I may be a disgruntled broke down narc. But my views aren’t as out there as some would hope. Here are observations by a retired LAPD Sergeant who blogs under the name Jack Dunfey. My take is that law enforcement command has been taken over by time servers, self-promoters and the shy. “Ride to the sound of the guns!” Has been replaced by: “Run and hide until the sound of gunfire ceases.” Uvalde wasn’t an anomaly; it is an indication of the new standard in police work.

Here is what he has to say:

Police officers seeking to advance within their departments know the next promotion can be scuttled by even a whiff of controversy, so they conduct themselves so as to avoid any incident where things might go wrong. Some of them had a pattern of being the last to arrive at a hot call (if they arrived at all), and I note that one of them is now the commanding officer of the same division where, while assigned there as a new sergeant years ago, she wouldn’t have left the station if it was on fire.

Jack Dunfey, LAPD Sergeant (retired)

If you are among those still perplexed by the failure of the police in Uvalde, Tex., to respond decisively to the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School, recent news from Chicago may help you understand how it may have happened.

On Saturday afternoon, Chicago police received a Shotspotter alert that ten gunshots had been detected at 615 South California Avenue, on the city’s West Side. An officer monitoring the Shotspotter system accessed a camera in the area and saw that the shooters had exited a white Dodge Charger with a black hood. The three men returned to the car and drove off. The first officer to arrive at the scene found a man dead from gunshot wounds.

A further description of the Charger was broadcast to officers, including its license number. The car was reported stolen, and hours earlier it had been involved in a shooting in which no one was injured.

Eight minutes after the initial report of the shooting on California, patrol officers in the nearby Lawndale neighborhood spotted the Charger and tried to pull it over. The Charger sped off with the officers in pursuit. When the Charger sped west into the neighboring town of Cicero, a Chicago P.D. sergeant instructed the officers to terminate the pursuit. As of this writing, the murder suspects have not been arrested.

Chicago is more than a thousand miles from Uvalde, but it is no less affected by the type of sclerotic, risk-averse management philosophy that allowed hundreds of cops to stand by outside that unlocked classroom door while children and teachers bled to death inside. . .

. . . I’ve been writing about this trend toward timidity in police work for years (most recently here), and the trend seems to have accelerated since George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis two years ago. Police officers seeking to advance within their departments know the next promotion can be scuttled by even a whiff of controversy, so they conduct themselves so as to avoid any incident where things might go wrong. This strategy is successful for many, and as I look over the current roster of Los Angeles Police Department command staff, I see several who I knew as patrol officers or newly appointed sergeants. Some of them had a pattern of being the last to arrive at a hot call (if they arrived at all), and I note that one of them is now the commanding officer of the same division where, while assigned there as a new sergeant years ago, she wouldn’t have left the station if it was on fire.

Jack Dunfey, LAPD Sergeant (retired)

Jack Dunphy is an excellent writer and analyst of law enforcement, coming as he does from a multi-decade career as an LAPD cop. What he leaves out of his essay is the origin of the timidity in policing. That is the up-ending of law enforcement and the justice system by radical Marxists who claim the entirety of it is merely an instrument of white supremacy. The fact that a non-white might commit a crime in the first place is trivial. Worse, it’s justified in their warped view of the world.

The biggest piece of shit to wear a police chief’s badge, that I ever knew was a product of LAPD. He parlayed that beginning to a series of police chief jobs and came to Texas. People mistakenly pronounced his name as gullshit. He was a patrol officer during the Watts riots of 1965. That event led to all LAPD officers being called to duty. Gullshit ended up guarding a hospital in the San Fernando valley, miles away from the riots. He bragged about how he wrangled the assignment and laughed at all his peers who ended up in Watts. He was damned proud of himself.

I had a conversation with another chief of police. I compared Henry Lee Lucas (the serial murder) to Gullshit. I concluded by saying that there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Henry Lee Lucas was a finer more morally upstanding individual than Gullshit. The Chief rocked back as if I had struck him. He reflected a moment and then agreed that I could be right.

Part of the problem is the nature of the job. Police administrators hate controversy the same way that the devil hates holy water. In some circles police officers blowing up assholes is controversial. Police chiefs like the status quo to the extent that crime is acceptable, until it isn’t. For every administrator like Sheriff Grady Judd, there are hundreds of timid souls claiming to be chiefs that will duck and dodge.

A pussified reporter questioned why Polk Sheriff SWAT
shot 68 times a worthless criminal sub-human,
…..
“That’s all the bullets we had!”, answered Sheriff Grady Judd.

“I not only have no regret, I’m pretty excited about telling you that’s exactly what would’ve happened. Make no mistake about it, there’s nothing about politically correct in a gun fight. There’s nothing about politically correct when you are keeping people alive and well and safe. And the people of this community and these law enforcement officers come first. I meant every word of it then, and I mean every word of it now. If you [criminals] surrender peacefully, that’s the way we prefer it. If you start pointing guns at us, you can not only plan on, but you can guarantee that we are going to shoot you [criminals].”

Lee County, Florida Sheriff Grady Judd

These two-faced assholes call themselves chief. They may or may not grudgingly support their officers who are involved in a shooting. At the same time, they will mourn the passing of the felon who tried to kill them. It is not tragic when a turd comes in second in a gunfight. How about this, “Mama look on the bright side, you will no longer have to spend money you don’t have to pay his bail or attorney fees. You don’t have to wonder about where he is or what he is doing. He is pushing up daisies.”

Oh well, I’m glad I’m out of it.