An Open Letter to Captain Ronald S. Johnson; From former St. Louis Metro Area Police Chief Delmore
"Captain Johnson, your words during the day on Friday helped to fuel the anger that was still churning just below the surface. St. Louis County Police were told to remain uninvolved and that night the rioting and looting began again. For much too long it went on mostly unchecked. Retired St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch tweeted that your hug-a-looter policy had failed."
"Well Captain, this veteran police officer feels the need to respond. What you said is, in common police vernacular********. The fact that Brown knew he had just committed a robbery before he was stopped by Officer Wilson speaks to Browns mindset. And Captain, the mindset of a person being stopped by a police officer means everything, and you know it."
http://www.lawofficer.com/article/lifeline-training/open-letter-captain-ronald-s-j
ETA ~ I missed the "hug a looter" tweet on Twitter.
I wish Chief Delmore and Chief Fitch had also called out Ron Johnson not JUST for posing for pictures with the demonstrators, looters, and rioters, but actually SHOWED some of the pictures Ron Johnson posed for, IN UNIFORM. Poses that should have resulted in Ron Johnson immediately being FIRED
for cause. In My Opinion. ("Hug a looter" policy, lol!)
This country fought long and hard to achieve civil rights, and end officially sanctioned segregation. But for many urban areas, that hasn't made anything better in over 50 years-- if fact, I'd argue that these environments are worse than ever, more crime ridden, and with fewer opportunities than before the civil rights movement. Self-segregation is now the norm, not oppressive segregation by policy. But now we have high level officials who want to mandate intentional law enforcement segregation-- because in their minds, only a black officer can "understand" the social problems of gritty, crime ridden urban areas. There is no possibility that a white officer, an Asian officer, a Hispanic officer, a native American officer, etc could possibly "understand" what it means to enforce peace and order and lawfulness. The absurdity of that is simply staggering, IMO. Mono-racial law enforcement officers will only INCREASE crime and corruption, IMO-- and the opinions of a lot of scholars and LE professionals. We don't achieve diversity and tolerance by officially sanctioning racial ghettos.
The problems of the poor, urban gritty neighborhoods are enormous, and multi faceted, as well as multigenerational. Attitudes are multigenerational, too. There are some good people living there who want to improve their neighborhoods and better their lives and their children's futures, but their efforts are dwarfed and crushed by the criminal and feral/ lawless elements, and tolerant attitudes toward crime. And there IS an element of personal responsibility for many of the social problems, IMO, that many are unable, or unwilling to ever admit.
