The Hypocrisy of My Vote for John Hemmerling as San Diego Sheriff
I just can’t bring myself to suggest that others do the same. It’s like recommending enchiladas in a Chinese restaurant.
A newly issued report, called Reimagining Community Safety in California, documents the ineffectiveness of sheriffs departments across the state when it comes to crime prevention and responding to the needs of the people.
Data used in the study was obtained by advocacy groups Catalyst California and the ACLU of Southern California through a state law to track racial profiling. It also suggests sheriff patrols spend significantly more time conducting so-called proactive stops than they do responding to calls for help.
Evidence presented in the report demonstrates that racially biased patrol activities inflict devastating harms, including dehumanization, degraded public health, economic extraction through fees and fines, physical violence through uses of force, and devaluation of life.
This is a tough subject to talk about since most people are conditioned to believe that law enforcement officers are what protects their possessions and personal safety. Calls for reform are easily conflated into fear mongering, as politicians characterizing the Black Lives Matter movement as a singular expression in response to brutality have demonstrated.
Reactionaries nationwide are reaching for a weaponized brush to tar candidates –even those who don’t advocate for changes in policing practices and policies– as part of an imaginary “defund the police” conspiracy.
In real life, almost all governmental entities at every level have increased funding for policing.
From ABC News:
Dr. Rashawn Ray, a sociologist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told KABC in Los Angeles that this false narrative has persisted due to repetition by public officials.
"Overwhelmingly, cities, counties, police departments across the country are not being defunded in any way," Ray said. "In fact, many of them have increased their budgets. Part of the reason why the 'defund the police' narrative has stayed around is because police officers say it and elected officials say it."
San Diego County Board of Supervisors candidate Tiffany Boyd-Hodgson, is the target of ads saying she’s part of such a conspiracy, even though the subject of police reform isn’t mentioned in any of her campaign literature.
The intent of such accusations is to shut down even the possibility of discussing changes in law enforcement practices because such conversations inevitably include evidence of institutional racism. In the past, examples of bias against minorities have been dismissed as not reflecting the policies of the agencies in question.
Our present-day model of policing has deep roots in the slave patrols in the early years of US history. For many African Americans, law enforcement represents a legacy of reinforced inequality in the justice system, as evidenced in contemporary studies.
While the term “slave patrols” wasn’t used after the Civil War, Jim Crow laws mandated separate public spaces for blacks and whites, such as schools, libraries, water fountains and restaurants – and enforcing them was part of the police’s job. Blacks who broke laws or violated social norms often endured police brutality.
Meanwhile, the authorities didn’t punish the perpetrators when African Americans were lynched. Nor did the judicial system hold the police accountable for failing to intervene when black people were being murdered by mobs.
Unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to keep repeating patterns of enforcement that demonstrate bias and undermine community trust.
Modern day law enforcement agencies say they are practicing equal opportunity when it comes to law enforcement, but statistics tell a different story.
From the Guardian coverage:
In San Diego, Black residents were 2.2 times more likely than white residents to be stopped by deputies; in Los Angeles, Black people were 1.9 times more likely; and in Riverside, which is east of LA, they were 1.5 times as likely.
The data suggests that Latino residents were stopped at relatively similar or lower levels than white people, though previous research indicated that stops of Latino people have been under-reported.
The inequities appear more pronounced when they concern stops for equipment violations and administrative issues, such as broken tail-lights or outdated registration. The LA sheriff’s department, for example, stopped Black drivers 3.3 times more often than white drivers for equipment issues, according to the report.
The authors of the report, called Reimagining Community Safety in California, also estimated the time sheriff’s deputies spent on stops. The patrol units in three counties appeared to spend most of their time on stops that officers initiated compared with stops or contacts with the public in response to calls for help, such as 911 emergencies: LA sheriffs spent 89% of patrol hours on officer-initiated stops and 11% on calls for service; Riverside spent 88% on stops and 12% on service calls; and San Diego spent 82% on stops and 18% on calls. The patrol time in Sacramento was more evenly split, with 42% of patrol hours spent on stops and 58% on calls.
Practices rooted in racism –even if their practitioners deny reality– are enabled by a cultural legacy that draws a distinction between people carrying badges and the rest of society and government.
This artificial induced separateness from the rest of society is enabled by the belief that the profession is the most dangerous (it’s not) and that it’s okay to lie to protect one's co-workers and the institution.
Stuart Shrader explored this topic at The New Republic:
You could call these the sustaining myths of policing, but I think of them as political arguments police make. They are instrumental, a means toward an end. Police attempt to achieve legitimacy through the stories they tell about themselves. Police legitimacy means public compliance. It means power.
It’s thus not simply that cops mislead in their statements to the press after an “officer-involved shooting.” The lie that police tell is not only rendered in deceptive language. It’s not about the words they choose. The lie is baked into the institution. The core of policing is not safety. It is social control. All the other lies obfuscate this function.
This distinction between cops and the rest of us has, in practice, become a third rail in politics. Outsiders who dare to venture into verboten subjects like racism and reform are cast as enemies who would enable chaos and crime.
The reality is that this “blue line” prevents practices that would have the effect of increasing efficiency when it comes to solving crimes and therefore protecting the public. And this “us vs them” separation is increasing in direct relation to the political polarization occurring in American society.
From the American Prospect:
According to the most recent data published by the FBI, the rates at which police forces are solving crimes have plunged to historic lows. In the case of murders and violent crime, clearance rates have dipped to just 50 percent, a startling decline from the 1980s, when police cleared 70 percent of all homicides.
It’s not just murder. Manslaughter is down to 69 percent clearance from 90 percent forty years ago. Clearances in assault and rape cases have dropped to 47 percent and 30 percent, respectively. Nonviolent property crimes like burglary (which involves illegally entering a property), theft (which involves taking property from another person), and motor vehicle theft are getting solved at a microscopic 14 percent, 15 percent, and 12 percent, respectively.
According to “Crime and the Mythology of Police,” a recent article published in the Washington University Law Review by University of Utah law professor Shima Baradaran Baughman, “on a good year, police solve less than a quarter of reported cases.” And we haven’t seen good years lately.
The upcoming local election includes the position of County Sheriff on the ballot.
The local agency is an ongoing disaster. Nineteen people have died in custody this year, outpacing even the notorious Rikers Island in New York. The department just lost another lawsuit ($4.35 million) for the way people are mistreated by its employees. And the department is all-but-blind to a culture brimming with discriminatory practices.
Some readers have pointed out what they believe to be hypocrisy on my part because I refused to make an endorsement in the race. To make a long story short, here’s what I said:
So locally elected Democrats have coalesced behind Kelly Martinez, who was promoted into the chain of command by the outgoing sheriff on his way out the door. Republicans have John Hemmerling.
I can’t tell the difference between the two. You might say that one has promised to wear a velvet glove while pummeling prisoners and the other promises to transparently use a bare fist.
Some progressives, including my friend Dave Myers, have endorsed John Hemmerling making the presumption that any outsider is a better choice than someone who’s been compromised as part of surviving within the institution.
Hemmerling has made some statements softening his more reactionary stances. And Martinez, despite her new-found Democratic credentials, has continued to cater to the nutcases who hide behind the Second Amendment.
I confess that I did vote for Hemmerling. I just can’t bring myself to suggest that others do the same. It’s like recommending enchiladas in a Chinese restaurant.
I had hoped a couple of years back that the role of law enforcement as an institution might be a discussion we as a people could have. Obviously I was wrong. The increasing acceptance of authoritarianism in society has served to keep the cops on their pedestal. Even liberal politicians feel the need to tread lightly on the subject, if at all.
I’ll close by quoting the conclusion of the release announcing Reimagining Public Safety:
Reimagining California’s approach to community safety is long overdue. Our state and local governments must recognize that outdated “tough-on-crime” approaches not only fail to meaningfully advance safety, but also disproportionately harm communities of color by annually funneling billions of dollars to sheriff’s departments that prioritize racially biased patrol activities.
Here’s a link to my Voter Guide.
Email me at: WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com