Why "Support Your Local Police" is a Formula for Despotism

by William Norman Grigg

There are those who still think they are holding the pass
against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The
revolution is behind them. - Garet Garrett, "The Revolution Was"
"We are extremely concerned about recent developments in this country which have imposed new
and dangerous burdens on our local police,"frets the "Statement of Principles" of the Support Your
Local Police Committee (SYLP). "Harassment and outright attacks against the police, in many
instances organized and controlled by subversives, criminals, and illegal aliens, have increased
alarmingly. Court decisions have placed unreasonable restrictions on the forces of law and order,
while freeing many criminals from prison and imposing only the mildest of sentences on others. And
far too many politicians have bowed to the disruptive tactics and outright threats of organized
pressure groups."
Does that paragraph even remotely describe the situation we confront today? The public is in
pervasive danger not because the police have been shackled, but because they have been unleashed.
We're dealing with a crisis of impunity, not one of impotence.
According to the SYLP, there is nothing wrong with contemporary law enforcement that cannot be
remedied by keeping the police above accountability. This is the material meaning of the slogan,
"Support your local police - and keep them independent!" The group properly emphasizes the
dangers of federal subsidy and control of local police agencies, yet its six-point agenda focuses
entirely on augmenting the privileges and immunities that have abetted criminal misconduct and
protected abusive cops from personal liability.
The SYLP's model "Statement of Principles" urges "all responsible citizens" to do the following:
*Support our local police in the performance of their duties;
*Oppose all harassment or interference with law enforcement personnel as they carry out their
assigned tasks;
*Reject any "civilian review boards" or other outside "supervision" of our police;
*Prohibit the creation of any national police force, or any other centralized authority, which would
replace and control our local police;

*Oppose any and all efforts to subsidize, regionalize, or federalize our local police, since any loss of
their independence from outside controls will inevitably lead to a loss of our protection and safety as
well;
*Accept our responsibilities to our local police ... defend them against unjust attacks, make them
proud and secure in their vital profession, and to offer them our support in word and deed wherever
possible.
Every element in this positivist prescription for "responsible citizenship" could be translated and
used - without further alteration -- in defense of local police in Cuba, China, Russia, Iran, or any
other country whose government was founded on the premise that citizens have "responsibilities" to
their rulers, rather than the reverse.
"We believe that the first and most solemn responsibility of all public officials is to protect the lives
and property of the citizens of [their] community," asserts the SYLP "Start-up Manual." "Our local
police, who have been entrusted with this fundamental obligation, have fulfilled their duties
admirably, justly earning a reputation as `the thin blue line' protecting the law-abiding citizen from
the lawbreaker."
This statement is an elaborate and demonstrable falsehood. Police officers have no enforceable legal
duty to protect "the law-abiding citizen from the lawbreaker." Some of them occasionally do provide
that service as a matter of individual decency and conscience, but they are not required to do so.
A police officer who fails to aid a citizen threatened by criminal violence can invoke the sacred cause
of "officer safety" and suffer no repercussions, even if the citizen is severely injured or even killed as
a result of that inaction. New York City resident Joe Lozito can testify that this is the case.
Lozito was severely wounded by a knife-wielding murderer in a subway car while a gallant member
of the NYPD cowered behind a protective partition.
After Lozito had subdued the assailant, the officer emerged and took him into custody, thereby
qualifying for a commendation and earning plaudits in the press for his "heroism." When Lozito
sought redress from the city, he was told that the police did not have an enforceable duty to protect
him, even when he was being hacked to death just feet away from an armed NYPD officer.
The "thin blue line" of public protection is a pernicious myth. The "Blue Wall of Silence" protecting
corrupt and abusive cops is an abundantly demonstrated reality. The Support Your Local Police
demands that the public buy into the deadly myth, and ignore the even deadlier reality.
Nowhere in the SYLP's "Start-up Manual" is there an acknowledgment of the fact that police are
more frequently a threat to the persons and property of citizens than a protection for them - or even
that police could be such a threat. The document focuses obsessively on potential threats to what it
calls the "independence" of the police - which in substance means the possibility that they would
have to answer to the public they supposedly protect, rather than the political class they actually
serve.
The "local" police are geographically proximate, but they are not locally accountable - and the
program presented in the SYLP manual would exacerbate this state of affairs.
SYLP volunteers are instructed to "investigate the current status of federal grants and aid to your
local police along with the rules and regulations attached to that aid.... Find out how much

assistance, equipment or financial aid, comes from outside or federal sources. What are the
requirements associated with receiving that assistance? How much say or control does the federal
government have over the affairs of your local police department? To what extent is the federal
government cooperating and coordinating with your local police? What are the involved federal
agencies, the NSA, FBI, CIA, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Department of
Homeland Security, etc.?"

Once this information has been collected,

continues the manual, it should be "put to good
use" in a media campaign "identifying the issue
as a local problem." This is a sound and
worthwhile suggestion that abruptly dead-ends
against the categorical imperative of
supporting the "local" police even after they
have become fully federalized, militarized, and
an active menace to the public:
"The local police are not your enemy. Your
committee is not here to attack them, blame
them for violating the Constitution or your civil liberties because they are enforcing a measure of the
PATRIOT Act or conducting a joint Federal and State anti-terror drill. These are federal issues,
which the local police in some cases may have already have [sic] little to no say if they are to
continue receiving their additional Homeland Security funds, new equipment and weaponry."
How can the militarization of the police be a "local problem" - but any attempt to reverse that
situation be dismissed as a "federal issue"? Exposing and condemning systematic violations of the
Constitution and abuses of civil liberties by police do not constitute an "attack" on the police, but an
exercise of what most Americans would regard as conscientious citizenship. Where the "local" police
have become an unambiguous threat to the population, shouldn't people do everything they can to
prevent them from "receiving ... additional Homeland Security funds, new equipment, and
weaponry"?
In practice, the "support your local police" program will consolidate federal control over police
agencies while keeping them "independent" of citizen oversight. While the SYLP manual demands
unstinting loyalty toward the police, it preaches unqualified opposition to "civilian review boards,"
which are depicted as a part of a decades-old Communist plot to subvert law enforcement.
No, I'm not kidding: From the SYLP perspective, anybody who wants to undermine the
"independence" - that is, the often murderous impunity - of police is supposedly doing the Kremlin's
bidding, nearly a quarter-century after the Hammer and Sickle was furled and the Soviet Union was
tardily consigned to well-deserved oblivion.
Civilian oversight of the military is a rudimentary constitutional principle. For some reason,
however, the concept of "civilian" oversight of police departments - which are supposedly civilian
agencies themselves - is treated as an unpublished footnote to the Communist Manifesto. This idea
apparently began with the late Cleon Skousen, who was a Special Agent in Hoover's FBI before
becoming Chief of Police in Salt Lake City.
Decades ago, Skousen reported that Dr. Bella Dodd, a defector from the National Committee of the

Communist Party, told him that the idea of police review boards "was invented by the Community
Party in the 1930s when it was felt that the country was ripe for revolution. The idea was to
somehow get the police out from under the control of elected officials and subject the police to the
discipline of a `civilian' group which the Party could infiltrate and control" - thereby controlling the
police.
Admittedly, the prospect of local police under Communist control is a horrifying one. In such
circumstances, police would be entirely unaccountable to the public. Police cadres would be allowed
to kill 12-year-old children without consequences, or burn infants in their cribs in 3:00 a.m. raids, or
detain travelers without cause and seize their money and property without due process, or torture
hundreds of people into "confessions" without fear of being punished for doing so, or execute
harmless mentally ill people in full view of the terrified public.... That is to say that they would
behave more or less the way police do today.
However, the "problem" with "Communist-controlled" police review boards, according to the SYLP
and the police unions whose rhetoric the committee regurgitates, is not that they would make police
more violent and aggressive, but that they would supposedly make them weaker and less assertive.
"No matter what names are used by the sponsors of the so-called "Police Review Boards" they exude
the obnoxious order of Communism," groused a National Fraternal Order of Police newsletter
published in the late 1960s. "This scheme is right out of the Communist handbook which states in
part, `... police are the enemies of Communism, if we are to succeed we must do anything to weaken
their work, to incapacitate them or make them a subject of ridicule.'"
After the implacable Communists have rendered the police weak and vulnerable, they will seize
control of that vital institution, re-writing its mandate to make it an instrument that serves the State,
rather than the people. Once that subversive process is completed, the typical police officer would
proudly proclaim that he and his comrades "are bound by our oaths and by our loyalty to the State
and to society to meet force with force, and cunning with cunning... We have a government worth
fighting for, and even worth dying for...."
Oh, forgive me - that expression of pious reverence toward the State, and willingness to kill and die
in its name, actually came from the pen of Chicago Police Captain Michael J. Shaack in his
overwrought "expose" Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror. Shaack's bloated and
sensationalistic tome was perhaps the first effort by American police to cast their critics as elements
of a monolithic, foreign-controlled campaign of revolutionary subversion.
Shaack's book was published in 1889. His arguments are still being credulously retailed at the end
of 2014.
"Unless you live in a major metropolitan area, and even there this may still be unknown information
to the police commissioner, your local police may not be aware of the current anti-police activities of
the activist Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP),"
contends the SYLP manual, using language badly in need of a competent copy editor. "Both of these
subversive parties run campaigns and sponsor demonstrations to `Stop Racist Police Brutality,'
annually on October 22."
It isn't made clear to the reader why he or she should be troubled by the activities of two admittedly
unsavory political groups whose designs may be immensely evil but whose influence is immeasurably
small. The manual recommends that SYLP members keep track of "subversive" and "anti-police"
activists and movements in the community, which is something the police themselves supposedly no

longer do: "Since the early 1970s, US local police departments no longer have their own
independent intelligence departments to keep tabs on or investigate the activities of revolutionary
leftist and other subversive organizations."
Assuming this were true - and it manifestly is not - why would this be a lamentable development?
Prior to the early 1970s, "red squads" operated by city police departments collected intelligence that
was shared with the FBI, thereby acting as the eyes and ears of what could only be described as a de
facto national secret police organization. Hundreds of city police departments also pooled and
shared intelligence through the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit (LEIU), a nation-wide network
created in 1956 by then-Los Angeles Police Chief William H. Parker because of a personal quarrel
with FBI Director Hoover.
Like the Federal Reserve, the LEIU was a public-private partnership: As a "private" company, it was
exempt from most forms of public accountability, yet it received federal subsidies to carry out its
work. A successor organization using the same acronym exists today, carrying out a nearly identical
mission.
In addition to providing intelligence on leftist groups, SYLP volunteers are instructed to help police
"differentiate actual reports of domestic terror and crime from those of leftist propaganda
`intelligence reports' from the Southern Poverty Law Center ... which are filled with vicious attacks
on conservative political organizations, conservative minority leaders, and Christian churches and
leaders ... labeling them to be hate groups or promoters of violence."
The problem with this recommendation, of course, is that SYLP and SPLC are carrying out exactly
the same mission in the hope of turning the State's coercive apparatus against their respective
political enemies. In this connection it is worth noting that the head of the organization that runs the
SYLP campaign has publicly and repeatedly boasted of his background as a police informant in the
early 1960s.
In terms of numbers, the SYLP campaign is a peer of the miniscule, marginalized left-wing groups it
condemns. Its tropes and truisms, however, do resonate on the right, and are recited by the likes of
Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and herd-poisoners of lesser standing. This form of
State-centered collectivism, which I've called Punitive Populism, is enjoying a revival at a time when
law enforcement is facing a severe crisis of legitimacy.
If the SYLP campaign were devoted to arresting our decline into unqualified despotism, it would
focus on police accountability, rather than "independence."
Rather than "educating" police officials about the dangers of the federal largesse that has expanded
their toy box and fattened their budgets, SYLP volunteers would be barraging state legislatures with
demands that the subsidies and arms transfers end.
Instead of pretending that "civilian" oversight of the police is a pernicious Communist plot, the SYLP
would agitate for restoration of the grand jury as it existed before it was turned into a tool of the
local prosecutor. Prior to the 1940s it was commonplace for citizen grand juries to conduct selfinitiated investigations of official abuse and corruption, including outrages committed by police
agencies.
In place of offering a generic endorsement of "law enforcement," the SYLP should champion the
cause of individuals who have conducted themselves as peace officers, rather than law enforcers -

particularly those who have defended citizens from criminal violence from fellow cops.
Ramon Perez, who refused an unlawful order to Tase a non-violent elderly suspect, and Regina
Tasca, who interposed herself to protect a mentally troubled young man being beaten without cause
by another officer, would be worthy subjects of a "Support Your Local Peace Officer" campaign. Both
of them were punished, rather than being promoted, for their principled acts. The same was true of
Adam Basford, who was shot while taking a violent felon into custody. Out of concern for bystanders,
Basford chose the riskier course of a hands-on arrest rather than drawing his gun. Rather than
receiving a commendation, Basford was cashiered - and then hit with criminal charges for filing a
complaint against a former comrade.
More recently a still-unnamed 20-year veteran of the campus police at California State UniversityMonterey Bay was fired for de-escalating a confrontation with a suicidal student, rather than using
his Taser.
"It defies logic and is extremely disappointing that, at a time when law enforcement is under fire for
using more force than necessary, an officer is being terminated for attempting to use civilized
methods to resolve a situation," observed the student's perplexed - and grateful - father. But this is
typical of contemporary law enforcement priorities. A year ago, PoliceOne.com described how a
police chief tried to punish an officer for disarming a gun-wielding suspect during an episode of
domestic violence.
A police officer is more likely to be punished for refusing to harm or kill a citizen, than for harming
of killing one without cause. When individual police officers are being purged or punished for such
acts of genuine courage, the Support Your Local Police Committee is conspicuously silent.
The SYLP's criticism of "outside influences" on the police doesn't extend to the role played by police
unions, which are national in scope and allied with other unions that conservatives generally oppose.
Local "independence" and individual police accountability would be served by the requirement that
civil judgments in cases of police abuse be paid out of police pension funds, more than a few of
which have turned "poor but honest cops" into tax-subsidized millionaires. Individual police officers
should likewise be required not only to carry body cameras to record interactions with the public,
but also individual liability insurance for any injuries they inflict upon the innocent.
The most curious element of the SYLP ideology is the casual - and entirely unwarranted - assumption
that "security" can or should be provided through a State-operated monopoly. If the objective is to
commend and support those who protect property rights, private security operatives - including
much-maligned "mall cops" - are worthier of praise than government-licensed purveyors of violence
whose mission is to protect the political class that preys on property.
We aren't facing the prospect of a revolutionary transformation of law enforcement into a centrally
controlled apparatus of tyranny. We are living with the ripening consequences of a revolution that
happened decades ago. What is needed now is a counter-revolution that will break up the State's
"security" monopoly. The SYLP approach is to issue strident warnings about a long-consummated
revolution while protecting the system to which it gave birth.
_
William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate
radio program. Follow him on Twitter.

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=48967