I spent this past weekend in Minnesota. My wife and I have friends with a son on the Nebraska football team; he’s a wide receiver and one of the best in the country. The prevailing belief before kick off was that Nebraska would mop the floor with “greasy grimy” Minnesota gopher guts; but that didn’t happen. The team got beat—decisively. It was a good game with lots of emotion that ended with throngs of Gophers storming the field, exalting their victorious team while dancing to the theme from Caddyshack—“I’m Alright”—in the way only true Gophers can do.
Hours later while licking metaphorical wounds in a literal local pub, our friend decided to check some sort of Nebraska Cornhusker Twitter feed. Within minutes she started reading the Monday Morning Quarterback, and a lot of it was pretty vile stuff.
The language used by some was surprisingly revolting and graphic. People talked about firings, idiocy and beheadings. The personal attacks on coaches, players and school officials, in many cases, were abominable. The hateful vitriol was surprising even to me, and I’m a pretty cynical guy.
But, I’m a huge believer in the first amendment and second-guessing is a favorite pastime for sports fans around the country. Hell, we were doing it throughout the game. “How the hell did the quarterback miss that open receiver? What the heck is he looking at?” came out of my mouth a couple of times. “Why is he running? He had a guy wide-open on the flat!” shouted another enthusiastic fan wearing an ear of corn on his red-and-white head.
The thing about second guessing, using replays and the 20/20 vision of hindsight is that none of it matters because there’s no real “skin in the game” for those doing the second guessing. Questioning whether the coach should have substituted players or called a different play is perfectly OK because it’s a game and nothing more. Besides, it’s easy from the cheap seats.
And we were right, the receivers were wide-open—but so were we. When QB Taylor Martinez failed to see Jordan Westerkamp breaking over the middle with no one defending him, he didn’t have the luxury of sitting 11 rows up while sipping a beer and gnawing on a way-too-stale salted pretzel. At the time Westerkamp made his move, Martinez had a real 295-pound tackle, who probably runs a 4.8 40, bearing down on him with one thought in mind: Hit, mangle and maim Martinez. As I said, it’s easy from the cheap seats.
So what? Who cares? This isn’t the sports page. What’s the point?
Monday Morning Quarterbacking in Law Enforcement
Before I proceed, I like to be controversial, as many of you know. Not for the sake of controversy but for two reasons: I don’t like to be boring and I strive to pull the curtain back and expose reality.
So let’s be realistic.
I believe police officers, supervisors and entire law enforcement organizations should be held accountable for their actions. I believe that there should be internal investigations, internal affairs divisions, and public oversight of law enforcement actions, policies, protocol and general behavior. Government, in any endeavor and at every level, cannot be totally autonomous or you invite tyranny.
If we use force it must be open to inspection. It needs to be looked at and, at times, investigated. If an officer makes a mistake or—on the very, very rare occasion—misuses his/her office in order to inflict pain for personal reasons or because of some sort of social intolerance, that officer must be held accountable without question.
That being said, here’s what I strongly believe: Anyone who’s going to sit in that judgment better know what the hell they’re talking about! This isn’t a damn football game, this is life and death, literally.
There are two examples of this currently in the news.
The first: A Dallas officer shot a subject standing on his own driveway but also holding a knife.
The second: Officers shot and killed a teenager holding, and refusing to lower, an AR-15, that wound up being a replica toy.
And many are up-in-arms over the actions/reactions of the officers who decided to use force.
Before continuing I wish for full disclosure: I don’t know enough about either case to form an educated opinion about the actions of the officers who were put in these unfortunate situations. However, those same limitations aren’t stopping thousands of others from making snap judgments. And the majority of those people have virtually no understanding of the reality of violence nor do they have the experience of employing force against another. None!
I was asked to comment about the Dallas case by a reporter from that city. She seemed nice, professional and curious as she asked her questions. What I kept trying to get across as she queried was that I had no opinion about the officer’s actions as I lacked specifics.
Presenting me with what she thought were the necessary bits of missing information, I realized she represented the mindset of most citizens: inexperienced, unfamiliar, and oblivious to and about real violence.
I don’t mean that to be demeaning or negative, I mean it to be descriptive. The vast majority of the citizenry have little or no experience with real violence. They think they do, as they’ve watched hundreds of “Law & Order” episodes, own all the “Lethal Weapon” movies and can recite lines from “Dirty Harry.” They equate knowledge with exposure, even though the exposure is limited to either pretend violence or manufactured bloodshed.
I read once that the average teenager has seen over 10,000 people shot via video games, movies and television. And like it or not, that experience affects their view of reality.
In our Calibre Press Street Survival Seminar, we address reality. No more theory, reenactments or conceptual thoughts. We present authentic realistic depictions of violence, decision making under stress, and the aftermath and consequences once force is deployed— or not deployed. We show videos of police officers over-reacting (hyper-fight) and under-reacting (freezing) as well as the consequences of each.
I bring this up because of something someone said to me at a recent seminar. This person was both a chaplain and a civilian on a police advisory board, but had no police experience, nor had he ever been involved in any violent act in his life. He said to me, “I was clueless. My entire perspective has changed. I truly didn’t understand what real violence was. I didn’t understand the process officers went through when faced with violence. Anyone in my position has to understand this stuff or they shouldn’t sit in judgment.”
It’s easy to make a decision from the cheap seats about whether a quarterback should pass or run; those judging can see the whole field and know the intent of the opposition. Even from a quarterback’s perspective, however, it’s easier than the decisions a cop has to make in a literal “split-second” because the quarterback has a couple advantages. First, he knows with absolute certainty the intent of the guys chasing him. There’s no hope a defensive tackle will have a change of heart, decide to stand-down, and allow the quarterback to move about unmolested toward the goal line. And second, as maniacal as defensive players may be, murder isn’t their true intent.
Police officers have no such luxury.
In my next column we’re going to discuss the true realities of judging officers who have to make life-and-death decisions in the blink of an eye and then live with those decisions for a lifetime.
