The Blue Divide: Policing and Race in America

By Will Moravits

The deaths at the hands of police of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans have spurred national outrage—but now what? To make progress on the complex issues surrounding race and policing, Americans must begin a conversation rooted in mutual respect and in facts. Laying the groundwork for productive engagement, Dr. Will Moravits details how police officers are trained in the use of force and the choices they confront. The Blue Divide analyzes the past decade's highest-profile cases of police use of force against people of color and looks more broadly at the criminal justice system, use of force, and the tragic disconnection between police officers and the communities of color they are sworn to protect. A former police officer, Moravits brings a uniquely informed, mutually sympathetic point of view that can be heard by everyone who has an opinion about American policing—good, bad, or unsure about what to do to ensure safety and justice for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781544524993

Book preview

WillMoravits_eBookCover_Final.jpgThe Blue DivideThe Blue Divide. Policing and Race in America. By Will Moravits, PhD.Houndstooth Press

Copyright © 2022 Will Moravits

All rights reserved.

The Blue Divide

Policing and Race in America

This book is dedicated to the men and women of law enforcement and to their families. You put your lives on the line every day for people you’ve never met and for a job where you rarely receive thanks. Your families make sacrifices so that you can make a difference in your communities. For that, your families should be commended. May God bless you and keep you safe.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Use-of-Force Training and Scenarios

Chapter 2

Understanding the Totality of Circumstances

Chapter 3

The Mind and Body under Duress

Chapter 4

Officer Preparedness

Chapter 5

Additional Methods of Preparation

Chapter 6

I Can’t Breathe: The Death of Eric Garner

Chapter 7

Hands Up, Don’t Shoot: The Death of Michael Brown

Chapter 8

The Tragedy of a Child Lost: The Death of Tamir Rice

Chapter 9

Streamed on Facebook Live: The Death of Philando Castile

Chapter 10

Say Her Name: The Death of Breonna Taylor

Chapter 11

Shot in the Back: Jacob Blake

Chapter 12

I Can’t Breathe Part 2: The Murder of George Floyd

Chapter 13

The Trial of Derek Chauvin

Chapter 14

A Split-Second Decision: The Death of Adam Toledo

Chapter 15

A Tragic Mistake: The Death of Daunte Wright

Chapter 16

You’re Next: The Death of Ma’Khia Bryant

Chapter 17

Retaliation against the Police

Chapter 18

Ignored: The Death of White Men under Similar Circumstances

Chapter 19

Police Use of Force: What the Data Says

Chapter 20

The Biased Criminal Justice System

Chapter 21

The Real Cost of Defunding the Police

Chapter 22

The Men and Women behind the Badge

Chapter 23

Conclusion and Solutions Moving Forward

Acknowledgments

About the Author

-

Introduction

On the evening of May 25, 2020, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was recorded by bystanders restraining George Floyd with his knee on Floyd’s neck while Floyd lay facedown on the ground in handcuffs. Floyd repeatedly stated that he couldn’t breathe. Chauvin did not release his knee from Floyd’s neck. After nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds (the initial reported time of eight minutes and forty-six seconds was later corrected),¹ Chauvin finally released his knee at the direction of emergency medical technicians (EMTs). En route to the hospital, EMTs reported that Floyd was entering cardiac arrest. Sadly, Floyd was pronounced dead at 9:25 p.m. at the Hennepin County Medical Center emergency room.² Overnight, the cell phone videos had gone viral. The next day, four Minneapolis police officers were fired—Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane.³ The ensuing weeks saw protests demanding justice for George Floyd that included over 2,000 cities across the world. Hollywood celebrities and music stars tweeted support for Floyd, condemnation for the police involved, calls for racial justice, and many made large monetary donations to charities supporting Black America, such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Reclaim the Block, and many others. The total amount donated was in the millions. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement was energized in a way not previously seen in America. Some 7,750 protests occurred in the name of BLM and George Floyd.⁴ Calls for defunding the police became commonplace, and it finally seemed that police brutality against Black people had been exposed to the masses and that real reform was coming. The BLM organization had the momentum to change America. Their stated purpose is that Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression. Now, BLM could finally attain real progress toward this purpose. The world was watching.

Throughout the summer, the mainstream media supported these protests, even some of the ones that turned violent. CNN’s Chris Cuomo, in response to criticism that the protests were a problem, defended them by pointing out the injustice that started these protests and then stated, Show me where it says protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.⁵ Perhaps he should reread the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights. He also stated that police reform would never happen unless white people’s kids start getting killed.⁶ The number of media personalities who encouraged or supported more unrest and protests is too numerous to name here. Politicians supported them, too. Vice President Kamala Harris was part of an effort to raise funds for those arrested for property damage in the protests. In an interview with Stephen Colbert, she also encouraged the protests to continue even beyond the election and not to let up. She was joined by celebrities such as Chrissy Teigen, who donated $200,000 to a fund to bail out those who had been arrested for looting.⁷

Very little effort was made by law enforcement, or the media, to discover who was involved in the burning of federal buildings, police stations, and private businesses. It was all excused because of the injustice faced at the hands of rampant police brutality. Calls for defunding the police from local and national politicians were proposed to fix this problem. Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick wrote in his essay series that we need to build a future without the terror of policing and prisons.⁸ He continued by stating, The ever-present threat of premature death at the hands, knees, choke holds, tasers, and guns of law enforcement has only further engrained its anti-Black foundation into the institutions of policing. In order to eradicate anti-Blackness, we must also abolish the police. The abolition of one without the other is impossible. To defend his view, he also wrote, By abolishing policing and prisons, not only can we eliminate white supremacist establishments, but we can create space for budgets to be reinvested directly into communities to address mental health needs, homelessness and houselessness, access to education, and job creation as well as community-based methods of accountability.

Not all famous athletes agreed. Notably, former NBA legend and current broadcaster Charles Barkley⁹ stated that even though he supports reform, he didn’t agree with the fools on TV calling for defunding the police. He stated, Who are Black people supposed to call, Ghostbusters, when we have crime in our neighborhoods? However, his view seemed to be in the minority of celebrities, athletes, and many political figures.

Unfortunately, no one in the mainstream media asked the most basic question about the premise of these riots and protests. No one asked if Black Americans were truly the targets of rampant police brutality and misconduct. No one asked if there was actual concrete evidence of widespread, systemic racism within police forces across the United States and in the criminal justice system more broadly. The purpose of this book is to answer these questions and expose the harmful myth that police are hunting Black men and that there is no accountability for police officers. We will examine the law and training that forms the foundation of police officer use of force based on my training and experience as a police officer. We will then apply this knowledge to some of the more high-profile cases of alleged police brutality and misconduct. Then we will compare them with several deaths of white men at the hands of police and address some of the academic research surrounding police shootings and the policing of minorities. Finally, I will offer some solutions to the problem moving forward.

1 Stephen Groves, Explainer: How Long Did It Take Medics to Reach Floyd? ABC News, April 6, 2021, https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/explainer-long-medics-reach-floyd-76905682.

2 Ibid.

3 Murder of George Floyd, Wikipedia.org, accessed February 21, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_George_Floyd.

4 Harmeet Kaur, About 93% of Racial Justice Protests in the US Have Been Peaceful, a New Report Finds, CNN, September 4, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/04/us/blm-protests-peaceful-report-trnd/index.html.

5 Kerry J. Byrne, Chris Cuomo: Police Reform Comes When ‘White People’s Kids Start Getting Killed,’ New York Post, April 17, 2021, https://nypost.com/2021/04/17/chris-cuomo-police-reform-comes-when-white-peoples-kids-start-getting-killed/.

6 Ibid.

7 Morgan Sloss, Cardi B, Kim Kardashian, and 18 Other Celebrities Respond to George Floyd’s Death, BuzzFeed, May 29, 2020, https://www.buzzfeed.com/morgansloss1/celeb-responses-to-george-floyd.

8 Emily Zanotti, Colin Kaepernick Demands ‘Future without the Terror of Policing or Prisons’ in Essay Series Debut, The Daily Wire, October 8, 2020, https://www.dailywire.com/news/colin-kaepernick-demands-future-without-the-terror-of-policing-or-prisons-in-essay-series-debut.

9 Charles Barkley Blasts ‘Fools’ Pushing ‘Defund the Police’: ‘Who Are Black People Supposed to Call? Ghostbusters?’ The Daily Wire, September 25, 2020, https://www.dailywire.com/news/charles-barkley-blasts-fools-pushing-defund-the-police-who-are-Black-people-supposed-to-call-ghostbusters.

Chapter 1

Use-of-Force Training and Scenarios

There is no question that Derek Chauvin’s decision to put his knee on the neck of George Floyd at all, much less for over nine minutes, has been roundly criticized by pundits, attorneys, and many law enforcement entities, such as Andy Scoogman (executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police), John Shane (professor and use-of-force expert at John Jay College of Criminal Justice), and John Peters Jr. (president of the Institute for the Prevention and Management of In-Custody Deaths). Use-of-force experts and members of the Minneapolis Police Department reiterated this criticism during Derek Chauvin’s trial,¹⁰ despite the fact that the Minneapolis Police Training Manual did allow for two types of knee on the neck techniques as a non-lethal use of force.¹¹ A pretrial motion to dismiss the murder and manslaughter charges based on this training manual was denied.

It is also without dispute that Derek Chauvin had seventeen complaints of excessive force filed in his nineteen years of policing.¹² What wasn’t clear at the time of Floyd’s death is what his motivations were. It is assumed that it was racially motivated despite no indication that it was, but the narrative of racist police was pushed. Although there is great condemnation for Chauvin’s tactics and the training manual that allows them, some information about the moments leading up to Floyd’s arrest were not revealed until several days later. We will discuss the body-cam footage of Derek Chauvin, his trial and conviction, and the aftermath later in this book. But first, it is necessary for the reader to get a crash course in police use-of-force law and training. Only then can we truly understand the facts and circumstances of these high-profile deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police officers.

Current training on police use of force is in line with criteria established in both federal and Supreme Court rulings. The purpose of the use of force is to gain control and to stop a subject’s action. In order for a use-of-force program to be truly effective, it must be defensible in court. There are four, general use-of-force justifications. Is there a need for force? Was the force applied proportional to the resistance exerted? Is the subject’s injury proportional to the subject’s resistance or threat to the officer or a third party? And finally, was the force applied in good faith in a way that a reasonable, trained police officer would react given the facts the officer had at the time of the encounter? Taken together, one could call this a totality of circumstances, meaning that evaluation of an officer’s use of force is dependent on the combined factors involved with a force incident. There are nuances to consider in the use of force which we will discuss later, but a description of the basic use-of-force continuum is necessary before we get into specific types of situations.

The majority of Use of Force tactics discussed in this chapter are from the 2003 book, PPCT Defensive Tactics Student Manual, by Bruce Siddle, Ron Bilyk, Joan Pechtel and Darrell Ross. There are two different philosophies surrounding police use of force, total control theory and One Plus One Theory.¹³ In total control theory, an intermediate weapon, such as a baton, pepper spray, or a Taser, would be used to control all levels of resistance. In this method, when the resistance level increases, the potential for injury to a subject will increase. To understand how this philosophy is applied, consider the following where an officer is using a collapsible steel baton as their total control, intermediate weapon. In low levels of resistance, the officer may use the baton to assist with a wrist drag takedown or joint lock.

In more active levels of resistance, the officer may use the baton to strike one of the many nerve motor points or an area of large muscle mass. When deadly force is applied against an officer, the officer could use the baton to strike the head and neck or use the baton in a choke hold. The One Plus One Method is a more conservative philosophy of use of force in that it puts emphasis on empty-hand control techniques where the officer is not holding an intermediate or deadly weapon. In this method, in which I was trained, the officer moves up a force continuum in such a way that they can use force one level above the level of resistance. In other words, as the level of resistance increases, the risk of injury to the officer increases, so the amount of force justified increases. An officer may also increase their use of force if the current force applied is ineffective. Conversely, if the techniques are working and the level of resistance decreases, the level of force used by the officer must also decrease. These are the principles of escalation and de-escalation. Understand, however, that it is not necessary for the officer to use each level of force. There are circumstances where an officer is legally justified in skipping empty-hand techniques of control and other situations where the officer can go straight to deadly force. We will discuss these situations as we move through the use-of-force continuum. We must also remember that the law is designed in such a manner that it prioritizes the safety