FORGET WHAT THEY ARE SAYING AND LOOK AT WHAT THEY ARE DOING
[This is to introduce a new feature on TTP — a column by TTPer of many years who often posts insightfully on the Forum: Mark Deuce. After serving America as an Army paratrooper, Mark’s career has been in community law enforcement. He brings life-long street experience to the reality of today. He’s entitling his column – what else? – Deuces Wild. Welcome, Mark!]
One lesson I have learned in law enforcement is to be attentive to the behavior of humans you encounter. A cop’s job is dealing with people—often at their worst. Most other cop skills can be taught; but an inability to assess and react appropriately to human behavior will guarantee your ineffectiveness.
This may seem elementary, but people act the way they do for a reason. Too often, we don’t ask what the reason is.
For cops, a common sign of trouble with a person you contact is them not obeying your lawful verbal instructions that you give them in order for you to do your job. Again, most people get that.
But another version of this behavior experienced crooks often display is a lack of congruence between what they say they are doing, or will do, and what they are actually doing in response to you. You may say to step out of the car, stop moving, show their hands, come to you, or show you identification in the course of you handling the call.
They may ignore you, or they may respond, “I will… I want to… etc…” while still not doing it and/or doing something else. They may also stall for time, or argue with you to keep you from doing your job, or distract you to get to a weapon or escape.
This behavior category is a huge danger sign and one that some cops don’t pick up on.
The cop will keep asking them to do something and the suspect will keep constructively refusing, and the officer—often a newer one—won’t notice, stand firm, stop the delaying games, and up the ante.
For officer safety, you need to mentally switch gears when you see this in an encounter and regardless of what they are saying, notice: (1) you gave them a command and (2) they haven’t obeyed it.
From there, you ask why; and through your education and experience, identify the course of action you need to take to get the situation back under control. Quickly. They may play to your ego, good graces, and talk smooth, but they have another agenda as seen by their actions, and it’s not good.
Once you take back control, the criminal won’t like it.
They will say you are wrong for doing your job. They will complain they are a victim. They will try to intimidate you with complaints; depending on who you are and who you are dealing with, possibly of racism.
Their present friends and family members will chime in and start waving their cellphones; you often wind up putting several of them in cuffs and arresting them instead of the person you got called on.
Let’s apply this thinking to how we deal with most Democrats, RINOs and liberals.
We have given them numerous commands—to keep our streets safe, to secure our border, and to protect our country otherwise through a strong military and sound foreign policies.
We have told them not to steal from us—to use our money that is taxed wisely, and to leave our property alone. We deserve to keep what we earn and not lose it to the selfish and corrupt.
And we want our freedoms and the ability to live normally; vegetables are for cooking. Drag shows aren’t the stuff of school programs.
The excuse drumbeat goes on 24/7, and especially during campaign season.. or perhaps they just ignore us once they are in office. Our elected officials claim they are complying with us, or want to comply with us, but are obviously serving other agendas.
Periodically the mask slips and we see that many of them are hostile to us, our values, and our country. Check the behaviors I went through earlier up against what you see in the news and media daily and note the similarities.
The result?
Our public’s trust in the criminal justice system has fallen far. No one believes in the ability of this system to adequately deliver justice; even in the case of the worst offenders. Our demands to lock up dangerous people have been answered with numbers games and social agendas that aren’t resulting in nearly enough deterrence.
This varies between jurisdictions but no one is surprised when a repeat felony offender “felonies” for the umpteenth time and some innocent is being gathered into the meat wagon. Much more can be said about this, but those who run the system and fund the system clearly don’t view public safety as at the apex of their priorities, in view of the track record of our system to date.
“Tough on crime” to the liberal usually means more gun restrictions on you. Liberals have more use for Hamas, the Chinese Communists, and pedophiles than they do the NRA.
Why? Particularly given the demonstrated ineffectiveness of gun laws?
Amidst both sides pounding the table about the “border crisis”, no one is actually doing much about it. It’s gotten so bad even blue governors and mayors are breaking ranks with Joe Xiden on it.
Most recently, in 2023 more people crossed our border than we have troops in uniform. The Usual Suspects heard us telling them to close the border, insist that they are trying, but… here come the arguments that they really can’t and we Normals don’t understand. The Injustice Department is even suing Texas for trying to secure the border the Federal government refuses to.
We tell them we want safe and effective schools. Go to any random public school in any random large US city—to include ones in “red states”, and see if you don’t find a multitude of students with behavior issues no one can quite address, with a cadre of harried teachers about to yank the ejection handle, who receive little support from their administration.
This assumes they aren’t globalists that thwart their school boards and voters, such as the schools in Texas continuing to teach critical race theory.
Dinesh D’Souza and True The Vote busted ballot box stuffers in the documentary 2000 Mules, making a compelling case for how the 2020 election was stolen. Where’s the Federal investigation? If only the mules were January 6th protestors and not BLM or Antifa.
And I need not work very hard to discuss the liberal attitude towards you keeping what you have earned. Suffice to say a shoplifter would understand it. So where to now?
Firstly, recognize that our suspects aren’t obeying the commands we give them and are indeed trying to hurt us.
Second, call them on it.
Third, make them comply; no matter the personal inconvenience, refusal to fund them, privation, or danger.
Be ready for their squawks of protests, and for them to fight you (literally, with the way things are going), and for their entourages to show up in the form of BLM, three letter agencies, lawyers, and other. They are in it for the long haul and you had better be as well. But the alternative is to let them win.
And also: Beyond the obvious, what is their agenda? Whom are they really serving? And if they have their way, what happens to us and our country?
We’ll be discussing these questions and much more in future columns of Deuces Wild.