PARADOXES OF POLICING IN MINNEAPOLIS

by Colin Liddell

The recent case in Minneapolis, where an unfortunate Black man was apparently killed by some heavy-handed policing methods (presumably taught in police academy), has reopened the never fully-closed can of worms of interracial policing.

Even if the facts are denied, it is an established reality that blacks are much more inclined to criminality and violence than Whites. Any doubts on this matter can easily be resolved by checking what post-codes professional liberals and leftists live in.

The only faintly reasonable line of denial that liberals have is in contesting the causes of this higher crime rate. There is still a sputtering argument that these racial disparities are caused by a fading memory of 1950s-style, bullwhip racism combined with "economic injustice." But this argument is an obvious cope, so, once all the smoke about "microaggressions" and "white privilege" has been blown away, we keep coming back to the essential problem of interracial policing. This devolves into the following three simple paradoxes:

1. Racial groups with different levels of criminality require different levels of policing, punishment, and deterrence.
2. All racial groups should be policed by people of their own race, but different racial groups have different levels of ability and commitment for policing. 
3. Those groups or communities most in need of intensive and fair policing are least able to provide it for themselves.

Paradox One

Differing racial levels of criminality require different degrees of policing in order to ensure behavior of a similar standard. A similar standard or "equal outcomes" are of course important in any society like our own, which, rightly or wrongly, values "equality." However to achieve equality, unequal methods are required.

For example, to equalize the Black murder rate with that of Whites a much greater intensity of policing, as well as much harsher penalties, would be required. The same is true of other, similar crime-prone groups in other multicultural states, like France's Muslims and Britain's Afro-Caribbean population. This is, of course, a direct challenge to the one-size-fits-all ethos of the multicultural state.

France: Let them eat cake welfare.

Failure by government to impose such policing and punishment means that the official myth of equality can only be maintained by incessant propaganda and/or unacknowledged apartheid as in France’s "Zones Urbaines Sensibles." In short the myth becomes an increasingly hollowed-out husk that starts to lose credibility as other members of society are forced to rely on negative stereotypes to bridge the official information gap.

This may lead to more heavy-handed inclusivist measures, such as increased affirmative action and codes of hate speech and hate thought, but the spiral is ever downwards.

Any society that tries to keep fundamentally different groups in the same society and treat them equally has in essence two options: (1) either under-police the most criminally-prone group, or (2) over-police the less criminally-prone.

Both of these courses are, of course, unfair, unsatisfactory, and indeed unworkable so, in practice, what happens is that a disguised two- or even three-tiered policing system develops, in which the most criminally-prone groups are effectively and necessarily policed/oppressed. This has been the key to the success of policing in New York under mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg.

The application of stop-and-search and anti-drug laws has been used effectively as a means of applying different levels of policing and punishment on racial communities with higher crime risk in America.

In the absence of an overtly declared and officially justified racial double standard – an impossibility in today's multicultural West – such subterfuge is in fact necessary to achieve policing that is tailored to different groups' criminal proclivities.

But although flexible, such a system also has several weaknesses. It creates inconsistencies that undermine its efficiency and moral authority, and which lay it open to media and political attack, as we are seeing in the tragic case of George Floyd. It also leads to cynicism among police officers and alienation among the targeted group, who will always be aware of any special treatment even if the media chose to cover it up.

Paradox Two

The second paradox is that even if you police populations at the correct level of intensity and with appropriate punishment and sanctions, they must be policed by their own kind or else a group of additional problems arise, such as community alienation, public support for criminals, and forms of political and active resistance. These are all common features in any black or Hispanic ghetto.

One race policing another is only possible in situations where the other race has been conquered or colonized and has accepted its lower status while also losing its will to fight. This may have been a possibility in earlier centuries, but it is clearly unacceptable now. As a result, efforts are made to "localize" policing, either through the electoral process or through affirmative action, but there can often be practical limitations to this.

One problem that arises is mismatches between the geography of ethnic communities and the geography of police forces. While they sometimes coincide, usually they do not. For example, the NYPD and the London Metropolitan Police have to police large areas inhabited by several distinct racial, ethnic, and religious groups. This means that the ill effects of Paradox Two are hard to avoid.

Paradox Three

Various advantages can be gained from handing policing over to people from the actual racial community involved, but there can also be serious drawbacks. Good policing requires a variety of qualities and skill sets, but the distribution of these is not equal across racial groups.

Limiting the question to Blacks and Whites, few would argue with the assertion that Whites have more of the qualities that make for better policemen: such as higher IQs, greater integrity and incorruptibility, and better all-round discipline. Whites needing less policing are better at it, while Blacks needing more policing are worse at it.

Black-on-Black: policing no longer a powderkeg issue.

This may partly be because they are operating under a system devised for and by Whites, with standards based on White norms. It is conceivable that a truly Black system based on Black norms might prove more effective and perhaps there are examples from Africa that might prove this. In some South African and Mexican communities rampant crime is countered by various forms of extreme vigilantism. It is possible to see this as either a form of indigenous policing or, from a White perspective, as part of the crime problem.

Because of racial differences, recruitment standards in police forces are circumvented or ignored to achieve politically acceptable racial numbers and proportions, both in America and elsewhere. If black police officers were recruited from the higher ranks of the Black community and had to do well on standardized tests, things might improve, but to rigorously impose standards in a way that did not greatly reduce the number of Black officers would require a two-tier system in which the brightest and best Blacks were attracted by having much higher salaries than their white colleagues and even other Black elites.

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The result of racial differences and the equality myth is that Black communities policed predominantly by Blacks will be less well-policed and suffer more cases of officer abuse than White communities policed by White officers, while Black communities policed by forces with a significant White presence will continue to feel a sense of alienation and of being picked on.

Whatever happens in law enforcement in the West over the coming years, it is sure to revolve around these three paradoxes in the same way that a moth circles the flame.

Among unequal populations you cannot have equal outcomes unless you have unequal inputs. You cannot have race-blind policing, based entirely on merit, unless the people you are policing are race-blind. Making policing truly effective requires tailoring policing to race, a sheer impossibility in the modern multiracial state.


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