Thin Blue Line

In a piece in the Wall Street Journal Heather Mac Donald informs us that police chiefs and elected officials in several municipalities around the country - for example, San Francisco, CA, and Middletown and Manchester, CT - have prohibited police officers from wearing the "thin blue line" patch on their uniforms.

The patch honors fallen cops and recognizes the role police play in protecting society from anarchy, but detractors insist the symbol makes people of color feel unsafe.

Perhaps I'd feel differently if I lived in a minority community, but I have difficulty understanding why this is so. It seems somewhat like the ordinances in some communities prohibiting the display of the American flag in one's yard because it's said to be offensive to immigrants.

If people in minority neighborhoods harbor a fear of police it's hard to see how the patch would be more likely to trigger that fear than the uniform itself. African Americans in some cities doubtless have good reason to feel unsafe, but not because police are wearing a "thin blue line" patch.

Indeed, many of the officers who proudly wear that patch are themselves black and Hispanic.

Mac Donald points out that the overwhelming bulk of violence in cities like Chicago is not caused by the police but is in fact directed at both the police and innocent civilians by criminals. She writes:

Three days before the anti-patch vote, Officer Ella French was killed by a bullet to her head during a traffic stop. French and her two partners had pulled over an SUV for expired registration tags.

One of the SUV’s occupants, 21-year-old Emonte Morgan, allegedly fought with the officers and opened fire, killing French and critically wounding one of her partners with bullets to the brain, eye and shoulder.

Mr. Morgan was on probation for a recent robbery conviction, which a Chicago Tribune story characterizes as not a “serious” crime. His brother Eric, who was driving the SUV, was on probation for a theft conviction.

French and her partner were among the 78 people shot in Chicago over the Aug. 7-8 weekend, 11 of them fatally. Typical of the post- George Floyd urban mayhem, a child—this time a 4-year-old girl—was among the victims.

The carnage in Chicago is horrific. It's doubtless true that a soldier was safer in Afghanistan than are some residents of Chicago in their own neighborhoods:

Over Fourth of July weekend in Chicago, a 5-year-old girl, a 6-year-old girl, a 12-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy were shot, along with 104 others. On July 1, a 1-month-old infant was critically wounded in a mass shooting.

Three young men emerged from a Jeep Cherokee spraying bullets in several directions. A 15-year-old and six other victims were also shot, along with the baby. Hours earlier, a 9-year-old girl was shot in the head.

Chicago is no outlier. In Minneapolis, six children 10 and younger have been shot since late April, including two girls, 6 and 9, who were killed; two boys, 10 and 3, both critically wounded; and an infant.

None of these Minneapolis children were shot by a cop; they were killed by criminals....

I'm sure that the parents of those children would've been deeply grateful had officers wearing the offending patches been present to prevent the terrible tragedies that took their little ones' lives. People in these neighborhoods have every reason to live in fear, but fear of police brutality is, or should be, pretty far down the list:

Police officers aren’t making minority neighborhoods unsafe; criminals are. The four victims of fatal police shootings in Chicago in 2021, all armed, are 0.7% of the 538 homicide victims year to date.

Meanwhile, police - white, black and Hispanic - are being murdered at unprecedented rates:

Ambush assaults against officers rose 91% in the year after George Floyd’s death. More officers have been feloniously killed so far in 2021—50, as of Aug. 18—than in all of 2020, 2019 and 2017.

Suspect resistance is up, which will increase the chance of officer use of lethal force. On Aug. 13, a Chicago police officer was seriously wounded while being dragged by a car fleeing a car stop.

It's little wonder that cops have stopped trying to enforce the law in many jurisdictions. They're pulling back from enforcing traffic ordinances and pedestrian stops. In California and elsewhere they've stopped making arrests for shoplifting.

The job is exceedingly dangerous and rules that prohibit any expression of pride in what a police officer does, like the rule banning the thin blue line patch, merely sends the message that their risks and efforts aren't appreciated by the communities they serve, or at least by the bureaucrats who employ them.

What is it that stands between society and anarchy if not the police? They really are the thin blue line that keeps our society from spiraling into chaos, and it seems ridiculous for elected officials and law enforcement bureaucrats whose lives are not in jeopardy every time they venture out of their comfortable homes to go to work, to prohibit their officers from acknowledging that fact.