By Steve Pomper
Some radical political issues have obvious red flags because so many political activists demonize folks just for asking honest questions about topics the activists have made controversial. And thanks to the increasing number of prosecutors enforcing radical political policy, we must keep asking questions.
Cops should treat all people respectfully and as equal under the law, right? It is a rational standard to which law enforcement aspires. Well, you’d think it was but, to paraphrase George Orwell, All people are equal, but some people are more equal than others.
Some radical prosecutors don’t want all people treated equally but some people treated as more equal. For example, if officers have the audacity to believe the biology they’d learned since grammar school, they will be targeted by a loudmouthed, media-supported, political minority, including public officials. Isn’t forcing people to belive that something that ain’t so, is so—or else, pure political tyranny? Does it sound like legitimate law enforcement training?
Why can’t the discussion stop at police must treat all people equitably and respectfully—period! That this standard is not good enough for some radicals proves they’re not looking for equal treatment but for special treatment. Police officers have enough distractions without worrying about calling someone by his, her, their, or them’s “woke” pronouns.
According to PoliceOne.com, New Jersey’s Attorney General, Gurbir Grewal, recently announced an “LGBTQ Equality Directive,” which “is designed to ensure that individuals are treated fairly and equally in their encounters with law enforcement, ‘regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.’” Doesn’t this description alone sound like nothing but virtue signaling and political pandering?
The mere fact the NJ AG released this directive insults the state’s cops. Most officers already treat all people fairly and equally. The AG apparently feels the need to check off another radical achievement on his political resume—and let cops pay the price.
Disrespect and bias will always exist, but 2019 is not 1959. There seems to be an odd yearning by some that they are not validated as individuals with distinctive extrinsic, intrinsic, or acquired attributes or qualities unless they are as oppressed as their predecessors.
Racialist radicals insult America’s civil rights heroes by denying their successes. Instead, these ingrates fabricate a myth about a mean and racist America—especially the police. Then politicians, academia, and the media reinforce on the public, reporting that oppression, prejudice, bigotry, and racism exists where it doesn’t or at a level at which it doesn’t.
For example, racialists routinely conflate individual racism with institutional racism, often even though their own political party has been the “institution” for decades in many jurisdictions. Individual racism will never end. But when an individual commits a racist act, it’s just an evil act committed by one sick, despicable, and immoral individual.
We now have states ordering their law enforcement officers to ignore human biology as an official policy. According to reporter Joe Atmonavage, “The directive says the general rule is “simple:” Officers should treat the person in accordance with their gender identity, regardless of their gender at birth.”
How is that any different from ordering cops to call the color red blue than it is to order them to disregard a person’s biological gender, where gender is relevant, despite what their eyes, intellect, and commonsense are telling them?
Now, female officers must search biological males who identify as women, and vice versa, even if an officer of the corresponding biological gender is available. And officers should place suspects in holding cells “with those in line with their gender identity or expression….”
For years, cops have been mandated to keep males and females separated whenever possible. Superiors treated it as sacrilegious to violate that policy due to the obvious legal liabilities. In Jersey today, disregarding that prudent standard is fine because it fits a new radical policy narrative, liabilities be damned.
New Jersey is forcing its cops into political reeducation camps to be indoctrinated in a partisan political protocol that ignores science and biology. The state is mandating its officers adopt a selective, politically correct terminology.
Look, if a person born as one gender wants people to consider him or her of the opposite gender, hey, it’s a free country. But when a state government expects cops engaged in law enforcement duties to regard people born as a specific biological gender as something they are not, isn’t that going too far? Isn’t that nothing less than political tyranny?
On the job, I met all kinds of people who wished to identify as something they were not. Most were peaceful, harmless, kind, and respectful. As long as they were not a threat to themselves or others, I returned the kindness and respect. But believing you’re something you’re not isn’t always about biology but also psychology.
I once responded to a trespasser at Seattle’s St. James Cathedral. The man was wearing a cassock (priest clothes) and “identifying” as the Pope. He was calm, cooperative, had injured no one, and had damaged no property. He simply insisted the bishop’s residence was his and refused to leave.
And he had a justification for displacing the bishop: He said he was “Pope John Paul XXXVI,” so he outranked the bishop. I told him the Pope was John Paul II. He solved the mystery and explained, “I’m from the future.” We arrested the man for trespassing. Except for refusing to leave church property, he cooperated with us, so we treated him accordingly.
According to New Jersey’s AG, how should the police have handled this man who appeared ordinary in every other way but “identified” as a pope. Are we on a national drift toward giving special treatment to any person who identifies as anyone or any thing? If not, why not? He was not a pope but sincerely felt he was. How is that different from a person who was born one biological gender but sincerely identifies with the other?
Closer to our specific gender-related discussion, have you heard about the Caucasian biological man living in Florida who identifies as aTuk-Tuk-driving Filipino biological woman? If this Filipina wannabe is no threat to herself or others, she should be left to her pursuit of happiness. But should she have a special legal dispensation that requires cops to treat her as something she is not even in a law enforcement context?
Doesn’t this also raise colliding radical political issues? What about transgender identification, man as a woman, woman as a man, and cultural appropriation? While the biological male Floridian identifies as a woman (which radicals accept), why is it not gender appropriation (which is not acceptable)?
And what about this white person identifying as an Asian person—umm, Rachel Dolozal. How should law enforcement view this and other inconsistencies in political correctness when applying the AG’s new policy?
To wrap up this discussion, when I attended police crisis response training—real law enforcement training, facilitators specifically taught us not to encourage someone’s delusions. But with this edict to law enforcers from the New Jersey Attorney General, isn’t that exactly what the AG is asking the state’s cops to do?
According to New Jersey’s AG, are cops allowed to ask what is legitimate “identificationalization” (if the radicals can make up genders; I can make up words), harmless delusion, or psychological confusion?
Would an officer get fired for even asking such questions, or would he or she (leftists feel free to insert your own pronouns) be allowed to ask honest questions? I suppose that’s the real issue for law enforcement officers and for all Americans.