What the DOJ got right about Ferguson

Making apologies for Ferguson is getting harder and harder. After I read the Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department report and recommendations, I find little fault with its conclusions.

As I turned each page of the report I was ready to be Holder’s critic and see his biased hand in every conclusion. As a researcher I was ready to question assumptions and statistics. As a staunch defender of police officers I was ready to point out unrealistic expectations and civilian ignorance.  In the end, the facts leading to the conclusion that there is a pattern of citizen mistreatment, quite deliberately encouraged by Ferguson’s city governance, are sound.

By way of critique, I see some argument in some of the anecdotal accounts, but the damning constellation of facts collected leads to some clear patterns. I also see little in the following public comment about accountability of the citizenry for allowing these abuses to continue. However, I don’t want to be among those who blithely write off “a pervasive lack of ‘personal responsibility’ among ‘certain segment’ of the community”, even though closer examination of that premise is an important part of whatever healing may come. But that was not the DOJ mandate.

As a Missouri native with St. Louis connections I grew up very aware of the prevalent racism in the city. My small town had no African-American subculture that I could tell from the few black families I knew. But even within my lifetime there were many towns posted with “sundown” warnings that no blacks were allowed inside the city limits after dark.  My generation watched the evening news as Dr. King marched, cities burned, and police dogs attacked.  As a boy I remember an elderly black man stepped off the sidewalk to let me pass in a conditioned deference to a white boy, just before I was going to step aside out of respect for his age. My dad had to explain that. It is no surprise that these American experiences cast a shadow over race relations a half century later. I also later learned that race hate was not a one way street.

What struck me most about the report was not that there was a deliberate attack on black residents, but a deliberate fleecing of citizens to fill city coffers. Given the power differential, the fact that black residents were disproportionately affected as a byproduct of the city’s greed is a natural consequence, creating a near indentured servitude. Indeed, laws were made to be enforced and we use armed government agents for that enforcement be it robbery or jaywalking. But the structure of due process must be designed with justice in mind, not the clinking of silver. Fines for offenses and warrants for no shows are for the public good, not for capturing citizens in a web of extortion.

My hope is that citizens will stop the tedious demonstrations and start voting, that all sides can get past the noise and review the fundamental principles of government, and that the officers of Ferguson PD can get the leadership needed to allow them to do the fine work I am confident they truly want to do

Ferguson Protestors' Rules for Police Inspiring New Era of Negotiation

The “Don’t Shoot Coalition” in St. Louis, Missouri has presented a package of requests to police officials on how to handle protests that will occur after the announcement of the grand jury’s decision on Officer Darren Wilson, investigated for the shooting of Ferguson resident Michael Brown.



Among the requests are no armored vehicles, no rubber bullets, no rifles, no tear gas, a safe house of refuge, advance notice of the grand jury decision, community-friendly policing, no mass arrests, hands off media representatives, allowing longer and more massive occupation of spaces than normally allowed, more tolerance of minor lawbreaking (such as throwing water bottles at police), no excessive force, and a few other details.



This is a great opportunity for others who anticipate criminal activity to jump on the rules of engagement bandwagon. Narcotics peddlers can begin requesting a no SWAT response to search warrants. Bank robbers should be allowed to get an ETA on responding officers to provide a reasonable lead time for their get away. Fraudulent check writers can negotiate for no prosecution unless they write a really bad check. As implied by the Don’t Shoot Coalition, all offenders should be allowed to throw things at police officers if they are sort of small things that probably won’t really hurt that much.



Sex offenders should negotiate being allowed one false identity to avoid the harassment associated with registering all the time. Arsonists, of course, would have to hold separate talks with the fire department officials to promise low water pressure on smaller fires.  Car thieves clearly would need to be assured a full tank of gas and insurance in case they crash when pursued. Unless, of course, pursuits are negotiated out of existence.



The real beauty of this expanding plan is that eventually police officers will be allowed to negotiate on some of these terms. For example, law enforcement could ask for a label on the thrown water bottles to assure that they aren’t filled with acid, urine, chlorine, or made of glass. Or we could just go with the honor system and hope the throwers stick to their principles of assaulting officers with relatively soft things.  The advance notice concept would be very helpful on all criminal activities. Even five minutes would be nice.



As for protective equipment, perhaps a provision that if one officer or more is killed or injured by that rare antagonistic, rule-breaking criminal, then a time out is called and officers can get into their gas masks or armored vehicles as deemed necessary by a standing committee.



Snarkasm aside, protests invite police attention, to be sure. But there is no reason to believe that law enforcement would interfere unless chaos and significant lawlessness break out, as happened during the initial riots. The coalition’s verbiage heavily implies that law breaking is anticipated and planned (but just a little bit). We used to call planning criminal activity “conspiracy”, not “negotiation”.

Brown, Wilson, and the History of Cop Hate

The collective pronoun "they" may be the most dangerous predictor of a tumble from impatience to harshness to hatred. "They always do that." "They need to get their act together." "They should be shot". The beginning of bigotry's hate is the convenience of category.

Comes now Ferguson, Missouri police officer Wilson in the matter of the death of one Michael Brown. Facts and physics be damned, Wilson is carrying the weight of "they" on his shoulders. From the long dead lawmen who gathered up escaped slaves to the ones who let loose the dogs and billy clubs on the Edmund Pettus bridge, Wilson shares a badge tarnished by suspicion and cynicism.

Wilson's decisions are not allowed to stand alone in the court of public opinion. He stands with the "they" of the hatred of cops by some and the love and respect of cops by others. 

Questions of why the prisons are full of young black men stand on Wilson's shoulders. Suspicion of an ever increasing Big Brother government stands there, too. A generation of self-centered, sheltered Americans leap on him. Those who never vote but readily protest and opine climb aboard. Those who fear oppression and those who fear lawlessness comprise his stand.

Darren Wilson was not every officer any more than Michael Brown was every black teenager. The ghost of all of history may hover over every "they", but when two men make individual decisions, the judgment must be framed by those individual moments.

The law is quite settled on these matters. If activists want to change the law that is another debate, but the law as it stands is clear, should anyone care to look:

"The "reasonableness" of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments - in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving - about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation." [Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989)]

Popular opinion fails in precisely the way that the lawmaker's predicted when courts and juries and the calm, rational systems of jurisprudence were designed. The law does not have a chip on its shoulder because a cousin was treated badly by the police. Jurors must not make any correlation between some SWAT team's error somewhere and Wilson's trigger. Those who really want justice wait for truth to be distilled from the chaos of public opinion.

They are few. 

A Cause Turned Stupid

Jim Croce's ballad gave a good definition of wasted effort: You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, and you don't try to make intelligent commentary about the St. Louis area rioting. And yet, here I go.

There was a time, despite the distortions of the Michael Brown shooting, that the opportunity to really talk about justice and race in America was an open door. Although the premise that Officer Wilson shot Brown because of their respective pigmentation remains unsubstantiated, sympathetic minds saw the pent up frustration of a segment of Americans burdened by a legacy of discrimination. Prisons full of black Americans and reports of profiling are compelling.

Then it turned stupid, and thinking citizens are increasingly rightfully embarrassed by the whole affair.

Please take note that when I use the word "stupid", I am only borrowing from our President who has used the word in reference to the police. His endorsement of the word makes it clear that it is not a racist term and that it is appropriate among bright thinkers in discourse of sober matters.

The turning point for most observers was rioting after a black male attempted to kill a St. Louis police officer who shot the man after dodging three bullets. To think that Officer Wilson assassinated Brown at high noon on a Saturday for jaywalking was implausible to begin with, then the subsequent wild anger overshadowed any attention to potential facts. The latest rioting because an officer defended himself from a murder attempt is stupid in the first degree.

The important dialogue was lost early when leaders failed to lead. The discussion was framed by Missouri's Governor acting stupidly by sharpening the pitchforks of the mob and urging swift prosecution of Officer Wilson. Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Johnson acted stupidly when he inflamed the crowd by apologizing for wearing the uniform. Al Sharpton acted just as expected, so I can't say he acted stupidly. But he did fail to act wisely when there are bridges that need to be built and not burned.

And every citizen, regardless of color, who has failed to vote in his or her own back yard has no claim on the shape and color of their local government. Complaining about white rule when 77% of the voting population is black sounds more like consent than rebellion. We are still a democracy and one that was fought for at great, tragic price in the civil rights era by courageous black men and women, and allies of every stripe who should be the heroes whose voices are heard today. One vote is more powerful than any brick thrown through a window.

Protesters who wear shirts that say "Don't shoot me because I'm black" make a mockery of black murder victims where all but 200 of the 2,648 black homicide victims (2012) were killed by one of their own race. And nobody wants to hear that over 40% of officers murdered were killed by black offenders.

The blindness of the whole mess is in the implicit claim that racial disparity in the land is singularly because of the police. If black Americans get relatively poorer prenatal care, have less stable family structures, get lower quality education, worse nutrition, less quality health care, more inadequate housing, less mental health support, fewer opportunities for banking, and all of the host of seen and unseen differentiation in our society why is it that an encounter with a police officer is blamed for our prison population? Let the police be accountable for what is traceable to their discretion. Fixing the police - if indeed they are broken - will not fix the systemic problem that the protesters ostensibly decry.

The fixing that needs to happen will begin with real dialog, real data, and finding out who the real heroes are.

Obama's Hypocrisy on Mistrust of the Police

I try to be honest enough with myself to admit when I agree with something said by somebody with whom I usually disagree . When I saw the headline about President Obama's remarks on mistrust of the police I began my deep breathing exercises in anticipation of another blood pressure spike. To my surprise and delight, the President made several statements with which I agree during a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus.

Mr. Obama spent a significant amount of time on the issue of justice, giving the topic highlighted attention among other sobering topics of war, disease, and the economy. The President, although entertaining applause for the parents of Michael Brown, declined to be accusatory and avoided referring to Brown as being "murdered". Obama accurately said that "the anger and the emotion that followed his death awakened our nation" to the "gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement" rather than saying the shooting was a direct result of racism as is declared by many.

Obama observed that "many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement", using restraint to acknowledge that the problem is one of perception that may or may not be sustained by reality. The President also made references to the perception of inequality in the criminal justice system as a whole rather than going for the easy applause of blaming the police only.

The President also acknowledged that government can't raise America's children, and called for more collaboration with private groups to meet the challenges young people face.

Most interesting is Mr. Obama's use of the phrase "strong policing". In declaring that mistrust harms "the communities that need law enforcement the most" and need "strong policing", this President, for the first time I can recall, acknowledged the value of police officers.

This from the man who famously referred to Cambridge, Massachusetts police officers investigating a reported break-in as "acting stupidly". The facts of the case are that the officers responded to a citizen report of a man attempting to break down the front door. The officers confronted an unknown person whom they asked for identification. The person was a friend of Obama, and is a prominent black scholar who was the homeowner. According to the police report, the man immediately started yelling "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO BLACK MEN IN AMERICA!"

Obama refused to back down from his "stupidly" comment, to which he had added an angry polemic about racial profiling, but did make a sideways apology for adding to the "media frenzy" over an issue that is "still very sensitive". The President stated two days after the remark that his words had "I think, I unfortunately, I think gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge police department or Sgt. Crowley". The closest to an apology that I can infer is that, as the President said, "I could have calibrated those words differently", which was perhaps an apology for not finding an acceptable replacement word for "stupid" to refer to the police.

Befitting the low status of a police officer, the President, Joe Biden, the professor, and Sgt. Crowley were invited to talk over peanuts and beer in the Rose Garden of the White House. There was reportedly no apology that arose from that condescending photo op.

While I have yet to forgive the President's harmful remarks in favor of his professor friend, I liked Obama's remarks to the Congressional Black Caucus last week. With a small hope that the inflammatory anti-police sentiment might be turned down a notch by the White House, I'm still waiting for a full statement that America's law enforcement officers, and therefore the public whom they serve, have been put at greater risk by the frenzy of criticism from spineless politicians patronizing black citizens for headlines and votes.

Mr. President, at the time of this writing, seventeen police officers have died in the line of duty since Michael Brown was shot. Seven of those were murdered. Did any Department of Justice representatives attend their funerals, or are words of condolence and support reserved for anyone else but those in blue?

The Whole Country is Suffering from Stockholm Syndrome

After viewing a sample of cellphone and amateur videos of arrests by police officers, including the horrific BART shooting, I am noting that nowhere is there any public commentary on the hostility of bystanders and their sympathy with persons resisting the police. The kinds of hate speech and abuse to which officers are subjected is astonishing. It appears that the universal assumption of bystanders during an arrest is that the officers involved a) have no right to arrest the person and b) have no right to use force against the person.

Police work is sometimes brutal. It looks rough and harsh and mean. The average citizen does not comprehend the violence police officers meet when a person resists. The citizen does not know what it takes to subdue a human being who does not want to be subdued. A non-police citizen cannot bear to know what police officers know about the capacity for others to be wicked.

The average citizen also does not know that data show that force is used in a small fraction of encounters and force other than handcuffing is used in a small fraction of arrests. Bystanders forget that officers are injected into an already violent or tense situation not of the officers' making, and that the legal obligation of citizens is to peacefully submit to an arrest. Except in those exceedingly rare cases of officer misuse of force, the singular prevention strategy for police use of force is for citizens in contact with police to obey the lawful commands of police officers. Period.

What has become to be known as the Stockholm Syndrome is a victim's identification, empathy, and positive regard for captors that is manifested in a lack of cooperation or disdain for their rescuers. In the videos where crowds are gathered to video police use of force, one might wonder why there are not cheers for the officers who are bravely stepping into disorder to capture those suspected of criminal activity. Instead it appears that they identify with the "bad guy" to the extent that they materially interfere with the officers' attempts to contain and control a criminal event.

It will be left to the sociologists and psychologists to examine this phenomenon for possible answers, but in the interim, police officers must constantly watch their backs for attacks from bystanders.

Here is an article I have written for review for publication:

Public Hostility and the Police
By Dr. Joel F. Shults

Fight in progress. The police arrive. The crowd gathers. A BART transit police officer is caught on video sending a bullet into a man in police custody. A storm of protest begins. There are two chilling aspects to video captured at the scene of this terrible event: one is the sound of gunfire; the other is the frightful sound of mocking and hate-filled voices of the crowd toward the police officers before the shooting. We can’t do or say anything about the shot fired but do we understand the significance of the crowd’s anger?

Police officers take calamity as their norm. We forget what our encounters with disorder look like to civilians who expect their world, including their transit platforms, to be orderly. In my world police officers don’t randomly grab people and make them sit shackled on the concrete or face down on the pavement. That only happens when somebody calls 911 and reports that people are doing bad things. I only go where I’m invited or needed. In my world I don’t fight anybody that doesn’t ask to be fought. In my world I represent and enforce the law and the law says that others have to peaceably obey my lawful order. I can’t choose to allow someone to refuse to comply; if I do the orderly world in which my citizens live will begin to unravel into chaos.

Therefore it is difficult for me to view the world through the perspective of those who are quick to digitally capture police encounters, hoping to be the next famous viral video, who leap to conclude that police officers are acting illegally and brutally? Is it the psychological distress of witnessing a fight that creates an onlooker’s identification with the suspect and revulsion toward the officer? Has the hateful rhetoric of music and race-baiting activism found a permanent place in the psyche of our population? Has our profession failed to reach out and educate the public to help them rationally asses these events?

Regardless of the cause it appears that the police in the U.S. are dealing with a chronic national case of Stockholm Syndrome, where victims identify with the bad guys and resist their rescuers. How can police officers and administrators deal with anti-police bias? Here are five things to consider:

Assume YouTube: You will be on film whether it’s your own car or mic cam or one of the 3 zillion cell phone vids. The video is as likely to be interpreted in a way that harms your case as it is to vindicate. If you accept that you’re being digitally documented then it won’t freak you out when you turn and see all the cell phones flipped open and pointed at you. Consider filming back: have an officer at the scene who can start panning the crowd with his or her own cell phone cam. Suddenly the crowd may not feel so anonymous.

Go Zen: Focus on your objective. While you assess the danger of a hostile crowd you don’t try to make your case arguing with them, make meaningless threats, or grab their cameras because they offend you by questioning your authority. Find some inner peace about what you’re doing.

Lawyer up: It is essential that every police officer have an advocate of their own. It is possible that nobody is going to be on your side unless you’re paying them to be. Find that person or organization now, before the crisis. Surviving until an objective fact-finding proceeding can sort through the smoke and mirrors may depend on it.

Be proactive: Are you helping to educate the political powers about the realities of police work? Are you documenting how rarely physical force is used? Is your department winning friends and influencing people with community outreach and collaboration? Does your use of force policy still use the unwieldy and unrealistic use of force continuum and insist on the minimum force possible to meet non-compliance? Does your Chief or public information officer apologize every time somebody is offended instead of laying out facts and calling for objectivity?

Gather Intel: Check the internet video, social networking, and blog sites for anti-police rhetoric toward your agency or the police in general from persons or cases in your area. Once you tap into the sordid web of anarchist rants, disaffected malcontents, and anti-police activists your paranoia will ratchet up a few notches. I use a variety of search terms that include my agency and organization name along with any kind of malevolent threat or language I can imagine to see who’s talking about me. Hint: turn off the family friendly search engine filter! You might even find groups to which you can reach out and repair misinformation.

As a profession we must assertively confront the issues of hostility against our most dedicated front line public servants to preserve our personal safety as well as the larger social order. Unquestionably we must purge the rude and brutal from our ranks, but we must also play an active role in understanding and molding public opinion.

http://www.joelshults.com

It's a Curse, I Swear

Police officers are subject to a double and even triple standard in many respects. We are expected to catch bad guys without hurting them, solve problems in a few minutes that existed for years before we got called, get to emergencies instantly without driving too fast, and stop crime without making contacts with minority groups or rich white people.

I remember listening to a citizen make a complaint on one of my officers for using foul language on a contact. I don't remember her exact words but it was something on the order of "Your (*&^^(*{ cop (&Y^$#W used some &*&_$#@ language around my *&$)_@% son and I think it was &)*%#$ uncalled for and you should *&$%+#$ reprimand his *(*%#$." Her point, although not well articulated, was that she could cuss but my officer couldn't. I actually agreed with her.

Naturally if I begin a diatribe against the use of swearing the first offended person will say "Oh, like you never cussed in uniform!", and I confess I have. My use of foul language has been very rare and it was used for linguistic effect given the context, and with a purpose to achieve a specific communicative effect. Have I ever said other inappropriate things or acted out of emotion? - yes. As Sgt. Friday famously said "The only problem with police work is that you have to recruit from the human race" (as quoted in my excellent book "Is The Line Ready" available at my web site http://www.joelshults.com/ ).

Words have meaning. I used to have morning coffee with a cranky retired physics professor who would get a pained look on his face during holidays and sunny weather. On one particular morning he was talking about the silliness of thinly disguised euphemistic language in a sitcom he had watched in which the word "boinking" was used to refer to sex. His final assessment was that words are meaningless so you might as well use the "real" words. As I thought about his foolish assumption that words are meaningless I considered looking him in the eye and saying "You know, you old bastard, that's really true" as a means to test his theory.

The words and phrases that we use to describe this kind of language are meaningful as well. We talk about "cussing" which is a slang derivative of "cursing", associated with "swearing". Before language was easily reduced to writing for contracts and pledges, a person's word truly was a bond. History was passed down orally and naming a child often had a determinant effect on a life. Spoken words were powerful. False speaking was condemned in both legal and social discourse by ancient codes including the Ten Commandments and the Code of Hammurabi. Mystics believed - and still do I suppose - that you could speak a curse on someone and change their life course. Jesus taught that calling someone a disrespectful name was tantamount to murder in motive and heart.

I once led a study by a group of middle schoolers from my church and talked about this very subject. I asked them to write down every cuss word they knew. Although they were hesitant at first, they quickly began, obviously, to enjoy the exercise. I wrote all the words and phrases on the blackboard (which I carefully and fastidiously erased at the end of the session) and began to reveal the hurtfulness behind each word or phrase. The sexual references often were demeaning to women, spoke of violence and adultery, or human waste and worthlessness. Other words spoke of disrespect to the Creator or expressing the desire for someone to be condemned to a life or eternity of suffering. The heaviness of the reality of what is meant by the words we so easily throw around became evident to the young people.

One theory of aggression blames violence on our liberal use of foul language - not that bad words cause violence (although what fight starts without them?) - but that if cussing becomes meaningless by overuse then what's the next level of venting but punching somebody? Growing up in a home where my Dad was a religiously disciplined man I never heard him swear except when he was working on the car or telling the banker who came to repossess the farm to get off our land. He taught by example that cussing was reserved for special occasions.

There is an evolution of language that makes some words and phrases harsher or softer over time. When I was in high school if something "sucked" the reference was to a demeaning, forced sex act. Today the word connotes a vacuum, emptiness, or worthlessness and most people have little objection to it. The epithet of calling someone a bastard has lost its sting in today's America where babies born out of wedlock is the norm. Other examples come to mind but I feel like a little boy behind the barn practicing my curse words if I ponder it too much.

The most ubiquitous and harsh word is the word that originates as a reference to rape. Referred to as the F-word, eff, f***, or other recognizable codes for public print. There are plenty of arguments for avoiding this word in addition to its potential moral revulsion. In most cases the word is just a space filler and makes no grammatical sense whatsoeffingever. Since police officers in emotionally charged situations tend to revert to what they practice, the word pops up on video tapes of crisis situations too frequently. If I never hear "Get on the f***ing ground and show me your f***ing hands now!" on bluetube.com I'd be grateful. The word has no communicative purpose and, in fact, obscures the flow of the language and the conciseness of compliance commands. It can also be prejudicial to juries and attorneys even though they are quite content using the language themselves or at least enjoying movies and HBO without the slightest flinch at the word.

As for the argument that this is the language of the streets and people need to know how serious we are, I just have to say that avoiding that language in my experience has never kept somebody from responding to my commands. We're not "one of them" and pretending that using gutter language bonds us to our rough communities is disingenuous. None of this is to say that total foul language abstinence is necessary any more than to say that we never do anything in the course of our jobs that is not also proper in normal social intercourse. We do use harsh language, we do use force, and we do use deception, all of which involve ethical calculations of ends justifying means and that, in a perfect world, would never be necessary tools of the trade.

Avoiding swearing in public requires the discipline of avoiding it in private. The exercise might be a good self-improvement project for this year. What the heck - it couldn't hurt.

http://www.joelshults.com/

Is The Line Ready

Today's blog is a blatant self-promotion of my POD book (POD = publish on demand) which I titled "Is The Line Ready - A police perspective on worldly wisdom" and available from a link on my website http://www.joelshults.com/ or from lulu.com. It's also a little bit of thinking out loud about being a writer.

The book has been well received by those who have read it. It consists of a quick read that can be savored one page a day for a year or can be consumed in an afternoon. The format is simple and consists of a quotation from a notable source followed by my brief commentary, then a challenge for the day.

I hesitate to call myself a "writer". A writer is someone who has suffered for years of rejection from publishing houses then finally gets a big break, goes on a whirlwind publicity tour, buys his dream house, and sits in front of the fireplace with his old typewriter trying to write the next best seller before falling into a desperate slump that leads to his suicide and everlasting fame as a tortured artist. Nevertheless, I would recommend that anyone who thinks they might have a story to tell take the opportunity to do it with the magic of internet publishing.

I don't know what the mind of a "real" writer is like. I'm not sure if there are lots of ideas and stories deep within me fighting for a voice. I will say it was quite a relief to see my first work in print, and a self-indulgent thrill to sign a book for a friend. The idea for a book of daily readings was actually one of my more recent thoughts. It took about two or three years to go from conception to print on this particular project. The inspiration for the book was 1) I saw other similar projects by persons whom I considered to be of no greater ability, 2) I hadn't seen any law enforcement specific books of this kind, 3) it was a project that seemed possible to accomplish, and 4) it seemed ideally suited for my first self-publishing project.

Before completing my doctoral dissertation my writing had been limited to letters to the editor, a weekly column while I was Chief of Police a dozen years ago, and one article in The Missouri Police Chief magazine. The dissertation process was grueling and a great training experience for writing. Of course for the most part a dissertation does not carry the burden of marketing, but the research and editing was like boot camp.

What really made me think I could write a book is the existence of self publishing and publish-on-demand services. After a little bit of internet research I chose lulu.com. It was amazingly simple - not without glitches but still relatively simple - to upload my manuscript on a template they provided, then create a simple cover, and order my first copy. I completed the manuscript while on a week's vacation. Since finding the quotations to use was fairly simple, albeit time consuming, half my work was done after selecting the quotes. The quotations provoked some thoughts that I used for my commentary and my daily challenges. The work flowed pretty seamlessly during the writing stage.

Editing was a challenge since there is a phenomenon where the brain does all the short cut editing for me. In other words, the flaws on the page are fixed in my brain's interpretation and therefore masks errors to my own work. In fact, the brain operates that way for other readers as well. It wasn't until after my 4th revision to the book that a friend pointed out an error on the title page! Lack of editing services is the most serious drawback to self publishing. Those services are available for a fee but most of us who are vain enough to push a book through a self publishing site are too vain to allow or impose on others a reading of their work before publishing.

The advantage of using a site like lulu.com is that there is no cost to the writer at all. If you order a book you pay for the book that is printed. This particular company inflates the shipping costs but since I don't own a printing press it has been a good deal for me. I am not deluded in my expectations. If I sell a hundred books I'll be delighted. The great advantage in addition to my ego is that I can now claim "published author" on my resume and lets me cross off one of the items on my bucket list. Now I just need to get my helicopter pilot license....

Hate Crimes

Before looking at this commentary the reader should do some deep breathing, relax, and keep an open mind. I'm not going to say anything explosive, but I am going to argue against having hate crime laws and that in itself will cause some to assume that I am racist. Being opposed to hate crime laws doesn't mean that one is in favor of hate crime behavior. The argument against hate crime laws is centered not on condoning a type of individual behavior, but rather on fearing the eventual result of government abuse of power.

Outcries for hate crime laws will be heard whenever there is a high profile crime against a member of a minority or protected group. There is still a movement for hate crime legislation echoing from the Matthew Shephard murder. (Shepard, gay University of Wyoming student was found badly beaten, tied to a rural-area fence post and left for dead on the morning of Oct. 7, 1998. Police charge that Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney pretended to be homosexuals, lured Shepard out of the Fireside Lounge and took him to a remote area east of Laramie, Wyo. He died five days later in a Fort Collins hospital. http://homes.thedailycamera.com/extra/shepard/ ).

The first question one might ask is what practical effect a hate crime law would have had on the killers of Matthew Shephard. Wyoming has the death penalty for murder and the four suspects were arrested and brought to justice. The threat of an additional slap on the hand would hardly have entered their calculus at the time of their crime.

The second question one might ask is what the hate crime legislation is actually punishing. Since the behavior which was spawned by their reported disgust with Shephard's perceived homosexual advances was already illegal (beating and murder), the hate law would only apply to a crime of having a certain thought or attitude while committing the other crimes. We have to take a short lesson in the elements of crimes before I explain why the premise of hate crimes is anathema to American jurisprudence.

Crimes consist not only of a certain behavior such as punching or shooting someone, but that behavior must be accompanied by a criminal intent. It is absolutely critical to distinguish between intent and motive. Intent is the state of mind which drives the behavior. To pretend to shoot someone with an unloaded gun, only to find the gun has a bullet in it when the trigger is pulled is a different intent than aiming a loaded gun with the intent that a pull of the trigger kill the intended victim. To find oneself threatened by another and choosing to use a firearm to defend oneself from a deadly attack is different than accidentally pulling the trigger while cleaning a gun. In all four of these cases a person on the receiving end of the bullet will be just as dead, but the crimes charged, if any, and the legal defenses available are all different, as would be any subsequently imposed punishment.

Motive is simply the reason that was used by the offender to justify a subsequent behavior. If bank robber A planned to rob First National Bank because his mother needed cash for a life saving medical procedure and bank robber B planned to rob the same bank to feed his own cocaine addiction, both A and B would be prosecuted for robbing the bank with the intent of stealing money. Motive, while of interest to investigators and jurors, is not required to be proven or even addressed in the prosecution. It is not an element of the criminal offense charged.

To prosecute for motive in hate crimes, as opposed to intent, would require a juror to know what set of attitudes an offender had and for the juror to be willing to punish a person for their thoughts. A thought or attitude of prejudice toward a person of another race or religion or sexual preference may be unjustified, immoral, improper, ignorant, despicable, and vile but it should not be illegal. Speech that expresses hate or prejudice is protected speech under the Constitution. As unpleasant as it may be to hear a NeoNazi parade with White Supremacists shouting racial epithets along Main Street, their thoughts and expressions are not only legal but enjoy a special level of protection by virtue of their unpopularity. In any discourse about the merits of the supremacists' position on race relations, the give and take of ideas will eventually serve the public much more fully than completely suppressing the rights of the hate mongers to spew.

The line is obviously drawn where riotous intent exists or where disturbance or assault or property damage ensues. In those cases where a criminal violation occurs those violations will be prosecuted for the illegal behavior that was intended and not for their notions of racism. Persons subject to victimization by virtue of their race, religion, sexual orientation or other minority or protected status still enjoy the protection of law. Burning crosses in someones yard, beating somebody up, refusing housing accommodations - all this BEHAVIOR remains illegal.

The peril of prosecuting thought should be obvious to any student of history or literature. The slippery slope is that certain beliefs will become illegal. Once those beliefs are unlawful, the expression of them will be unlawful and labelled as hate speech. This has already happened in other western cultures, notably our neighbor Canada. While moral absolutes such as murder, rape, robbery, assault, theft, etc will remain steady over the centuries the topics subject to hate speech will be blown with the winds of those in power. The risk to our freedoms that would occur from policing thought crimes vastly outweighs the risk of disorder from open discourse and debate, including hateful words. We must continue to define behaviors and criminal intentions as unlawful, and not motives, attitudes, or beliefs as illegal.

ER Docs Surveyed Claim Excessive Force by Police

A recent article (http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE4BN39F20081224?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews ) shows that a huge majority of emergency room physicians report that patients who had been treated after being subject to use of force by police officers were subjected to excessive force. Within the same article is discussion about whether ER docs should begin mandatory reporting of suspected excessive force by police. I cannot describe adequately how much damage this report will cause to the police profession, nor can I adequately express how utterly worthless the research is to the issue of police use of force.

The opinion of anyone - regardless of whether they are a well educated, well respected professional -about an event which they have not witnessed and about which they have no objective information is worthless and irrelevant. They may be experts in assessing injury but they are not experts in assessing whether that injury was justifiably and legally incurred. It would be no surprise to find that patients who were the subject of such force would almost universally claim that the force was excessive. "Thanks for using the Taser on me Officer I sure had that coming" is not a phrase you're going to hear very often.

There is no comparison between a domestic violence victim or child abuse victim and the person who has been injured by the police. A law or policy requiring medical personnel to report suspected excessive force by police is entirely out of place. No family violence victim chooses to be the subject of an assault. Persons who disregard their statutorily mandated duty to submit to an arrest and obey police commands do make that choice. No abuser of a spouse or child has the right to commit an act of violence against their prey (other than lawful corporal punishment of a minor for disciplinary purposes). A police officer is specifically trained, equipped, and lawfully mandated to be the aggressor in contacting persons suspected of criminal behavior. They are given Constitutional guidelines, certain levels of immunity, and statutory authority to act on behalf of the people in the use of necessary means to gain compliance. Victims of relationship violence have few resources and weak recourse against their attackers. Citizens who claim excessive force have advocates waiting in the wings to help them file grievances, imperil an officer's job, sue the officer and his or her employing agency, or commence a state or federal civil rights investigation. There is no conceptual correlation between a victim of relationship violence for which there are mandatory reporting and protection laws, and the subject of a police use of force.

I urge people in the medical, research, and law enforcement professions to speak out at every opportunity when this research is cited as evidence of police misconduct.