Back when I was a criminal investigator, my partner and I drew a terrible stabbing in a large and sprawling apartment complex. We found witnesses willing to testify: a woman and her children who also lived in the complex. The suspect was a recently released prisoner who had done hard time for a series of similar assaults and hadn’t received a single day off his sentence for good behavior. He was mean. He liked to hurt people. Knives were his weapons of choice.
We found the guy, who didn’t even bother to deny that he’d attacked the victim and nearly killed him, and took him to the magistrate for a felony warrant charging, in essence, attempted murder. Magistrates in my state were the ones who wrote felony warrants and, at the time, were allowed to set the preliminary bond. The magistrate we drew was known for setting low bonds. Despite our begging for a high bond, he refused. We were worried about our witnesses and went back to tell them that they should stay somewhere else, just to be safe. And that is when we found out that the woman was the magistrate’s daughter.
We returned to the magistrate and told him our witnesses were his daughter and grandchildren and he nearly had a stroke, but although he tried, under state law he couldn’t change the ridiculously low bond he’d set. We had to wait for a judge to do it at the defendant’s first appearance in court, which was a good 36 hours away since it was the weekend.
Fortunately, the defendant didn’t make bond—he was a scary dude and I’m sure much more at home behind bars than free in society—and during his first appearance, the judge saw our logic and increased the man’s bond substantially. Our suspect eventually ended up heading back to prison, where he belonged. The moral to this story? Some people must have skin in the game in order to “get it.”
Neither bias nor political correctness have any place in enforcing the law. The job of the police is to protect and serve. This mission has not changed since Sir Robert Peel’s days. But many integral tools of modern policing have been cast aside because some are so worried about perception and hurting feelings that we have abandoned common sense and preemptive policing in favor of a softer, prettier approach. I’ve got news for those who think police can protect the innocent by hugging criminals: It doesn’t work that way.
And now, with crime rising because society’s been brainwashed into thinking that a Kumbaya approach to law enforcement’s just the ticket, we need to make everyone out there realize that we all have skin in this game.
Police want to commit to their primary mission of protecting and serving, but selfishly, we’d also like to go home at night, so yeah, there’s that. Taking away valuable tools like profiling and the use of surplus military gear only makes our jurisdictions more vulnerable and creates the probability of more death and destruction.
The truth can’t be found in a group hug moment. The truth is in how safe our communities are and can continue to be. Making them so requires us to all admit to one commonality—we all have skin in this game. Like the magistrate’s daughter, every officer’s family. Like the magistrate’s daughter, every member of the community’s family. And family looks after one another.
Let’s start acting like that matters.
