A Violent Society Demands a Peaceful Police

There’s a contradiction central to the movement to, as a group of thoroughly woke Google employees put it, “defang” the police.

The contradiction is; police reflect the societies they are called upon to police. Corrupt societies, for instance, get corrupt police. And violent societies get violent police.

I’ve said here, and I’ll continue to say that, given America’s vast population and tremendous amount of police/citizen interactions, the number of acts of unjustified police violence against the population is still remarkably low. But allow me to address those of you in the utopian “One is Too Many” camp.

You can’t get what you want, and you’ll never get it. If policing continues as before, certain police/citizen encounters will end in violence, because America as a violent place, born in violence, with violence as its principal form of entertainment. Violence is a learned behaviour, on both the part of citizens and police alike.

If America is, as some demand, to be de-policed, recent events in the Seattle CHAZ, CHOP, or whatever the hell it is now called, have shown that the violence will not disappear because the police do. Violence will arise, and someone will have to deal with it. Using violence, no doubt.

I read a sociological study once which declared that, by the age of eighteen, the average American child has witnessed 20,000 murders on television. Violence far surpasses sex as America’s favourite form of entertainment. No society save perhaps Ancient Rome has so thoroughly reveled in blood. While the glimpse of a nipple at a Superbowl halftime show engenders paroxysms of outrage, dozens of headshots and stabbings every night produce nothing but yawns.

In recent years, the trend towards violence as king has only accelerated. Violence in sport is more explicit than every before. Bloody UFC cage matches thrill people who are horrified by the violence of a police takedown. Yet somehow, pummeling for pleasure rather than public safety is acceptable. Where once popular music celebrated peace and love, now it celebrates revenge and hatred, drive-bys and busted caps, bitch.

Hollywood celebrities who earnestly preach a disarmed citizenry and defenseless police all have a few movie posters in their past featuring them toting firepower which would make Dirty Harry blush. But none of them seem to see the irony.

Then, there is the violence we inflict upon ourselves, none of which seems to attract the attention of police violence. A one-hundred-victim shooting weekend in Chicago attracts national yawns, while meanwhile cities still burn over law enforcement killings.

In a society this violent, how on earth does anyone seriously propose that a “defanged” police will have the slightest impact? America is in love with violence. A pacifistic police may be a noble experiment, but it is one designed to fail.

I would argue that, regardless of the good intentions of many behind such a movement, failure is the ultimate goal. Given the militant leftist political overtones of the recent violent protests, someone surely realizes that ongoing violence and a helpless police will produce a power vacuum.

Nature abhors a vacuum. But totalitarianism does not. The absence of order will produce a new order, one more violent by far than the last, untroubled by constitutions or free speech.

What will we do then? What we’re told, that’s what.

Grant Patterson retired from The Canada Border Services Agency in 2017 after seventeen years of his service. He is now a freelance writer, teacher, and author of nine novels. His opinions are his own. www.grantpattersonauthor.com