A Conservative Christian View Of Police And Protests Shows Shortsightedness

R.R. Reno (click here for personal info) just wrote an article for the First Things blog that seemed to criticize the police for not being confrontational enough with protesters some of whom were destroying property. In his article, he makes the following claim:

Since George Floyd’s death, civil authorities have done everything possible to avoid deadly encounters.

 Reno calls much of their current approach 'containment' in contrast to 'confrontation.' In Reno's view, it isn't that containment is always wrong, but it has been overused here. As a result, not only has there been preventable property destruction, too much containment has led to vigilantism (click here for the article).

Perhaps the most revealing line about Reno's perspective precedes the above quote:

News of street violence makes my heart sink.

    When we combine those two statements together, we see that              Reno shows more concern over the reaction to the shootings than       the shootings themselves. Such is a view of a privileged person.

    Here we should note the human tendency to judge the actions of       others as if they are reacting from the same context, with generally    the life experiences as one's own context with life experiences. To      give an example, I remember corresponding with a member of          BLM  and telling my friend about how the police gently escorted        those who were engaging in civil disobedience at a protest in             suburban area. My friend, because of their own life experiences,         had difficulty in believing what I wrote. At the same time, one of       friends who lives around me could not believe the accounts of          police brutality that I relayed to them when I was discussing     misconduct by the police. Why? That was because he had neither      experienced, nor witnessed,  nor knew anyone who had been abused   by the police.

 Other factors can be involved in how we receive news about police violence as well. Those who are conservative authoritarians, which is a distinct possibility for Reno, naturally side with recognized authority figures such as the police. Those who are more anti-authoritarian might tend to assume that the police always are abusive when dealing with people.

Then there is the race issue. Whites have generally treated with less suspicion and more favortism by many police officers than Blacks have. So Whites might tend to be more open to favorable stories about the police than Blacks are. And that is especially true for those Blacks who have either be abused by the police or know someone who has been. But race is not the only contributing factor here, economic class is as well in determining what people tend to believe about the police.

Having said all of that, we need to get back to the quotes from Reno. The first quote points to an assumption of innocence for the police. It also separates the conditions of the protests from the protests. If police have done everything to 'avoid deadly encounters,' then why do we have two more examples of police abuse? Those two examples are the shootings of Rayshard Brooks and Jacob Blake. If the police to do not want to risk deadly encounters during protests, then why continue to conduct unjustified attempts on life which has been a cause for the protests?

But we should also point out clear police misconduct when determining whether police have done everything to avoid deadly confrontations. That misconduct ranges from the pushing down and then ignoring their victim as he was down injured of a 75-year protester in Buffalo. And to the attitude of the police regarding that matter, when two police officers involved in the assault were disciplined, 57 officers from that unit resigned in protest. Or we could go documented police attacks against protesters, medics, journalists and legal observers (click here and there). We should note that just because actions did not result in death, does not imply that such actions did not risk the death of the targets.

Also, if police were so concerned with avoiding deadly confrontations, why did they let a 17-year-old, untrained kid with an assault rifle walk toward a protest? Did they not know that that could easily lead to a deadly confrontation? Such would be unlikely.

Thus it seems that Reno's claim that the police have done what they could to 'avoid deadly encounters' seems flawed.

The second quote is even problematic. Where is Reno's expressed concern for the 3 men who have been either killed or seriously wound by unnecessary police violence? Why is the destruction of property some that saddens Reno but the flagrant use of force against Blacks does not produce a sorrow worthy of mention?

Later on, Reno writes the following;

Protecting property from theft and destruction is one of the fundamental functions of government.

And yet where is Reno's statement about protecting lives as also being one of the functions of government? As a religious leader, why does he more strongly express a concern for property than for lives?

The title of Reno's article is: The Rule Of Law Imperiled. But is the rule of law only imperiled when, in anger and anguish, protesters flaunt the law in the destruction of property? Or should Reno consider that when when officers of the court and state act unlawfully, then the rule of law is under attack too?

Finally we should realize that it is a sign of privilege to think that the current unrest began with the protests. For many, but not all, Blacks, the unrest today is simply a continuation of the conflict that started here in 1619. But because Whites like me don't have many of the life experiences that many Blacks have had, we are at risk for being at least partially blind to the whole picture of what is going on today.