A new Department of Justice report on Baltimore’s Police Department contains striking revelations of abuse by officers. For example:
- Black citizens are harassed without probable cause, leading to no charges or citations in 24 of every 25 cases.
- Excessive force has been routinely used even against people already in handcuffs.
- Retaliation is exacted against citizens for rudeness to officers.
- Police interfere with people exercising their right to videotape police actions.
The list goes on, but is underwritten by a general lack of accountability. And such problems are not confined to Baltimore, but apparent in other police forces.
They must be fixed. Fortunately, the public already broadly agrees with this. An epoch in which anyone can videotape what is in front of them has made the problem apparent. Reform is not just on the way, but already being undertaken.
But, whilst there are legitimate grievances, the Black Lives Matter movement has added many absurd and unreasonable ones, that hinder rather than advance a cause that might otherwise garner more sympathy.
The group’s official set of demands, released this month, seems less aimed at preserving black lives than at weakening law enforcement altogether, even at the expense of more black lives.
One BLM demand is the reversal (under the guise of deprivatization) of education reforms that have vastly improved conditions for a lot of many inner-city, mostly black, schoolchildren. This helps no one except teachers’ unions, and by denying black children access to a good education it makes them more likely to pursue adult lives on the wrong side of the law.
Black Lives Matter also demands the abolition of all police surveillance, including the use of police body cameras, that have proven effective in reducing police brutality.
BLM insists that police be removed from schools; that “all deportations” cease, including those of criminal immigrants; that no one be sent to jails “as we know them” until “we achieve a world where cages are no longer used against our people.”
This is unworkable nonsense, intended to be provocative and intransigent rather than to improve a criminal justice system that indeed needs improving. Everyone, to state the obvious, is safer when criminals are caught, convicted and put behind bars. The ability of police to enforce the law is non-negotiable.
The problem is not that police arrest too many criminals, or that they approach their job too strategically by using “predictive policing software,” which BLM curiously wants abolished. The problem is not that suspects are required to post bail as a condition of release pending trial, which BLM also wants scrapped.
The answer to both crime and to those occasions when police step out of line is to strengthen the rule of law, not to weaken it. Black Lives Matter is not seeking arrangements that would improve the condition of black people. It is seeking to undermine and weaken a system which, though badly in need of reform, remains the best hope for protecting a minority community whose members are disproportionately the victims of crime, not just its perpetrators.
The demand that law enforcement be reduced or, as some radicals advocate, eradicated altogether, puts black people in special jeopardy. They are five times more likely to be murdered than white people. Denying them police protection would be a withdrawal rather than an enhancement of their civil rights.
Black Lives Matter takes a pathological view of American society that should be rejected by all right-thinking people. The lives of black people killed by the police are not more or less important than the far greater number of black lives extinguished by criminals.
The police work for the public, and they must do their jobs so every person in society feels safer with them around rather than with them absent. A less active or effective police force benefits no one, except those who would prey on peaceable, law-abiding citizens.
Police must be paid and trained better, and inadequate candidates must be rejected. This will require resources to be more wisely spent, which includes the reform of police pension systems to allow salaries to be raised.
There are lessons to be learned, too, from policing methods in other countries, about best practices for non-lethal management of suspects. American police forces should also follow the lead of Dallas and other cities that have made major changes successfully without any resulting spike in crime.
Body cameras should be mandatory in all police encounters (and worn properly so they are trained on the action, not on the ceiling). Incentives and new laws should ensure that police preserve all video footage, without suspicious disappearances or cameras deliberately covered up to hide abuses.
These and other changes will help create a society in which all members of the public, no matter their race, feel safe and trust the police. But Black Lives Matter, sparked by a central lie (“hands up, don’t shoot”) about Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Mo., is a movement that continues to work against the truth. Police reform is necessary, but Black Lives Matter has none of the answers.
