We can read the newspapers (watch tv) and take each new story as an isolated story and then go on to the next. Or we can take each story and try to figure out how this story adds to everything else we already know and whether it tends to confirm or raise doubts for our beliefs. But we have to be careful that those beliefs don't cause us to accept the facts that support what we believe and to reject those that don't. Extricating 'the truth' is rarely easy. That reality helps liars greatly.
This story about Ryan Braun's positive drug test and subsequent overturning of the results on appeal offers us potential lessons for a lot more than just other stories about drugs.
It also offers us lessons for evaluating politicians and car salespeople. And friends.
And it also provides lessons for the whole endeavor of figuring out 'the truth' in general, or even pondering what 'the truth' even means.
The drug test said his testosterone level was higher than any other baseball player tested, ever.
He denies taking drugs, claiming something went wrong with the testing. And the appeal board agreed that the delay in sending in the sample for testing violated protocol and his 50 game suspension was overturned.
The New York Times had a long article which goes into details about the testing process.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Laurenzi
[the tester] denied tampering with Braun’s urine sample and said that he acted
professionally when he took the sample home for the weekend instead of
sending it immediately to a laboratory.
“I followed the same procedure in collecting Mr. Braun’s sample as I did
in the hundreds of other samples I collected under the program,”
Laurenzi said. “At no point did I tamper in any way with the samples.”
Laurenzi also said that in taking Braun’s sample, along with those of
two other players, to his home for safekeeping, he was again following
standard procedure. That procedure was in place because it had been
determined that it was better to keep the samples in a secure location
rather than leave them in a FedEx office where they could have been
tampered with or not properly stored.
“The protocol has been in place since 2005 when I started with CDT and
there have been other occasions when I have had to store samples in my
home for at least one day, all without incident,” Laurenzi said.
Many collections are done at night because that is when most games are
played, although when Laurenzi collected Braun’s sample on Oct. 1, a
playoff game between the Brewers and the Diamondbacks began just after 1
p.m. Laurenzi said he completed his collections at Miller Park in
Milwaukee at about 5 p.m., which is also the deadline for giving FedEx
shipments to stores in the Milwaukee area that could be flown out that
night.
Laurenzi said that after arriving home, he put the samples in a
Rubbermaid container in his basement office that, he said, “is
sufficiently cool to store urine samples.” No one other than his wife
had access to the samples during that time. All three samples were kept
in the same sealed, tamper-proof package.
Braun has never asserted, either in his case before the arbitrator or in
his news conference last Friday, that the samples tested in a lab in
Montreal bore any evidence of having been compromised. One person with
knowledge of the Braun case said a union representative on Braun’s
behalf was present in Montreal for a critical moment in the testing
process, and never raised any concerns about the sample.
Kent Covington at Braveswire - what appears to be an Atlanta Braves website - lists pros and cons for believing Braun and adds information I haven't seen elsewhere:
Beyond the sincere tone, Braun made a compelling case for his innocence. Here are the key points of that case: 1) He was 27 years old, entering the prime years of
his career with a long-term guaranteed contract, and even if he were
inclined to use PED’s, he would not have had sufficient motivation to
take such a risk. 2) Braun had passed 24 prior drug tests, including multiple tests during the 2011 season. 3) The fact that MLB said his testosterone levels
were three times greater than any other test result since testing began
made those results far less believable.
I must say, this is a persuasive point. Of all the juicers MLB has
tested in recent years, with hundreds of positive results… Ryan Braun’s
testosterone levels were THREE TIMES higher than anyone they had ever tested? That is a bit hard to believe. Especially given the following point. 4) He did not gain muscle mass, a single pound of
weight or so much as a tenth of a second on his run time on the
basepaths (which is routinely measured and documented by team officials)
between his last negative test and the test in question.
Another compelling point. 5) There was an improper 44 hour delay in the
delivery of the sample to a FedEx drop-off location. Braun suggested
this was a window of time in which someone could have tampered with the
sample.
From a legal standpoint, this is likely the argument that resulted in
the dismissal of MLB’s case against him. This part of Braun’s argument
will be less compelling to fans, however, most of whom remember OJ
Simpson getting away with murder (figuratively speaking, of course)
based on a technicality.
Overall, Braun was convincing and believable in his self defense.
Then again… a compelling case can be made on MLB’s behalf as well: 1) The league certainly has zero motivation to
falsely accuse one of its MVP superstars–with a squeaky clean image–of
being a juicer. 2) The sample in question was triple-sealed and its packaging showed no signs of tampering. 3) Perhaps the reason why Braun had not gained any
weight or apparent performance advantage was that he had just started
using PED’s when the test was administered. This is also the simple
counterpoint to all of Braun’s prior clean tests.
When all is said and done, I believe we all have an ethical
responsibility to assume Braun’s innocence. The 44-hour delay in the
delivery of the sample is more than a small technicality. It is unlikely
that anyone would have had both motive and opportunity to fabricate
Braun’s positive results or that an egregious error could have been
responsible for a false positive. But “unlikely” is a long way from impossible.
Covington adds several interesting pieces of information
24 previous tests with no positive results,
three times higher than any other test
no noticeable muscle mass or weight gain
So, if he had 24 other negative tests, does that mean that this is the first time he's taken something, or just that he took things now and then and was lucky he wasn't tested. Can a random fix give you power for a day?
Nowhere have I seen the actual testosterone levels.
A report at medicinenet
says the average testosterone level for men is in the range of 270 to
1,070 nanograms per deciliter. (This report also talks about the effects
- both positive and negative of heightened testosterone levels in men.)
USDoctor has a long post on the many ways to enhance testosterone and benefits and problems of each and how long they last, though it doesn't get into detection of drugs.
So while many, myself included, tend to lean toward assuming Braun probably feels that he can just deny in the face of it being difficult to prove he took something, there are some other possibilities that I haven't found discussed that could be out there.
1. Someone put something into his food. According to the USdoctor site,
"Oral testosterone may dramatically raise the testosterone level, only to have it drop a few hours later."
This would be consistent with the very high level and subsequent negative test. But then again, he could have done this himself. It would have made it easier to evade detection in the earlier tests.
2. There also could be problems with the testing equipment or the person reading the test. There is no evidence provided for this and usually such equipment is calibrated regularly. I don't know what procedures there are to document all this and how reliable they are.
What truths even exist and how can they be known?
Facts are things that potentially can be proven true or false. Here are some key ones from this story:
Braun either did or didn't have higher testosterone levels
Braun did something or not to cause this
Someone else did something or not to cause this
There was tampering or not of the sample
The sample was unintentionally or not contaminated
The testing equipment was or was not functioning properly
Is Braun telling the truth?
He could be knowingly lying
He could be deluding himself into believing
he did something but it was ok to do it
what he took was legal
since everyone else does it, it's ok
he really has lost connection with reality on this and believes he did nothing
There are a lot of ways one could push this story along. Why do we even care if sports figures take drugs? Why are records important? Why are we spending time on this story (and others like it) instead of reading more about Iranian and US relations and whether Iran is truly a threat or whether this is another push by war profiteers to get us into another war?
Or we could pursue the whole idea of truth and how we prove it and why it's important. But this is only a blog post and I have other things to do today. I only have enough time to raise questions, not answer them.
What is it about humans that we find ambiguity and uncertainty so troubling? Brainy Quotes credits Bertrand Russell with this thought:
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.
And they also credit Russell with this:
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Experience is a good thing. But it's better if one learns from experience. This is just a story about a ball player whose drug test came out positive. For some, it's just another interesting story to be pulled out and laughed over. For others, it's one more piece of the giant puzzle that helps us understand life.
[OK, this is rough, but if I wait to clean it up, it won't get up. Gotta run to lunch and workshop. Also there's video to be put up eventually. Snapchat nation is explained near the bottom. Typos will be corrected later, or not.]
Glad to be back in Alaska. Anti-racism educator and writer from Nashville originally. Working at schools, teachers, occasionally corporations, but I piss them off and they don't ask me back. Seven books.
Today I want to do something a little different, Books are fact and data driven which is useful in documenting. But I know that for the most part, to create anti-racist movement it's not data, we didn't get into because we saw a position paper, but usually a personal story that was shared, that touched us not in the abstract way, but in the real way. As a white guy, really good at abstracting this issue, even the people who want to make change.
I want to talk about the way the stories we white folks tell contribute to the problem.
Whites are people of the lie. We've told ourselves so many lies that we no longer recognize truth from fiction. James Baldwin said this long ago. Speaking about black and white conflict.
People who imagine that history flatters them, and it does because they wrote it, are impaled like a butterfly. They suffer from the being so embedded in a lie and suffer enormously from the incoherence this makes us.
I want to tell you three stories from my own life.
1. My grandmother - incredible person and force in my life. Come from messed up life. Dad alcoholic. Grandmother was my refuge from verbal violence. She was also committed to equal rights. Raised her kids right and had a big impact on me. She had been raised in a very racist home - her dad was KKK in Michigan, Detroit. GG father. At 16 fell in love with my grandfather who was Jewish who lived in the black community. She went to her dad one evening - either he was going to burn his robes and never go back to Klan, or she would burn them. 1936. Back then girls didn't stand up to daddy. GG Father took the challenge and accepted my grandfather. That's the good part.
Toward the end of her life she began to develop alzheimer. Both fascinating and terrifying process. Stages of fear and anger and anxiety - you don't recognize people think they're trying to hurt you. Saw her deteriorate. Was tended by African American nurses. In anger periods, would last hour at grandkids and nurses, this woman who made a stand against racism as a kid, as she deteriorated, she called those nurses - I won't repeat it, because you know. When I asked doctors about the process we forget. Dr: Last thing you remember is the thing you knew best. My grandmother knew racism best.
2. My kid - now, about us. We still have that virus. Unless we are nurturing anti-racism. Doesn't take us a disease to make us angry and racist. OK Tim, obviously your grandmother got taught that by her dad, but that doesn't apply to you. My kids 14 and 12 now. When 7 and 5, we watched a movie. Heaven Almighty. Morgan freeman plays God and he tells people to build an arc. Kids had already seen it. Rachel sees Morgan Freeman - is that really God? 5 years old, doesn't know better. No, that's just an actor. She says, Oh OK great. Older daughter laughs at sister. Rachel, that can't be God - I knew I'd have to ask her why not and I knew what the answer would be. I had a fantasy the answer would be great, like God is a woman. But she was only 7. She said, because God isn't black, God is white. We don't have any pictures of God in our house. But we can't protect our kids from all the images all over our culture. Not only internalizing those white images of God, you internalize your superiority. Blacks have opposite internalization. If you have family who can overcome that, it doesn't make the internalized superiority go away. None of us can be smug about who we think
3. Me - this is mostly on video that will have to wait till I get it up.
The school got rid of his racist teacher, but my mom and I didn't see how the system itself, in its structure of different levels of courses that discriminated against blacks and favored the white kids. We need to challenge our own narrative.
One more final story that speaks to the gaps in our knowledge. Both daughters dancers. Have to drive through public housing development, by definition is all poor and this one was predominantly white. 10 year old daughter asks, Why everyone in this neighborhood is black? Good questions. Most 5th grade classes don't teach this. Older sister says, "Redlining." How banks redlined neighborhoods to refuse loans to blacks. Sister is right, but doesn't know why and talk about how history gets us to places. It's not random. These are outcomes of results of history. Didn't lecture. Just a two and a half honest explanation. I don't think it was the first time she noticed it was a black neighborhood. When you are the target oppressed community, you take the red pill (Matrix) and you're seeing the patterns. But whites have the luxury of being on the blue pill. Don't you see all this racism? No, I don't see it man. Kids don't have to be sociologists with PhDs, but they see these things. Our kid had luxury of asking, because of what I do. I asked parents about a week later. There is only one honest answer about privileging and history. Parents hemmed and hawed. Or I don't want to burst the bubble of my child's innocence. It's being burst every day. Better we do it. People say I shouldn't tell them about sexism because it will make it self fulfilling. Hey, wouldn't send them down a dark alley with electronic fence at the end so they won't get neurotic. No, they need to know for their own protection.
We've got to own the tuff that hurts. Stop being snapchat nation, ok, but sending disappearing videos. If Snapchat were a country, it would be the US. What happened in the past is now gone and has nothing to do with today.
We're all privileged in some situations, if not white, then male, or straight, or college educated, or able bodied.
I posted some thoughts on confessions just before boarding a plane to Seattle. But I had more thoughts as we took off and before we got into the clouds.
Cook Inlet Ice as we take off
Making a Murderer is a disturbing yet compelling Netflix documentary series. I gave some details of the confession - what it sounded like in the news and how it was actually obtained - in the previous post.
Here are some more thoughts the show raised for me.
Some specific issues for me:
The Certainty of the prosecutors and the defense attorneys. The prosecutor and the investigators - even the initial court appointed defense attorney - were all certain that Steve Avery (Brendan's uncle) was guilty and that Brendan was an accomplice. They didn't even consider other leads. This certainty seemed to justify the way they got the confession. They knew for sure that Brendan was guilty and they just needed to get him to admit it. The defense attorneys were also certain. The first court appointed attorney was sure of his guilt. Later, the better attorneys who took over were sure of Steven Avery's and Brendan's innocence. It's the job of the defense attorney to defend the accused. But it's the job of the prosecutor to uphold justice. His job in court is to present the evidence against the accused, but when information comes out that raises doubts, he should just relentlessly go after a conviction. If the wrong person is convicted, it means the actual murderer is still loose and liable to find new victims.
Getting a Confession - How far to push? If someone is guilty, it's better for the prosecution to get a confession. It makes it easier to convict and you can get evidence on other culprits. Prosecutors even make deals with suspects - 'We'll offer you less time in prison if you confess and cooperate with us on others involved in the crime." It can also save the time and expense of a long trial if the suspect confesses and pleads guilty. And if there is still an imminent danger - an unknown partner in crime still on the loose and dangerous - there is the added urgency of protecting people from harm right now.
Foraker and Denali Get Some Morning Sun
But what if the suspect is not guilty? How far should the interrogator push? This was a big issue with Guantanamo prisoners and waterboarding and other torture. If the suspect is not guilty, one is inflicting unnecessary pain and/or anguish to an innocent victim or one gets a false confession when the suspect says whatever the interrogator wants him to say.
Findlaw tells us this was the reason for the protections against self incrimination in the US Constitution:
"The right against self-incrimination is rooted in the Puritans’ refusal to cooperate with interrogators in 17th century England. They often were coerced or tortured into confessing their religious affiliation and were considered guilty if they remained silent. English law granted its citizens the right against self-incrimination in the mid-1600s, when a revolution established greater parliamentary power.
Puritans who fled religious persecution brought this idea with them to America, where it would eventually become codified in the Bill of Rights. Today, courts have found the right against self-incrimination to include testimonial or communicative evidence at police interrogations and legal proceedings."
Getting a Confession - Use of Guile:
Another issue is the use of lies to get a confession. Interrogators led Brendan to believe that by telling the truth he would make his troubles go away. He told them he needed to get back to school so he could turn in a paper and they implied that he needed to answer the questions first. They asked if he wanted to go to prison for the rest of his life and when he said no, they said, then write down what you did. They told him, "We know what you did, we just want you to say it." Well, they didn't know.
"The detective also tells her that, if she confesses, they’ll “walk right out here, to special
crimes juvenile” to “talk to a social worker.” If not, he’ll consult with the medical examiner and start working on a murder case against her. . .
Finally Truong confesses, after being reassured by the detective that “maybe something good will come out of all this,” and that the courts will decide on what “treatment” she should get in the juvenile system. . ."
When you are dealing with a guilty suspect, you may have to use tricks to break them down and confess. There are lots of strategies that we see in cop movies all the time, like Good Cop/Bad Cop. But how does that work with the not guilty suspect?
The Frontline show goes on to say false confessions aren't as rare as people think.
"But are false confessions actually that rare? Brandon L. Garrett, a University of Virginia School of Law professor who recently wrote a book called Convicting the Innocent, says his research “suggests that innocents actually confess to a lot.” Forty of the first 250 people exonerated based on DNA evidence, or 16 percent, falsely confessed."
And why do people confess falsely? They quote Troung about why she confessed, which sounds similar to Brendan's story:
So why did Truong confess to something she says she didn’t do? Why would anyone? “It was a pretty long two hours,” she told Boeri, “and all I could hear throughout those two hours was that they were going to give me help if I confessed.”
They falsely told her and Brendan that all they had to do was confess and they could go home. In Brendan's case, that's all he wanted - to go home. But they lied to him and chained him up and imprisoned him. Is that kind of lying acceptable?
I think that different techniques are acceptable in different circumstances. I'm not sure where the lines should be drawn, but introverted kids, like Brendan, with a low IQ and an inability to understand what is happening, are clearly on the no guile side of the line. More important than locating that line, may be to insure that the person has an attorney present, though in Brendan's case, his attorney was part of the problem - enough so to be kicked off the case by the judge.
And over the Chugach
Innocent or Guilty Presumption And The Need For Closure
We have trials to determine guilt or innocence. The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yet in the Avery case and in Brendan's case, it's clear that even Brendan's attorney considered him guilty. (see the previous post on this.) The Sheriff - It's critical police keep open some doubt about the suspect's guilt, simply so they don't stop looking for other suspects. In Steven Avery's case, the sheriff's office ignored a tip from the local police that there was another suspect they'd been surveilling, except for the time of the crime. That other suspect eventually - after Avery served 18 years in prison - was proven to be the culprit. And he committed more crimes in the meantime. And Avery, through DNA tests was proven not to be. The Victim's Family - They want to believe the person who did that to their family member has been caught and punished. In the Avery/Dacey cases, the victim's brother was certain from Day 1 that Avery and Dacey (Kevin) were guilty. They ignored the inconsistencies. But the family really does have an interest in the real perpetrator being caught and punished. In Avery's original conviction (when he was proven innocent later) the victim positively identified him. But later on, when the DNA proved he hadn't done it, she apologized. The Media - They want to sell advertising. They have a strong incentive to report the most titillating stories they can. The reports of Brendan's confession dripped with blood and sex and murder. The reports made it sound like Brendan, after stewing on this for months, came in and spilled his guts. There's no hint the police picked him up at school and painstakingly fed him the story they believed and manipulated him until he eventually wrote what they wanted him to write. The media didn't ncecssarily presume guilt as much as presume that sensationalism gets ratings. But in going for gore, they planted the the presumption of guilt in the minds of their viewers and probably in their own minds.
Need For Closure
I suspect that the quick presumption of guilt in this case reflected a very human need for closure. The Sheriff - When a brutal crime is committed in a small town, law enforcement has to feel some responsibility for not having prevented it. Thus the sooner they catch the culprit, the closer they are to redeeming themselves. And there has to be at least subconscious antagonism toward the suspect for making them look bad. The Victim's Family - They too want to put this to rest as quickly as possible. Knowing the person who hurt or killed your family member has been caught and is being punished, for many, is a big part of the grievance process. Retribution seems to be part of human society. So much so that punishing the wrong person is not a worry for most victims' relatives. I'm not saying they knowingly will accept any culprit to punish, guilty or not, but rather their need for retribution helps them see guilt, even in the innocent. The Media - They probably have the least need for closure, as the 2014 Republican presidential race demonstrates. As long as an issue gets viewers and sells advertisements, they'll feed it to us. The Public - They share the police and victim's family needs. They want to know the perpetrator is off the streets and they are safe so they can go on leading their lives normally. They want to believe that justice will prevail. They've watched enough police and lawyer television shows that they believe that in the end, the smart defense attorney will pull her client out of the fire. Until they experience their own injustice at the hands of the police or the courts, they just want the culprit caught and punished and they don't probe too deeply into the matter.
One Other Issue - Media Manipulation Of Trials
My sense is that the filmmakers seriously made this film because they thought an injustice was done. At least that's how it came across to me. But how do any of us know whether they fairly represented all sides of this case? Because they were taking the side of the economically and educationally poor, outsiders of this community against the establishment - particularly the sheriff department and the court system - that their motives are relatively clean. But then, how poor are the Avery's? They've got 40 acres of land, they've got a great vegetable garden. Is there a bigger story that the filmmakers missed that someone is trying to get their land? Probably not. It's upstate Wisconsin and there is probably plenty of land available. You see how many threads one could unravel and follow here?
The film makers here did a great job of mixing entertainment and documentary. A documentary should be accurate and explain complicated relationships AND be interesting to the viewer so they watch the whole thing. That happened here. I know my wife and I were totally pulled into the story and we were rooting for the good guys and angry at the bad guys. The filmmakers succeeded in their mission.
But will others see this model and do similar types of films, but with a sponsored message? Will corporations use this style to push their agendas? Will criminal organizations make similar films to make their own members look innocent? This documentary wasn't available when El Chapo met with Sean Penn, but maybe he was thinking along the same lines.
OK, there are all kinds of directions this can go. Lots of issues. But enough now.
It was in the mid 30s when I went to Pecha Kucha class yesterday, but the streets were good, so I biked. My presentation was ok, people said nice things afterward. Here's the first of the 20 slides.
and I tried to make the case for how learning another languages let's you escape the confines of English (or whatever your first language is) as you learn that the words and grammar of one language reflect the world differently from other languages. This shows most concretely in the fact that words of one language don't translate exactly into the words of the other language. Even concrete objects might not translate right. Banana would seem an easy translation, but in Thailand there are about 20 kinds of bananas that regularly show up in the market and many people there pick bananas off trees in their garden. And that, say, a black cat, has meanings in one culture that it might not have in another. And words that describe relationships get even trickier.
The Thai words closest to brother and sister really focus on the older/younger relationship more than the gender relationship, or even the blood relationship
People without any blood connection use the terms for older and younger about each other all the time. (And it's different from the more recent US use of 'Bro'.) At one point I asked somebody, after he'd introduced me to his sixth or seventh 'brother', how many brothers did he have. Oh, they aren't that kind of brother, he said.
The class liked the blue and red circles I used to show how much the English and German or Thai words overlapped. I didn't think of that until I was finishing the last slide, the night before the presentation. Then I went back and put in circles for the different slides that compared English and German or English and Thai words. Good thing I did. I argued that when the words don't overlap completely (usually the case) is when you learn what your own language doesn't capture about the world. And the less the words overlap, the more you learn about yourself and the world.
It was just starting to rain when I returned yesterday. It was more a light drizzle, and the drops were tiny specks of hail. Much better than raindrops, not as good as snow. I could feel them on my face. But I got home fine, but I was expecting snow on the ground this morning.
There wasn't any and the street in front of our house was wet, but not icy. And large chunks of sky were blue. So I biked. For the most part it was ok but then I saw a police car's lights flashing ahead and this car on the side of the road.
The culprit seems to have been a piece of light brick colored cement at the intersection. While all the other surfaces were fine, that piece of cement was really slick. Was there a second car involved? I don't know. A stop sign had been flattened. (I thought I took a picture, but it's not on my phone.) I walked the bike around the debris and down the hill. Back on the flat I rode carefully to the church where today's OLÉ classes were held.
By 2:30 when I came back, the sun was out and any ice or frost that had been there was either a puddle or dry pavement. But I did have two voices in my head this morning. One said: "Don't be such a wimp. You can't let a little weather threat keep you off the bike." The other said, "A broken arm would really be a pain. Don't be stupid." Stupid beat wimp today, but I know I should be more careful.
The classes today were good. The Innocence Project class was a continuation of last week's list of reasons innocent people are convicted. I'll put that into another post. It's interesting. And this class is a great one after seeing "When They See Us" the Netflix series on the Central Park Five case. Everything they talk about in the class happens in the series.
The afternoon class was on Pebble Mine. We've had a representative from Pebble. A person from the Army Corps of Engineers, whose in charge of the Environmental Impact Statement, and today, was someone from Bristol Bay Native Corporation who are strongly opposed to the mine.
Patrick Gamble and the University got married less than a year ago. And here he's gone out and bought a '56 Corvette from a buddy who gave him a good deal, without consulting his spouse who had a new Subaru in mind. Is this going to be the pattern in this marriage or is he going to talk things out next time before he makes what should be a family decision? This spouse isn't like his first two. She expects to be a full partner in this marriage she was pressured into. Is he going to have to be firm until she shapes up or can he learn to enjoy life with an equal partner?
Is the appointment of Tom Case as UAA Chancellor by his fellow retired Air Force general an example of cronyism? (An aside raises the same question about Craig Campbell's appointment as Case's replacement at the Alaska Aerospace Corporation.)
Why is this worth blogging about?
[This is a long post, so here's a brief SYNOPSIS: Case's appointment fits three of the four criteria of cronyism and may well fit part of the fourth. President Gamble's decision to by-pass a normal participatory search process and to ignore unanimous Faculty Senate recommendations makes the case for cronyism more plausible. This suspicion is exacerbated by Case's same day replacement as head of the Alaska Aerospace Corporation. With that said, Case is clearly qualified to head UAA, but not necessarily the best qualified. The faculty and students and rest of the campus community have to determine whether Gamble has knowingly abused his power to hire a friend or truly didn't understand the academic culture. If the latter, he has demonstrated why bringing in another leader from outside the academic culture is problematic to many. The UAA community will also have to assess whether Gamble is willing and capable of respecting and adopting the culture.]
1. What is CRONYISM?
Cronyism: partiality to cronies especially as evidenced in the appointment of political hangers-on to office without regard to their qualifications (Merriam Webster online)
[Noun] An intimate companion; an associate; a familiar friend. To oblige your crony Swift, bring our dame a new years gift. Hence, an old crony is an intimate friend of long standing.. Source: Webster's 1828 American Dictionary.
Crony A familiar friend. An old crony is an intimate of times gone by. Probably crone with the diminutive ie for endearment, and equivalent to "dear old fellow," "dear old boy." (See Crone.). Source: Brewer's Dictionary.
The act of showing partiality to one's close friends, typically by appointing them to a position in a company or organization despite the individual not necessarily being the best person for the position. Although this is [sic] favoritism is frowned upon in many cases, it is often hard to determine what is or is not cronyism. In general it is not wrong to hire or appoint someone you know, as long as they are well qualified, so the boundary between the two scenarios is very unclear. Although accusations of cronyism are prevalent, they very rarely amount to any disciplinary action or removals from power. See also nepotism.
doing favors for friends: special treatment and preference given to friends or colleagues, especially in politics ( disapproving)
Most of the definitions I found were close variations of these. So from these definitions we can pull out the common factors:
Partiality or favoritism
Towards a good friend
Usually through an appointment to a position for which the friend is
Unqualified OR not the best qualified
Wikipedia's discussion of cronyism gives more nuance to the term showing why it happens and how it relates to other terms we know such as networking or good old boys system:
Governments are particularly susceptible to accusations of cronyism, as they spend public money. Many democratic governments are encouraged to practice administrative transparency in accounting and contracting, however, there often is no clear delineation of when an appointment to government office is "cronyism".
It is not unusual for a politician to surround him- or herself with highly-qualified subordinates, and to develop social, business, or political friendships leading to the appointment to office of friends, likewise in granting government contracts. In fact, the counsel of such friends is why the officeholder successfully obtained his or her powerful position — therefore, cronyism usually is easier to perceive than to demonstrate and prove.
In the private sector, cronyism exists in organizations, often termed 'the old boys club' or 'the golden circle', again the boundary between cronyism and 'networking' is difficult to delineate.
Moreover, cronyism describes relationships existing among mutual acquaintances in private organizations where business, business information, and social interaction are exchanged among influential personnel. This is termed crony capitalism, and is an ethical breach of the principles of the market economy; in advanced economies, crony capitalism is a breach of market regulations, e.g., the Enron fraud is an extreme example of crony capitalism.
2. Is the appointment of Tom Case by his fellow retired Air Force general an example of cronyism?
Cronyism, like most things, isn't either/or, isn't black or white. There are situations which are clearly not and situations which clearly are, and more ambiguous ones in the middle. But let's go through these four factors:
Partiality or favoritism
We know that UA President Gamble knew there would be a vacancy for the UAA Chancellorship even before he took the job. It was ten months after Chancellor Ulmer announced she would retire, before Gamble began the search process late November 2010.
We know that the UAA Faculty Senate - on notice that Gamble was considering skipping a national search - unanimously recommended their Provost as the candidate they could live with should he choose to NOT have a national search.
We know the next public step was that Gamble appointed Tom Case to be Chancellor.
Towards a good friend (All Air Force career information comes from the Air Force webpages for Gamble and Case.)
Gamble graduated from Texas A&M and became a student, undergraduate pilot training, Randolph Air Force Base, Texas in 1967.
Case graduated from the Air Force Academy and became a student in the Undergraduate Pilot Training, Laughlin AFB, Texas in 1969.
I'm not sure when they met, but both careers included assignments in Vietnam, Korea, Europe, and Washington DC.
Gamble (August 1996 - November 1997) and Case (October 1998 - September 2000) were both commander, Alaskan Command, Alaskan North American Aerospace Defense Command Region, 11th Air Force and Joint Task Force Alaska, Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska.
And they served together in Hawaii when Gamble (July 1998 - May 2001) was commander, Pacific Air Forces, Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, and Case (September 2000 - July 2002) was Deputy Commander in Chief and Chief of Staff, U.S. Pacific Command, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii.
Commander, U.S. Pacific Command (CDRUSPACOM) is the senior U.S. military authority in the Pacific Command AOR. CDRUSPACOM reports to the President of the United States through the Secretary of Defense and is supported by four component commands: U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. Pacific Air Forces, U.S. Army Pacific, and U.S. Marine Forces, Pacific. These commands are headquartered in Hawai’i and have forces stationed and deployed throughout the region.
Both men retired to Anchorage where Gamble became head of the Alaska Railroad and Case became, first, Dean of the UAA College of Business and Public Affairs (where he was my boss) and then COO of the Alaska Aerospace Corporation.
Usually through an appointment to a position for which the friend is
Search committees are the norm for faculty and high level administrative positions at the University of Alaska Anchorage - usually national searches. The previous Chancellors at UAA and UAF were not selected through nationwide searches, but faculty and community members were involved and approved of the selections. See previous post footnote beginning at "*I'd point out" for how those searches were conducted.
In this case,
Nov. 23, 2010: the President announced the beginning of the search and hinted at skipping a national search because there were good Alaskan candidates.
Dec. 6, 2010: The faculty responded by proposing the current UAA Provost for Chancellor. If not him, then they wanted a national search.
Jan 18, 2011: The President brought together a committee and asked them to come up with characteristics of a good Chancellor.
Jan 31, 2011: The President announced Tom Case as the new Chancellor
The President skipped the normal search process, rejected the faculty's proposed candidate without consultation, did not consult with the faculty or other normal constituents about possible specific candidates, and simply selected someone he'd known in his previous career who was also a personal friend.
Unqualified OR not the best qualified
Unqualified? - The Chancellor has a leadership position which requires good management skills and an ability to work well in the community for university support and partnerships and for fund raising. Generally, someone from inside the academic profession with the highest academic credentials (a doctorate) is chosen because they know the culture and norms of the institution they will lead. This is occasionally waived if the candidate has other remarkable qualities.
Tom Case does not have a doctorate, but he has a masters in systems management and a great deal of education and training in the Air Force plus experience leading large organizations. He also spent five years as Dean of UAA's College of Business and Public Affairs. In that position he expanded his widespread contacts in Anchorage and Alaska developed earlier as Commandant of Elmendorf Air Force Base.
There is no question in my mind that Tom Case is qualified for this position.
Best Qualified? - This is a question that might still be debated if there were a national search and there were several candidates. There might never be absolute unanimity. There are factors to criticize with his candidacy.
He doesn't have an academic background so he doesn't understand the culture of people he will be leading. But this isn't enough to make him unacceptable. Sometimes an outsider can bring in new ideas. Another factor arises if we take the macro view. Not just how this decision affects the one campus - UAA - but the impact on the University of Alaska system. As I've pointed out in a previous post.
There will now be four white males over 60 without terminal degrees in the four top posts of the university. While these four men are each unique individuals and have their own perspectives and experiences,
having other perspectives is both symbolically and substantively important. The fact that this wasn't considered too important by the President is also troubling. Also, as I've said,
having outsiders in academia is not necessarily a bad thing. But two retired Air Force generals in the top four positions seems redundant. We've wasted an opportunity to have a different perspective among the top four positions. Why? Simply because Gamble is more comfortable with an old Air Force colleague? That's not good enough unless he brings in other qualities so special they make him clearly better than other candidates.
But we can't even consider whether he is the best candidate because there are no other candidates.
So, is this cronyism? Pat Gamble hasn't told us his motives (other than saving money by not having a national search). It is clear that it meets at least three and possibly four of the standard benchmarks of cronyism.
He used partiality or favoritism - he chose someone he already knew and was partial to without letting any other applicants into the process. He chose another academic cultural immigrant from the Air Force. While he may think he has simply chosen the best possible person for the position, in fact he picked a friend without considering others. He didn't even discuss with the faculty the person they recommended and why they supported him and why he (Gamble) didn't.
But he clearly decided that despite coming from a different organizational culture - two actually if we include his time with the Alaska Railroad which seems to be a particularly 'good old boy' system - that he knew better than the faculty, without even having to talk to them about their candidate and his. Or any other possible candidates a nationwide search would produce.
The person he chose is a personal friend and professional colleague.
He did this through an appointment that was a deviation from the standard process. While there had been some deviation in past appointments, this one was extreme by totally excluding the faculty and others in the university community. The past searches for UAA and UAF chancellors deviated by not having a national search, but the conditions were different and shared governance wasn't abandoned in those cases. One major concern, I understand, for the faculty is fear that the exceptions will become the new norm and this appointment will set a precedent for skipping national searches and search committees altogether.
Tom Case is clearly qualified, but not necessarily the best qualified. We don't know whether he is the best qualified because Gamble's process excluded competition against which to measure Case.
How hard is it to imagine Gamble and Case and Campbell at a party discussing what Campbell would do after his term was over? "You know, there's an opening for Chancellor coming up. I can appoint Tom to that - he was a dean there already - and then Craig, you can take Tom's spot." Actually, I do have trouble imagining Tom Case in that meeting, but somebody must have discussed this for it all to happen so quickly and smoothly. Too quickly. Too smoothly.
The University of Alaska is a state organization and the Aerospace Corporation is state created and largely state funded. These are positions with serious salaries. The Chancellor gets about $250,000 plus benefits.
3. Why is this worth blogging about?
I've learned over the years that cronyism, like other ethical infractions, is "something that other people do, but not me." While working with Municipal Assembly members, for example, on rewriting the Municipal Code of Ethics, I had assembly members defend their right to have lobbyists pay for their lunches with reactions like, "Are you suggesting I could be bribed for a $20 lunch?" I had two responses: 1) How expensive a lunch would it take? and 2) If $20 is trivial, then why don't you pay for the lunch yourself? But I got the point. Other people were unethical, but even hinting they might be was insulting.
Most people, particularly those who have dressed themselves in society's symbols of legitimacy, rarely recognize when they do something wrong. Tom Delay, for example, is still protesting his innocence. If Gamble reads this, while he might acknowledge some of the points theoretically, he'd probably say that, practically, he'd made the right decision and he'd do it again. And that's why I'm covering this in such detail. He shouldn't do something like this again. And if he does, it won't be out of ignorance.
Broader Issues
1. The University of Alaska is a large public organization with a budget over $1 billion. The FY2012 operating budget alone is $884,983.300. The capital budget is another $212,525,500. (To put this in context, the Governor's proposed total operating budget for the State of Alaska is $5.45 billion. To be fair here, only $350 million of the UA budget comes from the State. But the total operating budget is 1/5 the State's operating budget.) How the University is run should be of concern to Alaskans.
2. The University of Alaska is the main institution for higher education in the state of Alaska. How it operates, its emphases on one approach to education or another, will greatly affect the future of the state. Nationally, great changes have been going on in higher education as university budgets have almost matched health care for significant increases. Legislators have reacted with calls for more efficiency. A business metaphor has replaced the idea of education. Students have been changed into customers and education has become preparation for a job rather than for life. "How?" is replacing "Why?" as the basic question for college students. There are legitimate questions about what universities do and how they do it. But there are also many simplistic answers floating around.
Facing these changes requires people who both understand education and who understand what parts of traditional education are essential to keep and how to move into the future taking advantage of new technology to make education better, but without making it superficial. So Alaskans, even those not involved in the University, have a huge stake in what happens in the administration of the University.
Specific Issues - Consequences of Skipping a Search
1. Credibility of the President's Commitment to Shared Governance
The President, in his November letter announcing the beginning of the search, said the new chancellor should have "an unwavering belief in the efficacy of shared governance." Either the President
doesn't have such a belief himself,
doesn't understand this the same way it's understood by faculty and staff and students, or
didn't want to risk not getting his preferred candidate.
There was no shared governance in this decision. Gamble muffed an opportunity to be a University President and instead acted as the University CEO. Chancellor Case was appointed by the President with no meaningful participation of the UAA community. Not only did Gamble choose someone against the Faculty Senate's unanimous recommendation, but he did not bother to discuss his reasons why before he made the appointment or why he scrapped any semblance of a search.
When push comes to shove, this new Chancellor will be clearly and unequivocally representing the President in Anchorage rather than representing the UAA community to the President. This is not shared governance.
2. Legitimacy
The odor of cronyism floats over this appointment. Even if Tom Case is the best possible chancellor - which we really can't judge given the lack of other candidates to compare him to - skipping over the process leaves a residue of suspicion and distrust. Had there been an open process with several candidates, the President may have risked that his preferred candidate was not recommended. He then would have had to make a decision - either to accept the search committee's recommendation or to still choose his preferred candidate. Gamble didn't take that gamble. The odds would have been in his favor. Usually such a committee identifies acceptable candidates and possibly a preferred candidate. Had Case made the acceptable list, his legitimacy would have been assured, and this would not have been seen as a possible case of cronyism. Odds are good this would have happened.
Instead the new Chancellor comes in under a cloud. And there is antagonism between the faculty and President.
3. Communication
The time that a search committee puts into developing criteria for a position is time where people have to articulate their values and their models of education and universities. There is a lot of give and take, people reveal themselves, and relationships are built. This would have been a great opportunity for the President, who comes from alien organizational cultures, to have gotten an intimate look at this new culture he now heads. That opportunity has been lost.
Conclusions
This is a post I wish I didn't have to write, but I feel strongly that if the President continues in this path the relationship between him and the faculty will get more and more strained. The faculty are in an awkward position. They don't want to spend their time taking on the President, they'd much rather work cooperatively with the head of the University system to make the university a better place. But a lot of them think they've been rolled by the President and don't want it to happen again.
My sense is that while they feel misused and are concerned about the future, they are willing to accept and support Tom Case. They also have to assess Gamble. Was this a willful decision to by-pass the process to make sure his Air Force colleague and friend would get the position or simply a cultural blunder? If the latter, is he willing and capable of respecting this new (for him) culture and concepts like shared governance? Did he know buying this Corvette behind her back was wrong, but did it quick before she could say no? Or is he just not used to having to check with the spouse? And how's he going to behave next time there's a family decision to be made?
This has been a long post because none of the other news media are covering the story, except the UAA student newspaper, Northern Light, and I want to document the complexities of this situation as best as I can for the record.
I expect that Tom Case will be a good Chancellor at UAA. I worked with him in the College of Business and Public Affairs and respect him as an honorable and sensitive man of considerable ability.
But in a democracy, the ends don't justify the means. Prisoners get released when the police or courts have violated procedures set up to protect their rights. The President had more than enough lead time to fill this vacancy properly. And as one of his first major acts of significance, it behooved him to do it right. He didn't. Wednesday he's coming to Anchorage to talk to the UAA faculty. Whether the future will be rocky or smooth will depend on how that meeting goes.
The university can be a frustrating place because democracy can be frustrating. Democracy allows time for people to have their say and be listened to. And I myself could point out to ways I would streamline things - but not at the expense of serious shared governance.
One needs to remember, "It's not WHAT you do, but the WAY you do it."
All
four of these movies pulled me in so completely that I wasn't watching
the movie making - all the technical stuff worked to tell the story, not
distracted from the story (either because it was bad or so spectacular
that it distracted.)
All four, I left the theater with the feeling of having seen a really good film.
Of the four, I probably was the least swept away at the moment by The New World. But it wouldn't let go of me. Scenes kept coming back to me. When I saw Hank and Asha
I walked out pumped. What a great film. But then, I wondered was
there enough depth? Was this just a well made, but light romantic
comedy? The New World seemed more important, but I didn't walk out with the same elation. Was I just being shallow?
At this point, I think they are both very fine movies. The New World
told a complicated story deceptively simply. It quietly took us on a tour of two people's broken hearts. We slowly learn about Mirte and Luc
and their similar losses that allowed her to reach
out to help him. At the same time helping herself. On the surface though, it almost seems like a
documentary about life at the airport's detention area for asylum
seekers waiting for the decision whether they can enter Holland or
not. It's so understated. Even the colors are muted. One audience
member told me his initial reaction was negative because there was no
humor. But the humor was there. It was just so quiet. Like a little
dab of yellow in a grey-brown world. For example - people are coming in
the door at the end of the hallway where she's just mopped the floor.
She waves her hands at them to stay on the side - these are immigrants who probably don't speak
Dutch. She makes 'chhhhhh...chhhhhh" sounds at them. An African stares
at her as he walks down the hall. She again goes, "chhhhhhh. .
.chhhhhhhhhh." He smiles and goes, "chhhhhhh. . .chhhhhhhhhh" back to
her as though he were learning to say 'hello' in her language. It's
such intimate cross cultural communications that make this movie so
powerful. Two low level people in a political no-man's land at the
airport, but not technically in Holland. In another scene, she catches
him staring at her and she waves him off and tells him not to look at
her. He comes up to her and in complete innocence says, "I've never
seen a white cleaning woman before."
This is a movie
where you have to look closely or you'll think nothing is happening, but
it's just happening at a lower volume and slower pace than we're used
to in US film. Slight gestures fill the screen with meaning if
you're attuned to them. When they get to the scene where she's washing
the glass wall and he dances on the other side along with her motions
it's like an explosion in another movie.
We get
glimpses behind the scene in this asylum center - the workers making
bets on who's lying, the attorneys trying to find ways to mesh the
clients' stories with the specifics of the law, the impossible
responsibility of determining if someone is telling the truth. We see
the healing relationship between the mother and her young son.
There's the motor bicycle she rides everywhere. There's so much. I was
only able to see this film once and I know that a second and third
viewing would reveal so much more I didn't see.
Actors Bianca Krijgsman and Issaka Sawadogo were superb. This was, for me, one of the gems of the festival.
And then I saw Hank and Asha. This is a feel good movie. It's a video romance between two strangers, played by actors (Mahira Kakkar and Andrew Pastides)
loaded with charm. It's all told in the videos they - two budding film
makers - send back and forth to each other between New York and
Prague. There's no nudity, no sex, no violence, just two well adjusted
20 somethings falling into an unexpected friendship that gets to the
edge of something more. Everything worked for me as they shared their
lives with each other via video. There's nothing heavy here, no
imminent deportations, though there is appropriate cultural and parental
conflict. The epistolary film, that uses an exchange of videos rather
than letters, is itself a comment on what we have lost as we've moved to
instant global communication. Everything worked for me. The story,
the characters (I never thought of the actors as actors it was so real),
the way it was all put together seemed so natural. We were simply
eavesdropping as two people opened their video mail from their new
found friend across the Atlantic.
The film makers -
James Duff and Julia Morrison - were at the festival and I was able to
learn more about the film. You can see my video with them in Anchorage discussing the film here.
Most surprising was that the two actors only met after the filming
was done. In fact Mahira did all her video in ten days in Prague before
any of Andrew's video was made. This speaks well to the scripting, the
acting, and the editing.
James and Julia said Hank and Asha will be available on Netflix in April and people should put it on their lists now.
This is the kind of film I feel pretty comfortable recommending - it's
hard not to like. We did see this one twice and it held up nicely the
second time. I saw lots of things I'd missed the first time.
Next, two films that were not in competition because they were special selections - invited films, not submissions.
We're back to be with my mom in LA. We were on the pre-screened list at the airport yesterday so we didn't have to take off our shoes, show our plastic bags, or take off our shoes. The ADN had an article on this program last December.
TSA spokeswoman Lorie Dankers, up from Seattle for the occasion, said there are two ways for travelers to join the program. Five U.S. airlines are authorized by TSA to invite selected frequent flyers into PreCheck. Or a person can apply through one of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Trusted Traveler programs like Global Entry.
All five of the select airlines serve Anchorage: Alaska, Delta, American, United and U.S. Airways. Bobbie Egan, spokeswoman for Alaska Airlines, said a batch of invitations went out over the weekend by email. If you didn't get one, it won't do any good to call up the airline to complain, she said.
"We don't set the criteria -- the TSA sets the criteria for who's invited to participate," Egan said. "It's a TSA program solely."
Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/12/04/2713439/tsa-opens-fast-lane-for-prescreened.html#storylink=cpy
I'm not sure what 'invite' means in this case. No one told us until we got to the security line and they scanned our boarding pass and told us to go in that lane. And it's the first time it happened. Is there a little racial profiling mixed up in this? Older white male and female? I'm sure that didn't do any harm. Or maybe NSA has told TSA that we haven't talked to any terrorists lately. Who knows?
The LA Times has an interview today with Professor Sergei Medvedev, an Arctic specialist who is calling for an oil moratorium in the Arctic and who Putin called "a moron." [I'm sure Putin used a Russian word. It would be interesting to know how it translates substantively and emotionally into English.]
"Political science professor Sergei Medvedev, a longtime lover and explorer of the Arctic, drew the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin when he recently called for international protection of the icy northern region in the face of economic development plans.
Last month, Putin called Medvedev, who teaches at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, "a moron."
The incident prompted a nationwide discussion of the Arctic and coincided with the arrest of 30 Greenpeace activists protesting a Russian oil drilling project in the region.
Medvedev, 46, who anchors popular television shows and studied and worked for 15 years in the West, spoke to The Times last month at the Architecture Museum in downtown Moscow."
LA Times story about man in prison for 34 years, convicted on eye witness testimony. The witnesses sister has now testified that she told police back then that her sister was lying. Finally it comes out and judge agrees he was falsely convicted.
Prosecutors had argued that about 12:30 p.m. on April 6, 1979, Register shot Jack Sasson five times in the carport of his West Los Angeles home. Sasson, 78, died three weeks later.
At trial, the physical evidence against Register was scant, court papers said. None of the seven fingerprints found on Sasson's car matched Register's. Police never recovered the murder weapon.
They did seize a pair of pinstriped pants from Register's closet, which had a speck of blood smaller than a pencil eraser. But it was of little value — the blood type, O, matched Sasson and Register.
Instead, the prosecution relied on eyewitness testimony, notably that of Brenda Anderson. Then 19, Anderson said she was at home when she heard gunfire, looked out the window and saw an African American man sprinting from the Sassons' carport, court papers said. She identified him as Register, though Register's girlfriend testified that he was with her at the time of the shooting.
Register was convicted and sentenced to 27 years to life in prison. Each time he appeared before the parole board, he refused to admit guilt.
"It appears that the only reason that I have been consistently denied parole is because I have maintained my innocence," he once told the board, court papers said.
Register might have remained behind bars, his attorneys said, if not for a stroke of luck. In late 2011, another of Brenda Anderson's sisters, Sheila Vanderkam, found a website that locates convicted felons. "I typed in the name Kash Register out of curiosity," she said in a declaration, "and learned, to my horror, that Mr. Register was still in prison."
Another example of police and prosecutors apparently more interested in convicting somebody than convicting the right person.
I biked down to Venice Beach just before sunset.
[Feedburner notes: This one seems to have taken about seven hours to be seen on blogrolls. I posted it at 7:28pm and the first hits from blogrolls came at 4:30am the next day.]
However, the death penalty is being meted out by police officers around the country. And while convicted murderers and rapists are spared the death penalty, often innocent citizens are not.
2019 Killed By Police* lists 197 people who have been killed by police in the US this year (and we're only in the middle of March.)
Death Penalty Info lists 3 people killed so far this year as a result of death penalty executions.
2018 The Root tells us 2165 people were killed by police in 2018. Mapping Police Violence puts the number at 2166 people killed by police in 2018. They also have a lot of related information and graphics - including comparisons between cities, crime rates, and other factors which show huge differences. The Washington Post lists only 998 people killed by police in 2018. (Including 7 in Alaska.) These are only people shot and killed by police. The others include all deaths caused by police. Death Penalty Info lists 25 people dying by state sanctioned death penalty executions in 2018. (Of that number, 11 are identified as Black or Latino. 13 (more than half) were in Texas.)
Killed By Police
Killed By Execution
2018
2166
25
2019
197
3
When police shoot and kill 'suspects' - the victim gets no presumption of innocence, no trial, no jury. No appeal. And police shooters almost never get prosecuted, let alone convicted.
OK. Let's acknowledge that police have a difficult job. They meet most of their 'customers' at some of the worst times in their lives. They're asked to intervene in crimes being committed, often, by people with guns and other weapons. They have to make fast decisions. Most of us don't want to do these jobs.
But when we look at the numbers, only a relatively small percent (less than 1/3) of police officers ever report firing their gun while on duty! From the Pew Research article (and reflected in the chart):
"To start, male officers, white officers, those working in larger cities and those who are military veterans are more likely than female officers, racial and ethnic minorities, those in smaller communities and non-veterans to have ever fired their service weapon while on duty. Each relationship is significant after controlling for other factors that could be associated with firing a service weapon."
The article points out that there is no cause and effect relationship proven between these characteristics.
My main point for using the data is to show that the vast majority of police NEVER even fire their guns in the line of duty.
"Well over 95 percent never shoot their weapons here," said New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir.
But we don't know if that's because they aren't ever in situations where they apprehend armed suspects or because they handle those situations differently from officers who do shoot. (Well maybe someone does, but this study didn't make any such claims.)
But the data do suggest that shooting suspects is NOT necessary in most cases.
Are there ways to reduce the number of police caused deaths?
I would also suggest that officers who do kill suspects are also victims of systems that make that option more likely. They see innumerable shootings on television, in movies, and in video games they participate in the shootings. They are nearly all given guns, which makes shooting (rather than other options, like talking, like waiting, like non-lethal weapons) an easy option. (We tend to use the tools we have to solve most problems.**) They don't necessarily get adequate training for dealing with the mentally ill. Internalized racism (again, television and movies play a big part here) will make many if not most officers more likely to assume the worst for suspects of color. (And officers of color are also the victims of internalized racism so when they are the shooters it's not proof that racism wasn't involved.)
"Failing to require officers to de-escalate situations, where possible, by communicating with subjects, maintaining distance, and otherwise eliminating the need to use force
Allowing officers to choke or strangle civilians, in many cases where less lethal force could be used instead, resulting in the unnecessary death or serious injury of civilians
Failing to require officers to intervene and stop excessive force used by other officers and report these incidents immediately to a supervisor
Failing to restrict officers from shooting at moving vehicles, which is regarded as a particularly dangerous and ineffective tactic
Failing to develop a Force Continuum that limits the types of force and/or weapons that can be used to respond to specific types of resistance
Failing to require officers to exhaust all other reasonable means before resorting to deadly force
Failing to require officers to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at a civilian
Failing to require officers to report each time they use force or threaten to use force against civilians"
I think it's important as fewer Americans die because of death penalty executions, to remember that in essence, police who kill suspects are, de facto, applying the death penalty.
Notes:
*Killed By Police lists a cumulative number for 2019 (197), but they don't for 2018. Each page is a month, and so I looked for other sources rather than try to count each specific death they list. The sources I used for 2018 did not have (at least I couldn't find) 2019 data.
**I learned about The Law of The Instrument long ago in a research methodology book It goes something like this: If you give a a child a hammer, it will find that most things need to be pounded.
