Considerations

•         Police Violence
•        Stopping Putin

        Before joining the ongoing national debate about "police reform" you deserve to know my "bona fides" or "where I'm coming from" when I say the issue is training and education. Learning is the reform that is needed.

        I was a college freshman and newly minted police beat reporter for a commercial radio station in my midwestern state university small industrial city. The first murder I covered was in Muncie. A poor soul was spotted by his wife in a country bar in the company of another woman. Mrs. went home, fetched his fishing knife and returned to nearly decapitate her cheating man. 

        The police beat seasons a young reporter.

  

        I asked to ride with the cops on Saturday night as they patrolled the south side dives and the downtown bar district. It seemed that for sport as much as for public safety a couple of officers liked to round up the drunks and haul them to city lock-up. Woe to the resistant inebriate! They became billy club target practice and were handled like tossed bags of garbage. Some of them were guilty of nothing but being out cold, dead drunk. They could not hear the order to get up. 

        Sometimes they got hosed down, and sometimes they were deserving, being covered in their own bodily output. 

        I'm embarrassed to say I didn't question the excessive force until a light went off during a sociology course. That led to questions, a couple of news stories, disconcerted cops, changed relationships and a new view of my work and that of the cops.

         Over forty years I worked with a lot of cops. Some were friends. Some scared me with their ideas about their work and their power. Some were genius investigators, some were politicians, some were real heroes and some were dirt bags. As the years passed and cities became gang ridden, and more guns hit the street, cops adopted a kind of siege or survival mentality. It's easy to forget that first they are just people with their own families and lives and hopes and fears.

        If I needed a particular kind of information I'd drop into a cop bar. Off duty, amongst their own was a great place to see the men and women for the humans they are, good and not so.

        I trusted my life to cops on several occasions. We had armed protection when we broadcast from violent a neighborhood where a drug gang had taken over. We hired off duty officers to be "crew" when we confronted armed and angry Ku Klux Klan members on their job site. We accompanied police on raids, and had to take cover from gun fire. I spent tense hours with SWAT members deployed in a dramatic hostage incident. 

        I understand the pressure they work under. But I've also watched as police departments that once touted Protect and Serve got militarized by hand me down Homeland Security or military weapons, outfits and vehicles. It has been the rise of the warrior cop.

        A crystalizing moment occurred when I began reporting on police training. With the help of an FBI agent and friend, I spent time at the National Law Enforcement Training Academy watching how they "upgraded" the quality of local police. 

        I've interviewed psychologists, educational designers, chiefs, administrators  elected office holders, judges and cops.

        US citizens are 60 times more likely to be killed by police than British citizens.  The American cop gets on average 600 hours of training while Finland trains cops for 5,500 hours. German cops get 4,500 hours, Australia 4000 hours, England 2,500 and Canadian cops are trained for twice as long as US cops.

     In the US cops are required to get less training than plumbers and cosmetologists. 

        When I followed a new class of FBI agents through 16 weeks of intensive training and psychological rigor I was convinced that states and cities needed to rethink how they recruit and train police officers. 

        Mental health and fitness, cultural and human relations, better crisis management and decision making are as important as weapons better suited for a battle field. 

        US police academies stress firearms training, as much as 3 times more than on training how to deescalate a situation. Some nations require academic degrees. 

        In addition to better psychological evaluation of job candidates we need to give cops better care. Police officers are five times more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in the line of duty.

        There is no excuse for the police violence we all have witnessed. It is police murder. But a government that does not pay more, or require more and better training and care and be willing to assign the resources needed is an accomplice to police violence. So too are the politicians who are willing to lament and complain in the media, but have not the courage to vote for additional funding, or better gun control. 

        In this way, police violence is systemic. 

        I am a realist, but I also pray for peace. In a few years people and governments will wonder why this generation of ours did not or could not stop Vladimir Putin. It is a nasty legacy for us, since we saw in our own century how a mad man bent on dominance was the evil factor who was responsible for the war that claimed 75 to 80 million people.

       Putin's war is purely his messianic complex at work. The world watches daily war crimes and atrocities. We have rallied opposition, we have assembled weapons, but the UN and all the alliances on the planet have not done what needs to be done, remove Putin.

       With Putin gone, it is an entirely new equation and it will then be a matter of standing down, disengaging and starting all of the repair and healing that needs to occur.

        Time and time again history tells us a timely removal of a delusional tyrant saves lives and prevents suffering and the work of destructive power. 

        Wishing you strength and endurance. 

        See you down the trail.

A Robbie Burns Ramble

 

        I roamed between the California central coast and Scotland as I rambled by the Pacific and climbed a hill today. Scots tend to celebrate this day, Robbie Burns day.

        He's the national poet of Scotland and since shortly after his death in 1796 Robbie Burns days have been celebrated with dinners and drink and bagpipes. There will be no Haggis on our menu today though we'll take a wee dram and hoist a toast. We've already listened to the pipes.

        I've been reviewing our August and September 2019 sojourn to the homeland and marveling that, has Lana notes, we were fortunate to have traveled then, pre pandemic.

    

        I'm certain the family that occupies the old home pile in Renfrew will observe indeed and express the fierce independence of Scotland the Brave. That is especially so now that Parliament is on the path to another vote for Independence from the English crown and the UK.

        There is much of the Scots political and social mindset that would do this nation well. 

And so as I climbed the hill and crossed the crest, I enjoyed the beauty of creation, all the while accompanied by a monarch butterfly that picked me for a tag along as I began the stroll.

        All the way the roar of the surf and on the higher trail bird song and my friend the monarch. Along the lower sea side trail we were joined by a curious heron.

    

        On the way home I spotted early blooms,

            

        and I convinced myself that Robbie Burns could find reason for toast in this splendid day.

    

        Aye!

        Slante'

        See you down the trail. 

Freedom of thought is absolute

 

        "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing," the bard wrote in Subterranean Homesick Blues when some of us were stretching our minds and pushing boundaries of custom and law while getting an education on campus.

        Nothing was off-limits. War, peace, love, hate, race, speech, art, sex all spilled into classrooms and campuses, the media and even the church. The discussion was fully engaged and frequently rancorous.

        People expressed their views, protested and even went to jail for equal rights, and free speech. 

        I wonder if Bob Dylan of the early 60's would be allowed to sing or think aloud his thoughts on campuses today.   

 

        Would Deans, Provosts or college Presidents  permit a professor to teach of a few words spoken about civil disobedience;

        "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus---and you've got to stop it! And you're got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it---that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

       Mario Savio said that to 4000 people on the UC Berkeley campus, sparked a sit in and the arrest of 800 students. It was the high atmospheric turbulence of the Free Speech Movement in 1964. 

        Other winds blow today. Free speech, even humor, is "canceled." Freedom of expression and to incite thought  is increasingly stifled, it might upset or disturb. 

It is a weird mirror opposite of the way it was. Now professors and teachers are fired because those young minds they seek to teach take offense. Today the student has become the heavy. 

        

    

        In decoding the intellectual tyranny haunting academia and popular culture we  are forced to face, to quote David Byrne, it is " the same as it ever was." There is a circular nature to this that is troubling. 

        Savio was among a group of students who had been busy in the south trying to register black voters, facing all the hate and violence that came with that effort back then. 

        When they returned to their northern campuses, including Savio's Berkeley, efforts to raise money for the voters registration and civil right organizations had been banned. The fuse was lit.

        Despite all that ensued in the intervening half century,  schools buckle to pressure from right and left and every garden variety special interests that is either loud or financially empowering to assert a censorship on speech and thought. It is a wave that teachers, adjunct professors, contract lecturers especially and those who are on the tenure track find difficult navigate.

            Tom Nichols nails it.  He's a respected security and weapons analyst who spent 35 years as a professor. He recently used an Atlantic column to dissect the dismissal of an adjunct professor who, with warning, showed students in a global art history class an image from the 14th century of the Prophet Muhammad. She offered any student who did not want to view it an an opportunity to leave class.

           In the resulting furor the school's president, Faynese Miller, questioned that academic freedom was at issue and questioned if academic freedom was sacrosanct or should be put above students own views and traditions.

        Nichols responded:

This makes no sense. The “rights” of students were not jeopardized, and no curriculum owes a “debt” to any student’s “traditions, beliefs, and views.” (Indeed, if you don’t want your traditions, beliefs, or views challenged, then don’t come to a university, at least not to study anything in the humanities or the social sciences.) Miller’s view, it seems, is that academic freedom really only means as much freedom as your most sensitive students can stand, an irresponsible position that puts the university, the classroom, and the careers of scholars in the hands of students who are inexperienced in the subject matter, new to academic life, and, often, still in the throes of adolescence. This, as I have written elsewhere, is contrary to the very notion of teaching itself. (It is also not anything close to the bedrock 1940 statement on the matter from the American Association of University Professors.) The goal of the university is to create educated and reasoning adults, not to shelter children against the pain of learning that the world is a complicated place. Classes are not a restaurant meal that must be served to students’ specifications; they are not a stand-up act that must make students laugh but never offend them. Miller is leaving the door open for future curricular challenges.

        Yes, we know the way the wind is blowing. Poet Dylan was particularly precocious with another line from Subterranean Homesick Blues.....

        "The pump don't work cause vandals stole the handles..."

         Free thought and speech are the pump handles of intellectual

progress. That chill that blows comes in on winds of repression and it bears a thief who seeks to steal your right to exercise and speak your mind.

           See you down the trail. 

        

The Break Between Storms

         In the wisdom of the old saying, "every cloud has a silver lining" today's clouds over Cambria are mostly mist and sprinkles, providing the ground and citizens a chance to dry and assess.

         Times of crisis bring out the best in people. Neighbors helping each other, including the emergency crews-fire, safety, utilities and road. During last years repaving of local roads,  gutters and swales were improved and they've made the last two weeks of rain easier. 

    

        We've been blessed by location. Our ridge is a block below the highest elevation between Highway 1 and the Pacific. It's called Top of the World and thus far drainage has been good.

    The pause in the series of storms affords a chance to take a closer look. The back hill garden plantings are holding. Lana's indefatigable work provides more than beauty. It's important because our property is slope with a plateau over more slope. 

    Here's a look around.

        

    The lemon flourishes but work on the new raised bed has been halted.

        The solar panels and battery are invaluable when PG&E service is disrupted.

Energy production is minimal, though not zero, in this kind of overcast. 

The Baby Tears have faired well and the pea gravel has continued to drain and percolate. 

Lana's "garden alley" and potting bench came through the deluge  without harm. 

No damage in her hanging meditation corner.

Most of her succulents and small plants on the deck had to be moved and drained, but no lasting damage. 

The artichoke bed is no worse for the wear.

The rain collection barrels are ready for pumping.

The barrel above is also plumbed to receive water that is used in our reverse osmosis process at the tap.

        Glad we trimmed the bottle brush below the utility lines. These storms have produced high winds. Trees into power lines have been a big problem.

        We've escaped the flooding, mudslides, and evacuations that plague thousands of our fellow Californians. If the forecast holds, tomorrow will allow for more drying and absorption. Friday we head into 4 days of another atmospheric river. 

        Perhaps a future generation will come to realize the value of rain and runoff capture, for those not so wet seasons that are inevitable on the west coast.

        It seems everyone is coping with extreme weather of some form this season. Hang in there and stay safe. 

        BTW, this was written by a person. No ChatGPT working here. 

        See you down the trail. 

    

Storming the New Year

         We've started the new year with an ample baptism on the California central coast. 

        In Cambria and environs 8.5 inches in the last 10 days has washed 2022 away and changed the color scheme from drought brown.

        Rain is forecast for 8 of the next ten days. We've been soaked for 8 of the last 10. We are being warned to expect 5 inches in the next two days.

        Santa Rosa Creek is a water freeway gliding into the Pacific near Moonstone Beach. It's also a zoom-floom. 

        The storm surf is audible from miles away. Its roar and growl thunder the planet's voice. Its power is immense.

        Some are not content to listen and watch.

        Leaks, slides, road closures, lost power and communication, washouts, and localized flooding; California is good at getting things back in operation and  Californians take it in stride, especially on the central coast. We've had a breather between the "atmospheric rivers," and we wait now for the next act. 

        This is a place of "human/nature interface;" mountains, forests, wildlife, the Pacific Ocean. We live here with the knowledge that nature rules. We are cool with that. Still, this rain season is unlike most. 

        See you down the trail.