Batons.
That’s the level of force.
When punks with pails and super soakers come after police officers, the appropriate response is batons.
The inappropriate response is to do nothing. The inappropriate response is to so restrain police officers as to endanger them, to allow this new humiliation to become a new risk.
You’ve seen the videos. Groups of young people – at this point seemingly all African-American – throw pails of water on police officers, or similarly douse them with large waterguns or jugs. There is laughing and taunting and, in one way or another, the police withdrawing, being driven in shame from the streets they are supposed to protect.
From the comments posted to the resulting social-media videos, a fair number of people believe the police have it coming. For every comment of upset or disgust at the dousings,there is at least one more of contempt for the officers, often referencing accusations of police bias and violence against black people.
And a week in, the phenomenon seems to be growing.
So here’s the response: Batons.
Because the attacks are an assault on police. Granted, typically water is not a threat. But who says it’s always going to be water? Who says it can’t be some caustic or toxicsubstance, or gasoline, or urine? When an assailant comes after an officer with a pail, must that officer’s health and wellbeing be dependent on the decency and goodwill of the assailant? Must the officer assume that there is nothing in that pail that couldbe injurious?
The attack must be rebuffed.
A physical – hand to hand – response is problematic. In most instances, the officers are outnumbered and the pail assault is a flip of a switch away from being a gang assault.Allowing the water throwers to be able to dictate the time and circumstance of engagement, to allow them to start a gang attack on officers by throwing water, doesn’t make sense.
An officer who tries to lay hands on a running, water-hurling assailant is being pushed into a risky confrontation that could go poorly and also look bad as the various videorecordings of it play back on the evening news.
So no grab and wrestle to the ground as a first-choice response.
Taser and pepper spray can be dangerous or ineffective in a wet environment. Water can be a shield against pepper spray, and an electric shock when everybody’s wet and in a scrumcan do things you don’t want done.
The bean bag shotgun is an option, but it’s seldom close at hand, and pointing anything that looks like a gun at teen-agers with pails is going to make the evening news – here,and everyplace that hates us.
So that leaves batons. The telescoping aluminum rods that took the place of nightsticks.
Unfortunately, the effective range of a baton is just a little bit longer than your arm. That means the ones standing off and shooting you with the super soaker are going to behard to get to, but if you do get to them, the super soaker is going to get smashed.
And as people with pails attempt to close and throw their water onto officers, a baton can make them think better of their undertaking, and give them a disincentive to get too close. A batonwill hurt, but it will not hurt you. You get bruises, not broken bones. Which is about right for water hurlers.
So we should get ready for a video or two of cops with batons striking back against people with pails. And we should be ready to support those cops. Even if we are Democrats, ministers or activists.
Because this is not happening without context. It is happening against the background of – and as a consequence of – the left’s relentless and bigoted attack on law enforcement. As the narrativeof accusation and prejudice against law enforcement ramps up as part of next year’s election, those seeking to enflame and exploit hatred of the police must recognize the blood on their hands, and accept that it is not washed off by their claims of fightingfor racial justice.
And all of us must recognize that the water-pail brigades are training grounds for violent assault on the police. As the water and video allow people to build up courage to run up on and countcoup on an officer, there must be the realization that the next natural step is to do so not with a squirt gun, but with a club, a knife or a firearm.
And if groups can organize to soak, shame and record the police, groups can organize to do far worse.
This isn’t just about embarrassing the police, it is about practicing to kill them.
You see that in the videos.
And you reduce the likelihood of those violent attacks tomorrow by standing up to the water attacks today.
And you do that best with batons.
Followed by handcuffs and criminal charges.