 23 and a half minutes into “Police Academy 7: Defund the Police,” which is the title of the 200th episode of Michael Moore’s Rumble podcast, Canadian author, journalist, and activist Desmond Cole laments the backlash he usually receives when advocating for the total abolition of policing and jails: “Now, we always get the question,” he says wearily, his tone of voice sounding like he’s rolling his eyes, “‘What about the murderers? What about the rapists? What about the serial killers?’ And I think the appropriate answer is: Many of them are police.” Well, I refuse to stand idly by while Michael (who I like about 89% of the time or so) provides his high-profile platform to such outlandish misinformation. Michael has let me down before, but not like this. Everybody knows there’s already been a seventh Police Academy, Michael. It just didn’t have a numeral in its title. Therefore, I hereby demand an official apology from you and the whole Rumble team on behalf of Alan Metter, who not only directed 1994’s Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, but the Eighties Rodney Dangerfield classic Back to School and, apparently, a feature-length Growing Pains movie. OK. Now that we’ve gotten the important part out of the way… What does it say about me (serious question) that I think it is preposterous for Mr. Cole to suggest there are so many police using their authority to get away with raping and murdering that it’s not worth worrying too much about violent civilian criminals—that the good of dismantling police forces would far outweigh the bad of, I guess, allowing murderers and rapists a clearer path to murdering and raping? I don’t love that I was bothered enough by Cole’s Rumble appearance to feel the need to write about it. As I’ve tried hard not to conceal here on CeeGees.org, I am a straight white American male (“SWAM”!), so I understand my opinion must be taken with a small boulder of salt. Case in point: The worst treatment I’ve ever received from a police officer obviously pales in comparison to the racial profiling Cole’s had to deal with in Canada, a country we Americans assume is, you know, totally cool, no racial injustice up there in the Great White North! (Ohhhh. It’s right there in their nickname, isn’t it? That they have racial justice issues, too. Great White North. Gotcha.) Anyway, here’s my “worst encounter with the cops” story: It’s the late-Nineties, and my post-college band’s van gets pulled over on the Ohio Turnpike. We were on our way to the now-defunct North By Northeast festival in Toronto, so those of us who might normally partake of any illegal substances (which did not include me, of course) took drastic measures to make sure no offending nothin’ was on their person in anticipation of being rogered roundly by cops at the border. I mean, that van was vacuumed and fumigated, pretty much—we were taking no chances. And yet, this trooper said he smelled pot before I had my window fully rolled down (I was at the wheel at the time). He radioed in for the drug-sniffing dog, and questioned each of us individually, one by one in the back of his Highway Patrol car, while we waited. When the drug dog handler arrived, the cop told me, “Now, if that dog scratches anywhere, you boys are in some trouble.” As the handler guided her gargantuan German shepherd (that’s the size and breed of the dog as I remember it, at least) around the van, she’d just tap on a spot somewhere and the dog would instantaneously pounce and furiously scratch that spot. There was no sniffing around; it was just tap-tap-tap, followed immediately by a lustful lunge and a few seconds of unhinged scratching. So the cops pulled every last item out of the van and rifled through it all. There were no apologies when they didn’t find anything, just confused looks on their faces and a tepid “You boys watch y’selves, now,” as they retreated to their cruisers and puttered off. (Each attempt at reimbursement for the extensive cosmetic damage the dog did to the van was answered by the Ohio State Patrol with a cheery, “You want us to pay whatzit for what-huh-now?”) So, that was my worst experience with the Law, and while I was a little nervous during my one-on-one interrogation (and a little concerned one of my bandmates surely must have missed extracting at least one dank nug from some knapsack nook or van cranny somewhere), none of us white boys ever felt like we were in danger of actual bodily harm. If we’d have been Black, I have no doubt the story would be far different. So I fully support drastic law enforcement reform. In previous Rumble podcasts, Michael rolled out proposals for a “Department of Public Safety & Compassion” to replace the institution of the police department as we know it, and a “Department of Restorative Justice & Redemption” to replace the incarceration industry (and it most certainly is an indu$try). And I love those ideas! But I also believe what I *think* most liberal lefties believe, too (albeit grudgingly): most cops are good cops. Although for my part, that’s really to say most cops are good people, trying to be good cops. I mean, I don’t profess to know the percentage of cops who are good people...what do you think it is, maybe 90%? Hell, it could be 70% for all I know. I do feel comfortable, however, stating that “most” cops are good people. But good people can still have baked-in implicit racial biases. And when armed officers who are trained for the worst-case scenario show up to investigate a noise disturbance, or attend to someone experiencing a mental health crisis—or God forbid somebody’s passed a counterfeit $20 bill in Minneapolis—shit can go bad right-quick. And way, way, way too often—and especially when the subject of the call is a person of color—it does. So, we need thoughtful, thorough, ambitious, visionary police reform—a complete overhaul of the institution, so that the only people taking guns to the scene of a potential crime are the very best-trained, and the crime in question is clearly presenting a significant danger to the community. Such a transition would inevitably mean, in a literal sense, “defunding the police” in America. And doing so will mean job loss for a lot of, not necessarily good cops, but good people who tried to be good cops. And again, I believe that absolutely must happen! And that there is no comparison between police officers suffering a job loss and the suffering Black people have endured historically at the hands of police officers. That said, it’s not really necessary to rejoice in it, is it? Or (another serious question), are we saying that punishing these people would send an important message? To show the Black community we as a society acknowledge the injustice they’ve endured? By causing the institution at least a modicum of the kind of suffering it has caused? Intellectually, I know implicit bias—in favor of cops—is part of the reason I tend not to want to punish police any more than that which would come with such a significant renovation of their trade. Cops, to me, are T.J. Hooker, or Barney Miller. Sure, there’s an occasional Magnum Force-style rogue death squad that might pop up from time to time, but my Midwestern Eighties and Nineties upbringing told me cops were the good guys, by an overwhelming margin. So, I’m biased, whether I like it or not, or am conscious of it or not. But for me, there are still legitimate parallels to be drawn between having to let a bunch of cops go because police reform is imperative, and having to let a bunch of coal miners go because adopting clean energy is imperative—it’s the right thing to do, but it still sucks to take jobs from people. We should be showing up for outgoing cops like it’s been suggested we show up for outgoing coal industry workers, so we can help them find new, better jobs that lift up society in both the short term and the long term. Let’s not make the transition so punitive. * * * * * * *Let me throw out a few more quotes from Desmond Cole’s discussion with Michael Moore, because I would love to know if I’m being too hard on the guy (and, indirectly, on Michael Moore): On people asking questions about how completely abolishing incarceration in America would work: “Here again, just like with getting rid of police, people say, ‘Well what are we going to do with the people who we’d send to prison in the past, how are we going to be kept safe from them?’ And I’d say, ‘You have police officers who murder people and no one even knows their name…” And then no further answer. It is awful, awful, awful, everything Cole is referencing that cops have most certainly done historically—it's just truly awful. But listing these atrocities is not an answer to, "So what do we do in place of incarceration?" How different, then, are Cole's non-answers from “what-aboutism,” which we accuse Republicans of living by when presented with an un-winnable argument? “We need to investigate the assault on the Capitol.” “Oh yeah? But what about Antifa, huh? Huh??” I’m not sure how best to express my frustration with Mr. Cole’s appearance on Rumble without sounding like I’m downplaying the severity of the monumental problem we have with police in this country. All I can say is it’s not my intention to downplay anything. Because, YES, as Michael suggests at one point, many times police arrive long after the crime occurs and it’s just cleanup duty for them. And YES, Michael, policing should be “preventive” more than anything—now we’re talking!—give cops the kind of training, both in skill and compassion, that prioritizes preliminary legwork instead of just reacting with force. Perhaps we could head off at the pass the kinds of desperate situations we see often lead to violence in the first place. To do this, we indeed have to get rid of the bad cops—and that means the bad people who are cops, but also the good people who are bad cops. Hire people better-equipped to be better cops, and spare no expense on establishing kinder, fairer, more proactive, more compassionate policing and incarceration systems that only lock people up whose crimes thoroughly demand it. And the jails we reserve for the truly hardened felons must be strictly not-for-profit—for-profit prisons are a phenomenon I am absolutely 100% in favor of abolishing! But just saying, “Policing is really effed up, it has to go, and it doesn’t need to be replaced by anything” is, to me, unhelpful, to put it as emotionlessly as I can. Or at least the way Cole expresses his intentions without providing real solutions...that approach seems extra-unhelpful to me. “Some people get to be heroes when they commit crimes, and police officers fall into that category. Police officers who do the most cowardly things—handcuff children, mace children, lie to get people convicted of crimes, or so-called crimes—they’re cowardly, but they’re celebrated for their antisocial behavior.” WHO IS CELEBRATING cops like these? Who cheers cops on for macing children?? Even if it’s a 17-year-old “child” who is doing something to disrupt the peace somehow, nobody is cheering on the macing, are they? Or does he mean figuratively—just by tolerating police activity on any level, you’re complicit in the macing of children? When we go to defundpolice.org, Michael says we’ll “see it all laid out there. And you will read it, and you’ll go ‘Ohhhhh, that’s a good idea! Why don’t we do that?’ I know you will [feel that way]—if you have a good heart, you will.” And yes, I agree with the programs defundpolice.org wants to divert funds to, 100%: “housing, health care, income support, employment, and community-based safety strategies that will produce genuine and sustainable safety for all.” I’d give all that a definitive “Hell yes.” And yes, I want the money that’ll pay for all that to come from demilitarizing police forces and “divesting from institutions that kill, harm, cage, and control our communities.” But I still want there to be police—highly skilled, well-trained, well-vetted, empathetic and compassionate police—and I still want jails for the worst of the worst who have been proven in court to be the worst of the worst (and yes, I know there are people—and so often they are people of color—who aren’t represented properly in court and get wrongfully convicted way too often, but at the same time there are still people who are legitimately the worst of the worst, and it would seem there are more of those people than there are of the wrongfully convicted, no?). I just can’t accept that feeling the way I do—and having questions, while still trying in good faith to learn the complexities of the issue—should disqualify me from the conversation, as Cole’s “my way or the highway” attitude seems to suggest. I mean, I want all the things defundpolice.org says they want! Michael asks, “Why do you think the white liberal pundits have been railing against this concept of ‘defund the police,' and warning other liberals or lefties, ‘Do NOT use this term, or we’re going to lose this next election.” Cole: “Yeah, I think you’ve answered your own question, this is about politics. ‘Defund’ is a losing message to white liberals, and they don’t care about the ethical underpinning of ‘Defund,’ they just think, ‘White people aren’t gonna listen to that, so don’t do it.’ It’s a politics of expediency, and it’s a politics of not having to give a f*** because it doesn’t affect you in the same way it affects other people.” Wow. We don’t care at all? Not signing off on the term “defund the police" equals ambivalence over the ethics of it? I’m just concerned about the politics? Doesn’t affect me, so, eff it, I guess? That’s not what I was consciously feeling when first sitting down to listen to this Rumble episode, Desmond, but...if you say so! Cole: “So I don’t really care if white people hear ‘Defund’ and get scared. You [white people] hear that society has been pointing a gun on Black and Indigenous people for hundreds of years, and you’re thinking that maybe we’re going to take that gun away, and that makes you scared? That’s your problem, that’s not my problem. I don’t have to sit around and waste my life convincing you that I deserve to live without society’s gun pointed at me every day. Or [to have] that society watching and surveilling me every day. I have a right to live without all of that, and if you’re not sure, that’s your problem.” But I am sure, man! I am 100% sure that it is atrocious bullshit of the highest degree you have to live feeling like you do about this, day in and day out. And if the impetus for this article was subconsciously my fear of white people becoming obsolete...I certainly didn't feel that way when I started writing, and I still don't feel that way now that you've suggested it, but I'd never rule it out. I realize bias operating "implicitly" is a tricky thing. My best assessment of my attitude right now, though, is that I friggin’ hate that for you, that you feel constantly watched, your integrity questioned, every day. And I know, of course, I’ll never be able to understand what that feels like—when I was in high school and had hair down to my ass and looked like a scuzzy rocker dude (probably because I was a scuzzy rocker dude), I got eyed pretty closely by department store security, pretty much every time I went into a department store. But that's the closest I'll ever come to being able to relate: if I think back on those experiences and multiply how they made me feel by a gazillion. It's a shame, though, that you think if I don’t foresee the path to fixing policing exactly as you see it, I’m a lost cause. However, if that is your truth, I guess I have to accept that and try to work with it, don’t I? I'm trying. Cole: “What do white liberals care, if this isn’t their world? It’s not their family members in jail. It’s not their children being followed around by the police officer in their schools. What do they care? If they feel like they’re safe because certain people need to be followed around, certain people are scary, certain people are antisocial...of course they’re not going to go for this as a political message. But this is not a political slogan. This is not about expediency, or winning a political argument, or winning through incrementalism.” I wonder, how would you recommend I prove it to you that I do care about this? About how Black people are often treated terribly by the cops, and are often unjustly banished to jails for bullshit reasons? Would I need to adopt your agenda, fully, with no questions or misgivings allowed? Would that even be good enough? Cole: “Liberal ideology about ‘reforming’ police? Incrementally? Is completely bankrupt, and, I would add, insincere. Liberals don’t want to address this problem. They want us to shut the hell up about it, that’s all they want. So who the f*** cares what they say? We’re on a mission, and if they come on board, they come on board. But how many miles are we really going to gain begging liberal people to acknowledge our humanity as Black people?” He sounds like Democrats these days talking (accurately) about Republicans in Congress: ”What good will it do to keep waiting for them and begging them to negotiate with us in good faith, when they prove time and again their only priority is to delay and obstruct government at all costs?” The difference, though, is that those Dems are specifically referring to office-holding Republicans, the vast majority of whom truly stand for nothing—they’re wholly political animals now, possessing no morals or decorum when it comes to their jobs...“It’s just government, no hard feelings!” The way I took Cole's point, on the other hand, was that, as a non-office-holding citizen very supportive of drastically reforming policing—yes, "reforming" it, and technically defunding police but not calling it that—I am an insincere asshole who doesn't really care about the issue because at the end of the day it doesn't directly affect me. Or does he, too, just mean the liberals in Congress? Because I see where he's coming from a lot better if that's the case. But I don't think it is. And even if that is who he meant, I can't be the only one in Michael's listening audience who felt he was attacking him personally, can I? After Mr. Cole provided all of the above perspective, I was still left wondering, (1) who do you think is worthy of joining forces with you to help your cause, and (2) you still haven’t given us any suggestions on how to fix anything. * * * * * * *I was really looking forward to learning from this Rumble episode. I was hoping to better understand why the movement insists on calling itself “Defund the Police” rather than “Reform the Police.” Unfortunately, I learned very little, and came away from the podcast just wanting to distance myself from any movement Desmond Cole was involved with. And that’s despite the fact that it sounds like I want what he wants, for the most part. I just want to approach getting there differently, I want to persuade people who are skeptical—people we’re going to need help from whether we like it or not. Why offend people who are still learning, who perhaps never got into politics here in America until being scared into it by Trump’s election (i.e., me, pretty much)? Why offend me by literally telling me to eff off? When I was just beginning to wrap my head around the scope of the problem? A frequent refrain of Michael Moore’s is to point out that in 30 years white people will be the minority in America, so we better get on board with treating all people equally, and with dignity—because movements like the abolitionist movement are coming whether we want them to or not, it’s just a matter of time. And Cole deflects even that thinking when Michael offers it, saying there are plenty of Black billionaires and Black people in power like Obama who benefit from the status quo as much as anybody and will just fall in line with their white counterparts, maintaining corrupt policing and obscene for-profit jailing...because it’s too hard not to. Look, I was upset Obama didn’t go further with a bunch of stuff too, and seeing him paragliding and having a grand time vacationing on a tropical island somewhere in early 2017 while Trump burned the country down positively enraged me. But, again, who are you hoping to persuade to fight for your cause when you take this hardline of a stance, which goes beyond completely justified defiance and into mean-spirited aggression and uncompromising exclusion? When Cole eventually does respond to one of Michael’s requests gingerly asking [paraphrasing], “So, Desmond, seriously though, what do we actually do?” Cole finally provides some substance beyond [wildly paraphrasing], “Well, most police are murderers, what more do you need to know?” He speaks of organizing locally. OK, that sounds like a fine start! And, for instance, if you want cops to stop patrolling unnecessarily in schools, you have to go to the local school boards and appeal to them, Cole says. And my question with that one is, Are school board members elected up in Canada like they are in America? Because it sounds like there might be some politics involved in this solution. Might there be some white liberals sitting on the board you’ll have to convince? Or might there even be a conservative or two? Will you be telling them all to eff off and get out of the way as well, like you’re telling much of Michael Moore’s audience to do? I’m concerned you will then be the one told to eff right off, sir. And then everybody's effed! Your movement needs you, Desmond. Your voice needs to be heard. Not just listened to, but heard-heard. You’ve certainly got balls a billion times bigger than mine—I know you’ve been arrested for what you believe in, and you resigned from your gig with the biggest newspaper in the biggest city in your country because editors reprimanded you for protesting an issue you were also reporting on. So I respect immensely the integrity of your big-picture intentions. And while I haven’t read your work yet, I of course take the anger and fatigue you exhibited on Rumble in the context of your having been racially profiled so much during the course of a single year that you had enough material for an epic article, which became a documentary film, which became your award-winning, bestselling book, The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power. But seriously, how does it help the cause to guest on an influential podcast and leave people turned off and de-energized, rather than further educated and super-stoked on your agenda? I could totally be wrong, of course; maybe most people listening liked your approach, felt invigorated afterwards. Truth be told I'm only about, oh, I'd say 79% or so confident that I'm right about all this, so..... * * * * * * *The second-most detailed instruction Cole provides on what we actually do about the policing and jailing problem is to engage directly with the persecuted, ask them what help they need from the public, and I think he mentions that nonprofit organizations should be enlisted to help. And then he says you keep that brand of consistent outreach going “for years and years and years,” until you gain some power.
How is that not just as incremental an approach as the reform liberals favor? I think it sounds smart, and practical—definitely not bankrupt or insincere. But if he's going for the total defunding and disbanding of police but in a measured, deliberate way that will be implemented over “years and years and years,” and I'm for taking the funds that are misused by policing as we know it and completely overhauling the institution, like, right now... In order to keep the process pure, he seems willing to help far fewer people far less quickly—just so he can do it his way, the uncompromising way. And I hate looking at it like that...and obviously I’m nobody, I fully acknowledge that I may have such little understanding of what is such a complex problem that I’ve missed the whole point and am simply showing my hopeless swamminess (i.e., straight white American maleness) for all to see. But, bottom line, I still think the term “Defund the police” is a buzzkill for more people than it's a motivator, which I know Cole doesn’t care about, but if you limit yourself in how many people you can bring into the movement...isn't that a problem? Being so immovable, and talking to potential converts the way Cole talked to them on Rumble...I just don’t get it. |
