CAUTION AND
VIGILANCE
ARE NOT SIGNS OF “FEAR"
October 24, 2014 a man later identifed as
Zale Thompson approached
with
an axe a group of NYPD Officers and,
in
an unprovoked attack, struck two of them with the
axe before Officers fired upon the subject,
killing him.
TAGS:
NYPD, COMMUNITY POLICING,'REAL LIFE POLICING' LEC, LEO,
FEAR
IS NOT AN OPTION, MEDIA OFTEN SENDS WRONG MESSAGE
IN
POLICE ISSUES, PREGNANCY AND POLICING
(MUST
READ TO FIND OUT WHAT THAT MEANS)
(Tuesday July 19, 2016 Mott
Haven, The Bronx, NYC) As the streets and sidewalks continue to boil in the
relentless heat of an already hot Summer in neighborhoods such as this across
the country, every competing narrative be it political, societal or cultural,
insists that “words matter”. That, they
do. They matter a great deal not only as
the nouns, verbs, and adjectives of any news item, argument, or opinion but in
the way they are strung together to give life to difficult to express concepts
and perspectives very different from our own.
Words matter whatever the source; logical, reasoned verbiage will emerge
over hyperbolic, emotion-fueled, heated rhetoric in any arena. Our politicians and candidates employ speech
writers, “wordsmiths”, to help them craft an artful, compelling message; a
message they hope will “connect” with the particular audience they are intended
for. The broader the target audience,
the more clarity and simplicity the message requires.
In these past weeks of Police
shootings as well as the ambushes that have sent Police Officers to violent,
bloody death, there has been a veritable ocean of commentary and opinion from
all quarters on every side of the myriad issues under discussion and debate in
public media, in political advertising and campaigning as well as in the
confines of Police Precincts here and everywhere. There are two words that are
not getting any traction in Precincts and among the rank and file MOS of the
NYPD; “fear” and “scared”. It is dangerous
to have these words used as descriptive modifiers in debates and discussions
about MOS of the LEC.
FROM DAY ONE
Beginning on the first days a
NYPD Cadet spends in the Police Academy, they are taught about situational
awareness, presence of mind, and the necessity for constant vigilance. Over the months of training these themes are
repeated so often, exercises designed specifically to instill these principles
are as much a part of the curriculum that they are interwoven into other more
topic specific instruction and study.
But this is only the beginning of the indoctrination to these
principles; once on the streets teamed with veteran Officers, they learn
rapidly how to access a situation, make the nano-second calculations often
required to insure the safety of the public as well as their own, and to
develop and come to trust their “instinct”, that ill-defined sense born of
practical experience and continual exposure to scenarios that range in hazards
from very low to “life and death” high. They are also taught that no job, no
call or response is ever “routine”; any situation carries with it the unknowns
and the potential for escalation and complication. Cops learned to keep emotions in check, to
depersonalize certain stimuli to devote full attention to the more problematic
components of the scene they find themselves in. This is not meant to be interpreted or in
any other way even remotely imply that the emotional shut off allows Officers
to “devalue” anyone’s life; quite the contrary. Officers are as much tasked with protecting
the lives of others as they are to maintain order, a sense of cohesiveness in
our society.
Police Officers are produced
through the Police Academy; Cops are made on the streets. For many of us of a certain age we can recall
when the veteran Officers would preach that a Rookie is a Rookie in their eyes
until they have spent seven years out on the streets. That even year
designation was no random standard arbitrarily chosen to keep younger less
experienced Officers at arm’s length.
Not at all. It was thought that
it took a solid seven years before a street Cop had scene at least once
essentially every type of scenario they’d be faced with over their career. It was a good marker to set.
FEAR ITSELF
Fear has its place; it has
been an integral component of human beings’ survivability from the days our ancestors
of antiquity lived in caves. Fear
produces the “Fight or Flight” response flooding our bloodstream with a variety
of hormones and enzymes that assure that our bodies are physiological prepared
for the fight or the flight. There are
many degrees and gradients of fear just as there is a similar range for all our
behavioral patterns from response to threats to the genetic imperative to love
and protect those most closely related to us.
Arguably, no human is entirely devoid of fear. Even the brave first seven Mercury Astronauts
who were blasted into space in a small capsule perched high atop a literal
ballistic missile had some measure of fear in other aspects of their
lives. Fear can be dealt with, it can be
channeled, handled, shunted in such a way that it becomes an asset not a
liability. Fear in its rawest
manifestations can be partially conditioned out of a Police Officer with that
rawest of feelings replaced by hyperawareness, measured breathing, and an
automatic reflexive response elicited from their training and experience.
NOTHING TO LOSE, NOTHING TO FEAR
As we all have witnessed from
sites and incidences from just a few miles south of here at the ground where
our Twin Towers once stood to the war-torn landscapes of the Middle East,
Afghanistan and other countries terrorist have targeted, a person willing to
die is essentially fearless. Men that
would crash passenger jets into skyscrapers, conduct suicide attacks of every
kind and actually believe their death to be their eternal entrance to
martyrdom, are virtually impossible to stop.
Every gene in our bodies as well as every recess of our brains commands
in us the unparalleled desire, the desire to survive. Actions antithetical to this are difficult to
comprehend but we have learned the lessons quickly over the last 15 years.
What some among us may not
fully realize is that there are those individuals in our cities, on our
streets, perhaps right in our neighborhood that so devalue life, their OWN
life, that they are in that sense “fearless” and a person without that fear
will perpetrate any act or actions they are moved to. Sure, some are terrorists or wannabe
terrorists, others infected by serious mental health ailments, still others are
simply caught in a cycle of criminality (and all the societal ills that help
cultivate it) and a mindset such that committing murder be it premediated or in
the heat of the moment manslaughter, is just another fact of their existence. Individuals such as these do not fear jail or
prison; they fear no punishment our criminal justice system provides for. They most certainly do not fear the Police;
even those who protest that they fear a random encounter with the Police, or
view the Police as an “occupying force” in their neighborhoods continue to
behave in ways that only increase their chances of a Police encounter.
POLICING AND PREGNANCY
The public discourse of the
last two weeks clearly highlights the profound differences among virtually all
demographics of our population particularly in our largest urban and metropolitan
centers. Each side has their ironclad
base beliefs and “core values” that allow for everyone to talk down to or over
an opposing perspective. This is “Democracy”
in practice even though arguments on each side fall a bit short in ethical and
moral objectivity. It seems that every newspaper,
periodical, cable “newsertainment” network and talk radio station have their
loyal cadre’ of retired LEO, attorneys, experts of varying renown in a wide
array of academic disciplines as well as official representatives from the LEC
that reinforce any particular media outlet’s political bent. Yes, there are more “Policing experts” on air
than had been previously suspected to have even existed. When one of these talking heads is paired off
with their polar opposite the discussion turns rancorous and often devolves
into nothing more than a petty shouting match.
It benefits no segment of society to have such volatile representative
allegedly “speaking” for them but these epic shouting matches sure do drive
ratings and, make no mistake about it, each media outlet has a distinct bias
and are all ratings driven. Rating keep
the money pipeline from corporate sponsors flowing.
There is, however, a very
significant and substantial between all the experts, politicos and pundits
claiming to be Policing mavens. The most
appropriate analogy we have developed is in the story of the male physician who
goes on to be the world renowned unmatched expert on pregnancy.
This male doctor holds every
Board certification available in his field of Obstetrics and Gynecology
(OB/GYN). He has written texts books on
human pregnancy and is know the world over as the preeminent expert on pregnancy. This doctor knows the physiology,
endocrinology, gynecologic, obstetric, emotional and every other physical
manifestation of pregnancy in a woman’s body.
He literally is “Dr. Pregnancy”.
Despite all his knowledge and
expertise, his decades of practice, research, teaching and writing about
pregnancy he can never fully know – know in his body and mind – what precisely
it feels
like to actually be pregnant.
We employ this analogy as a
counter argument to all the well-meaning, sincere, and thoughtful critics of
the Police and even to those who demonstrate their idiocy every time they speak
publically. Unless a man of woman has
served, has donned the uniform, hit the streets, and personally acquired a first-hand
account of what being a Police Officer feels like, what it is to function as
one in the communities, neighborhoods, subways, housing projects, and every
other environment you can think of, then they cannot truly speak about “knowing”
or “understanding” Policing, Police Officers, and all that the Job
entails. And that, ladies and gentlemen,
is the primary cold hard fact of the debate; unless you have actually done it
and done it for years, you do not, can not grasp, try as you might, understand
the Job.
This is not to say that there
is no basis for honest, open, objective examination of and discussions on
Policing. It is to suggest that the
Police have the finest of fine lines to walk.
While they defend their profession and colleagues, as they listen to the
legitimate complaints and highly emotionally charged grievances of members of
the communities they serve, they must exercise the discipline to not simply
dismiss all Police criticism as just so much horseshit. Sometimes it requires super human restraint
but we as a community, the LEC, should at least listen objectively as we
possibly can and to participate from within our own Organizations in any
practical efforts or initiatives that might begin the lessen the abyss between “Us”
and “Them”. After all, we are, much like
the famous Dr. Pregnancy painfully learned, the only people who can.
Copyright The
Brooding Cynyx 2016 © All Rights Reserved
Copyright
Brooding Cynyc 2016 © All Rights Reserved
