues her instinct to enforce the law, chooses the better part of valor, and drives to Starbucks. After all, why should she chance having to use force or arresting the man for only jaywalking? De-policing.

***

De-policing is, again, that provocative term used to describe a phenomenon where cops reduce or avoid proactive patrol. Though it’s become a hot topic, it’s been around awhile. In 2010, I wrote about a fellow Seattle police officer (a black officer) describing a training he attended as de-policing classes. Today, everyone knows de-policing.

In August 2015, Colin Flaherty, writing on AmericanThinker.com, titled an article De-Policing: The Scariest Word of the Year. The title hits the mark dead center. If only the political left knew just how scary, they might rethink their pogrom against the cops. Flaherty quotes a Chicago cop as saying suspects are refusing to comply with lawful orders…or answer simple questions…they know we can’t or won’t do anything about it. Defiance is now the rule. Yeah, scary!

Are police officers in Seattle and across America de-policing? Yes. In this hostile, anti-police climate, who can blame them? But is de-policing an intent to or a result of equation? Does an officer form the intent to avoid proactivity, or is the officer refraining from proactive police work as a necessary response to external pressures?

One of the external pressures causing de-policing is the left’s campaign for government-sponsored social justice. This is not a matter of persuasion. This is a matter of coercion. Liberal governments across America (until recently, including the Obama administration) have been engaged in an effort to indoctrinate the nation’s police officers with leftist political ideology. The seemingly innocuous term social justice is playing the part of the Trojan horse, sneaking liberal dogma into the police station.

Some people said they supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election because she supported more training for police officers. Well, what kind of training? Masquerading as law enforcement training, liberal governments teach police officers about white privilege, minority victimhood, and so-called level playing fields—social justice. They seek not equal opportunity but equal outcomes, which is impossible. The left’s version of police training is not law enforcement training. It is political indoctrination.

What on earth is Seattle’s leftist government teaching its cops? Several years back, under former mayor Greg Nickels, Seattle adopted the Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI). This initiative’s socialistic tentacles have slithered into every crack and crevice of city government, including the police department. Seattle is forcing its officers to attend social justice day camps where it purports to teach its cops about America’s racial history. Unfortunately, it’s not objective history, presenting a balanced perspective.

For example, it doesn’t have liberal scholars such as Cornel West and Tavis Smiley on one side versus conservative intellectuals such as Thomas Sowell and Benjamin Carson on the other, debating the issues. Instead, through a thoroughly leftist PBS presentation (RACE: The Power of an Illusion), cops hear about minority victimhood, white privilege, and how unconsciously (and consciously) racist and bigoted cops are—especially white cops. Don’t even try to argue; to argue also means you are even more racist. The left isn’t interested in your point of view.

Consider what conservatives are up against in liberal areas. In Seattle, following Donald Trump’s election, I read about some public high school teachers leading mourning sessions in their classrooms. In other schools, students walked out of class—with teachers. This, after witnessing a democratic election process envied by the world. But this time they didn’t get their way. At Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, the American flag was lowered to half-staff (and someone burned it). What about students who genuinely supported the Republican candidate? Americans still have that right, don’t they?

Matt Maloney, CEO of Grubhub, a food delivery service, issued an email encouraging employees who supported Trump to find work elsewhere. As Dennis Miller remarked on The O’Reilly Factor on November 10, 2016, There are a lot of people with love in their hearts who wish you dead if you don’t have as much love as they do.

The RSJI has been popular with subsequent administrations. After Mayor Nickels, Mayor Mike McSchwinn McGinn snatched up the liberal baton and giddily biked away with it. After the inept McGinn left office, following his defeat in 2013, the relatively few fiscally conservative Seattleites hoped that Seattle’s next mayor, Ed Murray, would be more practical, as he seemed to be, and would leave social justice to the private sector where it belongs. Unfortunately, under Murray, the RSJI continued to slaughter common sense, and the political indoctrination of the city’s cops continued, as did de-policing.

I don’t know if it was karma, but on September 12, 2017, within the tumult of allegations of sexual abuse of teenaged boys in the 1980s, Ed Murray announced his resignation. Coming full circle, former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington under President Obama, Jenny Durkan, is running to replace him. She is one of the feds responsible for inflicting a bogus consent decree on the SPD. Think she’ll have Seattle’s cops’ backs? Not a chance.

At its root, the RSJI has the ostensible goal of leveling the playing field for minorities the liberals label victims. Doesn’t it seem that leftist politicians promise to fix people—in exchange for their votes—but only after they convince them they are broken? To further this illusion, local, state, and federal government policy is now seasoned with a sprinkle of social justice before it’s poured down its cops’ throats. To see how insidious this effort is, just go to Seattle’s city website and peruse its RSJI page.

Seattle’s liberal propaganda efforts branched out even further into the community with a race and social justice exhibit. The exhibit ran at the Seattle Science Center during the busy holiday season, from September 28, 2013, through January 5, 2014. Progressive proselytizing does not take a sabbatical.

The DOJ arrived in Seattle a few years back toting a prejudiced conclusion of police wrongdoing. The feds then coerced the city into a lucrative consent decree—lucrative not for the city but for the enforcers—worth millions of dollars.

The DOJ issued a ludicrous finding that 20 percent of Seattle police officers’ uses of force were unconstitutional. The DOJ then persuaded Seattle’s mayor to subject the city’s cops and residents to an invasive, unnecessary, and extortive consent decree. The DOJ transformed the SPD, virtually overnight, from one of the most respected and emulated police departments in the nation to an enfeebled version of its former self.

As a result of their fake investigation, the DOJ alleged enough officer violations to justify imposing a full-blown federal consent decree on the SPD. The DOJ refused to make public the methodology it used to arrive at its bogus results. It reviewed the cases marked for study and arrived at that absurd number of unconstitutional uses of force. Seattle University criminal justice assistant professor Matthew J. Hickman also studied the cases and concluded that a more believable 3.5 percent of officer uses of force potentially violated constitutional protections.

Professor Hickman wrote a bold editorial titled, "Special to the Times: Department of Justice owes the Seattle Police Department an apology" (Seattle Times, February 8, 2010). In it, he advised the SPD command staff to call the DOJ’s bluff and demand an apology. But instead of taking his prudent advice and saving Seattle’s already overstressed, understaffed cops years of unwarranted anxiety, the city helped the DOJ construct the gallows and hang the nooses. Police officers were the casualties.

Many months later, with a federal consent decree in full force, the mayor and SPD leaders finally agreed with the rank and file and conceded the DOJ results were bunk. Of course, it was too late by then. In patrol roll calls, SPD relayed to its officers, through its consent decree compliance coordinator, that officers needed to cooperate quietly to prove that the DOJ was wrong about them.

In response to a question from the editor in the Seattle Police Officers Guild newspaper, the Guardian, about the DOJ’s bogus findings, Merrick Bobb, the federal monitor, uttered this Orwellian statement:

Whatever the correct figure might be [of alleged officer violations], it’s not relevant to our task today. This is not the Hatfields and the McCoys. The feud is over, and past disagreements must not impede current progress. What I know for sure is that the settlement agreement embodies best practice in policing and that it’s to the SPD’s and Seattle’s benefit it be implemented regardless of what led up to it." (Guardian, August 2013)

So, apparently the lies told to get to this agreement don’t matter. Once again with the left, the ends justi…Well, you know.

This is like a judge telling some defendants he’s exonerated them, but they still have to serve their prison sentences—with a