No, not an order to clear the area. Not an order to shoot into a crowd of peaceful protesters. Not even an order to beat and arrest a reporter. But NYPD Lt. Robert Cattani of the Midtown South Precinct had one regret.
“The conditions prior to the decision to take a knee were very difficult as we were put center stage with the entire crowd chanting,” he wrote.
“I know I made the wrong decision. We didn’t know how the protesters would have reacted if we didn’t and were attempting to reduce any extra violence.”
Cattani was one of those white shirts who got down on knee to show solidarity with protesters. These were the pics that people gushed over on social media, in juxtaposition to images of militarized cops firing at crowds or pushing an old man to the ground. These were supposed to be the good cops, the more empathetic cops. Why couldn’t all cops be like Cattani?
…the cop in me wants to kick my own ass.
…horrible decision to give into a crowd of protesters’ demands.
While Cattani’s kneeling might have warmed the cold, cold hearts of the outraged, it froze the cold, cold hearts of the other outraged, his fellow cops. So he did the apologia and tried to weasel his way out.
“The conditions prior to the decision to take a knee were very difficult as we were put center stage with the entire crowd chanting,” he wrote.
“I know I made the wrong decision. We didn’t know how the protesters would have reacted if we didn’t and were attempting to reduce any extra violence.”
He was too weak, too easily influenced, to ignore the chants of the crowd?
“I thought maybe that one protester/rioter who saw it would later think twice about fighting or hurting a cop,” Cattani wrote.
“I was wrong. At least that [sic] what I told myself when we made that bad decision. I know that it was wrong and something I will be shamed and humiliated about for the rest of my life.”
It was a performance to calm the crowd to protect other cops? There are a lot of performances being played lately, by people of all views. What made Cattani kneel is unknown, but that he decided to walk it back is what matters. Cops, the people he commands and relies upon to do his job and make it home for dinner, were outraged at his action. In their view, he capitulated to the mob, he disgraced his shield by not standing with his brothers. He crossed the thin blue line.
In the past few weeks, reaction to the murder of George Floyd could have caused cops, as a group and a culture, to have an epiphany. On the one hand, they could realize that a significant percentage of the public had enough with their commands, their use of force, their belief that they are a “them” against “us.” Cops exist because we want them to exist, we need them to exist, but that only goes so far.
When cops are perceived to be as nasty and brutish as those they were supposed to protect us against, they not only lose the public’s support, but reach a point where some are ready to go without them. Or at least, to reimagine them, whatever that ends up meaning.
As someone told me the other day, the Overton Window on cops has been dragged so far left that “defund police” has not only become acceptable discourse, but may actually happen. It was a critical observation, as this would have been a crazy notion a mere year ago, yet here we are, not only talking about it, but watching as it seems to be happening.
The other path is the one cops have historically taken, circling the wagons, union leaders screaming banalities into microphones about how they’re being treated like “thugs.” Cops can demand respect all they want, but respect has to be earned, a lesson for the unduly passionate as well. But at the moment, whatever goodwill cops have amassed over the years has been burned, squandered in a hail of tear gas, rubber bullets and images of cops taking down people doing nothing more than exercising their constitutional rights.
We see these images and are furious. They see these images and think only of how it’s the protesters’ own fault; if they don’t want to be shot, then do as they command. But what about the match that lit the flame that started the conflagration?
“We all know that a- -hole in Minneapolis was wrong,” Cattani wrote.
“Yet we don’t concede for other officers’ mistakes. I do not place blame on anyone other than myself for not standing my ground.”
For some cops, the dots don’t connect. What Derek Chauvin, “that asshole,” did in Minneapolis wasn’t markedly different than what any cop might do any day to any perp. That it ended in the death of George Floyd changed the outcome, but didn’t change what any cop might have done. A knee in the neck or back, body prone, chest to the ground, can be seen in a hundred videos, a thousand. Cops being absolutely callous toward people, citizens, their fellow human beings, refusing to talk to them like human beings, routinely calling them “motherfuckers” for no particular reason.
How did cops lose their humanity when they put on their shield? There are many theories and many reasons, but that’s for philosophers and academics to ponder. I know too many cops personally, some close friends, to buy into the simplistic cartoon character image of all cops as evil bastards. But because I know cops, I know that something changes when you put on your uniform and believe that no one gets to challenge your power.
Was Cattani too weak not to kneel or too weak not to tell his outraged brothers to get their heads out of their collective butts is unknown. But if you think you can circle the wagons and present the options as capitulate to your orders or suffer the consequences, you may have pushed people to the point where they’re ready to shut you down.
Cattani may be too weak to stand up to his fellow cops, but that doesn’t mean the public is weak enough to let you continue treat us like the enemy. You want respect? Earn it. You want dominance? Take a knee.
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The one I’m going with is the police view themselves as prison guards, and members of the public they have encounters with are wards of an open-air prison. The observed behaviours nicely parallel the findings of Dr. Philip Zimbarto’s Stanford prison experiment in August of 1971.
That was my way of saying don’t do this, which you naturally did immediately. Where on the spectrum are you?
So that far.
> “There are many theories…”
>> “That was my way of saying don’t do this…”
To the uninitiated that could look rather like an invitation to speculate on these various theories. “Uninitiated” here meaning, not initiated.
Read the rest of the sentence, “but that’s for philosophers and academics to ponder.”
This is the current hat on the pole, and he bowed to it. He is certainly not alone. As is obvious by typical days on this and similar websites, the constant voices for use-of-force reform have been few. Today, bowers and scrapers and poseurs of every stripe are in the throes of a passionate epiphany that there are some problems with police practices around the country. Tomorrow or next week, they will be chasing another squirrel and bowing to whichever hat has next gone up the pole.
Except this is about his unbowing.
Right. But only because the hat to which he usually bows took jealous.
Chicago’s FOP president has now threatened to expel from “the lodge” any members who bow to the competing hat.
Years ago, I was an associate member of the FOP so I could put the shield on my license plate and drive as fast as I wanted.
There was a recent NPR interview with the head of police training in Munster Germany. When asked how Germany deals with systemic racism within the police, the head trainer offered a series of reforms that he wisely admitted may not apply to US policing.
He made one important point I think does apply. After acknowledging the historic problem with German policing with an emphasis on the holocaust, he pointed out that the calls for reforms to policing in Germany had come from the police themselves.
That’s what I am listening for from US law enforcement. Not explanations of why George Floyd was a bad one off, or how they have a tough job, which I believe. I want them to convince me they see the need for reform. What I get instead is Lt. Robert Cattani.
This is why defunding has caught on. Of course most people would prefer reform, but how do you reform an organization that largely believes it’s their critics that are in need of the reforming?
It’s not about convincing you Sam. You just aren’t the point here.
He does have a point, in that no reform will work unless the police themselves want it. You can’t push cultural reform from the outside, it has to come from within to stick.
I’ve made that point over the past decade. But maybe a cop or two will see that the public doesn’t love them as much as they want and have the epiphany that they’re not sitting at the right hand of Jesus.
But Sam’s not the barometer any more than you or I am. Well, me anyway.
Don’t look at me as a barometer of anything other than if I fired up the smoker this week. Actually the neighbors drooling are even a better barometer of that than I am.
Still haven’t gotten out to get a brisket again yet. Packers cut briskets are hard to come by in VA, unlike in TX where every butcher counter has a stack of them.