Hysteria About Policing is like Animal Farm. The Critics Are Worse Than Those They Criticize by Michael P. Tremoglie

This is an excerpt from my 2006 novel "A Sense of Duty." Keep this in mind when there are police use of force controversies. The novel's protagonist, Phila. police officer Mike Carr, is talking to his friend:

" Tom, listen. Nobody calls the police when things are going fine, " explained Carr. "The only time the cops are called is when there is a problem. Police officers make judgments in a fraction of a second.-a judgment that will have serious consequences. A judgment that will be criticized by people who have the luxury of deliberation." 

This is the case in every instance of police use of force from the least to the greatest i.e. deadly force! As I wrote then, nobody call the cops when there is no problem, or threat, or danger. They are called in volatile situations or in emergencies.

So the first question - that is never asked by the media - is why were the police called. As we see now in Baltimore the police were called by the very person who is now condemning them, state attorney Marilyn Mosby.  How come no one asked this initially before condemning the officers?

Regarding this incident in McKinney, there are several issues not mentioned by media, pundits, and the usual cop bashers - and even other police because we are not monolithic. These are:

• Why is it that no one has mentioned that nothing happened to the boys who were told to sit down and did sit down? One clearly sees this on the video. So anyone that complied with the officer's attempt to restore order was not subject to force.

• Teenagers? How many of you have tried to restrain or apprehend a teenager who is stronger, more flexible, and often bigger? These teenagers were fighting adults. They started the fight by crashing the party  did they not?

Now I do not condone the McKinney officer pulling out his gun. But if he did it because the one's kid hand went behind his back (again this is clearly seen in the video - the one kid I think with a blue shirt) then maybe, maybe  I could understand it. I do not think I would have but he reacted differently. 

 This pontificating, this self-righteous judgmentalizing is absurd. Police are fallible.  There are some who are evil, brutal, and corrupt. I know more than most because I worked with them. Those need to be punished. But as we have seen there is a lynchmob mentality coming from the left and left-leaning libertarians that is disgraceful and unconscionable.

This hysteria - by Cato, Reason magazine, the ACLU, the NAACP and all the other usual suspects - about policing is deleterious to public safety. Because the critics will do far worse than anything those they criticize will do.  Their attitude is reminiscent of the pigs in Animal Farm.

Blanket condemnations and snap judgments of police actions are no different than the racist accusations of blacks as born criminals.