Andy Berke, Chattanooga mayor, is all smiles among a group of children, members of a race whose people are disproportionately abused by the mayor’s executive branch and its well-armed constabulary. (Photo Facebook)
Mayor Andy Berke is so out of touch with the operations of his own police department that he does not see its continuing acidic dealings with the people of Chattanooga, especially blacks.
Mr. Berke rebukes challenger Larry Grohn for discussing at a Realtors association forum the harassment of gang members by police.
By David Tulis / Noogaradio 1240 AM 101.1 FM
I had earlier pressed Mr. Grohn to accept a broader assertion of harassment of people generally, and he limited his usage to police’s pestering of young black males identified as gang members or affiliates.
Mr. Grohn repeated his assertions about harassment of gangs. But Mr. Berke turns these comments into a pretended attack on police that Mr. Grohn is far from making, as he, too, is pro-cop. Says the mayor:
My opponent says our police officers harass gang members. That demonstrates that he is out of touch and has no idea what sacrifices our officers make every day to keep our streets safe. If you are in a gang and you commit a crime — you should go to jail. Period. I don’t call this harassment. I call it the law.
Our officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe and they need a mayor who has their back. Over the next four years, I’ll support our police department by putting more officers on the streets and equip them with the tools they need to keep us safe and get guns out of the hands of gang members.
Mr. Berke’s position is standard issue pro-police indicating he is out of touch to the phenomenon we have reported and about which even Franklin McCallie, the humanist interracial peacemaker with his black-white dinners, is concerned.
Mr. Berke pretends that the biggest danger to the average citizen is private crime. Law enforcement is more dangerous to the average homeowner or user of the public right of way than gangs, private criminality or terrorism. Mr. Berke wants to add to the general harassment of the citizenry by police by adding to their numbers, largely in the guise of fighting gangs.
The mayor’s office has said nothing about the lawless prosecutions of Rochelle Gelpin and Hanson Melvin, whose distresses came to our attention in 2016. These cases are typical of police harassment and overreach that are SYSTEMIC.
Acting without probable cause is the main sin of cops. To cover their violations of constitutionally protected rights, they commit perjury, kidnapping (stealing a person from his place without lawful authority and for that person’s harm) and abuse of process. Police also exercise lawlessly when they kill under the continuum of force rules accepted by state law.
4 steps to saving innocent lives
In his term of office Mayor Berke has done nothing to demilitarize police and ordain de-escalation and peacekeeping training.
To avoid killing people who have not committed a capital offense, police should be trained to use four key elements to save innocent lives, those of people acting irrationally, armed perhaps with brick, back, club or knife. These safety valves to save innocent lives from execution:
➤ Time. Cops
➤ De-escalation
➤ Cover
➤ Distance
East Ridge city employee Daniel Sephenson, an armed man wearing a blue uniform, imposed a death sentence on a plumber, Todd Browning. Sheriff Jim Hammond and district attorney Neal Pinkston blessed the slaying as lawful.
They do that because they are trained in military fashion to exercise proprietary control over the citizens (ownership interest). That means that if a citizen does not lie down on the ground or jump out of his car with hands up in the air as commanded or stop walking as commanded he could be tased, tackled or slain by executive action.
https://tnt23.wpengine.com/2017/01/chase-killing-sexton-cry-policing-reform/
Berke accepts black humiliation by police
Mr. Berke is part of this picture and he does not complain about it and does not make the slightest effort to reform policing in Chattanooga. His violence reduction initiative against gangs is his major effort, but gives debatable results. Chief Fred Fletcher’s program to have trainees get to know gays, blacks, Hispanics and one other group may give understanding and empathy, but is not an antidote to the typical training program whose main thrust is to make sure the officer gets home at the end of the day and the making of snap judgments in risk suppression (see Atlantic Monthly’s important story at the link).
To be pro-police is to be anti-black. That sounds like an extraordinary assertion. But blacks, often being poor, are out of step with the neat requirements of regulatory government, with its papers, tags, permissions, court dates, probation deadlines, child support payment schedules, permits, licenses and the like.
Blacks as a population are disproportionately consumed by the police and judicial-industrial complex that feeds off of their ignorance of their rights and a plantation mentality. That mentality sees police as an unknowable mighty force that is incomprehensible, as unstoppable as the Tennessee River, as fixed as a legal border or a mountain. Police hold blacks in low regard for their indifference to laws and law enforcement, for their fear and contempt of police and the state and city corporation that police represent.
To be for policing is to be implicitly for the continuing degradation of the black man by the state and its agents in municipal corporations such as City of Chattanooga. For a mayor to favor the people he serves, he has to work to protect them from his own office, whose agents, the police, represent the state as against the people.
Mayors have executive authority. Candidates should not pretend that police departments are somehow independent. Mayors should save American lives, and demand draconian reforms in the direction of peacekeeping.
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As I present this to you I imagine you will make some assumptions as to who I am considering in the election but it doesn’t matter, as this is an impartial rebuttal of your ridiculous assertions. First off, “To be pro-police is to be anti-black” is a ridiculous and uneducated statement. Day after day police help PEOPLE. Color does not matter. Statements like that only retard the efforts that police and others in society take to end racial tensions. You my friend are part of the problem.
Second. Your, again, uneducated statement that police aren’t trained in de-escalation tactics, and suggestions on how it should be done, are the most ignorant and irresponsible views one could have.
Finally. Your assertion that police “harass” gang members is at best laughable. People complain about the gang problem, but whine when good officers take action against those gang members.
Peace does not come about by wishing away the evil. It comes about when good men go in to the dark places and do bad things to evil people. Throughout history there have been those who have tried to “love” the problem away, but it has never worked.
There will always be evil, but to comfort the innocent, I assure you there will always be those who choose to face the evil for them while they sleep comfortably. If you truly think there is a better way, get on the street and show it. Otherwise the best thing you can do is take the steps to understand what goes on in the streets.
Trent, I greatly appreciate your taking the time to rebut my assertions in this essay. If I am part of the problem in policing by being someone who points out its fundamental premises, I am sorry to have caused offense.
But policing is part of the nation-state, and part of the state’s effective ownership of the people. Read Martin van Creveld and others about the rise and decline of the state, and some of its amazing premises.
I am glad you have not noticed many of these claims, nor been offended by them enough to see things as I do. You are a blessed man, and I encourage you to enjoy your comforts and quietude.
But many are not as blessed, and suffer the consequences of the policing problem. I believe gangs would not exist anywhere near their current level if it were not for the continuing emasculation members feel by state actors in their cruisers, uniforms and immunities. In short, policing is the fuel for gangs. If policing stops, gangs become occasionally rowdy clubs, but not vertically integrated district power cartels.
Indeed, I propose that to be pro-police is to be anti-black, as blacks are that segment among the people most harassed and embittered and pestered by the statutory state and its enforcers.
My assertions are not ridiculous, but too sadly true. I wish the candidates for mayor would discuss the abusive nature of police, whose department is under their full authority as chief executive.
Reforms will focus on training to use de-escalation, distance, time and cover to avoid needless killings. Let’s save American lives, sir, and encourage the end of police killings. Disarmament. De-escalation. Less testosterone, more negotiation. Less belligerence, more treating.