Did Woke Policing Result in Double Murder?

The claim that America’s criminal justice system is systemically racist is not new.  It was the basis of the 1991 riots in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted four police officers caught on video beating a black man named Rodney King.  The video was damning, but it did not show King, who was drunk and just one year out of prison for robbery, leading police on a 117 mph chase through Los Angeles.  It did not show King’s two passengers obey officer’s orders and remain unmolested, nor King’s refusal to comply and actually charge one of the officers.  The riot resulted in 63 deaths and $1 billion in damage.  Whatever had been done to close the racial divide in the years following the Rodney King riots seems to have evaporated in recent years.

In 2008, America elected its first black president.  A major focus of the the Obama administration was the claim that racial bias was baked into just about every aspect of the nation’s founding and its institutions.  The “police are racist” theme was the basis of policy at the Obama Department of Justice, which forced consent decrees upon police departments in several large U.S. cities to reduce claimed racial bias in policing.  The fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, a young black, by an Hispanic neighborhood watchman in 2012, was reported for weeks as the unjustified racial killing of a young unarmed black man by a white bigot.  Shortly after the shooting was reported the President told the nation “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”  Months later the watchman, George Zimmerman, was found not guilty on all counts and an Obama Justice Department investigation failed to find a racial motive for the shooting or any violation of Martin’s civil rights.

Two years later a white veteran police officer in Ferguson, Missouri shot and killed and 18-year-old black man in front of several witnesses.  It was immediately reported as the racially-based killing of a promising black teen who was shot while holding his hands up.  There were eight nights of rioting in Ferguson, as the president told the media that the shooting “exposed a racial divide in the American justice system that “stains the hearts of black children.”  Months later a grand jury, after interviewing several mostly black eyewitnesses, found that the evidence indicated that the 6’4″, 290 lb. teen had attacked the officer and was actually charging at him when he was shot.  On March 4, 2015 the Obama Justice Department announced that its investigation could not find sufficient evidence that the killing was racially motivated.

The net effect on police resulting from these and several other incidents involving the deaths of black suspects between the time of the Michael Brown shooting and the May 2020 death of George Floyd,  was easily predictable.  They backed off on the policing of minority neighborhoods where most crimes are committed.  When responding to a call involving a resisting black suspect, officers are now making a cost-benefit analysis which counsels not to engage.   As one deputy put it, an officer opting for the use of force “could lose his career, his life or his liberty.”

By the time, George Floyd was killed by a rogue police officer in late May of last year, a national anti-police infrastructure had been formed around an organization called Black Lives Matter.  The group had direct ties to the national media, headquarters with paid staff in every major U.S. city and millions of dollars contributed by liberal billionaires, prominent entertainers and corporations purchasing credibility as non-racists.  Days after Floyd, a violent felon wasted on drugs, was killed by the officer attempting an arrest, riots broke out in hundreds of cities, with buildings set on fire, widespread looting, and violent attacks on police and civilians.  For anyone paying attention, it became clear that the thousands breaking into local Targets, Macy’s and pharmacies  to steal televisions, medications, watches and tennis shoes were not there to honor George Floyd.  They were being allowed to commit these crimes because, in most big cities, police were being prohibited from making arrests.

Excellent research by professor Paul Cassell examining 2020 arrest rates in Chicago, pedestrian stops in Los Angeles and vehicle stops in Philadelphia, indicate a significant decline in police contacts in these cities that cannot be explained by the pandemic.  In Philadelphia and Los Angeles, police contacts understandably dropped during that March thru May lockdowns, but fell even lower and stayed there as these cities were overcome with rioting after the Floyd killing.  Both cities suffered unprecedented increases in homicides which began during the riots.  In Chicago, the arrest rate dropped during the lockdowns, spiked briefly during the riots, then dropped by 1/3 and stayed there through the summer and fall, even as homicides reached historic levels.   “The best, currently available evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the Great 2020 Homicide Spike resulted from the widespread anti-police protests, which in turn lead to a reduction in policing activity directed at fighting gun crimes,” writes Professor Cassell.

An unfortunate recent example of the real-world impact of reduced policing is provided in a recent Sacramento Bee story by Sam Stanton.  On Monday, February 6, black repeat offender Raymond Weber was arrested for the murders of two woman in a Vacaville, CA apartment.  Weber actually livestreamed the dead victims lying on the floor as he is seen carrying a handgun.  Two months earlier, on November 29, 2020, a young Sacramento woman called the police after Weber, a man she had been dating, pistol-whipped her and attempted to shoot her, before she was able to exit his car and run away.  When the police arrived, the woman, who was black, was bleeding.  She pointed to her attacker’s car and spotted Weber walking into an apartment.  “I said, there’s his car right there. He had my cell phone, he had my car keys, my house keys, Officers, He’s right there…he’s walking into that apartment there….He’s armed and dangerous,” she later told reporters.  Instead of making any contact with Weber, the officers drove the woman home.  At that time Weber was facing charges of domestic violence and assault with a deadly weapon.  An attorney who filed a complaint on the beating victim’s behalf told reporters “it appears that the Sac Police missed an opportunity to prevent a double-homicide and ignored compulsory domestic violence laws.  Something’s gone terribly wrong.  If there is an explanation for this we want to hear it.”

It is possible that we already know the explanation.  The officers made a cost-benefit analysis about confronting a black suspect who was likely to resist.  It is easy to imagine that this is happening hundreds of time a day in squad cars in almost every medium to large U.S. city.   In the world of woke policing, black lives really don’t matter.