Savannahmann
Savannahmann's JournalQuestion, what if we treated police shootings like aircraft accidents?
If anyone has ever watched television documentaries, or docudrama's about aircraft accidents you know how extensive the investigation to find out what happened, and why is. No stone is left unturned. The investigators seek to understand the effects of everything. Design of the aircraft, weather, procedures, crew behavior, training. The questions they ask about every piece of information is what, and why.
The author of this article points out how the aircraft crash investigations are run, and how we could apply that model to our police force.
I'll summarize it, probably too much. Partly because aircraft accident investigation is one of the documentaries that I like to watch, and I love learning about how things work, and how a little mistake can lead to a catastrophic result. Perhaps it's taught me to think ahead somewhat.
The accident happens, and the "go team" from the NTSB is sent. These are experts in specific subfields of aircraft investigations. Pilot training experts, materials experts, weather experts. All of them start out trying to figure out what happened. One tool that has made it much easier to determine the cause of the accident is the recording devices. The Flight Data recorder shows what the plane was doing. The inputs to the controls, the behavior of the engines, as much data as they can get. The other half of that data is the cockpit voice recorder. This records all the sounds in the cockpit giving the investigators a history of every alarm, every spoken word, the wind rushing, the bangs and groans the plane may make.
This information is vital in finding out as exactly as possible, what happened. But they don't stop there. If there are recordings at Air Traffic Control, they want them. If there are tapes of Radar, they want them. If a guy took a picture with his camera, they want it. They want every piece of information they can get, and they want pilot information especially. Was the pilot drinking or taking drugs before the accident? A drug and alcohol check will tell us that. What was the health of the pilot? When did he sleep last? What did he eat and when?
By the way, I work in an industrial setting. Heavy equipment, and lots of weight being moved about. If there is an accident at work, we have to provide a sample to rule out drug and alcohol playing a part. If you go to the Hospital, you will provide a sample there. It's part of the insurance regulations, and it's part of the workmen's' comp regulations. I've done that, had an accident and been cleared of the presence of drugs or alcohol that may have impaired my ability to perform my job.
Now, for aircraft, the airline gets to offer whatever information they have to the investigators, they don't get to hide anything, or claim that a single document is classified or restricted. They provide everything to the investigators. The same with the manufacturer.
Imagine if American Airlines plane crashed outside your town. American shows up with representatives from Boeing (not suggesting either Boeing or American are doing this, just picked their names out of the air as an example) and say they will be investigating it and you all can go away. They'll tell you what happened later. They announce that the plane is the safest thing in the air, and the pilot was great. It must have been an act of God. Then a second plane crashes, and a third, and so on and all that. Then video surfaces of pilots finishing their drinks and popping a bunch of pills before they board the plane to fly. The airline says that is an isolated incident, and one bad apple shouldn't prejudge the rest of the fine pilots. Video surfaces of people putting wings on the plane with duct tape. The manufacturer says it was a one off mistake, no reason to suggest all the other planes are less than safe.
You would picket and demand that no airplanes fly over your neighborhood. You wouldn't accept the word of either group ever again. No amount of internal reforms would be enough.
Yet, for Police, we do just that. No drug or alcohol checks. No suggestion that the officer did anything wrong. No one outside of the police agency can investigate the incidents.
The end result of the aircraft investigation is a narrative of what happened, and the mistakes that were made. The suggestions to prevent another accident are also included. A change in the design of the plane. Different training. A policy change, or procedure change. New regulations about what can or can't be done.
As an example, did you know it was a violation of regulations to have the pilots discussing anything but the plane during take off or landing? Checklist errors have led to crashes, and the pilots were usually, but not always, discussing something else besides the plane. Just normal people having a normal conversation. But it was dangerous enough that the pilots are now prohibited from doing that during preparations for take off or landing.
That regulation was made to make sure that future accidents were prevented. Because we don't want a world in which our weather report includes sheet metal showers and intermittent bodies.
We should have an incident investigation team that examines the use of deadly force every time. Not from inside the department, or even the city. But hand picked people who have one goal, to make sure that each incident was absolutely necessary. Does this incident provide a glimpse into poor training or a bad policy?
But we need information to conduct those investigations. We need recordings, video and audio to show what the officer saw, and heard. We need to look at those to see if there is a training change that can be made to reduce mistakes. Perhaps the officer could stand a little further away, further from the danger. Perhaps he can be taught that the weapon is his last resort, not a routine response. Perhaps it's anger management training and the effort to make the police set aside emotional response instead of ramping up the me cop you obey mentality.
We need a police incident investigation board. We need to know exactly what happened, but more, we need to know what went wrong and what we can do to prevent it from happening again if at all possible. We aren't going to get that with the current system. But we need to get there as soon as possible.
Once again, I stand with President Obama on the Budget.
Yesterday, I angered a lot of people when I stood with President Obama. Today, I'm certain to do much of the same.
So what's in the so called Cromnibus bill? Some things we don't like. Some things the Republicans don't like. We get fully funded ACA, more money for early childhood development. EPA money got cut, but was still more than the Administration asked for. We got the Immigration funding for six months.
Does anyone realistically think we'll get a better deal next month when the Republicans take over the Senate? Does anyone think that the Republicans will be more willing to deal then?
We get almost a year of the ACA. We get six months of Immigration funded. We get a lot of things, a whole lot of things, and if we balk at this, the Republicans are just going to pass whatever they want and it will be ten times, a hundred times worse than we have it now.
I'm not happy about the things we don't want. I think it's risky to relax the rules on Wall Street. I think it's asinine to let more political funding go to the parties. But I think that as bad as those things are, losing the funding for the ACA would be way worse.
We lost the midterm election. We lost and next month the Republicans take over the Senate. We need to take what we can get and just swallow the things we don't like. Because if we don't take it now, we'll get it next month, and we definitely won't like it then.
There is a thing called Realpolitik. It means being practical, and it means being willing to accept that sometimes you don't get everything you want.
Because make no mistake, if the Government shuts down, it won't be the Republicans who get the blame, it will be us. We will get the blame, and we will be the ones who shut down the Government during the Holidays because we were poor losers in last months election. Believe me, the Republicans have their bullet points ready, talking about all the things in there that were just what the Democrats wanted.
We need to support the President, and get this done. Because I do not want to write off the next election already. I want us to fight, and win. But we can't do that if we have given the impression that we are nothing more than petulant children.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/10/politics/policy-riders-spending-bill/index.html?hpt=po_c1
We're getting immigration and full funding for the ACA. We're not losing as much as we would next month. It gives us until September to increase public pressure to maintain those funding needs.
It's not great, it's not even very good, but understanding Realpolitik, it's probably the best we can get.
Why I agree with President Obama that the Bush Co cabal should not be prosecuted.
I knew the Torture Report just released would be disturbing. I also knew that there would be many calls for vengeance, for justice, and I would probably be part of those calls. I've been thinking long and hard however.
One of the oddities of our nation compared to others is the smooth transition of power from one, to the next. 43 times power has passed from one to another. One would hope that this tradition will continue well pass one hundred times. Yet, there are many nations in which a change of leader results in jail, prosecutions, and persecutions for the previous holders of power. It is almost inevitable with each election. Someone new takes over as President, Prime Minister, or whatever title the job has. The first thing they do is lock up the previous office holders and often their supporters. We've all seen news stories of second and third world countries doing that. We've also seen the corrupt become dictators, knowing that if they lose power they'll end up in prison, or dead. When those Dictators fall they inevitably run to some other nation, usually with all the money they can steal, to a nation with no extradition to hide and live out the rest of their lives.
In the title, I said I agree with President Obama. I do, because I can see the sense of vengeance bouncing back and forth. President Obama sees the Bush Cabal prosecuted. Then the Republicans take over, and in revenge they prosecute President Obama when he leaves office. Then the Democrats take over, and we're right back to prosecuting the party not currently in power. I'm afraid that we would quickly devolve into a third world nation with a political system written in pencil for all intents and purposes.
Does this satisfy my desire for justice? No. I'd love to see those torturing bastards and the ones who gave the orders put on trial. But I know that in just about twenty five months, the ones put on trial could well be those like President Obama. The charges would be that they harmed National Security by releasing the information or some such thing. A process crime, even if they didn't commit a real crime.
We would be outraged, as we were when the Republicans impeached President Clinton. We would wait until our side was in power, and we would get even.
What is important here? First, we must tell the truth about what happened to make sure it never happens again. Second, we must put safeguards in place to make sure it never happens again.
You may remember that I have written about Robert Lady and how he was convicted of Kidnapping and Torture in Italy. The why we won't allow him to be extradited to Italy is pretty obvious. He would have to implicate his superiors, he was only following orders, and while that would not get him out of trouble, it would spread the blame out. Those superiors would present documentation that would implicate others. I think he should be in prison. But I know that if he was, he would point the finger and drag down others.
No, I don't know where this stops. But I don't want to see President Obama and the administration persecuted next. That's what I'm saying. We need to change the way we look at things. We need to change the principle we embraced during the Truman Era that doing bad things for good reasons would be acceptable. That was when we enabled the CIA to engage in covert operations, supposedly with plausible deniability. The idea was we had to do bad things to stop the Communists, which was a good thing in our minds.
We've got to stop that, that principle that has become core in our Government. Sometimes Presidents and people have to do bad things for good reasons. It argues that the ends justify the means.
I will be more than satisfied, I'd be happy if we eliminated that mistaken ideal from Government service. We could, we should, pass a law that from this date forward, no more will we tolerate illegal actions in the name of National Security. Everything from before that point is forgiven. But from here on, no more.
No more.
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