Tag Archive for: police

When Will We Learn? by T.K. Thorne

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It felt like a blow—what the woman beside me was saying.

Questions flicked through my mind: Was this what happened? How could I not remember that? Why did I not remember what had triggered the entire thing?

Circa 1980:

My partner and I went into a well-known restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama to eat dinner. We were working the Evening Shift (3-11 pm). Though we were both young female officers in the Birmingham Police Department, the shift sergeant had put us together to work a beat that included two housing projects, a couple of fast-food joints, and one “nice” restaurant—the one we walked into.

Females and black officers were a small population. My partner was a member of a smaller demographic as a black female officer. I was a minority of “one” as a Jewish police officer, evidenced by my engraved name tag.

My religion was not something I spoke much about, unless someone asked a question. Thankfully, I never encountered direct prejudice from fellow officers about it. Dealing with being a rookie and a female rookie was enough. But that is another tale.

This story began when we entered the restaurant and sat at a booth. One of us took the portable radio from her gun belt and placed it on the table, as was customary for uniformed officers when eating. The man in a booth behind us twisted around and asked if we could turn it off. I replied we would turn it down and did so. When he repeated his request, I explained we had to keep the radio on in case we were called or there was an emergency we needed to respond to. Again, we adjusted the volume as low we could and still hear it.

This did not satisfy the “gentleman,” who stood and snarled at us.

I have always remembered what he said as being something that included the “N” word; he got loud in the restaurant with his remarks; and we arrested him for Disorderly Conduct or (possibly) Public Drunk, not without some trouble. After being told he was under arrest, he became passive-aggressive, sitting down again in the tight booth and refusing to stand up. It took several officers to carry him to the police car.

Forty-plus years later at a retired female officers’ luncheon, I sat next to the woman who had been my partner that night, the first time I had seen her since those days. She told me the story as she remembered it. Her recollection, though similar in the basics to mine, contained a particular addition that stunned me. After twice requesting that we turn off our radios, the man stood and said, “What do you expect from a ‘N-word’ and a Jew?”

She threw the contents of her salad bowl at him.

I don’t know and didn’t ask if the lettuce connected, but I assume (and hope) so.

Apparently, he had spoken loud enough that others heard him and, according to my partner, something like a bar brawl ensued, with people taking sides, and I called for backup. Several went to jail. In court, the judge required him to make contributions to a charity of our choice (a unique sentence, but one that seems aligned with the principles of justice).

What disturbs me is not that I forgot many of the details—I have forgotten way more than I remember about the past—but that I forgot the “. . . and a Jew” part.

Did I just pass it off as a drunk idiot, and it faded from my mind? This seems odd, since I distinctly remember the first and only time someone called me a “kike” (a derogatory slur for a Jew) in middle school. It stunned me. It is one thing to know intellectually that some nebulous people hate you, another to hear it from the mouth of your peers.

So why did I forget?

I don’t know the answer. But I know that anti-Semitism has increased 500% over the past decade in the country I call home. And it is still on the rise.

And that makes me profoundly sad . . .  fearful . . . and angry at those who spew hatred and spread conspiracy lies that have roots hundreds of years old.

I have researched and written about the Civil Rights days of my city. I know that the movement for Black rights—to vote freely, to sit in the restaurant of their choice, to go to a school with White children, etc.—was decried as a “Black-Jewish Communist Conspiracy.”

Blacks and Jews have their own stories, their own histories, but we are particularly linked.

In a deeper sense, the entire human race is linked. As Dr. King wrote from the Birmingham Jail in 1963, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

And from a song of my youth: “When we will ever learn? When we will ever . . . learn?”

T.K. Thorne writes stories and books about whatever moves her and wherever her imagination flies.

 

 

 

 

 

T.K. Thorne writes stuff and books wherever her imagination flies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Defunding the Police – T.K. Thorne

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Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.
 

 

One of the confusing calls today is the one to “Defund the Police.” My
thoughts on the subject are seasoned with a career in law enforcement, a
master’s in social work, some research, and a couple of decades of
contemplation.

Actually defund the police

Some who call to defund police, mean it. They want to restructure society
without police. I sincerely hope we figure out how to do this, but at this
point in our development as human beings, abolishing police is not a workable
idea, particularly in the U.S. Consider recent events in Chicago (where in two weekends, 34 people were killed and 186 were
shot); consider also Seattle’s failed
no-police protest zone experiment; and the violence in our own communities.

Abolishing police would stop police abuse issues, but it would create a
vacuum that could be filled with violence. Even a country with minimal crime
like Norway has a police department.

Replace the department

For others, defunding the police means they want to dismantle the particular
law enforcement system in place as completely dysfunctional and reassign it. A most unlikely place did that. Camden, NJ,
in 2010 had the highest crime rate in the country. They faced a $14 million
budget deficit and had to lay off half their police force. What happened?
Arrests in 2011 dropped by half, burglaries increased 65%, and the murder rate
skyrocketed. So that is one lesson about defunding police.

Here’s the other side of what happened. In desperation, Camden dismantled
their (union represented) police department and merged with the county,
putting more officers on the street for less money. The change
also gave them an opportunity to instill new cultural values in the
department, significantly reducing excessive use of force complaints,
and crime rates dropped 42% compared to
a drop of 4.9% in U.S. (in the same time period.)

Redefine the job and reallocate resources

But for the most part, the meaning of “defund the police” means a city
reviewing what it wants and expects from its police, what it values and
believes is effective in terms of where it puts resources.

I say this is long called for—both for government and for police agencies
themselves. I’m not saying the Birmingham Police Department, in particular,
needs an overhaul.  First, I’ve been too long removed to comment on that,
and second, it was an honor to have served there with many extraordinary men
and women doing a difficult and demanding job, some of whom gave their lives.

But there are systemic issues with the culture of law enforcement. Even as a
rookie, I was confused by the militaristic model of training we received
(picture red-faced sergeants yelling at recruits, making them drop for
push-ups, etc.) A military model works for . . .  um, the military, which
actually has an “enemy” and relies on instant, unquestioned obedience. That
kind of role model is reinforced by peer pressure and instills in police
recruits an expectation and demand for obedience and a respectful attitude from
the public, which adds to the (human) difficulty of maintain stoic responses in
the face of the opposite behavior. It is also not conducive to the type of
independent and sometimes creative decision-making required of police officers
on the street.

Officers are trapped in a system that measures and rewards them for writing
tickets and making arrests. Think about that. Number one: Neither interactions
are helpful to developing relationships. Number two: Officers tally up their
tickets and arrests for evaluations and promotional decisions. So, in reality,
officers chase an unknown number—a type of reward system that creates anxiety
and competition, ill feelings in the public, and overfills our jails and
prisons. Obviously, that is also driven by what society defines as criminal.

Add to that the systemic dysfunctions that create a breeding ground for
crime, like a dearth of available, affordable drug rehab, mental health
support, housing, and predatory lending, limited services for the homeless,
food deserts, lack of arts and enrichment in schools, mentoring and tutoring
needs, high speed internet, transportation, job training and placements—only to
name some of the challenges facing a large portion of the population, mostly
the people who both need and fear the police the most.

Then blame the police for not being able to solve the problems that arise
from society’s dysfunctions. Throw in the perception and sometimes reality of
police abuse, and it’s a no brainer to realize that much of the public has no
trust for police or that police feel they are made “the enemy” and tasked to do
an impossible job.

I want to be clear that police need to protect themselves and others. In 2/3 of the nation’s police departments the number of
deadly-weapons attacks on officers averaged 27 per day.
Officers need to be constantly aware and alert but call on those responses only
as a last resort. This is a daunting requirement.

The links to crime

Studies show it is not the number of police or the number of arrests that
affect crime. An avalanche of research in criminology is linking declining legitimacy with increases in crime.
When Camden lost half its police force, it may not have been the lack of
arrests per se that drove crime, but the perception that there weren’t enough
police. People virtually stopped calling the police for misdemeanor
infractions.

Predatory violence can increase because offenders believe victims and
witnesses will not report incidents to the police—the primary reason that many
homicides go unsolved and perhaps a reason behind the explosion of shootings in
cities like Chicago during a pandemic. They don’t believe the police can or
will be able to stop it.

Trust is key

Let’s talk about lack of trust. How do you trust someone you only have
negative interactions with? How do you address the fear of police? For me
personally, the reality of that hit home with two events—the killing of George
Floyd and the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. As a Jewish person, I appreciated
the outpouring of sympathy and outrage at the massacre, but it did not
make me feel safe. And I can understand that no amount of white
participation in protesting and support makes black people feel safe.

The number of police shootings of unarmed Black shooting
victims is down 63% from 2015. That does
not make black people feel safe anymore than Chicago residents feel safe
knowing that the weekend shooting sprees were anomalies in pandemic crime
trends. Trust is going to take a long time to build and is going to be about
people interacting with people in the community.  It must be, as it always
has been, about relationships.

And how do police build relationships if they don’t have the time to do
anything but answer calls or if they are busy making traffic stops and arrests
to go on their monthly reports? I’m not saying those things should not be in
law enforcement’s toolkit, but the majority of responses society needs from
police officers are better addressed by a mindset and training as problem
solvers with crisis intervention and de-escalation skills. Try to fit that into
a military training model.

That said, even the military has recognized that many of today’s soldiers
need multiple skill sets and the trust of the community in dealing with warfare
in areas where the enemy is indistinguishable from innocent civilians. That
takes a maturity, training, and value set reinforced by standards,
expectations, and peers. The latter is the hardest to tackle but not
impossible.

Police need to be screened, trained, evaluated, and importantly—paid as
professionals doing an extremely difficult job. Yes, Camden put more officers
on the street by paying them less, but their turnover is very high. That means
they are investing in people who don’t stay. It helps payroll, but in the long
run it will cost the city. Paying police more by itself doesn’t solve the
issues, either, but without that, you are looking at reduced applicant pools,
both in quality and quantity or, as in Camden, police who stay long enough to
get trained and then leave for other jobs or other careers. That is actually an
ongoing problem plaguing departments throughout the country, including
Birmingham.

Change is needed, both for police and society. But just taking
money from the police department is not going to accomplish anything of value.
A safest metros’ report found that the most dangerous cities dedicate about 50% fewer dollars
to police and public safety, and their community services allocations are 3
times smaller than in the safest metros.

In particular, taking street officers away from areas of high crime would be
counterproductive and abandoning those who need them the most (see Camden, NJ).
The city needs to invest in solving its problems, and that is going to take
funds and dedication to do something hard. In a time when revenue is
decreasing, that also means how to do more and be effective with less.

How to reduce costs

Although more officers overall doesn’t seem to affect crime, deploying more officers on the street in high crime areas
has shown to be effective, and not result in more arrests,
just less crime, especially if they have the time and motivation to get out of
their cars and talk to and interact with the community. That means reducing
costs and redeploying sworn officers.

Utilizing trained civilians could reduce the need for sworn officers in many
positions. Working the front desks at precincts, as assistants in detective
offices to deal with paperwork, contacting victims, etc. (possibly freeing some
detectives to return to street duty). Why do we need armed officers to respond
to accident scenes to take reports for insurance companies? Trained citizens
could do that or even respond to theft/burglary or other after-the-fact calls
where the major requirement is filling out a report.

Birmingham was an early leader (1970’s) in hiring social workers to follow
up or to respond with officers to calls of domestic violence, mental health,
child abuse, etc. But there are only 5 positions to cover the city 24/7. That
program should be expanded, along with the resources they and police officers
need to support their efforts to address community problems.

Technology can be employed.  Why do police have to stop vehicles to
give tickets?  Yes, sometimes drugs or weapons are found that way, but is
it worth it in terms of the negative association of citizens with police and
the opportunity for harm to both inherent in even routine traffic stops? 
We are quite capable of having cameras and computers monitor traffic violations
and issue appropriate tickets.

Perhaps it is time to reexamine the possibility of sharing costly facilities
like jails, dispatching, training, and vehicle pools and to evaluate law
enforcement hiring and training—a topic unto itself. Monies saved can go toward
addressing the communities’ needs.

But it shouldn’t stop at police departments. A reevaluation of where monies
are going throughout city government is called for, to weigh the value of
administrative costs and to shift people and resources where they are
needed—more police on the streets, more investments in schools and youth, drug
rehab, job training, and mental health services to start. With access to these
resources, police can actually be problem-solvers, have alternative strategies
to arrest, and can build trust in the communities they serve, and that will
make their jobs easier and more rewarding and our communities safer.

Change is hard. It is much easier to keep the status quo. The pandemic has
created a tough financial time for cities in addition to the pressure of calls
for reform. We need to do more than just survive it. We need to use the
opportunity to take a hard look at what we do, who we are, and who we want to
be.

 T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at: TKThorne.com

 

Breaking the Code of Silence—by T.K. Thorne

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Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

We are living History, a moment of angst and hope, of isolation and involvement, a time to look deep.

In the beginning of my novel, House of Rose,
my police officer heroine shoots a man in the back. I deliberately
placed Rose in that situation, because it put her in trauma, and that is
how character is built. I wanted readers to experience that from her
perspective, to be uncomfortable. Having to pull the trigger is not a
comfortable place. I am a former police officer, and, like my fellows, I
always dreaded having to make such a decision and having to live with
it—right or wrong.

My fictional shooting is a circumstance very far from the blatant
lynching of George Floyd, which—along with a dark cloud of other racial
encounters and shootings—have stained the badge that so many wear
proudly and with honor. For the first time in my memory, law enforcement
officers have broken their “code of silence” and stepped forward to
voice their outrage, some to walk and pray with protesters.

I am proud of those voices, but I understand they do not make black people feel safe.

I am not black and not trying to imply I understand what it feels
like to be, but I am listening and trying to imagine that and to relate
it to my own experiences. I am Jewish.

Recently, I watched a documentary on the growth of anti-Semitism in
the world, including the U.S., and it awoke in me something that I try to ignore in my daily life, an underlying fear of being different
and what might happen to me or those I love because of who I am and
what I believe. The outpouring of sympathy and expressions of horror at
the Tree of Life massacre did not make me feel safe either.

How are we not beyond this? I yearn for there to be no need
for police to have to make awful decisions or even to be armed, only to
perform their highest calling—solving problems, protecting and helping
people. I yearn for soldiers to put down their weapons and say, “Ain’t
gonna study war no more.”

I also research and write about history and know we have moved the
needle significantly from the past, but we have not left the darkness
behind. It is a chasm looming before us. I fear we are on a precipice as
a country and world.

What can I do?

I am a writer, so I am doing what I do—writing about my pain,
confusion, my passion for justice. Sometimes I do that through my
characters, but sometimes I just have to struggle for the words in my
own voice.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes books,
which, like this blog, roam wherever her interest and imagination take
her.  Want a heads up on news about her writing and adventures (and
receive two free short stories)? Click on image below.  Thanks for
stopping by!

https://tkthorne.com/signup/

Pandemic, Protests, and Privilege

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By AB Plum

Paraphrasing E.L. Doctorow, “Writing is a socially
acceptable form of committing murder.”

I’ve been killing a lot of characters this past month.

Not because the pandemic has demanded much of a change
in my life. I, basically, lead a life of privilege. I think killing “the bad
guys” is my way of venting frustration about the handling of the pandemic fueled by institutional racism.

Food, good, fresh food,
appears on my table nightly. The house where I live provides more than adequate
shelter. Walking daily remains part of my routine. I am white, well educated,
and healthy (except for a heart condition that puts me in the “Higher Risk” COVID-19 category). One risk I don’t have to deal with: 
living in constant fear of the police.

I like to think I’m smart enough to be grateful for my
lot in life and to be sensitive to so many others less fortunate. (It sounds
self-serving, but I grew up poor as dirt and have never forgotten my deep roots
in poverty).

Unconsciously, I write about flawed characters who
often are well-to-do. Many of them, though, have memories of being poor,
disenfranchised, ill, mentally incapacitated, and marginalized because of race
and/or gender.

In my Ryn Davis Mystery
Series, she runs a safe house for former prostitutes. With Hispanic surnames,
little education, less money, and children with absentee fathers, these women
are struggling to learn computer skills that will give them better chances to map
out independent lives and to protect their children. None of them has ever met un policia they trusted.

Beau “Peep” Scott earned millions as a drummer in The
Stoned Gang. The rock group’s name is apt since Beau burned too many gray cells
to take care of his fortune. His parents were drug addicts who neglected him,
and he deals daily with people’s sneers about his intellect. He adores Ryn and
may be the only man she trusts completely.

Elijah White, former Stanford law school and business grad,
successful corporate attorney, and the oldest of five siblings, now runs his
own PI business in Southern California. He remembers going to bed hungry. His
father was shot and killed by a cop.

Angie, a former Ph.D. candidate in biology and the
abused, runaway wife of a Silicon Valley tycoon, is about to hang out her shingle
as a vet for the homeless. She lived on the streets when she met Ryn. She
shares an affinity with Elijah and Beau for 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles. She
also understands classism from the perspective of a trophy wife to a toothless
bag lady.

These are a few of my regular characters in the series.
I’ve not killed any of them and don’t see that happening in the next book at
least. Instead, I look forward to exploring greed, lust, and power as the
primary reason for murder—and maybe for most of society’s woes.


***  AB Plum
lives, walks, and writes in the heart of Silicon Valley. No Little Lies, her third book in the Ryn Davis Mystery Series hits
Amazon on July 6. Preorder here.  
























When Crime Meets Magic–by T.K. Thorne

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   Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

The first thing most people say to me when they learn I was a career cop is, “Oh. You don’t look like a policeman.”
This is a good thing because I’m a woman.
Perhaps at 5’3”, I don’t fit the stereotype in their minds. That’s not worrisome to my self-image because during my 20+ years in the Birmingham Police Department, it never occurred to me that I was too small . . . other than the annoying fact that my hands couldn’t fit properly around a gun. Not only did I have to figure out an alternate way to shoot, there were other challenges. In those early Academy days, we had to carry the fifty bullets needed for the firearms qualification tests in our pants pocket and dig them out to reload with one hand (the other held the gun). Tight time constraints for firing and reloading were in place to try to replicate some of the stress of being under fire.
If I pulled more than six bullets at a time out of my pocket, it overwhelmed my small hand’s capacity to manipulate them into position to reload. Bullets tumbled to the ground, making it impossible to reload in time. With practice, I developed the ability to blindly grab exactly six bullets at a time. I’m still proud of that skill, though I’ve yet to find a good use for it.
Since Joseph Wambaugh’s controversial Choir Boys appeared in 1975, the number of law enforcement authors has grown, but they’re still an anomaly, and so I get to surprise with the double whammy of being a retired cop and a writer. I’ve learned to deal with the “You don’t look like a policeman,” reaction with a smile and a simple, “Thank you.” And when I explain my latest novel is about a young police woman in Birmingham, Alabama who discovers she’s a witch, I get an even more fun reaction—“Is it autobiographical?”
Seriously, yes, I get this.  At first, I was too stunned by the question to respond, but now, I immediately shoot back with a straight face, “Totally.”
Even though I don’t claim to be a witch, I did pull on my police background to give authenticity to the story. Challenges lurked, even so. It has been a while since I wore blue, so I had to update department polices and equipment to those of current day, such as putting a body camera on my patrol officers and computers in the cars, but these were minor items. The most critical element was attitude, knowing how people in law enforcement who risk their lives on a daily basis think and react. That said, I certainly don’t espouse writing only “what you know” in that sense. If I did, I’d have a problem dabbling a little magic in with murder and mayhem!
My character, Rose Brighton, is a police officer in the city of Birmingham, Alabama. She’s taller than I am and has no problem holding a gun properly, but Rose has other challenges. Her first clue that her life is about to get complicated comes when she’s chasing a suspect down an alley and he appears to divide into two men, the real suspect, frozen in time, and a shadow version with a gun. From here things go south. She shoots a man in the back, the nightmare of every cop, and can’t explain what really happened. Unraveling that and the mystery of who she really is becomes a high-stakes struggle for survival.

Weaving magic “realistically” into a crime story was a bit like learning to pull exactly six from a pocket full of bullets.  It seemed improbable at first, but maybe learning that skill was not such worthless endeavor after all. Maybe it was a reminder that anything is possible. 

Even a police-witch.

T.K. Thorne’s childhood passion for storytelling deepened when she became a police officer in Birmingham, Alabama.  “It was a crash course in life and what motivated and mattered to people.” In her newest novel, HOUSE OF ROSE, murder and mayhem mix with a little magic when a police officer discovers she’s a witch. 

Both her award-winning debut historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, tell the stories of unknown women in famous biblical tales—the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot. Her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, the inside story of the investigation and trials of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, was featured on the New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list. 

T.K. loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. She writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, often with two dogs and a cat vying for her lap. 

 More info at TKThorne.com. Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”