larger view

I wrote this letter to the Advocate editor a minute ago:

While I agree with the “Viewpoints” “Our Views” editorial concerning a fence along the U.S. Border with Mexico, I agree because there are far better ways to stem the flow of illegal immigrants there.  The reasoning promulgated in the editorial essay is, frankly, miserable:

Comparison, for instance, with the Great Wall of China is as fallacious as the statement that the Great Wall “failed.”  The author begins by stating that the wall stood in some degree from sometime between 5 B.C. to 221 B.C. and lasted in some form until the seventeenth century.  To imagine that a wall being built and maintained that long “failed” is little short of ludicrous.  The Great Wall, in fact, served to repel numerous invasions; more, it still constitutes a barrier to invasion – as anyone who has ever defended a position against an invader will tell you. 

Neither does the fact that the wall was breached in 1644 prove anything concerning the general tactical or strategic usefulness of a wall in defense of what’s behind it.  I should forego walls on my house because they might one day leak?  A prison should forego erecting walls because a prisoner or prisoners might one day escape? 

The author here proceeds to compound his fallacious reasoning with another false analogy - to say nothing of the “straw man” fallacy, the “poisoning the well” fallacy, among several others - the “evil symbolism” of the Berlin Wall (with which, incidentally, I had my own experiences).  The analogy of the Berlin Wall proves absolutely nothing having to do with the subject. To compare the purposes of the East German regime to those of the United States where their respective walls are concerned is absurd logically, as absurd as implying that a wall holding people in is the same as a wall holding people out. 

Neither are these the only examples of the illogical, and obviously biased without stating a reason for such bias, opinion.  “No matter how high or long the barrier is,” the author pontificates authoritatively, “illegal immigrants and drug runners wanting to enter the United States will find a way.”  Really? – a way to continue the same flow, the same number of illegal aliens, at the same amount of effort and cost? 

As any tactician – military or game theorist - will tell us, the purpose of a defensive wall, or any similar barrier – a mine field, for instance - is to impede an invader.  How well the wall succeeds – how many invaders succeed in passing the wall – is dependent upon factors which include the both the effort of the prospective invader and that of the defender.  The theory having to do with use of a wall or barrier the like cannot be logically defeated by mere observation that penetration of a wall is possible (such an objection is called logically “trivial”).  No wall left unattended (that of the Ming and Shun Dynasties, for instance) ever remains impregnable.  Obviously.

And if, as the author asserts, the border fence is a waste of U.S. dollars, should he not then provide an accounting that demonstrates how costs for the fence will exceed reduction of losses to the U.S economy?  How, logically, would one know the former - that the fence is a “waste” - unless he knew the latter – how many aliens it will keep out, and how much of the taxpayers’ money it would save?

Should, moreover, the author not also show some credentials by which to demonstrate why his mere opinion should be respected, even conclusive, and why he holds his view (otherwise, we might be led to believe that his reasons are mere bias, bias derived from what we can only guess).     

“Indigenous wildlife.”  Is this really a concern?  How do we know?  How much wildlife?  To what effect?  Or are we being instructed that no wildlife should be disconcerted?  What, pray tell, is the effect of the torrent of illegal aliens, tramping across miles of otherwise pristine wilderness on wildlife?  Or are we to assume that they make no disturbance whatever?  Which shall we consider more disturbing to wildlife – the fence or the aliens?

I trust I need not characterize such an argument as this one, but the fallacy is known as “Appeal to Emotion.” 

And finally, since the rule of the day is that of analogy, that I have walls on my house, and a fence around it, “slams the door in the face of my neighbors?”  Strange, but I was steeped in the idea that “good fences make good neighbors.”  While the Advocate’s assertion that Mexico is a friend likewise constitutes an appeal to emotion, it also – and more obviously - constitutes dissimulation and the fallacy of distribution.  That Mexico is our friend does not mean that any Mexican criminal – thief, kidnapper, rapist, murderer – is my friend; and that I am not the friend of any Mexican or group of Mexicans does not mean that I am not a friend of Mexico. 

The Advocate “view” is, of course, an opinion.  But the right to state one’s opinion, like the right to speak freely, bears with it responsibility.  For one in the position of the journalist – even more, an editor – that is certainly the case.  To repeatedly make false and fallacious statements while giving the impression as does a journalist or editor that his opinion is more authoritative than others is reprehensible. 

So is this “view.”

larger view

The use of force by police officers has, of course, been the subject of controversy for decades now.  At whatever level, and regarding every kind of force imaginable, ideological, political, and even religious factors intervene to exacerbate the level of unscientific opinion, illogical deliberation, and downright nonsense inflicting itself upon the debate and the issue. 

Every possible bias has become part of the argument, and where the police weapon known as the TASER is concerned the situation is even worse.  TASER (Thomas A. Swift’s Electronic Rifle), like PR-24s, Nightsticks, Chemical Mace, Pepper spray, and the like, are devices intended to permit police officers and the constabulary in general to overcome resistance to arrest.

So are methods like boxing, karate, taekwondo, judo, aikido, sombo, freestyle wresting, and combative measures the like.  Whether instrument or instrumentality, or purely physical means like judo and aikido, there are distinctive and material differences in each.

In the instance of the instruments and instrumentalities, and without exception, some kind of injury is deliberately inflicted.  Among the purely physical methods, boxing, taekwondo, and other means which entail the delivery of kicks and blows, deliberate injury is also inflicted. Only judo and aikido have for their basic objective the restraint without injury of the opponent or “subject.” 

Any effort to examine the general question concerning the propriety of TASER use by police must go eventually to the incontrovertible fact that TASERs and devices like them – Mace and chemical sprays included – presuppose an officer or officers who are physically unable to overcome physical resistance.  One must therefore consider first as a factor the training and caliber of the arresting officer or officers. 

As a former police officer of seven years experience and a bodyguard and security specialist who first began teaching Police Science classes in arrest at North Iowa Area Community College in 1967 and came to Texas in 1995 at the behest of the Texas Deputy Sheriffs Association, the National Deputy Sheriffs Association, and the American Deputy Sheriffs Association to travel the nation instructing police officers, bodyguards, and security personnel in defensive and physical arrest tactics, I am well-qualified to comment on both current police training and the caliber and competence of those who are currently being trained to enforce the law. 

While there are many considerations concerning police training, together with the caliber, and competence of officers, I wish I could say my opinion is positive.  First, the TASER and the array of offensive weapons which today festoon the typical police officer’s waist demonstrates eloquently that the individual officer and his organization do not believe themselves competent to overcome resistance to arrest without use of weapons cannot be rationally disputed.  One does not carry a tool he does not intend to use; and, “When the tool you have is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.”  The demonstrable fact, moreover, is that alternatives to armed assault of the public by police officers exist.  Of course, the alternatives include things prohibited by expense, politically correctness, and the various related ideologies, things like proper training, improved tactics, and scientifically objective choice of candidates, and therein lie the reasons for status quo including the TASER. 

The fact, moreover, that a police officer is equipped with and therefore intends to use TASER, Mace, Pepper Spray, or the like speaks loudly concerning both his – and now, since militant feminism has inflicted itself upon our military and constabulary, her – philosophy of arrest and his or her intentions vis a vis the public.  The TASER speaks loudly concerning his community and department’s philosophy and intentions in that regard, too, and that the nation’s vaunted media - eager to report the tawdry lives and affairs of entertainment celebrities, together with each an every instance of a shooting by a civilian anywhere, has so little to say about matters like the hundred, even thousands of citizens being killed by police and their panoply of weapons - is thunderous in its implications.  

The situation is a microcosmic one, representative of a nation fractured by ideologically-demented political forces.  Forty thousand (according to the Cato Institute) botched SWAT raids yearly, resulting in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects, police shootings like those of Amadou Diallo, Dr. Salvatore Culosi, and Sean Bell, repeated beatings of unresisting suspects – beatings often rendered undeniable by private video recording – and more, outrages like the shooting of Sammy and Vickie at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, the slaughter of innocents at Waco, and hundreds more speak incontrovertibly of unnecessary violence perpetrated by police improperly trained and personally inadequate for their mission. 

When in 1958 and again in 1967 I wrote the first papers describing the SWAT concept, I not only emphasized the importance of unyieldingly demanding personnel selection and training, but warned of what would happen otherwise.   I therefore write ruefully today. 

The situation having to do with TASER weapons is a bad as that having to do with the blundering SWAT teams I’ve already mentioned.  Since 1999, according to a report by the The Arizona Republic, more than three hundred people have died in North America following TASER attacks by police.  In all of these cases, medical examiners have either cited the TASER as a factor in the subject’s death or could not rule it out.  The public’s unwillingness to curb police use of the weapon, the need for police departments to equip officers incapable of adequate use of physical force all are factors in these deaths. 

As with so many things in a nation with government now run like a corporation, “collateral damage” due the profit – and therefore cost-cutting – motive, most, if not all, of the injury and death being wreaked by incompetent police results because proper training involves money government at all levels would rather spend elsewhere.  Improved tactics demands both more study and more scientific, apolitical and ideology-free choice of individuals.  Women, for instance, have no place in situations where physical force may be required to make an arrest, an obvious fact I have demonstrated at least five hundred times before classes and audiences otherwise.  Faced with the prospect of force she does not feel competent to master, the woman officer and her overweight, out of physical condition and weak male counterpart inevitably repair to their only alternative, a weapon. A TASER.

In a nation with studies having to do with almost every conceivable matter, one wonders when one will suggest how many citizens have been TASERed, Maced, Pepper-sprayed, or the like by an officer incapable of any other kind of effort.  When, for instance, will we have a university or government study concerning the “collateral damage” of feminism’s assault on the effectiveness and efficiency of our police and military (don’t hold your breath)?

There is simply no need to use a weapon against an unarmed person, period; and as I’ve already remarked, I know of what I speak.  During seven years as a patrolling police officer who made literally hundreds of arrests, many against fierce, sometimes drug-induced, even murderous resistance, I did not carry anything but a sidearm and handcuffs; and during as many as a hundred seminars given across the length and breadth of the United States, I did not once fail to overcome physical resistance to arrest without resort to anything but judo and aikido (there are, incidentally, literally thousands of persons who would attest to this).  In not one instance did I ever inflict injury on anyone.  

Yes, indeed, there are reasons both legitimate suspects and innocent people are being killed by those supposed (the courts have ruled repeatedly that the police have no duty to protect the public) to “Protect and Defend” them, but there is no need. 

Quis custodet ipsos custodes – who watches the watchmen?