Substandard, As Measured By...

 "If he's such a good hitter, how come he doesn't hit good?"

Billy Beane, Moneyball (Michael Lewis, 2003)

It helps, when one is an over-analyzer, to have someone in your life who is... Well, Over-analyzers Anonymous is that obscure and discreet organization one can call in dire situations of need. A critical incident responder arrives at the front door, bottle of tequila in hand, and has a couple of margaritas with a sufferer until the urge to disappear down rabbit holes passes.

 In the alternative, having another over-analyzer in the household at least offers a kindred soul with whom to commiserate. Casual conversations become calls to action. Road trips become seminars. An innocent book the basis for hours of conversation, give and take and more books. That's what I have.

Over the years, trips north seem to spur on meaningful conversations, even as the most pressing decisions in my retired life revolve around the kind of coffee creamer to buy. Yesterday was no exception.

My dear spouse casually mentioned an article she'd read about a local police department's recruiting and selection process. This department, whose employment processes are governed by a civil service regime, gives a test to those who apply for law enforcement positions, I suppose among others. Recently, the city has given some latitude on what they consider a passing grade. This decision was apparently met with howls of derision, accusations that critical standards have been swept aside and, of course, the pronouncement that Babies will die!

I have just finished listening to Michael Lewis's delightful and entertaining book Moneyball, which examines how the Oakland A's baseball team sought undervalued players (they had a small-market budget) using a statistical analysis that examined what seems an obvious concept - what are the skills players have that contribute critically to winning baseball games. And... We're off.

What attributes make a good police officer? How does an organization determine that a person has those attributes, or develop them in people who seem susceptible to learning? Are they the attributes once deemed essential, or were those just reflections of bias? Is one of the solutions to the issues presented in modern law enforcement a reevaluation of what makes a good cop good?

Like the old-school scouts inherited by Billy Beane, past law enforcement recruiters often looked for things having tenuous relationships to policing. Tall, fit, male, military veteran... Each seemed to be intuitively related to success, but, like the baseball players Mr. Beane evaluated, there was precious little data available and much of it was conflicting. "Good body, firm chin, looks the part," the scouts would tell Billy. Another thought having an ugly girlfriend meant a lack of confidence on the part of the player. 

It turned out that what mattered, what could be proven by the reams of data available to Billy, had nothing to do with looks, either the player's or his girlfriend's. It had everything to do with getting on base and staying there until someone or something advanced them. It didn't matter if the player was a gifted "Five tool player" or someone who only did a few things well. Data proved conclusively - players who get on base score runs. Runs win baseball games.

Which brings us (mercifully) back to law enforcement. What are the attributes of a good police officer? Can they be quantified, and thereby evaluated? Is it as simple as counting tickets, reports, arrests, contacts? Below are a few things to get us started, offered in no particular order.

Empathy

 The dictionary definition of empathy is the ability put one's self into another's place, especially emotionally. In his excellent book Morality, Jonathan Sacks is less inclined toward ability and more toward inclination. It isn't as important that a person can, so much as that person seeks. Seeking empathy involves seeing the other person as a human being, worthy of the time and attention required to create the connection.

There are any number of interesting studies showing that people respond positively to empathy, even when a police officer is engaged in an enforcement activity - an arrest, a ticket, a warning. What I've never seen is something authoritative that measures the degree to which a person is empathetic. Certainly little if any attempt has been made to select candidates based on an objective analysis of their inclination toward empathy.

Emotional Stamina

Author Nassim Taleb introduces the book [Anti-Fragile] as follows: "Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better". Wikipedia

A police officer, over the course of their career, is exposed to hundreds, perhaps thousands of traumatic incidents, depending on their assignment. For someone to remain emotionally healthy in the face of that kind of experience requires a number of skills, some of which can be learned. Post traumatic stress disorder is epidemic in law enforcement ranks, and many organizations offer training and treatment to deal with it. Certainly, trauma is one of the factors leading to an array of mental health issues among past and present officers, which account for, among other things, recruitment and retention difficulties for organizations. Plainly, there are some people who, even after getting a good start in law enforcement, leave with the parting comment that no amount of money would make them stay.

Are there some individuals who are inherently more "anti-fragile" than others? If so, how would one find this out? Is there a psychological measure? HR departments still use the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), which is a brute of a multiple choice exam. Something of a blunt instrument, it is obviously better than nothing but even in its modern form is a tool, not an oracle. Can it predict which applicants (or serving officers) are or can be taught to be anti-fragile? No.

Intellectual Curiosity

 Arthur Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes calling it the "Observation of Trifles" in his short story The Boscombe Valley Mystery. It isn't confined to looking for clues, as it were. It is examining how the job of Policing a Free Society (Goldstein, 1977) is undertaken, and finding ways to improve. It is the George Bernard Shaw in all of us, seeing things as we imagine and saying "Why not?"

In the five years that I spent as an academy staff member, I had the privilege of working with nearly five hundred recruits. While most of them were excellent (a handful were not) there was a smattering of the truly intellectually curious, people who asked why more often than any other question. There has to be a way to intentionally find them

Character

 Character and Cops (DeLattre, 1994) makes a heroic effort to one-stop-shop the subject. It lays out (in pre-social media and woke culture terms) what it means to have character, how to develop and train morality. It gives police leaders suggestions on how to model it in themselves, and how to demand it of others. It's a nice try.

"Lead us not into temptation" is the prayer, and the temptations are many. They are not confined to money, fame and romantic encounters. The temptation to power, to authority, has a debilitating effect. It is the most astonishing moment in a new officers career when he or she orders a citizen to do something, and they do it. On the heels of that is the moment when someone defies them (which is rare). What happens next often means the difference between an uncomfortable few moments of wrangling (or wrestling or fighting) and Memphis.

How does one measure the tendency to misuse authority? The same way one measures the ability to get on base. What have they done in the past when given a degree of power over others?

Finally - this might have been exhausting, but it is not exhaustive. Often, in the ongoing struggle to find acceptable candidates to populate law enforcement agencies, we ignore important traits and elevate meaningless ones. 

What do you think?

We Shall Return

 "Don't judge every day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant."

Robert Louis Stevenson

On March 22nd,  a troubled 17 year old young man brought a gun to East High School. In the process of trying to disarm him, two school administrators were shot, one critically. The young man fled into rural Park County and apparently took his own life. He leaves behind him nothing but grief for his friends and relatives, and questions.

There are a number of points to be made, none of which are intended to further any political agenda. Rather, they are meant to point out what we consider obvious.

*The young man brought a handgun onto school property. It is already illegal for a 17 year old to possess a handgun (with limited exceptions not relevant here). It is illegal to transfer possession to him. It is illegal to bring a handgun onto school property. Solutions do not require more laws.

*The young man was apparently already the subject of a weapons charge in Arapahoe County.

*The young man was apparently already on the radar of school officials and was the subject of a "safety plan."

*Nearly three years ago, the Denver Public Schools removed all Denver Police SROs in response to the events in Minneapolis that resulted in George Floyd's death.

What seeds have we planted by demonizing all police officers based on the actions of a very few? How has the public's attention been diverted from proven solutions to violence to the largely symbolic (and therefore useless) posturing done for the purposes of raising campaign funds? At what point are Americans ready to reject extreme but fleetingly fashionable positions on both ends of the spectrum and support proven strategies - the presence of trained professional police officers where young people congregate, common-sense enforcement of laws already on the books to identify and remove from society at large those prone to violence, and a rejection of the notion that passing new laws is any kind of solution to violent crime?

Now the school system is requesting the SROs to return. This is a good decision. Rejecting police as part of the solution to violence in our society was a misguided seed sown by well-meaning officials responding to a tragedy. The bitter harvest does not have to be collected and consumed. We can, as a community, admit it was a mistake and move forward, together.

The Right to be Obnoxious

 After Martinez left the building, Schumacher said, the protesters began to cheer, cry, and hug. "We are creating a hostile environment at this law school," Schumacher said—"hostile for anyone who thinks an Article III judge should be able to speak without heckling."

Washington Free Beacon, March 14, 2023

 Whaaaat?

I cannot replicate the sound one of my grandson's makes when he says that. It is a combination of disbelief, disdain and WTF. You might be saying the same thing, so some background is in order.

Several days ago, a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals judge (a judge appointed under Article III of the US Constitution) was invited to speak at Stanford University's law school by their chapter of the student Federalist Society. For those who are unfamiliar, the Federalist society is:

"[A]n American conservative and libertarian legal organization that advocates for a textualist and originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution." Wiki

One might get the idea from that brief description the Federalist Society is right of center, if the "left-right" labels really have any worth anymore. The judge they invited is relatively young, and (gasp) a Trump appointee. He has expressed (also gasp) textual foundations for his opinions.

Lest one think that, like everything else in public life, the gulf between textualist/originalist doctrine and "living constitution" doctrine is both substantial and insurmountable - maybe that's how it is becoming. Textualism is now seen as a form of oppression, a means by which institutional bias is preserved. One is not merely of a mind to base their legal decision on what is in front of them, but they are deeply rooted in a time when the law was used to exclude individuals with legitimate grievances. Etc.

We're not going to litigate this here. Suffice to say that the differences are important enough to consume the time and attention of great men and women of the bench, bar and...

I almost wrote academia. Apparently, when the judge invited by the Federalist Society students rose to speak, he was shouted down by "student activists" who, not to put too fine a point on it, disagree with the judge on matters of law, and stuff. A faculty member intervened and made matters worse by delivering one of the great "However, comma" moments where she tried to have it both ways and couldn't quite find the words. Stanford maintains an inclusive environment, she said to a Federal Appeals court judge being silenced by the classic "Heckler's Veto." Fortunately, no one was injured but the speaker did not have a chance to deliver his prepared words or take questions.

The dean of Stanford Law issued a written apology to the judge, implied that the faculty member's efforts had been weak and misplaced, and that should have been that. But, wait. The next Con Law class the Dean taught involved a "Wall of Silence" protest by members of her class, who dressed in black, wore masks and stared defiantly at her the entire time.

Who is the dean of Stanford Law? Jenny Martinez, a faculty member for twenty years. Her Stanford bio reads: "Martinez is a leading expert on the role of courts and tribunals in advancing human rights."

One of the students in her class, one Schumacher, who did not participate in the protest and - shockingly - was not made to feel all that included among his student peers - noted above that the protesters are intent on creating a hostile environment. I think they've gotten a good start. I invite them to explore this kind of childish behavior in a Federal Court, where federal court judges take a dim view of the "Heckler's Veto" in their courtroom. There, they have a ready solution.

Court marshals arrest the miscreant for contempt, and the subject goes to jail until the judge is good and goddamned ready to let them out. My guess is that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure professor at Stanford has not let them in on that.
 

UPDATE: And so it begins. Two federal circuit court judges voicing what is a growing concern among members of the bench - that enough students in top tier law schools have demonstrated an unfitness, at least in their present immature state, for the practice of law in any capacity, to render them unworthy of prestigious and highly prized clerkships upon graduation. If this seems like an especially blunt instrument... Law schools who refuse to discipline or expel students who cannot treat an adversary with respect are doing both the practice of law, and the students, a disservice.

Stop the Chaos: Law Schools Need to Crack Down on Student Disrupters Now

Bleeding Orange

Syracuse, New York, is like Hawaii for eight months of the year. The other four months, I don't care about the weather because we're playing basketball.

Jim Boeheim - Syracuse University men's basketball coach

He may be talking about a different Syracuse than the one to which we moved in the middle 80s. Perhaps there is a side to Hawaii we didn't see on our visits to Maui. Certainly, I was never tempted to go scuba diving in Onondaga Lake.

But, deference is due to a man who had been the men's basketball coach at Syracuse for ten years when I enrolled in law school as a 1L in August 1986, and who retired at the end of the 2023 season. It is said that "It's the dash that counts" (his tenure was 1976-2023) and within Mr. Beoheim's dash are more than a thousand wins, a national championship and a hand in making the Big East conference one of the best in college basketball. That's a pretty good dash.

Jim Boeheim attended Syracuse as an undergrad, rising from freshman walk-on to senior year team captain. He played a little minor league pro ball, then came back to SU as a volunteer assistant coach. It wasn't long before he was the head coach.

Much has been made of his single-mindedness when it comes to Syracuse the university, and Syracuse the region. Commentators have observed that there is no other coach in men's basketball who grew up, played for and coached through their whole career the same school in the same town.

It isn't like Syracuse is actually, literally, akin to Hawaii. It's beautiful in its own way - lush and green, access to outdoor activities on beaches, in forests, along lakes and streams. It was once a vibrant industrial town, remade itself when heavy manufacturing died or departed, and has an appealing small-town feel. Our years there were the usual in a life on its way to other destinations, filled with good times and challenges. Like Jim Boeheim, I would have stayed. Unlike him, fate had other ideas.

My spouse and I were visiting our daughter in her adopted city of Fort Myers in 2006, and free one afternoon we toured Sanibel Island. Stopping in a small restaurant for appetizers and a beer, we found a seat at the bar. The Big East tournament was on the TVs hanging in several locations. Syracuse was making an "improbable run" (Wiki) as a 9 seed, playing arch-rival Georgetown in the semi-final. We were the only ones paying much attention as the game, a back and forth nail biter, drew to its dramatic conclusion.

Apparently, the grip the game had on us was infectious. The patrons in the bar became fans of Jim Beoheim and his underdog Orange. Each Hoya basket elicited a groan. Robust cheers accompanied an SU bucket. Back slaps, high fives... We counted down the seconds together and toasted a Syracuse victory. 

That is the House that Jim Built.

I'm often asked where I attended law school. When I answer, the first thing that comes to people's mind is Jim Boeheim and Orange basketball. It should be noted that the President of the United States is an SU law alum. Jim Beoheim built a powerful program in Maui by the Onondaga, as much by his own will and love of Syracuse as anything. He deserves the best of everything, including the thanks of an educational institution to whose name he will be forever attached.

Shocked...Shocked, I Tell You

 Common sense is the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction.

Thomas Jefferson

Tom isn't around to insist on that from the law, and so we have City of Ocala v. Rojas. 

In 2014, a shooting occurred in Ocala, Florida. (If you're wondering where that is, draw a line due west from Daytona, and it is just a bit farther than the halfway to the Gulf of Mexico). There were no suspects at the time of the shooting. Police and city leaders got together and decided that holding a public prayer vigil might encourage witnesses to come forward and - this is as not as far fetched as one might think - might weigh on the conscience of the suspect, causing them to turn themselves in.

One would think that this is just the kind of thing cops and community leaders should do in cities where actual people actually talk to one another. What do we have to lose? If no law enforcement goals are met at least people of good will can come together in fellowship. Nothing else was working to deal with violent crime. What could it hurt?

But, wait!

Let me ask you this. If you showed up to a gathering profusely advertised as a prayer vigil, organized by religious congregations, featuring men and women clerics... Wouldn't you feel even a little silly filing a federal lawsuit alleging that you were shocked...SHOCKED...that among the officiants were police chaplains? That your delicate sensibilities as a humanist were offended by prayers for the injured, and supplications to whomever was responsible to look into their hearts and make amends?

They didn't feel silly, they felt aggrieved. A person like that went for the singular purpose of feigning shock and hurt, so they could allege a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which reads (in pertinent part) "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." Aside from a variety of Court decision that place that prohibition on the "Several States" as well, doesn't common sense tell you that someone - it's called Offended Observer standing - who complains because the police and the religious community have gotten together to calm fears and to encourage lawfulness should be told, politely, to get out of the courthouse most riki tik.

I'm calling it the Grady Standard. We'd get a retired jurist, someone who'd been around and seen a thing or two. He or she would read the pleadings of especially iffy lawsuits. If their first utterances upon completion was:

You're shitting me, right?

The case would be dismissed. That's due process enough for something that wastes everyone's time and presents facts that, taken in the best light to the plaintiff, are stupid. No sanctions, no rebuffing. Just "No." Appeals? Sure, fine. Rebuttable presumptions? If we must.

What do people want from the cops? Why would the facts of the Ocala lawsuit, rather than finding a voice in US District Court, not be lauded as an excellent example of members of the community coming together to make their city a better, safer place to live?

Because Tom isn't around to help.

Another Brick in the Wall

 

"Suspects from France, Canada and out of Georgia among those arrested in 'significant escalation' at Atlanta's police and fire training facility."

Fox News, 3/6/2023

copyright Fox News, 2023

It doesn't require genius at any level, let alone one that might be considered galactic, to think that money poured into training - both course work and the facilities to support it - will have a positive effect on performance. In any profession. It cannot be stressed more fervently in situations where lives are at stake.

Look at flash point incidents in which police officers have erred and one finds the likely root causes in two major areas - inadequate training and negligent supervision. One would think that making strides forward in American Law Enforcement would begin with... Call me a sentimental fool, but investing in the men and women who choose public service seems an obvious step in the right direction.

 

One need know nothing about policing or firefighting to know the value of training. Have you ever engaged the services of a car repair shop, only to have the vehicle returned worse than when it arrived? Called a plumber to mend a small leak and ended up with a flooded basement? It seems any fool could cut down a tree, until the fool takes out a corner of your deck (it needed rehab, anyway).

So Atlanta found some money and is trying to build a state-of-the-art training facility for its first responders. Police officers and fire fighters will be trained to address the complex, often tendentious and sometimes dangerous aspects of their jobs. Initial selection, basic training and certifications in risky businesses would have applied the best methods, the best facilities and the best instructors at hand.

 

Instead of celebrating Atlanta's vision, the crazies have descended. Not only are they throwing commercial-grade fireworks, bricks and gasoline bombs ("Molotov cocktail" makes it sound like a vodka tonic) at the cops, but recently one of the "protesters" shot a Georgia State police officer. That officers returned fire (and returned the protester's soul to the Creator) means little, apparently, to the hoard of anarchists, thugs and criminals who have a vested interest in... What?

Anarchy, because anarchy is fun for the anarchists.

I have an idea. I wonder how fun it would seem if someone from France (for example), on an Anarchist Roadtrip, had their vacation extended with a few decades in an American Federal prison?

 

You'll love the food.