Kill All The Tigers

By Roy D. Follendore III

September 29, 2002

What are the prioritized objectives of society with respect to law, order, peace, and justice? How can we achieve any of them with any sense of priority without the properly diversified law enforcement tools?

Recently when a 400-pound Bengal tiger escaped from a trailer and hid in shrubbery in Bloomington, Ill., the police were there to do what they are trained to do. They protected the public. They shot the endangered animal dead. Maybe they enjoyed doing it, maybe not. But in either case no doubt, they will have another interesting story to tell their friends and children for years to come. The outcome should not be a huge surprise to anyone. It is what should be expected of in a run-in between the typical Tiger and Police.

The central question that comes from this story is the concept that underneath the badge and the behind that Norman Rockwell smile, the overriding objective threat of Police officers is the kill. Police are given nightsticks to beat with. Police are given guns to kill with, not to wound and maim. Because of the tremendous differential weight of the gun over that of simple life, the badge just represents the laws society has enacted that allows the Police that privilege. The Police are trained to take immediate and powerful control over situations they encounter by using any force necessary. This is precise the reason why the Police are more often called the Police "force" instead of the Police "request." This is not a joke in the street. The true distance between a Police request and the impacting force of lead in a living heart can be a matter of seconds. Television shows like "Cops" makes all of this threat look kind of cool. Their presentation of Police reality simply becomes an extension of the concept of war.

The SWAT team is a kind of Police force that is more akin to the military, though they generally do have more specialized people to negotiate as well as to kill. They are well trained to break into homes and buildings without notice and to set off bombs in the process, just like combat soldiers fighting in World War II. Once again, people who resist are likely to be shot dead. The old saying that you have nothing to fear if you did nothing wrong can be misleading. There are lots of cases where innocent people were shot dead because they simply could not comprehend the sudden attack of police within their homes. Uh... Oh our mistake, sorry your and your husband are dead. The result of an armed invasion, regardless of who the invader may be, or their justification can be bad, very bad. Breaking into homes to make arrests is not exactly a good thing to do, not only because it is humiliating, it is dangerous for everyone involved, even if it makes entertaining cop shows.

You might notice that I have not mentioned the idea that any deadly Police tactics might be justified. The reason for not doing so is course that any action can be justified before or after the fact. Of course murderous actions can be justified. Convicts do it all of the time in prison. Society justifies the death penalty for convicted murders, even though a significant percentage of them can later proven absolutely innocent of the crime by DNA tests. Soldiers justify using an M60 machine gun to shoot down a five year old walking up to a group of soldiers with a live grenade. The firebombing of Dresden, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of course justified acts of violence, that as a side effect happened to have involved the horrific deaths of many many thousands of innocent men, women and children. As I said, any action can be justified. Moreover, the systems that causes the solutions others are forced to use are easier justified, instead of modified and improved. Without improvement, decisions become self-fulfilling justifications.

There is great truth in the idea that mankind causes outcomes by the way that we choose to prepare for events. If a highly trained surgeon and a homeopathic physician are brought to a patient, through their disagreement they will actually be choosing the expected outcome. The diversification of healthcare specializations have to do with the potential problems and outcomes that are expected. Science seems to force one to understand the justifications for diversity, the "justice" system does not. The biggest and most consistent problem that our police management seems to continue to have with their concept of the "Police Force" is that one size fits all. The modern Officer is expected to be everything to everyone, in every given situation. For good reasons they say they are constantly expect to walk into a war zone taking on all comers. This universal police mentality can be seen by all of the various tools of the trade hanging off of their "batman" belts. It is no wonder there is a jaded divisional attitude among members of the public as well as the Police. The Police and the Public are pitted against each other but it does not have to be this way. To act differently, society first needs to begin to think differently.

For instance, maybe it is time for society to form a new kind of community driven Police organization, one based on opportunities for social and other professional solutions that fit the problems. This "new" kind of Police could be given all of the rights of any Officer, but trained to keep the peace rather than to enforce the peace. This kind of Police could reduce the threat of potential arrest and defuse situations rather than make arrests because they would not be obligated to have the expected results end in arrests. This new kind of Police would reduce the need for the one size fits all kind of Officer that must present the possession of a deadly weapons to the public. It would require new training, new techniques and new tools of a new trade. The kind of "weapons" that might be far more useful for such a different kind of officer would involve different communications and a secure audio-visual recording system for which the officer would maintain control. We can also do a better to classify situations so that the right kind of police are put on the right task. All of this is well within our technical ability to achieve.

There can be no doubt that good Police are put into situations where they must be brave and enforce the law. But Police bravery under fire is not the point. The tendency toward more and more combat oriented officers in the field to arrest citizens must be all wrong. It should be expected in most situations that the majority of citizens will do the right thing if they are treated with a certain amount of dignity and are managed by skilled professionals they can trust. The exceptions that do not fit this profile, may then be referred and managed as required by other specialized officers. To do otherwise is to widen the gap between the official society of man and the species of mankind.

Police need to start using the best specialized practices for the right jobs. The use of the standard combat trained tactics for all tasks represents a critical failure of management leadership and planning. Under the system that we currently have, when we send a couple of Police officers with shotguns to provide animal management, and the outcome is to be expected. Until we change our way of thinking we might as well speak the truth and admit that we expect to kill all of our tigers on the streets.

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