Ok, one thing which sort of makes me different from a lot of people on the "left" is that I have a more pragmatic view of defence and justice issues. So, I thought I would share this clip from Britain's ITN (Independent Television News) news from 1966.
A lot has changed in 50 years and British police can be seen carrying guns, or have access to firearms.
Let's not forget that not only can we see the police improperly using their firearm, but we can also see civilians using firearms on the police. So, it's not a one way street.
Something that is annoying me is watching British commentators condemn ICE for shooting Alex Pretti.
My usual question to them is "what would be the reaction of British police if someone showed up at a protest with a holstered handgun?"
And unlike a lot of people out there: this blog has been pretty consistent about carrying weapons to a protest as being a no-no.
I'm sorry I can't say too much if Alex Pretti was going to show up with a firearm and get in the way of police. My experience is that is an incredibly bad idea from my long career of dealing with the police in various capacities.
I know that some jurisdictions make it illegal to carry a weapon during a civil unrest (e.g., 18 Pa.C.S. 6107), which is why I said that I am surprised the real militia (national guard) didn't shoot Kyle Rittenhouse for walking about armed in Kenosha.
I had a manual on protesting from the 1960s which made it clear not to bring weapons to a protest, that I can't find. And there are states which prohibit this activity.
White supremacists and anti-government extremists have sought to undermine our institutions with armed protests that too often escalate to violence. An 18-month study of 560 events where demonstrators, counter-demonstrators, or other individuals or groups were present and carried or brandished firearms found that at least 18% of these events occurred on the grounds of government facilities, with more than 100 reported at legislative buildings and vote-counting centers. The study also found that armed demonstrations are nearly six times as likely to turn violent or destructive compared to unarmed demonstrations.
The right to peacefully assemble is enshrined in the First Amendment and has driven political progress in the United States since its founding. While the overwhelming majority of recent protests in the U.S. have been peaceful and have not involved weapons, a growing number have included individuals with firearms—whether participating as protesters, counter-protesting, or claiming to provide security.
Armed individuals undermine protests’ core democratic nature: They intimidate and discourage people from exercising their rights to speech and assembly, and they have interfered with basic democratic processes like voting and lawmaking. Amidst unprecedented political polarization and heightened fears of political violence, the presence of firearms at protests today threatens to be a particularly combustible trend.
So, you may not like what I say about Alex Pretti getting shot, but someone needs to toss some cold water on the practise of carrying weapons, particularly firearms, to protests. Pretti was "too soon oldt and too late smart" when it comes to this. And, like Rittenhouse, his heart was in the right place, but his head was up his ass.
Unfortunately, Pretti DID get killed for his ignorance.
I tried to write a post about the differences in US and Europan Union privacy laws which somehow got trashed, but the gist of it is that the US doesn't have strong data protection laws. That means law enforcement is working with the crap data mining services provide.
On the other hand, digital ID these days is biometric and works well with facial recognition.
And immigration services worldwide are using biometrics for law enforcement.
I would also add in that immigration is tightening up worldwide. So, it feels hypocritical that people outside the US are condemning ICE. Especially since the Schengen Area in Europe fines people 1,000€ a day for overstaying. There is also a possibility of being banned from the Schengen zone.
Fortunately, people in the US are too distracted with ICE to notice that they are handing the data miners information. That was an important part of the lost post, a reference to this article: How is ICE tracking people in Minnesota? An expert explains.
It might make more sense to demand strong data protection laws which allow people to control what is private information being sold. Especially since your private information is one of the things making money for big tech.
OK, I've made it clear that you're taking your chances if you bring a weapon of any kind to any form of protest. Something I said in another post on police violence (Defund the Police is Utopian, Misinformed, and Misguided):
OK, the "Gun Violence Prevention" types should be upset about the guns on the street, but they are getting way ahead of where they should be in this process: especially if they are serious about cutting back on how many people patrol the streets. Getting the guns off the streets should be priority number one for the people who are going to float this crazy concept. Not to mention they should be really careful about how they frame the issue in regard to people who carry guns.
Guns are not the problem in Europe and most of the rest of the world that they are in the US.
Acquiring guns illegally in the US is not much harder. About 57% of this year’s deadly force victims to date were allegedly armed with actual, toy or replica guns. American police are primed to expect guns. The specter of gun violence may make them prone to misidentifying or magnifying threats like cellphones and screwdrivers. It may make American policing more dangerous and combat-oriented. It also fosters police cultures that emphasize bravery and aggression.
While people might want to say that Alex Pretti wasn't armed, as that quote points out you're taking your chances having anything in your hands in an encounter with the police.
But, I'm going to let this sheriff explain this to you and maybe you might not do something stupid which gets you killed.
As I said in the other post:
I witnessed the police beating someone resisting arrest. It was about 4-6 police officers on one small, skinny person.
Was it a bunch of white racist cops in the US?
Nope,
it was someone who refused to leave a bar on Gandy Street in Exeter,
England in 1991. The person who was being beaten was white, as were the
police. The issue was that the person was resisting arrest.
Getting in the way of police doing their jobs is taking a serious risk: whether you agree with what they are doing or not.
As I said before, Europe has had militarised police for a long time. In this case, the Carabinieri, which has been around longer than the country it serves (remember Italy was only unified in the late 1860s). And don't let the fancy ceremonial uniforms deceive you, the Carabinieri are a very professional police force.
As this video points out, the Carabinieri are loyal to Italy, not a political system. Well, they did support the King as opposed to the fascists. This loyalty led to most Carabinieri joined the resistance!
And while I like GIGN (Groupe d'intervention de la Gendarmerie nationale), GIS (Gruppo Intervento Speciale) are pretty top too. In there with Borstar and Bortac. Sometimes the best special forces units go unnamed.
Quite frankly, I would like to have a militarised force like the Carabinieri around if they put country over politics.
I saw a clip which featured John Oliver bemoaning the "militarised police" in the US. It made me wonder if he had ever traversed La Manche. Or is he like his insular Amerloque cousins and stuck in a place where police never carry guns, which is actually a myth since British Police are armed. They just aren't armed to the extent of the French. The headline from Le Monde states:
Urban riots: the use of elite police and gendarmerie units, a "conscious" strategy
BRI, RAID, GIGN... by calling in these intervention units, the Minister of the Interior wanted to make an impact. According to his entourage, this is a choice that has been "assumed and asserted".
This is a definite show of force as the Le Monde article points out:
"Show of force
The tone and method are changing. "Systematic intervention instructions have been given to the police", he tweeted on Thursday 29 June. That very morning, as part of the Reinforced Operational Coordination in Conurbations and Territories initiative, an initial decision authorised the gendarmerie's security and intervention platoons to take action in police zones. Then came the decision to deploy elite police and gendarmerie units in the field. According to the minister's entourage, this was a "demonstration of force that was fully assumed and claimed, with a dual operational and psychological objective".
The aim was to regain the initiative by pushing the rioters, far from the usual policing strategy, which theoretically consists of keeping the demonstrators at a distance. RAID and BRI armoured vehicles were deployed as close as possible to the clashes. At the request of the public authorities, three additional vehicles have even been loaned urgently by the manufacturer, Arquus, without the company having had time to repaint their sand-coloured livery, which is more reminiscent of military operations in the Sahel than the urban maze of the housing estates in the Paris region. For its part, the gendarmerie is lining up its brand new 4 × 4 Centaure, behemoths measuring 7.4 metres long and 14.5 tonnes, and instructing its helicopters to take off at 7pm, before nightfall, to fly over sensitive areas and provide information.
Article XII – The guarantee of the rights of man and of the
citizen necessitates a public force: this force is thus instituted for
the advantage of all and not for the particular utility of those in whom
it is trusted.
The concept here is the maintenance of order which is also mentioned in the US Constitution (i.e.: insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the
common defence). The US Constitution makes it clear that it has a similar attitude toward insurrection, but the force charged with suppressing insurrections is the Militia (Article I, Section 8, clause 15) which is theoretically closer to the "people" than that of the French system.
There is another post on the difference between US policing and French policing, but I will say that the founders were well aware of the French system. The founders chose to stick with the British system for the most part. But there weren't organised police forces at that time in the British world.
On the other hand, the US Second Amendment has been reinterpreted in such a way that it is removed from its original context. One can arm themselves legally to a level equal to the police: maybe not that of the French Police. Does such an arms race mean that the British system is obsolete and that the police do need to be militarised?
I mentioned in my previous posts on the differences between the French Gendarmerie Nationale and the Police Nationale: the main one is that the Gendarmerie is an internal army--complete with special forces unit, the GIGN.
This headline is pointing out that the Gendarmerie Nationale is deploying its tanks to combat the riots.
I used a picture of a costume Gendarme the last time I did this post on this subject. This time I am using actual material from the French Gendarmerie Nationale. Those who do not understand French can turn on autotranslated English subtitles.
The National Gendarmerie is one of two
national law enforcement forces of France, along with the National
Police. The Gendarmerie is a branch of the French Armed Forces placed
under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior, with additional
duties from the Ministry of Armed Forces.
In short, it is an internal army, which is a no-no in Anglo-American, especially American, tradition.
The first video is a short video on the history of the Gendarmerie Nationale:
general security in support of the Departmental Gendarmerie
military and defense missions
missions that require large amounts of personnel (Vigipirate counter-terrorism patrols, searches in the countryside...)
Nearly 20% of the Mobile Gendarmerie squadrons are permanently deployed on a rotational basis in the French overseas territories. Other units deploy occasionally abroad alongside French troops engaged in military operations (OPEX or external operations).
This system is unlike the US, which has the Posse Comitatus Act a United
States law which limits the powers of the federal government in the use of
federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the
United States, France has a professional military which works internally with no issues to that. To some extent, the British also use their military for civil defence. The Militia in the United States, which is now the National Guard, and has the powers to enforce internal order given to it under Article I, Section 8, Clauses 15 & 16:
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming,
and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as
may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the
States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority
of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by
Congress;
The founders' intent was to have a civilian force, instead of a professional military one, to handle the tasks which are delegated to the Gendarmerie Mobile in France. This is due to a cultural difference where the Anglo-American tendency is to dislike large standing military forces. Or as the Virginia Constitution of 1776 states in its Bill of Rights:
Sec. 13. That a well-regulated militia,
composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper,
natural, and safe defence of a free State; that standing armies, in time
of peace, should be avoided, as dangerous to liberty; and that in all
cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed
by, the civil power.
I should add that modern police forces are a new thing in Anglo-American tradition dating back to the early to mid 19th Century. There were night watches and other non-professional forms of law enforcement early on. Modern policing only began to emerge in the U.S. in the mid-nineteenth century, influenced by the British model of policing established in 1829 based on the principles of Sir Robert Peel.
Sir Robert Peel created what is termed an ethical police force. The approach expressed in these principles is commonly known as policing by consent in the United Kingdom and other countries such as Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
In this model of policing, police officers are regarded as citizens in uniform. They exercise their powers to police their fellow citizens with the implicit consent of those fellow citizens. "Policing by consent" indicates that the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public is based upon a consensus of support that follows from transparency about their powers, their integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability for doing so.
The first organized, publicly-funded professional full-time police services were established in Boston in 1838, New York in 1844, and Philadelphia in 1854.
As I said, the difference in attitude is based upon cultural differences.
ADT had an ad almost 30 years ago that compared a handgun to a burglar alarm. It pointed out that the alarm would call the cops while the gun was sitting in a drawer or safe. In other words, the alarm could protect your home when you weren't there.
I've had enough experiences over that period between my private life and my work in the criminal justice system to come to the conclusion that CCTV is much better at stopping, or at least deterring, crime than any firearm. Not to mention much safer: unless you are installing it yourself and you have no idea what you are doing.
Having a firearm is probably more of an advertisement to get robbed than having an alarm or CCTV since you have a valuable commodity (or commodities) to the criminal fraternity.
As the gun crowd likes to point out: criminals don't respect the law. And how else are they going to get their guns other than breaking the law?
CCTV images of 2011 UK Rioters
On the other hand, CCTV does indeed stop crime. Likewise, the footage can be stored remotely and shared. Mine is hi-def quality and stored for a month. Any clip I make is stored until I delete it. The best part is that I don't need to be at home for the camera to work since the product is stored on the internet. I can be anywhere there is internet access and flip through the footage. I can share the clip with the law enforcement using a link.
I would also add that my clips use facial recognition. Which is actually sophisticated enough that it can catch someone trying to obscure their face.
And, yes, I have shared my video with LE since my camera is registered with the local police.
While some people may believe that CCTV isn't that much of a deterrent, especially if used by the government, that isn't the case when individuals share the information between themselves and/or law enforcement. Also, the issue about "government intrusion" can be limited if the CCTV info comes from individuals instead of the government or business.
Anyway, CCTV is definitely a crime solver and deterrent where I actually live with quite a few high profile cases being solved using CCTV information. The reason I'm posting this is that my footage has helped apprehend a criminal even though I wasn't home at the time.
The real issue is whether the prosecution want to use CCTV information. Compare the UK's use of CCTV after the 2011 and that of in the US to catch the "peaceful protesters". With the exception of the person who set fire to the police car in Philly, most of the protesters have gotten away with it due to prosecutorial inaction.
The issue is that the surveillance economy is already here. We may as well make it work for the benefit of society.
OK, the utopians not only want to rid society of guns, they also want to get rid of the police. Crime will be solved by social programs which ensure equality by providing housing, health care, social services, and lord knows what. Probably drugs will be legal and freely available so that the population is properly drugged up and docile.
Crime suddenly disappears making the police something which a utopian society no longer needs.
Not really. Even utopian ideologies such as anarchy believe in order, but the order comes from people knowing the rules and respecting them. Utopian societies don't exist, but they would be much more "authoritarian" in reality if they did. You don't need the cops because you know the rules and follow them. Otherwise, you do some public self-criticism about your failure to be a good citizen.
But that isn't really my point here since the distopian reality is already here: the surveillance state.
You don't need cops on the street, or even a highly visible force, since the people doing the policing are sitting in some room. They probably don't need to be too attentive either since facial recognition software can keep tracks on people.
The real solution to the police problem is the surveillance state.
And it's already here. To the point I've been tempted to write a post called "Why are you here? Really?" about how social media, which includes Google make their money on surveillance. Trump could have had a field day if he went into how big tech, especially social media, make their money.
And people gladly hand them the info.
But you don't need to have rooms full of monitors to have a surveillance state. All one needs to do is set up a clearing house for the information which is collected by individuals. That doorbell cam can help solve crimes.
I know mine has and I haven't been "home" most of the time.
The surveillance state's neighbourhood watch never sleeps. Even better you don't need to worry about it being brutal. People walk by the eyes of the state blissfully ignorant that they are under observation until the moment they act up.
People might get upset about facial recognition, but how do they feel about it after it helps apprehend the person engaging in sexual assaults in their neighbourhood?
Defunding the police will result in something much more sinister. Hell, it's already here!
A disclaimer: I believe in some of those social programs, but am under no illusion they will be the sole answer to crime.
Nope, it was someone who refused to leave a bar on Gandy Street in Exeter, England in 1991. The person who was being beaten was white, as were the police. The issue was that the person was resisting arrest.
This is why I say "Defund the Police" is misinformed. It is based on pretty much upon ignorance since the police will use force on someone who is resisting arrest no matter where one happens to be in the world.
The morbid exceptionalism of American police violence cannot be explained by the amount of money the U.S. spends on police, or by the number of cops it employs. The U.S. spends less on police than the European Union does, as a share of GDP. Italy has more officers per capita than any state in the U.S., according to a comparison of FBI and Eurostat databases. Greece has more officers per person than Newark, New Jersey; Baltimore; and Chicago.
But none of those places shares our epidemic of police violence. American police kill about 1,000 people every year. Adjusted for population, that body count is five times higher than that in Sweden, 30 times higher than that in Germany, and 100 times higher than that in the United Kingdom.
Many differences between the U.S. and the European Union can partly explain these gaps, including our history of systemic racism and our porous social safety net. But without the mention of guns, no explanation for America’s record of police violence is complete.
OK, the "Gun Violence Prevention" types should be upset about the guns on the street, but they are getting way ahead of where they should be in this process: especially if they are serious about cutting back on how many people patrol the streets. Getting the guns off the streets should be priority number one for the people who are going to float this crazy concept. Not to mention they should be really careful about how they frame the issue in regard to people who carry guns.
Guns are not the problem in Europe and most of the rest of the world that they are in the US.
But the biggest issue is the legal framework regarding the use of deadly force in self-defence in the US. Let's go beyond the enhanced castle doctrine/stand your ground laws to get to the amount of force police are allowed to use in the US and EU.
Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), was a US Supreme Court case regarding the use of deadly force by the police. Graham can be boiled down to:
Any use of force by law enforcement officers needs to take into
account "severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an
immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he
is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight."
"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."
Bottom line is that it is constitutionally permissible for police to use deadly force when they “reasonably” perceive imminent and grave harm. There are 38 State laws regulating deadly force which are almost always as permissive as Supreme Court precedent allows. Sometimes those laws are even more permissive than the federal law in the latitude they give officers to use deadly force.
Contrast that to the European Union where the European Convention on Human Rights allows police to use only the deadly force that is “absolutely necessary.” In contrast, police in the United States are permitted if they have a “reasonable belief” that their lives are in danger. Under these differing principles, a police shooting might be lawful in the United States and not according to European standards.
Add in that European Union countries set their own regulations within the commission’s framework. Similar to the US some countries have stricter rules than others in regard to the application of that framework. Again, we see a difference between the US and EU attitudes toward the use of deadly force by the police. In Finland, for example, a cop is expected if possible to seek a superior’s approval before using deadly force. In Spain, if possible the police officer must first fire a warning shot and shoot at a non-vital part of the body before they can shoot to kill. Those examples were not meant to advocate attempting to shoot a "non-vital part of the body".
Likewise, racism alone can’t explain why non-Latino white Americans are 26 times
more likely to die by police gunfire than Germans. And racism alone doesn’t explain why states like Montana, West Virginia and Wyoming, where both perpetrators and victims of deadly force are almost always white, exhibit relatively high rates of police lethality. I would add that the Guardian feature on people killed by the police showed that (1) more whites were killed, but (2) the population most effected by police violence was native americans (10.13 to blacks at 6.66)!
One other thing which is common in European, and other non-US forces, is that they are not locally controlled. One of the reforms in Belgian Policing after 2001 was that the forces were reformed into to different national branches. Most European Police departments are accountable to a national body.
The bottom line is that simply saying "defund the police" will be a failure until there are drastic changes in US society, which I don't see happening. Those are the enactment of effective gun regulations and a change in the standard for the application of deadly force in self-defence.
Two thing that the "gun violence prevention" crowd and "Black Lives Matter" would be well advised to spend their time addressing. Otherwise, they are acting against their stated interests.
The term "Gendarme" may connote the quaint French Policeman like the one in this picture.
Not really, the French Gendarmerie Nationale is one of France's two national police forces. Unlike the Police Nationale, the Gendarmerie Nationale is a branch of the French Armed Forces placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior with additional duties to the Ministry of Defense.
To try and analogise this to US law enfocement, the Police Nationale would be something like a combination of large city police forces and the FBI. The Gendarmerie would be more like the State Police forces, patrolling the smaller cities, towns, and countryside. But unlike the State Police forces there are two different branches: the Departmentale and the Mobile. The Departmental being like the state police forces.
The mobile being an internal army, quite literally. main responsibilities are:
crowd and riot control
general security in support of the Departmental Gendarmerie
military and defense missions
missions that require large amounts of personnel (e.g., counter-terrorism patrols)
Nearly 20% of the Mobile Gendarmerie squadrons are permanently deployed on a rotational basis in the French overseas territories. Other units deploy occasionally abroad alongside French troops engaged in military operations (called external operations or OPEX).
Let's toss in the the Gendarmerie Nationale also has the Groupe d'intervention de la Gendarmerie nationale (GIGN), an elite law enforcement and special operations unit numbering about 400 personnel. Its missions include counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, surveillance of national threats, protection of government officials and targeting of organized crime. GIGN is one of the world's top Special Forces groups, which is something that would make people who get upset about armed police to go apoplectic and die.
Gendarme means Man at Arms. So the Gendarmes were the "men at arms" of the Middle Ages. The term was more specific than just men who had weapons, but were government officials.
Also, France's Gendarmerie has been highly influential on other national police forces, mostly in civil law and former French Colonies.
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