David Packman writes that his work precludes him from continuing his efforts at documenting police misconduct and abuse at Injustice Everywhere.  His project, The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project, helped all of us track what was happening, filling the void left behind by a government that only tracked the misdeeds of others.

My perspective on David’s announcement will likely be a bit different from many others. I remember David when no one knew his real name. He was Packratt back then, nursing the bruises he received at the hands of police and lawyers, filled with despair and rage.  With some support, he eventually put his anger to better use than howling at the moon, and created the NPMSRP.  It was useful for us. It was cathartic for him.

The project was big and time-consuming. David was just a guy. He had a family who wanted to eat every day, and he needed to work to feed them. It wasn’t always easy. Some of you may remember that we’ve been through some tough times recently, and David wasn’t immune. 

The first time  David quit was back in 2009.  He somehow pulled it together and, at the urging of many readers who grew to rely on his reporting, kept the project alive.  We’ve tried to get funding for the project itself (and by we, I mean David and I, as I sponsored him as a Soros Fellow).  Unfortunately, the money didn’t come.

I hit on some of the wild and crazy think tank folks, who were floating in bucks in furtherance of agendas that murdered millions of words, and it seemed that David’s project would fit right in.

There are a few people who write blogs who earn a living that way.  Balko is one.  I’m not, but then I’m a lawyer and throw this together in my spare time.  Packratt wasn’t getting paid for what he did online, and he wasn’t a lawyer.  He was just a guy who wrote about police misconduct for the benefit of the rest of us.

Maybe Radley Balko, who I know follows Packratt’s twitter feed, will read about this and tell his people at Reason Magazine that this guy should be on the payroll.  I won’t press the issue as I have no idea whether the idea has any feasibility at all, but I can’t help but wonder whether Balko’s work will be the worse for Packratt’s absence.  I suspect it will.  I don’t suspect that Reason will put Packratt on the payroll.

Radley tried. It didn’t happen. He’s  still trying to help David. Over the years, David has “quit” regularly. Not as a ploy for sympathy or money, but as a realistic reaction to hard times.  Many have implored him to continue, and he has, but it’s always been a Herculean struggle to keep pushing forward.

Many readers can’t understand why some organization with some decent money behind it hasn’t either provided financial backing for David’s efforts or just hired him on.  I wondered too.  I suspect that answer is pretty simple, that money is a scarce resource; that David was doing it for free, and why buy the cow, etc.; that David lacked the resume or connections to find comfort within the organizations that should be at the forefront of supporting his project. 

There’s a lesson here for all the readers, from the disaffected who have either suffered personally at the hands of bad cops, to those for whom the political belief that government has become a self-sustaining monolith determined to subjugate the population while ignoring the roots of its existence.  There’s no big money behind most of the internet, with a few exceptions, and those few are closely guarded and largely disinterested in carrying any excess baggage.

Without an infrastructure to sustain it, projects like David will eventually fade away. The love and appreciation of readers is wonderful, but it’s not a substitute for a job and funding.  When David needs a new car, will some adoring fan buy it for him?  When David goes to the supermarket to get food to feed his family, will some adoring fan pay for it?

David’s resignation has become a regular event.  Just like his project, his problems keeping it alive in the face of so much seeming support tells a story about the relative importance of keeping the flow of information on police misconduct alive.  The pro-police websites have backing from police unions. There is no union who cares about David Packman.  He will get no pension. He has no hope of “20 and out.”

That’s how the internet rolls.  That’s how the handful of people who have given of themselves for years to provide  a format for those of you who feed your beliefs off other people’s efforts survive.  It’s not magic. It never was. It’s just a guy named David who spends a lot of nights when he could be watching TV or getting a decent night’s sleep instead tapping away at his keyboard so the rest of us have something to read.

David Packman has come a long way since he was beaten by the cops.  The internet hasn’t changed all that much.  And so David has annouced, again, that he’s calling it quits.