PD Editorial: Let’s not take a fetal position on brutality

Our national conversation about excessive force by police took an unfortunate turn this month when Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel attributed an increase in crime to police assuming a “fetal” position due to increased attention - and digital recording - of their conduct. “They have pulled back from the ability to interdict,” he said. “(They) don’t want to be a news story themselves, they don’t want their career ended early and it’s having an impact.”

Last week, FBI Director James Comey added to that conversation, observing, also with scant supportive evidence, that highly publicized and debated instances of police brutality may have led to an increase in violent crime. “In today’s YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime?” he asked. “I don’t know whether this explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year. And that wind is surely changing behavior.”

Even President Barack Obama appeared to join in the discussion, noting in an address in Chicago on Tuesday that those in uniform are wrongly “scapegoated” for society’s broader problems that contribute to crime. He also blamed the news media and its tendency “to focus on the sensational.”

It’s worth noting that both Obama and Comey were addressing large groups of law enforcement when they made their comments. Nonetheless, the remarks are troubling, first, because they suggest some kind of national work slowdown by police in response to public debates about officer-involved shootings in places like Ferguson, Mo., North Charleston, S.C. and even here in Sonoma County. Oct. 22 marked the second anniversary of the shooting of 13-year-old Andy Lopez by a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy who mistook the airsoft rifle he was carrying for a real AK-47. Are officers nationally essentially turning their backs to their duties, much as New York City police officers turned their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio during memorial services in January for a police officer who was killed while on duty? We find that hard to believe. If so, what are they hoping to achieve? That the public no longer discuss these viral cases?

As we’ve observed before, the vast majority of those in law enforcement are professional individuals worthy of the public’s respect and admiration. The public is indebted to their willingness to do a tough job, one that, as Obama noted, often requires being the first line of response and defense against some of society’s unresolved issues. But the conversation that has emerged in the past couple of years is not about the 99 percent who do the job right. It’s about accountability for the 1 percent who don’t or those who follow policies and training on use of force that are in dire need of ret hinking.

As it happens, the public was given another example this week with the video of a white South Carolina officer seen toppling and then dragging a 16-year-old black student out of a classroom.

In our view, there’s plenty of room for observers to be offended by this officer’s conduct while remaining 100 percent supportive of police in general.

If not, then the discussions that have taken place across the nation for the past two years have been for naught, leaving us all in a futile, if not fetal, position.