A Matter of Definition

 JRITC and National Rifle Association marksmanship training sparks online debate.

Fox News, 12/22/2022

I'll make this quick. How often is a discussion online a "debate." When I look up the word debate, there are an number of definitions that seem to suggest argument, which in and of itself is not necessarily bad. Merriam-Webster calls it a "contention," which implies something contentious. But... Is there ever a debate online?

Or, is it mostly name calling, asserting positions one has always taken (and always will), setting up strawman arguments and pithily slaying them...? How many of the people who took to Twitter to condemn the NRA as complicit to mass murder would, upon reflection, write - "Your argument swayed me, and I've changed my mind."

I confess I am as likely a sufferer as anyone else. Nevertheless, I strive to emulate former congressional representative Trey Gowdy, who alleges - "I am always one fact away from changing my opinion on many subjects." I take him at his word, and try to incorporate that into my daily life.

An "online debate." It's nice to start the morning off with a chuckle.

Not So Fast, Sir

 The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

Bob Marley

I have watched thousands of hockey games. I've seen many of the greatest hockey players in the world play, mostly on TV, but some in person. Five times "my" team has skated around a rink with Lord Stanley's Cup - The Boston Bruins in 1970 and 1972, the Colorado Avalanche in 1996, 2001 and 2022. In 1972 my mom, attending a game between the Buffalo Sabres and the Boston Bruins, patted goalie Gerry Cheevers on the shoulder, then came home and touched me on the head.

I got three straight shutouts, playing for the Pittsford Knights high school hockey team as their goalie.

Hockey is in my blood, and I ain't never seen anything like what happened two nights ago in Ball Arena, Denver, CO.

The Avalanche were playing the New York Islanders, and their premier defenseman Cale Makar had picked up the puck in his own zone and was headed up ice. Let's stop for a second and recap, just to create the proper mood.

Cale Makar is a cherubic-looking young man, often soft spoken, an athlete who is just now getting into his prime. His combination of skills, his maturity on the ice, his ability to toss his team on his shoulders and skate to victory... Wayne Gretzky, arguably the best pure offensive player ever (he is eight of the top ten highest scorers in NHL history) on a national TV broadcast publicly compared Cale to Bobby Orr. Who is Bobby Orr? He only revolutionized hockey in the late 1960s and led the league in scoring...as a defenseman. So, Cale Makar may be the Colorado version of the greatest hockey player of all time. That's who he is.

Cale Makar started up ice with the puck, and an Islander attempted to intervene. Makar appeared to lose an edge, the puck dribbling away as he fell unceremoniously. The whistle blew, and the referee signaled a penalty against the Islander - tripping or hooking. A minor, anyway. Fairly standard stuff. But, wait...

Cale skates toward the referee, shaking his head and gesturing with his gloved hand. There is a brief exchange of words. The referee skates to center ice, engages his mike and announces that there is no penalty on the play.

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot.

I may have seen a ref reverse a call "after review." I've seen the on-ice officials huddle. I've never seen the player who was fouled intervene on behalf of the opponent. But, that's what happened.

Later, his coach sort of marveled at it all. Yes, that's what happened. No, he didn't tell anyone he was going to do it. Well, he probably shouldn't make a habit of it, but that's the kind of quality young man Cale Makar is. Um, of course a power play would have been nice.

Interviewed by the press after the game, Cale explained that it isn't something he expects to do regularly. Or, ever again. Still, he wasn't exactly apologizing, either. It was a hell of a hockey game, wasn't it?

The Avalanche won 1-0 on penalty shots. Great goaltending is a treat to watch, and there was plenty of that. Some clown on social media asked "What if they had lost? What would you have thought about that, Avalanche fans?"

I'd still have marveled at what a young man, caught up in the heat of a close game, had shown about who he is, and the kind of group he plays with. Thanks for asking.

International Cycling Fame

 Sic transit gloria mundi - All glory is fleeting.

George S. Patton

In all of the days of my cycling life, I have never been bestowed such an honor. I have completed a long journey across the country. Been in a race or two. Climbed mountain passes, endured rain and snow. I've crashed, and risen to ride again. I've been a professional cyclist, paid good money to patrol the streets of my community as a police officer. Never once have I been recognized in quite so public a manner.

I was recorded riding my bike by Google, and now appear on Google Earth.

Check it out. I'm leaving my driveway and heading out for a ride. It happened this past summer, and I remember it well.

Alas, all glory is fleeting, and Google will inevitably replace me with just a bland look at our street.

The Fix Is In

 The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

John F. Kennedy

"Fixing the broken policing system."

How could that not catch my eye? How was that not intended to catch the eye of a reader, scanning a social media platform called (by a good friend ) "The Book of Faces?" So-called click bait, it was also a well-meaning but naive article written by another "expert" with just enough experience to say they are a reformer with actual police experience!

Lee County's Dancing Deputy

I'm not a psychologist. Nor have I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express lately (a reference whose relevance I admit is fading). I have to guess, however, that if someone begins an essay with the assertion that America's policing system is "broken," the very people they'd like to reach have moved on to reading memes, or looking at pictures of beach bars.

In 2018 - the last year for which statistics seem available on the internet - there were approximately sixty-one million contacts between police and citizens. I'm not going to bore you with meaningless analysis because I'm also not a statistician, but that seems like an awfully big number. If I'd sold sixty-one million books (I can dream, right?) I'd be saying "I've sold a lot of books." In first class. To my wife. On the way to our beach house in... Well, anyway.

Of that sixty-one million, how many went badly wrong because the police system is "broken?" I'm going to say - and I'm just spitballing, here - none. We can argue all day long about the definition of how a system presents as broken, but that would be silly. You get a gut feeling when you hear the word "broken." It doesn't work. And, with all due respect, for a system that "doesn't work" there are a hell of a lot of people demanding more of it. If you don't think that is true, read some of the comments by people who live in Chicago, Minneapolis, LA.

So things are awesome, fantastic. Full speed ahead. Um, no. Of the sixty-one million contacts in 2018, a number went badly wrong because cops are fallible human beings, tasked to do a difficult and dangerous job. Not all of them are up to it. A handful are themselves crooks and criminals. They are the exception.

I wrote A Guardian's Promise because there are things to do to improve how police services are delivered, and how to minimize the exceptions. And... Let's take a look at some.

Street Supervisors belong on the street.

An excellent officer was once caught in a hot mic moment as I approached a gaggle at the scene of an incident. "Oh, here he comes," the officer exclaimed. Great radio system, right? He and I were (and remain) friends, but he had an intuitive sense of my role in his professional world - quality control. I was there to make sure we did the right thing, the right way. Not because I was perfect, but because I was experienced, and trained to do the job. And, I'd made enough mistakes from which I had extracted hard, but valuable lessons. There was no way I could apply those hard-earned lessons sitting at a desk listening to the radio, buried in agency-created administrative tasks.

Unhitch statistics from being direct indicia of performance.

Police officer performance evaluations are often tied, intentionally and formally, to the number of enforcement actions they take - mainly tickets and/or arrests. In fact, the manual at one large western agency once (and may still) dedicated a significant section to how officers "score" points for arrests, moving violations and other assorted activity. In many agencies officers are paid, indirectly, by revenue generated by tickets, mainly (but not exclusively) traffic. 

Measuring performance mainly by statistics is one of the worst recommendations of the President's Task Force from the late 60s. It is well-meaning - officers who hide (no matter where) instead of doing their jobs are unprofessional. Some form of official police activity certainly suggests that an officer is being diligent, if not effective. But, just because something can be assigned a number doesn't make the number meaningful.

Is "law enforcement" strictly the role officers play? Much energy has recently been expended more accurately applying a name (some of them are, frankly, ridiculous), but the fact is enforcing laws is a tool to accomplish a greater good. That greater good is community safety. Any enforcement action that does not contribute to community safety is being done for other reasons. Often, those reasons are self-serving to government and not necessarily benefiting the community, or contributing to safety.

City officials informed us a few years ago, though the chain of command, that we were "$300,000" behind the previous year in ticket revenues. Oh? Is that how a city measures the effectiveness of its officers in making the community safer? The Justice Department, evaluating the Ferguson, MO PD didn't think so.

Recognize how important the informal reward system is.

I'm as guilty as the rest. I enjoy a good war story. Grit and determination are admirable traits, especially when they result in "the bad guy" in cuffs and "the good guys" prevailing. And, frankly, we all understand that an officer willing to engage physically with an aggressive suspect - a foot pursuit, a fight - is displaying physical courage that cannot be ignored. Heavens, an officer at the Lakewood Police Department recently demonstrated a profound act of bravery and selflessness that is one of the truly great moments in LPD's history.

Those can't be the only moments rewarded by supervisors at roll calls, or at the end of watch check out. Initiative, imagination, empathy. They are often called "soft skills." They are not. Often, it is more difficult to reason one's way out of a brawl, than to engage in one. To wit:

We were executing a court order to take a person into custody for a mental health evaluation. It was not a request. The man stood six-eight and weighed three hundred-plus pounds of solid muscle. He was pleasant enough with us, until one of the officers mentioned handcuffs. Hard no.

An experienced officer looked at the guy and frowned. "See that sergeant?" he said to Man Mountain. He pointed at me. "He's new, and he's an asshole. He's been gunning for me, and if I don't handcuff you he'll write me up and try to get my ass fired. I'm too old to hunt up another job. How about you cut a brother some slack."

The guy looked at me. I shrugged and nodded. He left, muttering about how unfair life was - wearing two sets of cuffs.

Getting in a fight with this guy would have been easy. "Fuck you, we're going to handcuff you" and the fight would be on. We'd win. We might have to kill him, but we'd win. Talking our way out of it took a gift, patience and a desire to do something positive for a person upon whom luck had not been kind.

Reward stuff like that.

Police work is hierarchical, sure. Don't etch that in granite.

"We should turn him over on his side," one of the young, inexperienced officers said, looking at George Floyd. The older, experienced officer ignored him. The entire world knows the result. Don't they? What do you think the English soccer team was kneeling for?

Let me pose a hypothetical. So, the young and inexperienced officer (who has been recently trained about the dangers of positional asphyxia) says what he says, and the older officer says, "Good idea. Help me out, here." They roll George Floyd onto his side and try to calm him. And, he dies, anyway. What is the reaction?

If you are saying the protests would start, anyway, and the riots follow, you might have a point. Officers are often criticized (or worse) after doing the right thing. But, they still did the right thing, the best practice they had been taught. It is not uncommon for police departments to provide body-cam footage to community leaders of their officer acting reasonably, only to have those leaders calm the situation before it gets tragically out of hand.

It's an old cliche, that a new officer gets in the car with their first trainer, who tells them, "Forget all the academy bullshit. I'll tell you how it really works out here on the mean streets." It may actually be true that this happens. And, it's a shame.

I asked an officer, a recent academy grad who had become an excellent street cop, what we could have done to make his training better, more realistic while in the Academy. He said - "Nothing. I should have listened more. Everything you guys said would happen, happened."

The "FNGs" - the friggin' new guys and gals - have gotten the latest and greatest taught by people who have decades of experience, much of it on patrol. FNGs aren't, by any means, seasoned veterans. But, don't treat them like children. They may be trying to save you from prison.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

There are many more (never make an incompetent, ill-trained and ill-prepared paper-pushing administrator the incident commander at a school shooting) but you get the idea. It isn't about fixing a broken system. It isn't even about emphasizing what is wrong, and making it right. It is often finding things that work, and making sure everyone knows how to make it work for them

Several days prior to Hurricane Ian, the sheriff of Lee County (FL) put his organization on an alpha/bravo schedule. That is, they worked twelve hours on duty, and had twelve off. It provides more boots on the ground at any one time, which certainly comes in handy when a large chunk of the jurisdiction has simply been swept away. Days off? Maybe some other time.

In the meantime, by all accounts, the Sheriff himself was on an alpha/alpha schedule. By the look of him on day four or five, he'd slept very little. But, he was out there, "all hands on deck." Encouraging, cajoling, giving people positive energy in what was an astonishingly negative outcome for his community. And there they were, his family members as he calls them, serving their community with pride, with courage and with honor. Many of them were sleeping in shelters, their family members evacuated, their home demolished. But, they did their jobs with distinction.

Several days ago, there was a benefit concert involving some big name rock bands. This sheriff was invited on stage, and was greeted like he was a rock star. Clearly, the man is doing something right for his people, and his community.

Go tell that crowd lawr enforcement is broken.

Hear Their Echo

 Great moments are born from great opportunity. That's what you have here tonight, boys. That's what you've earned here, tonight.

Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell), Miracle (2004)

I admit right off that drawing a parallel between ice hockey and soccer requires rhetorical gifts that have eluded me my entire writing career. If you are a soccer fan, and that comment offends you, I guess I've only proven the truth of that assertion. Caveats notwithstanding... Doesn't the presence of the American Men's soccer team in the round of Sixteen in the World Cup competition inspire an examination of the similarities? Even a little?

Recall the winter of 1980... Or, recall movies and books about it, or the memories of your parents and grandparents. High inflation, energy insecurity, and hostages being held in Iran. America was in doubt of itself. No one seemed poised to do anything about it. Until the Olympics.

Along came a band of college kids, led by a quirky, iconoclastic coach full of wise sayings, and with a cruel streak to which perhaps only hockey players are inclined. He told everyone he had a plan to beat the Soviets in hockey, something that seemed not just unlikely, but daft. Only a few years before, an all star team of NHL players had barely accomplished the feat.

The world is uncannily similar as the American soccer team prepares to take on Netherlands. Uncertainly, inflation, an unsettled world. America divided. The men's national team coach having collected the pieces of a difficult situation. And, of all countries to face in an elimination game, Iran.

I don't profess to be a soccer fan, or know anything about how strategy on the field unfolds. I keep hearing about offside calls, but I'll be damned if I can see a blue line. And, having watched parts of perhaps ten games over the last few weeks, the term "Soccer Injury" is no longer a mystery to me.

That said, goodness gracious did both teams (the US and Iran) play hard. The American goal scorer threw himself at the ball, colliding with the Iranian goalkeeper and, at the end of the half departed for the emergency room. "He sacrificed his body for that goal" one of his teammates said later. "But then, there are twenty-five guys here who would do that same thing, given the chance." How do you not admire that kind of grit?

They seemed exhausted in the end, one side playing to scratch out a goal and tie - thereby advancing - and the other trying to hold off the frantic efforts that one announcer called "Using every weapon in their arsenal." Those, he said, included the Dark Arts - working the officials. When the US prevailed "One-nil" or one-nothing, it seemed they had just enough energy left to smile, even as two of them consoled a rival who had suffered an admirable defeat.

How can one not take heart in that? 

They have a great opportunity tomorrow, to beat a better team (on paper) and continue their improbable run. Here's what I know about soccer.

There may be more flopping than at a fish market when the boats come in, but these are tough, athletic men who play until they can hardly stand. That's got to make you feel like you are watching a great moment, no matter how many points they score.

Goals. How many goals. Right, Beth?

Songbird

 Learn your instrument. Be honest. Don't do anything phony. There is so much crap floating around. There is plenty of room for a bit of honest writing.

Christine McVie

It is now so many years ago.

I dimly remember the Northeastern University student union in Boston, circa 1977. There was a snack bar, after a fashion. Tables and chairs where people studied, read, chatted. Not only was it pre cellphone, it was pre most music devices, and certainly there was no bluetooth. There was a jukebox.

Finishing my degree by doubling up on classes (including taking a one credit course in first aid from my buddy Joe) I had little time for myself, except the occasional space between lectures. I'd built an eclectic college career - dropped out for a while, gone to a different school for a year, returned to NU to get a degree - and had committed to moving to Denver following graduation, once I made a bit of money and looked for a job there.

Most of my friends had either graduated, or were gone. Joe was still around, and I was living with his parents, running up a big phone bill with a girl I'd met in Kansas. She attended the University of Denver - it's now beginning to make sense, right? I just had to finish college...

From time to time, sitting alone with my thoughts and a newspaper or a book, I'd toss a quarter in the jukebox and play "Go Your Own Way" by Fleetwood Mac. It spoke to the me who had made an easy progression of classes and summer jobs into a complicated game of three-D chess. The me who had traveled cross country alone on a bike without any real bike camping experience. The me who had, through my parents, a million influential friends in Western New York but planned...no, was set on moving to a place where I knew exactly three people. Go your own way.

Stevie Nix and Lindsey Buckingham were the front performers, at times yelling the lyrics to each other in what was, among other things, an angry song that captured the harsh, raw and bitter emotions between the two in response to their break-up as a couple. The energy between them was hardly positive, but to quote musician Randy Newman, at least they got a song out of it. For me, it was an anthem.

And, in the background, playing piano and singing support vocals was Christine McVie. In an era when the brassy and alluring Stevie Nix garnered most of the attention, Christine was a solid presence. She had a beautiful voice, a reassuring stage presence and when the spotlight was on her she was both pitch perfect and elegantly heartfelt. She didn't so much belt out a song as she caressed it gently for the beauty she'd intended when she wrote it. There wasn't the come hither Stevie Nix presented (who performed for a time with a bed as a prop), but then that was not what Ms. McVie was offering. It was not an experience, it was a commitment. She was honest.

Many of Fleetwood Mac's most memorable, catchiest and singable tunes were written and sung by Ms. McVie. Most were inspired by loves won and lost, triumphs and tragedies of the heart. Little pieces in time, with which the rest of us marked our own life's journey.

Christine left professional music for a time, returning in her later years to sing the old songs, perform some new writing and be with her friends. She passed away in England after a short illness, at seventy-nine.

The one incomprehensible fact, in my mind anyway, was that Christine McVie would ever be seventy-nine. That's not how I picture her...or ever will. She will always be young and beautiful, singing songs that told me a whole wonderful life was ahead of me.

It was, and is, going my own way. Thank you so much, Christine, for lighting the path.