Too Bad It’s Not A Game

I have come to grips with a condition I have struggled with since I was boy. I have LSI (Low Sports Interest). There apparently is no cure. I think I was born this way even though I tried to fight it. I was embarrassed as a young boy when my Dad caught me reading a book about how to throw a football. “You can’t learn to throw a football by reading a book”, he said compassionately. I was confused. After all, the name of the book was “How to Throw a Football”. In junior high and high school I found my leadership and teamwork niche in student council and cut my competitive teeth in debate tournaments. But I still struggled with LSI. Let’s just say that Dad was pretty happy when I joined the Army.

Now the tables have turned. Whereas once I was the wonder of a father who couldn’t understand my lack of manly interest in sports, I am now a father whose son cannot understand my lack of manly interest in sports. My son is a sports fan with notable athletic achievements dating from T-ball and peewee basketball. To try to relate and cement those father-son bonds I will occasionally try to have some quality sports moments. Those don’t last very long because my competitive spirit, honed in the sweat-drenched classrooms of weekend debate tournaments, makes me hate to lose. So, I quit playing when I quit winning. That means that driveway hoops, rec center handball, golf, chess, and thumb wrestling were all bitter memories by the time he went off to seventh grade.

I still attend an occasional pro sports event with him and we have a good time, although I suspect when he finishes college and gets a job my companionship (i.e. buying the tickets) will be less sought after. I still don’t really understand football, or basketball, or the nuances of baseball, soccer, hockey, or the reason I spend a hundred bucks to sit in the middle of screaming intoxicated adults in extended adolescence while trying to read the local paper between plays, or downs, or quarters or whatever they are.

The one advantage that my LSI has provided is that I don’t do any Monday morning quarterbacking; no second guessing of the millionaires who obviously have reasons for making the decisions that their entire lives have been devoted to being able to make. When a batter stands with a thin wedge of matter held above his shoulder, he faces a small sphere that will be hurled in his direction and arrive from the pitcher’s hand to the batter’s torso in about a third of a second. Since the batter’s brain takes a quarter of a second to command the arms to begin his swing, there is less than one tenth of a second to make a decision to swing or not swing. This doesn’t count the milliseconds for the retina to translate a few million inputs, or the micro-adjustments the muscles must intuitively make in order to make the kind of swing most likely to rocket the ball in a certain direction.

Similarly, who am I to question a pass from a quarterback being assaulted by a horde of adversaries anxious to knock him silly, looking into a swarm of movement where the field of opportunity changes with every fleeting moment. Spectators may moan about moves they wouldn’t have made had they been in the batter’s box, but they soon forgive and forget and go about their business.

I wish the public would give the same consideration to officers making their split second decisions. A police officer is thrust into the fight of his or her life. The outcome will not decide who gets a Super Bowl bonus or World Series ring, but who lives and dies. The spectators – always late to the game and depending on replays – will have no experience with which to judge the winner and yet they will be vocal in their opinions while the survivor must remain silent. The field of encounter is not cleared for the contest, it happens right in the middle of the real world. There is little notice, no fanfare, and the adversary plays by no rules while the officer has many. The contest cannot be flagged for penalty, because it is the final play and it will be a sudden death decision.

Fine motor skills will be dulled by primitive body chemistry while those same instincts will focus the senses in ways the officer cannot possibly consciously control. With neurons firing at lightning speed, the officer’s brain will simultaneously reflect on training, emotions, calculations of time and space, moral considerations, and will balance all the training to shoot against all the powerful indoctrinations not to shoot. While the body accounts for movement, light, and all the micro-data accumulated over a lifetime, all comes to focus in one small finger pressing against a very small trigger to create a very small hole in the opponent that may or may not end the encounter. If the officer wins, he or she gets to spend the rest of their career explaining why they chose not to lose.

As it turns out, I signed up for the toughest game of all.

Rules of Engagement

I've been gathering helpful hints from news accounts so here are the rules of engagement according to the media:
Never shoot anyone over 60.
Never shoot anyone under 18.
Never shoot anyone who has a disability.
Never shoot anyone on their birthday or the night before their wedding.
Never shoot anyone who likes children, was going to make something of themselves, or had an interesting hobby.
Never shoot anyone of a different race, gender, or culture than you.
Never shoot anyone unless they have a bigger, closer, and more visible weapon than you.
Always try to figure out why somebody wants to kill you; it's obviously something you said or did that provokes them.
Always give the person at least one chance to shoot or beat you first.
Tasers are evil but you may use them if the person has a gun.
Since you have unlimited back-up immediately at all times, two big strong police officers can always easily subdue another person due to your special training and other superpowers without harming them.
How hard can it be?

Deep Thinking: The Moral Origin of Police Power

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” – do these words from the Declaration of Independence haunt us when we are tackling a suspect? Perhaps they should.

Police power in the United States is derived, designed, and purposed differently from most other countries. We cannot imagine the absence of some mechanism in place to enforce protections for life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness envisioned by the Founders, but they could not have foreseen our powerful ubiquitous modern police departments. There are a variety of internal and external controls on human behaviors that worked with some success prior to the arrival of today’s organized police. Our 21st century culture suffers the weakening of some of those controls such as religion, extended family, and strong long-lasting local community ties. The sheer volume of human interaction, cultural influences, and unprecedented anonymity add to criminal opportunity against which our police forces are now embattled.

We must be honest in recognizing that police power is the power of force and coercion. A glance at your equipment belt will verify this fact. A societal value associated with the capacity to force compliance is that this power must be held in reserve and used only in the most extreme circumstances. Understand that our practical application of this philosophy is not so clear and certain, but the general public views force in this way and it is good that it is so viewed, lest the baser nature of those holding that power perpetrate the diabolical abuses seen today in the streets of China, Iran, and Korea.

A sad and common mistake in interpreting the Constitution is that this grand document gives us rights. It does not. It recognizes rights that naturally exist – “God given” as our deist forefather Jefferson recognized them – and that the only thing government can do is to repress those rights or protect them. Therefore, our power is derived from the people and granted to us for the purpose of ensuring the rights of all. That power is to be exercised only in the interests of a greater peace and equality. Every citizen has the power and responsibility to intervene and be a peacekeeper, but we often stand in their stead to protect the weak and unawares. Our power is the equalizer against the opposing forces of disorder. It is this rationale that provides the only moral basis for use of force in gaining compliance with the law.

Power exercised in violation of our national design necessarily diminishes the goals of freedom, peace, and equality. When a police officer uses his or her power to exact vengeance or when a politician uses police power to create favor of one over another, then our treasured values are betrayed.