These Are Our Protectors. Alas.

Three stories from the past few weeks about the people who are allegedly protecting us.  No, this isn’t about the sorry excuse for law enforcement in Uvalde: everyone already knows about that gaggle of craven incompetents.  More to the point, we can at least understand their inaction, which seems to have been motivated by little else than garden-variety cowardice.  No matter how well you’re trained, no matter how much body armor you’re wearing, that guy in there has a semi-automatic rifle and an apparent desire to kill people: choosing not to be his next target is understandable.  We might hope for more from our police, but we shouldn’t be surprised at what we got.

Today, Curmie writes about different, less comprehensible, forms of unfitness for the job.  Sometimes it’s just people who are temperamentally ill-suited to perform the functions of the job.  Sometimes it’s a system ripe for corruption and a police force more than ready to exploit those opportunities.  And sometimes, well, we’re talking about a significant error of judgment.  It’s probably not true that the cop in question would come in third in a battle of wits with a dead chipmunk and an anvil, but one particular decision was, shall we say, particularly ill-advised.  

As usual in such posts, Curmie takes them in the order they crossed his path.  We begin, then, in Buffalo, NY, site of the last big mass shooting before Uvalde.  Notice the key word, “big.”  There were in fact 15 mass shootings (at least four people killed or injured, not counting the shooter) in this country, accounting for 12 deaths and 72 injuries between Buffalo and Uvalde.  There have been 22 mass shootings (that’s two per day), with 19 dead and 102 injured in the 11 days since Uvalde.  It’s almost as if there was an ongoing problem here.

Latisha Rogers

Eh bien, revenons à nos moutons: One of the survivors of the Buffalo attack was Latisha Rogers, whose misfortune it was to experience her second such shooting incident: the first cost her brother’s life.  This time, Rogers was working at the customer service desk in that Tops supermarket in Buffalo when the shooting started.  She took cover behind the counter, hoping not to be seen.  She took out her phone and called 911, whispering to the dispatcher that there was an active shooter in the store.

The response?  “What? I can't hear you. Why are you whispering? You don't have to whisper, they can't hear you.”  Right, because you can intuitively determine where the shooter is relative to Rogers’s location.  Then, in Rogers’s words, “She got mad at me, hung up in my face.”  OK: not being able to make out what is being said over the telephone by someone who is whispering—that’s completely understandable.  But you’re a freaking 911 operator, and it’s part of your training to understand that if someone is speaking very quietly, there’s probably a reason. What you don’t do is have a snit fit and end the call.

County Executive Mark Poloncarz described the 911 operator’s performance as “inappropriate” and “completely unacceptable.”  Ya think?  Of course, a different county mouthpiece said the law enforcement response time was not affected by the handling of Rogers’s call.  He might even be telling the truth, but Curmie wouldn’t bet the price of a small pizza, let alone the ranch, on the veracity of that statement.  Doing what you can to keep the county from getting sued is likely to trump integrity in situations like this.

The only good news to come out of this is that the still unidentified dispatcher was indeed fired, which is about all one can hope for.  There was no apparent malice, and nothing illegal about her actions.  But people like that ought to find alternative employment.  That’s obviously going to happen.  Curmie hopes so, at least, since he doesn’t want to spend a lot of taxpayers’ money on unemployment compensation.

Our second story suggests that not all cops are good guys.  Who knew, right?  Anyway… In Polish immigrants Justyna and MattKozbial bought a building, formerly a church, in small-town Highland Park, an enclave within the city of Detroit.  After securing some 13 separate licenses, they converted the space into a facility to grow medical marijuana.  Sometime later, on Christmas Eve of 2020, Mayor Hubert Yopp and Police Chief Kevin Coney showed up for a “fire inspection.”  Fire inspections, of course, should be conducted by jamokes like these two instead of… you know… people with relevant credentials, like, I don’t know… maybe someone in the fire department?

Upon entering the building, what to their wondering eyes did appear (Christmas Eve, remember?) but a bunch of marijuana plants?  Naturally, despite the baker’s dozen licenses, the (ahem) fire inspectors declared the site an “illegal narcotics operation” and seized the building under the state’s arcane forfeiture laws. 

Stupid laws like these allow corrupt cops and politicians (there’s another kind?) to exploit the system for literally millions of dollars of cash and material goods.  There are some (not enough) safeguards, such as the one which requires that such seizures be reported immediately to county prosecutors.  Guess who says they were never contacted…  But also guess who did nothing about it when they were, at least until the story went public.

It should be noted here that the Kozbials have not only never been convicted of any offense, they’ve never even been actually charged with a crime, making the seizure of their property even more outrageous.  And yet, things manage to get even worse. 

The city tried what the Kozbials’ lawyer rightfully calls a “shakedown with a badge and a lawyer.”  Highland Park officials actually told the Kozbials that they could get their property back in exchange for two police cars valued at nearly $70,000.  Really, it’s apparently right there in the city records.  In a just universe, Yopp, Coney, and City Attorney William R. “Terry” Ford would now be doing hard time with roommates named Mad Dog, El Diablo, and the Butcher.  Does this look like a just universe to you, Gentle Reader?

There are folks interested in reform of the system—the Mackinac Center, for example—but it’s a long and winding road ahead.  What passes for good news here is that the city conceded shortly after TV coverage from the Detroit ABC affiliate.  Of course, the shakedown artists at the center of the escapade are still in positions of responsibility and more than likely to try again. 

Marc Deldin, the Kozbial’s attorney, makes the cynical but accurate observation that “There’s clearly no respect of the constitution or people’s rights. But there appears to be a fear of the media, because it took a call from you and a story for them to do the right thing….  That should have been done 17 months ago.” 

Curmie is no fan of the media in general terms, but sometimes they do some good.  This would be one of those times.

Finally, we move on to a different kind of incident at a Texas elementary school: a career day.  The day after the Uvalde shootings, a Tarrant County Deputy appeared at a career day at E.M. Daggett Elementary School in Fort Worth.  After the formal presentation, a student asked the deputy what kinds of weapons his vest protected him against.  The deputy then did a Google search, thereby projecting images of AR-15 rifles onto the classroom screen.

Even if, as is likely the case, this was just a moment of not paying attention to the circumstances, it’s a little strange to want to show kids pictures of any kind of guns in answer to that question, irrespective of the timing.  When we add in the fact that those kids are the same age as those killed by essentially that weapon, in that state, the day before… well, that’s a remarkably stupid thing to do. 

But for the brighter kids in the class, the lesson is even more traumatic.  They’ll put things together: “yes, my vest will protect me from the very weapon that killed 19 kids your age yesterday, but the police there didn’t do anything to rescue those children.  These vests are to protect us, not you.  If the same thing happens in this classroom, don’t expect any help from us.”  OK, that’s a little harsh, but you see what I mean, yes? 

The Uvalde police had riot gear, but did nothing for what must have seemed an eternity for those still alive.  Could moving faster have saved one or more of the victims?  Maybe.  But whether it would have made a difference is pure moral luck.  The lives of schoolchildren in Uvalde were deemed insufficiently important to demand an immediate intervention by police. 

There were probably fewer students in class in elementary schools across the country, let alone in Texas, the day after Uvalde: one of Curmie’s Facebook friends, a teacher in Texas, reported that only about a third of her students were physically present that day.  And then to remind the ones who were there that even Kevlar-protected cops wouldn’t necessarily come to the rescue—this may be an appropriate lesson for junior high kids. But for elementary students, the Sheriff’s Office apology that described the incident as “insensitive and a profound momentary lack of judgment” leans more to the side of understatement than of hyperbole.

The good news here was that the reports Curmie saw that the Deputy had brought an actual AR-15 to the school were false.  That’s something, although it also highlights how easily false information can spread.

So there you have it, three stories about people who are supposed to keep us safe: a 911 dispatcher ill-suited for the job; a conspiracy of cops and other city officials to screw over private citizens who had done nothing wrong, and a moment of extreme if unintentional callousness.  All in all, not a good look.