It’s terribly frustrating and depressing that I have to write about something like this again. Four police officers were fatally shot in a Tacoma Washington area coffee shop today in what is being described as a targeted attack. While no other information is currently available, it comes on the heels of similar attacks on Seattle police officers recently and is being described as an ambush attack with no other apparent motive but to kill the police officers who were simply sitting around drinking coffee and using their computers.
While there hasn’t been any word on possible motives or suspects, given the similarity and proximity of the attacks on Seattle police officers that was done in the name of fighting against police brutality, I want to be clear about this. I do not believe that the use of violence in response to police misconduct is a reasonable course of action. In fact, it only serves to make the problem worse, not better.
To be even more blunt… in my mind, there is no difference between a police officer who kills an innocent person in an act of misconduct and a person who kills police officers in cold blood in response to acts of police misconduct.
None of us has the right to act as judge, jury, and executioner… be that a police officer or not. While I certainly would hope that people who read this site appreciate the ethical problems involved with responding to police misconduct with arbitrary violence, I do know that for some victims, it’s a difficult point to accept.
So, if an appeal to ethical sense doesn’t reach you then look at it this way. Anecdotal evidence indicates that when police officers are attacked like this that it always results in a more aggressive response by police officers within that region, and sometimes nationally. In other words, a violent response like this never reduces police misconduct, it only increases it and makes the public and media more receptive to it.
Of course, there’s no indication yet that this had anything to do with police brutality or was anything like the attacks in Seattle. But… in the very remote chance that it was and that the person who performed this attack happens to be reading. Please stop, you’re not doing anyone any justice by doing this… in fact, by doing it, you may have made the problem worse.
UPDATE: Apparently, a “person of interest” has been named in the case and, if this person were to end up being the person responsible in this case, it would appear it had nothing at all to do with police misconduct.
Decent to speak up in the defence of those that protect us. Perhaps it has always been this way, imo the arrogance of many in the department is causing more and more of the general populace to dislike the uniform. When police officers refer to people as civilians they are distancing themselves, creating a needless rift. It is past time for departments across the country to train their officers that they are part of the populace, not some superior overlord.
Not to run on but…the image of cops as bullying thugs with little respect for the law isn’t helping. Change this and perhaps the antagonism will fade a bit.
I wonder if this isnt some sort of false flag with the cops having an agent provacatour getting some fool to start shooting cops to demonize their critics.
Nony,
Well, I wouldn’t disagree with that, even though it’s hard to say for certain that the attacks on officers this year, from Oakland to Seattle, and now Tacoma, are tied together in this way as a symptom of the larger problem with police misconduct and the, from the public’s perspective, lack of response to it. But, I think that, if these cases and others are perceived to be a response to police misconduct, the more important question we need to ask ourselves is how the government and law enforcement will respond to that.
The tendency to date, as a long-term response, is for law enforcement agencies to use these kinds of incidents to push for less oversight and transparency instead of increased accountability, often arguing that these cases illustrate the threat officers face when their misconduct is made public and that cases of misconduct and misconduct records should be kept secret to protect officers.
Often, legislators respond to that argument more favorably than they respond to the counter argument that the answer is more transparency and greater accountability since the anger about police misconduct has more to do with the perception of injustice than the acts themselves.
The thinking here is that people are less likely to want to take the law into their own hands when they feel confident that the law will be enforced equally, but more likely to respond with violence once it becomes apparent that the law is not being evenly applied. After all, most riots in response to police misconduct tend not to happen immediately after the incidents in question, but after it becomes apparent that there will be no consequences for the officers involved in that case of misconduct.
In other words… I don’t think that it’s the images of police officers abusing citizens that causes a violent response like this… It’s the images of the police officer smiling after being let off the hook without consequences afterwords that sparks a violent response like this.
Still, again, I must make it clear that law enforcement agencies never respond to incidents like this with introspection about how they have a role to play in this cycle, they respond with more aggressive tactics and by using that incident to justify a crackdown on the community. And the governments that control those agencies tend to accept and support that type of response.
Sure, it’s a response that only generates more anger and disrespect, which only furthers aggravates the problem, but it is how they tend to respond. Which is part of the reason why I try to suggest that a non-violent approach to police misconduct is more productive.
Zon,
Well, again, we don’t really have any established motive in this case yet, so it’s all speculation. But, I’d risk it to say that the possibility of that being the case is pretty remote.
Will the police use this case to spin lobbying efforts in their favor? They certainly will even if this was a case of a personal grudge or some other type of motive… but I really don’t think that they would sacrifice other officers to advance an agenda, especially since there was already a high-profile police homicide just recently in the same state.