You Can't Elect a Friend

I'm reading a lot of apocalyptic predictions from one side and a lot of gloating and 'I told you so' from the other.
Just a reminder: NO politician is your friend. None.

It's all about money, and power. One side ties your hands and demonizes your profession, and the other sees you only as a tool, an investment, measurable in credit and debit columns, and prone to discard the tool when it costs too much.

Or when it's broken. Or old.

*photo from Wisconsin State Patrol FB* 

I'm reading things about proposals for changes to benefits and retirements at federal levels, modeled on Wisconsin's sacking of their public employees system and worse. 
That's not going to be a morale booster, or recruiting asset, and believe me, where the federal model goes in cost-cutting, Republican statehouses will follow suit.

The civil service system isn't perfect but it was established to fight the corruption and nepotism of the political spoils system and it is imperative that a revolving door of patronage is never again permitted, at the federal or state levels. 

If you don't think it matters, that's likely because so far, it hasn't mattered to you. 

Ask any officer from a small department who works at will just how much it matters. They spend every working hour one bad boss, one "wrong" arrest, from the unemployment line or the courtroom. 

I've had officers from 'conservative' states, especially those with no workplace protections like POBR and that adhere only to federal OSHA standards (read: exempting government agencies from OSHA's own regulations) tell me of so many dire management abuses: 
from failing to provide safety equipment, and basic vehicle maintenance, to officers being explicitly instructed not to record overtime, to some who have worked 30 days and more without a day off, or been threatened or fired for voting the wrong way. 

In every state, by the way, failure to accurately record work hours violates many, MANY laws.
But who will hold them accountable?

Pay attention to politics. Don't make decisions on what candidates say, but on what they do- even more so once they're in office. 

How are your representatives voting on topics that matter to you? When they have the opportunity to make your job safer, more rewarding, your retirement more dignified, your enforcement of law more objective, do they follow through? 

"Backing the blue" is just lip service if they blink when it costs. Waving a blue line flag is worse than empty symbolism if they won't follow it up with the legislation that lets you do your job, survive and thrive, and find the resources you need, when you need them. 

It's hypocrisy. 

That thin blue line is your family crest. Don't allow it to be co-opted by someone who wants your vote, but doesn't have your interests in mind on the voting floor. 

The Assumptions that Kill You

Every year I ban folks- sometimes hundreds of folks- from the OKC Bombing anniversary post on the FB page. I set a record for page bans on a post about the sentencing of Eric Frein, the wannabe revolutionary who assassinated one Pennsylvania state trooper and inflicted disabling wounds on another, and it took all of five minutes for libertarian and anarchist trolls to attack a post about the murder of an El Dorado County deputy on an illegal weed grow, where the career of a visiting San Joaquin deputy was ended as well.

That time, I learned how to block not just individuals but also the pages and groups where my posts were being shared. If I write about armor (especially armored vehicles), all bets are off and the trolls rise up from their bridges in ranks to pile on the comments. (Since the biggest complaint is "If we can't have it, cops can't!!", I delight in finding mil surplus for sale on eBay and sharing the links. I don't care what people have, I care what they do with it.)

I mostly have to ban people from posts involving domestic terrorism and attacks on cops by anti-gov extremists, so it's time for me to clarify some things:my only loyalty is for truth- not politics, not parties, not the approval of a bunch of people I've never met, so I'm not going to tailor my posts to keep from offending someone.

When I see a threat to law enforcement, I write about it without apology.

If a reader happens to identify with the politics of the person I judge to be a threat, that is not my problem, nor am I obliged to host that reader's inflammatory blather and defense of rioters, murderers or terrorists.

When I write about threats and actual criminal acts by anti-government extremists, it is an uninformed, shallow and illogical stretch to assume that my writing somehow implies that I approve of or agree with everything ever that any government agency/representative has done.

Understand this: when the next Timothy McVeigh, Gordon Kahl, Carl Drega, Eric Frein, Gavin Eugene Long, Micah Xavier Johnson, Steven Carrillo, Lloyd Barrus or Jerry Kane Jr. marinates long enough in their grievance to move from planning to implementing violence, it won't matter to them if you're unhappy with current events too.

That rural badge you wear means nothing to extremists except that you are the nearest, most accessible symbol of what they hate, and they'll kill you for it.

They won't ask you your feelings first. They won't care if you have a Gadsden flag in your garage, or a Molon Labe tattoo. They won't ask who you voted for before shooting you or blowing you up. That's what extreme means.

If you refuse to perceive that threat because you also think government's too big, or you don't like who's sitting in the Oval Office right now, or you don't like the way some laws are written, then wilfull blindness puts you at risk. You cannot protect yourself- or anyone else- if you refuse to recognize an impending threat.

Someone will read this and get defensive, and say, "Well, sure Charlie, but why don't you write about *this other threat*?? They are (just as bad) (worse) (not like me) (fill in the blank)!!"

And I will answer: I will write about what I will write. I cannot write about everything so I will write about what I think is the most immediate issue for my readers: rural cops. I spent more than thirty years in remote mountain places and small towns. I saw very little blac bloc, and most of them were high school students experimenting with skinny jeans and nail polish.

I saw a LOT of people who hated everything to do with laws, rules and government in any form, and who took it out on cops. So if you come here with blather and ugly memes about Waco, or Ruby Ridge, or redcoats and bluecoats and ACAB and conflate that with 2nd Amendment issues and Hawaiian shirts, I'm going to ban you. Ain't got time for that.

--Charlie Pitt

Stop Eating Your Own

(National Geographic photo)

"Do officers deserve sound mental health?", I asked and received a long string of variations on 'Yes'.

Then stop eating your own.

Stop it.

Many years ago, a family friend was beaten nearly to death with his own baton, and then dragged into the road to be run over. The suspect finally left when the officer fumbled unsuccessfully with his holster.

The case went to trial, and the suspect looked sharp in his suit. Our friend was still recovering from emotional trauma and a profound TBI. He was unshaven, and he stammered and wept during his testimony. It was brutal to watch. The suspect was convicted anyway, and the officer was never able to return to work.

A little while ago I read a comment *from* a cop on a law enforcement page about uncontrollable emotion during testimony about officers attacked and injured during a chaotic and violent crime scene that went on for hours. He said, "I haven't seen so many grown men cry since a can of OC malfunctioned during briefing", and he laughed.

Today I read a comment on another police page directed toward the surviving widow of an officer who died by suicide:

There's a term for that: it's called 'sanctuary trauma', and it wrecks otherwise sound first responders. Sanctuary trauma isn't the bad thing-- it's what happens *after* the bad thing, when you get back to where it's supposed to be safe, and it isn't.

If you'd take a bullet for another officer, can't you please for God's sake give each other some grace when when their brains and their hearts hurt, as well as their bodies?

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal thing is NORMAL. Tears may be hurt, or sadness, exhaustion or fear. They may also be anger, and betrayal, and overload.

If we truly believe cops deserve mental wellness, then stand in the gap for the ones who can't right now and defend them, even if you don't know them, and even if you weren't there. It's bad enough to take garbage from administration or command staff, without it coming from the line as well.

Stop killing your wounded.

Stop eating your own.

Stop the stigma

 

Charlie's Rules

 

1. Comment on articles, not headlines. 

2. A mistake is mismatching your socks in the dark. A bad decision is calling your crazy ex instead of going for a run. A crime is a crime. 

3. If a suspect is old enough to vote, marry, enlist and enter into contract, the suspect is an adult. Calling them a teen or a boy doesn't change that, nor the penalties to which they are subject upon conviction. 

4. If you say 'I back the blue, but...', you don't. Double that if your 'but' concerns the cost of training, equipment or taking care of a wounded officer.   

5. If you attack another human being for criminal purposes, you have to give up your Really A Good Guy card. 

6. Mental illness does not render a suspect harmless. 

7. A bad childhood doesn't excuse criminal behavior. Lots of people get abused and instead grow up to say "I won't ever do that to my ______".  Don't devalue their hard work and good decisions. 

8. Poor ain't no excuse for ugly. This is not a reference to appearances. 

9. Criminals know what they signed up for. They can choose another career field at any time. 

10. Law enforcement may be a calling, but good will doesn't pay the bills, and neither does pretty scenery. 

Part II : Media Literacy, and How Media Works

Last month I published my promised primer on media literacy. While I was writing it, I realized asking the right questions while you're reading a news article helps only just so much, if you don't know (really know) how the news industry works. A free and independent press was enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution because it's THAT important. It is a counterbalance to political power, and can be a valuable source of accountability to contain and expose corruption. 

It's not perfect. Nothing involving humans can be. And partisanship and slanted reporting aren't new- newspapers during the Revolutionary War were famously, fabulously biased, full of propaganda and bickering. "Yellow journalism", a phrase coined in the 1890s during a battle for supremacy and market share between publishing titans William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, described the sensationalism and self-promotion that propelled our country into the Spanish-American War. In a lot of ways, both press and government have actually calmed down over time. (We haven't had any senators try to beat each other to death on the Capitol floor in good 150 years now, after all.)

In this Part II, I'll give you an overview of news and media: what it is, how it works, why it matters. 

                                                              *photo via FreePik*

WHAT DOES 'MEDIA' MEAN?

A medium is anything that carries or transmits something else. News media is any means of mass communication, in print (newspapers), broadcast (TV and radio) or a website that carries an electronic version of news. 

"Mass media" just means that lots and lots of people can access it. Pretty much all media is mass media anymore, with the exception of small, targeted blogs, like mine. 

"Mainstream media" is a pervasive term used usually as a pejorative-- a bad thing. Sometimes it's abbreviated 'MSM'. In real life, all it means is large, well-known, usually well-funded major news sources with big distributions. The major video networks- NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and the like are mainstream media. So are the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other large papers. 

The word mainstream implies the existence of alternate sources. Alternate sources exist everywhere now, thanks to the internet, and they often position themselves as "real" simply because they're not the more-established outlets. This is an easy trap for a suspicious mind to fall into.

  Whether a source is good or bad is solely a measure of its sourcing, thoroughness and journalistic ethics. Being big or small is a measure of circulation numbers and reach, not accuracy or bias. 

 Now, a few necessary definitions if you're going to understand news coverage:

NEWS: news is specifically newly received, noteworthy information. In journalism, information that's more than a few days old is not news. Sometimes the term 'hard news' is used to differentiate from other kinds of articles. 

FOLLOW-UP : this is further information that adds depth or perspective to an earlier news story. 

FEATURE: a feature story is 'soft news' or creative journalism, a topical, longer-form story related to a subject of interest in the news, or that the writer thinks should be better understood. 

OPINION: what a writer thinks or feels about what happened in the news, sometimes called commentary. 

ANALYSIS: offers extra information for context and understanding, often using research by or interview with outside experts. 

Learn to discriminate between the types of coverage, or you may be misled. Opinion is not news. Ever.

BUT HOW DOES NEWS WORK?

This is an overview, so the answers will be broad.   

In the United States, news is mostly a business. 

There is a small percentage of public broadcast funding from public grants (the rest comes from private donations and business partnerships), and of course publications like Stars and Stripes and Voice of America are publicly funded. Government code includes a 'firewall' that prevents political interference in news coverage by those outlets. 

All other news sites, papers and channels that sell advertising are commercial. So what does that mean to you, the reader? 

It means that good reporting, like good law enforcement, costs. It's expensive to do it right. Doing it right involves constant travel, research, subscriptions to research resources and services, phones, computers, cars, and contacts. Travel is expensive, but only so much depth can be acquired over the phone or secondhand.

If you want high quality reporting, investigation, editing and publishing, you're going to have to pay and the way you pay comes in three varieties: subscriptions, advertising and information. 

First, know that subscriptions do not cover any significant portion of the costs of reporting and publishing news. If they did, no one could afford them. What subscriptions do is provide a small, steady base of income and also proves a base of loyal readership for advertising sales. Paying for news access is more common internationally than in the US, but some small, local papers have been using the model to fund high-quality local news coverage. 

Next, advertising sales is the most common source of steady income for news, whether it's print advertising or the unending flow of television and web commercials. Businesses pay for space, time and eyeballs, ad execs get paid a commission, and the remainder of the fees pay for reporters, resources, travel, subscriptions to research services like LexisNexis , and costs for buildings, printing and more. 

Lastly and most recently, information about you funds the production of news content. That's what's going on when you click on a news story, and get blocked by a survey before you can read it. Just click on the survey; it's annoying, but it's also cheaper than subscribing, and less intrusive than online advertising. Cookies collect your data without even asking first, after all.

A FREE MARKET GUARANTEES A FREE PRESS- RIGHT?

Eh...sort of. Well, no. The news industry in the US is relatively free from official, governmental interference because of the First Amendment. However, the pressures from commercial sources are many. 

People have political and social opinions. People own businesses and spend money to promote their businesses in commercial advertising. Therefore, they can withhold advertising dollars when news coverage displeases them, or worse, their customers. Boycotts and broken contracts are the original expressions of cancel culture and censorship. 

In theory it shouldn't affect coverage. In reality, news stations and papers have bills to pay and losing big advertising accounts (or more palatably, "partners" or "sponsors") exerts a LOT of financial pressure to tailor coverage to avoid offense. This can come in the form of minimal reporting without detail, skewing a story to avoid unflattering content, or 'spiking' a story-- pulling it altogether and not covering the topic at all. 

Because revenue from internet advertising is driven by traffic, more traffic (clicks) means more income. This creates a feedback loop that rewards sensational and controversial topics. Stories that provoke an immediate and powerful emotional response drive comments, argument, sharing-- and money. Any rewarded behavior will be repeated; it's human nature and a financial imperative. 

Does this mean the news industry is evil? No, it means the news industry has bills to pay. Just like law enforcement, they must use the resources at hand to pay those bills. 

For you, that means the local tax base, grants, and in some places, revenue from fines, fees and asset forfeiture. For news papers and stations, it means advertising, subscriptions and sometimes grants. The work product of both industries is unavoidably shaped by their economic realities. Ethics, integrity and education will vary in both, and there are good reporters who have destroyed their own careers by running with the right story, just like there are cops who have thrown away their pensions to make the right arrest.

Until someone comes up with a better idea, that's the way it goes in our economic system.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ME?

It means you have choices to make, and those choices influence the quality of the news everyone consumes. 

1. Choose to read and share only well-sourced, well-written news. Learn to discriminate between opinion and news.

2. Support high quality sources and writers with sound ethics. Engage with their articles on social media, share them, subscribe if you can, grit your teeth and finish the surveys.

3. Understand that we, the readers, have influence over what 'goes viral'. It's easy to say "MSM will never report this!" but the fact is that, if you're reading it anywhere, someone already reported it. THE STUFF THAT GOES VIRAL IS THE STUFF THAT GETS ATTENTION. So, search the topics that are important to you, read them, pass them along. Give those clicks to the topics that matter.

4. Don't get derailed by name on the masthead. The best interactive series on the Dinkheller video I've ever read was produced by CNN. 

5. Remember that civilizations are destroyed when judges, cops and reporters become fair targets for attack. We've watched it happen in Colombia, in Mexico, in Egypt, Afghanistan and Libya. 

Understand how news happens, and how it gets reported. Understanding the limitations, pressures and responsibilities of the news industry makes it simpler both to take advantage of the resource and to have some say in how topics important to you are represented in public. 

Part I : Media Literacy, or The Right Questions Matter

I don't run the biggest law enforcement FB page, but I do run one that's trusted by the people who follow it, because I'm careful about what gets posted there.
When I asked readers if they'd like to know more about media literacy, the (surprising) answer was an emphatic YES.

 Therefore, this will be an in-depth, two-part explainer: Part I will be about media literacy itself, Part II about what media is and how it works. Like the field of law enforcement, there are a lot of moving parts, and it's complicated.

                   *photo courtesy of Freepik*
 

"Media literacy" means understanding, analyzing and evaluating the information drowning you on the daily.
Until you can do that with confidence, and just enough skepticism, you're at risk of being steered instead of informed.

How do you know what that article is that you're reading, that podcast you're hearing?
You didn't ask for it. You didn't seek it out.
There you are, scrolling through your social media, and link after link bombards your feed-- suggested, sponsored, shared by friends and family, or just appearing from the Upside Down. Now what?

CHECK THE DATE
You see an 'Officer Down' headline, and your heart races. Don't touch that share button without looking to see when it happened.  News about critical incidents floats back to the top of news feeds because of increased search activity on anniversary dates, or when follow up articles get published.

ASK QUESTIONS.
Who is this writer or speaker?
How do they know the stuff they're telling me?
What do they want me to think about it? Why?
Who's paying for this?
Who is the target audience? (Who do they expect to be reading this article, or watching this video?) 

If your answer to any of the above is, "I don't know" then you have two choices. 

1.Find out OR

2.Skip the article and move along with your day. 

But in that case, don't share it. If you're going to find out more, here are your next steps.

IDENTIFY THE SOURCE. 

Did it appear unsolicited on your social media? If so, it might be a promoted post, or ad. 

Is it a source you recognize? What do you know about it already? How do you know it? 

Did someone else share it on social media? 

What do you know about that person's judgment, personal biases and critical thinking? Someone can be a good friend and be an unreliable source of information. Don't enable that.

Is it even a real news source? Lots of articles posing as news on social media are from conspiracy, pseudoscience, and satire sites. Well-intentioned people are captured by the initial hook, and pass it on as if it's real.  

The saying 'Video or it didn't happen' is cute, but it isn't accurate. As technology evolves, it's as easy to manipulate video as it is to alter static photos. Beware the Deep Fake, and do some fact-checking if anything seems off. Fakes are engineered to provoke that "I knew it!!" reaction from viewers, so be suspicious when a video perfectly, conveniently makes a point you've always 'felt' was right.  You can't believe your eyes, actually.

In fact, according to the nonprofit journalist training site FirstDraftNews, many videos widely shared to "prove" election fraud during the 2020 campaign season originated from Russia, not Illinois, Pennsylvania, or Arizona. No investigation, criminal or journalistic, can benefit from contaminated or falsified evidence. 

Plug the source into a search engine and find out who owns it; association with or financial backing from a highly influential or political person or institution, or with a religious organization, will influence the way the news is reported.

 It doesn't mean the information is necessarily false. It does mean you should use that information in evaluating the reportage and deciding how much credibility to ascribe to it. 

News is like groceries: local is likely the best, and every news story starts out local. 

Once the national sources pick it up and syndicate it, the story is edited for time, losing depth, context and follow-up.  Therefore, if it's a national news story, search the topic or name in the incident and find a local news source about it. Think of the game 'Telephone' you played in kindergarten: information still works like that. The closer to the original story source, the better.  

EVALUATE THE SOURCE

What can you tell from the link?  The domain may show you whether it is a government office, a nonprofit, a business, or a school.

 Is it a press release straight from a government source? Again, the closer the news is to the original source, the fewer options for dilution, contamination and opinion to seep in.  

For law enforcement readers, this can be especially important when sharing news of a line-of-duty death. The accepted etiquette requires that the officer shall not be identified until the death is verified and the name released by an official source, to allow for next of kin to be informed. No one deserves a death notification by social media.

Cross reference the story. Search for coverage of the same event, and see how the story differs in other publications. What's being left out? Added? Why? 

If you cannot find the story elsewhere, hold off on passing it on.

I like a site called MediaBiasFactCheck.com  for assessing a potential source. It is an independent outlet supported by donations and third party advertising, used by many large media companies and fact checkers. And, it's free.  

I can search for a source there and find out who owns it, what the site's evaluation of their bias is (ALL sources have bias, because humans), and the source's history of factual reporting. The site has a clearly explained method for evaluating bias, and I've found them to be reasonable. 

The more you know, the more value the information has. 

RED FLAGS

Sensationalism and cliffhanger headlines indicate clickbait , not news. There's information being conveyed, for sure, but it's to make easy money off quick clicks, not to enlighten you. Here's a visual guide created by a Reddit user for his grandma:

Don't go down that rabbit hole. And don't share it. 

And I'm sorry to add, don't assume a source is reliable just because it has 'law enforcement', 'blue', 'police' or the like in its name. News sites and social media pages know that cops are suspicious of "mainstream media" and will take advantage of your (justifiable) suspicion to gather your eyeballs and your clicks. You deserve better than that. Find the ones that are neutral in tone, well-sourced and reliable. You may not always like what they have to say, but it's worth that once in a while to not be manipulated for better results in a search engine. 

Loaded language is another red flag, in the body of an article or especially in a headline. 

News reporting should tell you what happened. If it tries to steer the way you feel about what happened (outrage, anyone?) , it's no longer just 'news' and you need to turn on the skeptic filter.

Some examples of loaded language versus neutral language:

*Did the involved officer shoot the suspect, or "gun them down"?

*Is the suspect a...well, a suspect, or is he/she a "father of two" "a grandmother" "a teen" (at 18 or 19, rather than "a man")? A "graduate"?

*Did someone "say " something? Or did they "report"? "Admit"? "Concede"? 

*How about "died"? Or, "passed away"? "Was killed" or "was murdered"?

Each word may be technically accurate. Each word also carries its own positive or negative implication, influencing the reader's view of what happened. Loaded language does not necessarily make a report incorrect, but it may very well make it misleading. 

Practice being a literate news consumer. If you don't, you risk simply becoming an information sponge, or worse, a dupe being steered by others who want your vote, your influence, your money and your time. Lives have been ruined by social media mobs pushing social media inaccuracies. 

It's worth the time and effort, to preserve your own credibility and the integrity of the information you pass along. If you'd like to start teaching your kids to be wise news readers as well, try playing online games designed for students. Make it a competition, and talk about the results. 

 

The Golden Rule of Media Literacy (Especially Online) is verify, cross reference, and when in doubt, wait. 

Yes, I just made that up. 

It works anyway, I promise. I've been doing it for years now. 

Superheroes, and You

Watched Civil War again last night, and got talking about our deep thoughts on the matter; yeah, we're a house full of nerds that way.

The themes of that film, Batman v. Superman and The Incredibles collided---
Fear by the public of the use of strength and authority, to defy and contain evil. Sound familiar?

I don't think it's coincidence that this theme keeps repeating itself, and that it is the the heroes who are doubted, second-guessed and criticized for fighting what needs to be fought, even when it's hard, when it's messy, when the outcome doesn't always seem clear.

And each film resolves the same way: the heroes are needed, but not loved.
Their consciences require action, to protect those who cannot defend themselves.
Their community, troubled by what they do not understand, is still better with them than without them---and that ultimately they are admired, and emulated, but never completely accepted.

Sound familiar? That's you. That's the ones you love.
Your Sunday comics came with a moral this week.
You're welcome.

*image by No Greater Love Art *