The Battle for Free Speech

I get frustrated by persistent complaints about so-called "cancel culture."

Not that I think it's entirely non-existent. I'm sure it does exist in places.

Not because it tends to be an accusation made by people who generally lean right against people who generally lean left, when it seems clear that left-leaning voices are excluding from conservative media just just as effectively as right-leaning voices are excluded from progressive media.

Not even because it is old news. Censorship, boycotts, tarring and feathering (both literal and figurative) have been part of our political discourse since before the revolutions.

What really irks me, what makes me nuts, is that the real issue has always been having the bravery to speak out in the first place.

We are promised the right to speak and print your views by the constitution, short of directly inciting violence. We are not promised it will be easy, or that we can escape the consequences of our speech. Nor are we promised that public or private resources (e.g., lecture halls in institutions of higher learning) will be allocated to us to speak abhorrent or hateful views. Which of course sets up a very thorny -- but equally valid -- political discussion about what views are deserving of society's support. But just having an idea does not automatically entitle me to public support in broadcasting it.

Of course, to have an effect on public thought requires speaking in a way that others can engage with. Some people go with rage, spite, and condemnation -- these things will get people engaged, but probably just the people who already see things the same way. Some go with deception, exaggeration, and hyperbole -- these things have worked well in Russian, Soviet, and Stasi disinformation campaigns in European experience, and seem to be pretty effective in US social media too.

To me, the battle for free speech is an internal battle for the courage to speak. And the best way to be heard is to speak with all the rationally and courtesy I can muster.

Something Like Normalcy

I was so excited to have something like a normal weekend for like the first time since covid-19 initially surged in Massachusetts.

Went hiking in the blue hills on Saturday, got good and lost on the way back with no map and a stubborn refusal to use my cell phone...but after bushwacking off Hancock Hill found my trail again and all was good.

Ran rock climbing and a bit of high ropes for a patrol of 5 scouts at New England Base Camp on Sunday. I had not realized how much I missed that whole experience - spending time with fellow instructors and seeing young folk try something new and succeed at something they initially thought was impossible.

Due to covid-19, we have to keep to the same small groups throughout the day -- to limit potential for spread, we can't have drop-ins and random intermixing -- which means a lot more time to have meaningful program and see a bit more of the scouts than the weekend programs usually offer. I liked it.

Cats

(Yesterday, I said I was going to talk about kittens today. In fact, I want to talk about grown-up kittens.)

A few days ago, we dropped our youngest son off at college. He's in a small dorm (probably less than 50 people) and they have a cat! That made me happy. We had cats in my dorm during college, and they really helped me deal with the stresses of a challenging academic environment.

Good architecture matters. Dormitories based on long rows of cramped apartments are absurd. We can do better. Living in small settings with other folks who who've just become adults, learning how to cook for yourself and share responsibilities for keeping the kitchen clean, these things just feel so much more healthy. Having pets (and caring for them) seems like part of the same package.

We don't help our youth become adults by continuing to treat them as if they are children.

Policing XII: Conclusion

 Policing in the US has been maligned for its ties to slave patrols and enforcement of Jim Crow laws. But it also has noble roots in the ideas that the forces that ensure civic order and protect the vulnerable are not to be soldiers quartered by external forces in our midst, but are to be civil authorities drawn for the citizenry itself. Seen from this latter perspective, when a significant portion of the law-abiding public fears the police no longer protect or serve the people, that is a sufficient cause for reflection and concern.

It is from this point of view that it seems to me that, notwithstanding all the positive acts of individual officers and department, policing in the US can be improved, and that we have a moral obligation to consider the improvements that can be made. Though we may support institutions like our churches to remind the public of good moral conduct, or serve in youth organizations to help build the citizenry of the future -- these facts do not excuse us from our responsibility to ensure that arm of civil authority we entrust to use force in keeping order should be as close to perfect as humans can manage. Nor can we escape the fact that police are the forces we as a body politic commission, and it is those forces that we maintain that we have a primary responsibility for managing in order to achieve the highest possible degree of protection for all.

In the last 12 days, I have dedicated my reflections to that concern. From those reflections, I suggest the following points:

• Transparency and oversight should be improved through civilian review boards, use of body cameras, and publicly available accounting of complaints and "near misses"
• Training and education should be improved so the time spent learning to de-escalate and peacefully resolve high-stakes situations is commensurate with the time spent learning to use force
• Building wide bridges of trust and familiarity with the community are a critical part of policing in the US; those efforts should be funded and chosen for maximum impact
• Where appropriate, police should be work in tandem with mental health professionals and other experts to address root causes of conflict; at the same time, as a society we must also work to address inequities that fuel conflict
• In choosing the offensive and defensive tools showcased in most situations, the guiding principle of a civilian police force should be the exact opposite of "maximum shock and awe," and efforts to portray policing as being at war, or arm police as if they are at war, are antithetical to efforts to build an inclusive society
• While the degree of actual abuse is debated by some, qualified immunity goes to far in denying the public to bring civil suit, and as the culmination of decades of legislating from the bench, should be subject to legislative clarification.

Most importantly, as a life-and-death concern, policing is too critical to be treated as commodity hourly labor. I suggest we should seek to move to a professional model of employment that draws on patterns in civil engineering and aviation safety, among others. Hallmarks of this switch would include 4-year college level training for police officers, reinforcement and extension of a dedication to ongoing training, diminishing hierarchy and band-of-brother responses so in all cases two or more police officers together are less likely to be involved in violent episodes rather than more, and critical self examination of incidents and near misses with an unflagging goal of no preventable mishaps.

I'm sure not everyone agrees with my conclusions, but I've tried my best to be reasoned and level-headed in my thinking and my rhetoric. What's more, I've learned a lot -- in no small measure due to comments, questions, and challenges from those who took the time to read my reflections. But it was also exhausting. With your permission, I think I'll talk about kittens tomorrow.

Policing XI: Abolish, Defund, or Reform

The problems we face in policing are systemic in the sense the way the system operates will create outcomes we don't want, even if every police officer in the US is of above average goodness. At the present time those outcomes have been cast in sharp relief by the death of several African-Americans in encounters with police. Further, we can expect that police themselves are not perfect, nor is every police officer of unquestionable moral character - they are human like the rest of us. It is against this backdrop that a substantial portion of the US public has come to the conclusion that the flaws in policing are intolerable and we must take action.

When addressing systemic problems, it is fair to ask if the system to be changed should be rebuilt from scratch, substantially reorganized, or subjected to incremental reform.

Advocates of abolishing police point to its history as a tool of oppression - for example, origins in slave-capture in the south, or in efforts to keep new immigrants "in line" in the north. Some may also further assert that we need no police; the people can regulate themselves. I do have some sympathy for that argument; I've lived in a group of more than a hundred dormitory residents with no constituted government and I thought it was generally fine. But that depends on bonds of social connection that, in my opinion at least, do not scale to the tens or hundreds of thousands of people that inhabit a mid-size city. Further, there are vulnerable among us who deserve protection (e.g., from rape, domestic violence, child abuse, and more.) To me it is not permissible to say these vulnerable people must all wait until the slower wheels of mental health services right the world. Nor is it wise to say every threatened person should go out, get a gun, and protect themselves -- indeed, that is not a freedom available to minors or ex-felons, yet they still deserve protection under the law. Therefore, while an individual city may choose to reconstitute their police force from the ground up, I do not see it as a nationally viable plan, nor even a plan that most states should embrace.

The idea of defunding the police is that we change the system by shifting funding from police departments to social services. These services, it is argued, can reduce our need for conventional policing by attacking social ills that combine to create situations that currently demand policing. On the face of it, this is a strategy that shares some common ground with the idea of reducing federal government funding to "starve the beast" and change government priorities. The strength of this position is that it clearly acknowledges reforms can get stalled and co-opted, and puts firm guardrails in place to ensure reform proceeds. I'd be concerned that the social services take longer to create good than proponents like to admit, but the position has a lot of appeal to me: reforms are often derailed. But the mayor of LA pointed out that since police are generally hired by seniority, this policy would cause her department to reverse hard-won progress in making the police force representative of the communities being policed. On balance, considering these two objections, I feel forced to consider reform as the proper way forward.

Reform, as noted, carries the significant drawback that it can get stalled. The systems and cultures in place can be powerful impediments to real change. I'd be lying to suggest that was not a concern. Still, I prefer reform.

To me, one of the best ways to overcome resistance to change is to move from a labor model to a professional model of policing. In particular, as a professional body police should investigate adverse outcomes with the same intensity the commercial airline industry does. To put that in context, there are about 16 million commercial flights in the US each year (for 800 million passengers), compared to 10 million arrests (these are all 2018 numbers). In the years from 2003 to 2009 there were 650 arrest-related deaths in the US each year. In most years, there are no airline deaths (excluding illegal acts); in 2018 there was one. That is the result of a relentless pursuit of perfection. Our response to a death in policing should not be to shrug our shoulders and say these deaths are an unavoidable part of law enforcement. Our governments and our police should look at these events with the same intensity and need for change that characterizes the commercial airline industry. 

As airlines are engineered systems and people are not, we will likely never see a year with no police-related fatalities, but experiences with efforts to improve patient safety in surgical settings (e.g., nearly 40% decline for 10 years for most age groups) indicate the same sorts of deep analysis and commitment to improvement can lead to substantial improvements over time. I believe that in the long run we will only create that sort of change but adopting similar practices of continuous critique and improvement in policing. Until then, the training and oversight reforms in the Massachusetts police reform proposals should yield material improvements in outcomes and help move policing from a labor model to a professional model of service. But absent a deep level of self-examination by communities and their police departments, none of the 3 broad options for change are likely to create sorts of improvements our consciences ought to compel us to seek.

Policing X: Qualified Immunity

Let me start this post on qualified immunity and related matters by stipulating that in order to effectively respond to rapidly evolving situations, police should not need to fear criminal charges for reasonable good-faith actions taken in the course of their work. In support of this goal, qualified immunity is judicial (not legislative) doctrine from the late 1960s that has evolved to bar civil rights suits for unconstitutional conduct unless it had been “clearly established” (i.e., by legal precedent) as being illegal at the time it occurred. The present concern with qualified immunity is that in seeking legal precedent, clear violations of civil rights might be precluded from reaching trial because there did not exist a clear precedent at the time the doctrine of qualified immunity was established, thus the case can never be heard and no legal precedent can ever be established. Opponents further assert that requirements for precedent are being sought on overly narrow grounds in practice, and have had the effect of preventing morally justifiable cases from even being filed.

As this appears to be a situation where an absence of law has caused the courts to effectively "legislate from the bench," we should all welcome legislative clarity. There does seem to be some anecdotal evidence the critics of qualified immunity have a point. And, since few officers are also case law experts, it seems that existence of precedent is a poor basis for making split-second decisions in policing. I am of the opinion that qualified immunity should be more restricted than it is. The proposed Ending Qualified Immunity Act in the US House of Representatives provides no protection for reasonable acts done in good faith. I think it goes too far. I am much more partial to the Massachusetts Senate proposal (the "Reform, Shift + Build Act"), which retains qualified immunity but places the burden on the state to demonstrate qualified immunity applies.

Regardless of the status of qualified immunity, for an officer to be found guilty of an offense in a court of law requires at least a preponderance of evidence (for civil cases) -- and more for criminal cases. It must also generally be the case that internal warnings and disciplinary actions are independent of legal findings of liability, or police departments should be able to act to prevent future misconduct. To the extent that labor agreements and other mechanisms limit the ability of municipalities to act without meeting that high legal standard for burden of proof, they abuse the public trust.

Also, because of qualified immunity and standards of evidence, it it follows that if in aggregate a community is aggrieved by police misconduct, then in order to properly protect accused police officers, some degree of injustice against the aggrieved group will go unpunished and in fact unrecognized. I know of no precedent for addressing such grievances, but it is worth considering that their historical and ongoing weight should be addressed. Perhaps this could be considered as a form of reparations -- as noted, I do not know of a precedent here, but the cumulative sense of injustice ought to be recognized even if individual guilt cannot be proven in a court of law.

These are thorny, detailed questions. But they are critically important and must be addressed. Though no bill will satisfy all parties, I am hopeful that the Massachusetts legislature will be successful in crafting a reform bill before ending the current session.

Policing IX: Arms and Weapons

I think I have just a couple more posts on this overall topic. Today I want to talk a bit about the offensive and defensive weapons police use. This will not be a comprehensive or detailed discussion, but perhaps is an outline of a basis on which such a discussion could proceed.

The process of dumping military-style hardware into community police forces has been discussed by many reporters and commentators across a wide range of political perspectives, so for brevity I will limit my comments. From what I can tell, there is a general consensus this practice is inappropriate and should be curtailed. The problem is, of course, if your tools are all made to quell urban combatants in foreign countries, then the challenges you face in police can appear to look like urban combat. There is some truth in the saying "If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

In the contexts of protests like those we have seen across the country in the past months, it is worth mentioning that it is not only offensive weapons that tend to escalate a conflict. Defensive weapons can have that affect also. I can't offer a solution here -- we all have a right to protect ourselves. On the other hand, showing up in full body armor with gas masks and nightsticks does send a message about where you expect the night to go (this applies to protestors as well). In some cases, it seems to me, deploying with overt and excessive defensive gear reinforces an adversarial stance and could even suggest a target for violence -- but this is not a line of thought one should carry too far. I would never suggest police forces should divest themselves of that sort of riot gear, but I would urge them to be thoughtful in its deployment.

In addition to guns, Police also have at their disposal a variety of less-lethal weapons. A few years ago, we called these "non-lethal" -- the change in nomenclature is, I think, useful. In a brief discussion, it's not worth detailing the risks of each type of weapon. Although not every situation can be de-escalated, it should be sufficient to note that choosing a less-lethal weapon is only descalatory if the conflict has already progressed to the level of immediately lethal force. As I've noted a few times, we are in a bad place if every signal we can send is escalatory in nature. (And I should say many police are good at sending these de-escalatory signals, but some are not and these less-lethal tools can enable that more escalatory response)

Lastly, one thought on guns themselves. Sam Harris (and others, I suspect) points out that since police in the US generally carry guns, suspected criminals can reach for the gun and every encounter that police go into carries the seeds of being a lethal encounter. He then adds that, because of the widespread availability of guns in the US, police have no choice but to carry guns. I'm not sure I fully agree with every step in that chain of logic, but for argument let's say that it is true. Though it's a technical band-aid of sorts, there is an obvious solution to the objection in the form of smart guns which would prevent a criminal from easily using an officer's gun against them. Though they are not sold in large numbers and are maybe not as technically mature as other guns, that would almost certainly change rapidly if police forces widely adopted the technology. For that reason, I regard as specious the argument that police must regard every encounter as potentially lethal because of the guns they themselves carry. (Not being a police officer, I cannot say how much this fear influences thinking, I am merely saying if it is a substantial source of concern, it seems fixable and thus should be fixed.)

Policing VIII: Professional Organizations

Doctors are required to take and abide by the Hippocratic oath. If they violate their oath, they may be removed from their professional association, regardless of whether they are found guilty in a court of law. 

Lawyers are held to the standards of their jurisdiction, which are generally based on the ABA model code. If you violate those standards, your license to practice can be taken from you by your state bar association.

Civil engineers operate under the code of ethics of their professional society, and again can lose certification even if they are not found guilty of a crime under law.

Yet police, while police chiefs have a uniform code of ethics, police officers operate under a hodgepodge of oaths administered by their employers. The role of the police union seems to be to protect police officers' employment first, while the integrity of the calling takes a much lower priority.

I am generally not anti-union, and I absolutely recognize that police deserve labor protection in some form. I submit, however, that a group given such power over others, a group that has been given license to use deadly force in the course of their work, should operate under a framework more like the examples above. An alternative might be a military code of conduct, but I do not believe we should be blurring the lines between police and military.

I recognize this entails treating police more like professionals across the board - good pay, for instance should not be dependent on overtime or on traffic detail work. But I think it is consistent with my thoughts yesterday on increasing entry-level training requirements for police.

I recognize this is easier said than done, but I do think there is great value to all in recasting the relationship between police and society as more professional in its focus and less about labor as a commodity. To show I am not the only one who see this as a possible way forward, I'll close with this link from the National Police Foundation: A Hippocratic Oath for policing.

Policing VII: Education

In Germany, minimum standards for police education require two and a half years of education, and often require four years. In some places in the US, you can be a police officer with less than half a year of training.

As things are right now, we expect a lot from our police officers. They are asked to lead the response to a wide variety of complex situations involving domestic violence, mental health, substance abuse, motor vehicle accidents, and more. While I support efforts to bring additional fields of expertise in these situations -- especially when it can be done as a preventative measure -- the truth remains that responding to a mandate as large as this requires a lot of training, as well as a lot of support after the training. From what I can see, we could do better at both in the US.

Given the very wide-ranging mandate we give our police in the US, a four-year post-high-school training period does not seem unreasonable to me. Police officers deal with complex and diverse situations, they should be given a broad range of tools to understand and address those situations. Further, completing a sustained course of specialist study both indicates and develops a degree of self-discipline that I think is an appropriate expectation for the job. On the face of it, good policing is a high-level calling -- there is no reason I can think to expect it should require, for example, a dramatically lower standard of education than we require of public school teachers.

In Germany, one factor that motivates their curriculum is looking at the role policing played in the rise of naziism. As a result, the curriculum includes specific training on empathy for minority and disadvantaged groups. And still they have some problems with holocaust deniers. If the US had a similar longer-term training process, how would we be able to ensure it did not inculcate the very attitudes we seek to diminish over time? It's an important question and, in truth, I don't have a complete answer. I'll touch on some partial ideas tomorrow, but I think it's fair to note that we have the same concern with any educationally-based credentialing system -- doctors, teachers, lawyers, etc., all benefit from successfully addressing this issue. 

It's my point of view, which I recognize I'm asserting without proof, that: 1) we should give police more tools and techniques for resolving conflict without violence; 2) continued progress in drawing police from communities they serve is worthwhile; 3) increasing empathy by police for the community they serve is part of what a good educational system can do. These are high-level goals, and are worth continued investment.

Policing VI: Outreach Programs

Because this series of reflections is an effort to think about ways policing could be improved, it tends to lay a lot on police. As I said at the outset, I have taken that focus only because they are the professionals and they are the people I pay as a taxpayer -- it doesn't mean anything more than that.

Still, it feels like the right time to change up a bit and offer something that is not wholly negative. In team dynamics, sometimes we take an approach of asking what we should stop doing, what we should start doing, and what we should keep doing. It's worth talking about what police should keep doing, and I'll use the Quincy Police Department as an example. QPD runs a variety of public safety campaigns that are not about law enforcement at their core:

Advocacy: Autism Awareness and Pink Patch Project offer commemorative patches that generate funds for the indicated causes. These are causes worth supporting, and I feel fairly confident they generate some good will. There is some risk a cynical observer could see them as a smokescreen behind which deportment shortcomings are camouflaged, but we're not being cynical here. It makes sense to me these are genuine expressions of concern that QPD should keep doing, but take a bit of care to avoid touting them as proof that there are no reforms that could benefit the community.

Safety: QPD offers Basic Boating Safety Courses and Car Seat Installations as in-person services. I think they once offered Bicycle Safety in person, but the web site currently only shows an online course. They also offer a Self Defense Program for women. These programs offer person-to-person contact between the police force and the community, strengthening trusting connections we want to have. These are the sorts of things I'd absolutely like to see more of. For example, imaginatively revitalizing the bicycle safety program could provide an opportunity for police to directly interact with youth in the community.

HELP (Handicapped-Elderly-Lost Persons) and Project Lifesaver / Lojack are similar to one another. They are important services and essential in overall community safety. Kudos.

Domestic Violence Advocacy Program is self-explanatory. Health Imperatives is a broadly similar effort focused on victims of sexual assault. From the website, it seems officers receive some training. And it is good that the QPD partners with advocacy groups in these areas. But I've also heard that some victims of these types of crimes have felt belittled and dismissed by QPD. These are essential services: we need to be sure the commitment to them extends way beyond a link on a website.

CRASE is a program to train organizations in responding to active shooter events. It seems like an innovative program and a good chance to build relationships between the community and the QPD. This might well be a program my church could benefit from. Definitely keep doing.

DARE Program is a well-intentioned effort to address a real problem. But long-term effectiveness is questionable and it's not clear it helps build positive relationships with QPD broadly among our youth. This one might be due for some critical review.

Jail Diversion Program is an effort to work with mental health professionals to ensure mental health events do not become criminal events. There is a recent video taken of QPD officers that provides at least anecdotal evidence this sort of initiative has had some success. But that same video showed some officers were much more willing than others to escalate the situation. I don't have overall statistics, or even a good idea how I'd get them. Nor can I pretend to know the details of that event. So I'll give a qualified thumbs up to what we're doing today, with the suspicion we could do more.

Prescription Drug Disposal is a necessary service, and QPD is a good home for that. Just from a "good governance" perspective, we need to be sure the drugs that are dropped off are well controlled from that point on and do not somehow find their way to the market or to abusers (to be clear, I have no reason to suspect that is a problem at QPD). And related to this, QPD pioneered the use of NARCAN to successfully reverse the effects of overdoses and saved lives by doing so. Let's keep doing stuff like this.

In sum, beyond the narrow mission of law enforcement, QPD has been successful in several important programs and had qualified success in several others. I see these sorts of programs as things that both have direct benefits and can also build connection with the community they serve. While there is opportunity for improvement, these are good investments, and I both commend the QPD for them and encourage city officials to continue supporting this broader view of public safety. At the same time, we need to be sure that having good programs does not blind us to ways we can do better.