Police Patience Is Blatantly Selective
Someone in law enforcement finally has figured out that if Noah could wait out a passing shower for 40 days and 40 nights, then it’s possible to camp out while waiting to see if a few armed, loony white guys can come to their senses.
The FBI has been surrounding the freemen on a Montana ranch for nearly six weeks with no bombast, no bullets and no Waco, Texas, style of blaze. It just goes to show what clout white supremacists really do have on Capitol Hill.
A few months ago, Randy Weaver cried at a Senate hearing about how overzealous law enforcement had killed his wife and son in the 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Weaver, a white separatist, is so good at singing the white blues that he has collected $3.1 million from the Justice Department and sympathetic outrage from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who has lambasted the “swashbucklers” in federal law enforcement.
So far, the swashbucklers have been kept in check in Montana. The norm is shuttle diplomacy. Last week, far-right hero Bo Gritz went in to rap with the freemen.
It does not matter if some of them are wanted on federal and state charges of threatening to murder a judge and of writing millions of dollars of worthless checks. It does not matter that despite claiming they are subject to none of our laws, freeman patriarch Ralph Clark and his ranch partners have received $676,082 in government farm subsidies since 1985. It does not matter that they are racists. Negotiators actually are going in and asking these guys what they want.
“Understanding is the key,” said FBI special agent Tom Ernst. “The director of the FBI and the people who have planned this are emphasizing ‘let’s get into the other person’s shoes and walk with him for a while’ and see if we can come to a peaceful conclusion.”
A similar understanding was extended three months ago to rich white loony John E. du Pont. Du Pont, an heir to the Du Pont chemical fortune, had holed up in his mansion in suburban Philadelphia after allegedly murdering Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz. Police cut off du Pont’s heat in the January cold and waited patiently for 48 hours. Du Pont was arrested when he came outside to fix his boiler.
In this case, familiarity bred respect. Many Newtown Square policemen, including their chief, had been trained on du Pont’s firearms range. “We knew he wouldn’t harm a police officer,” one of them said.
Such patience is a good thing. The problem with it is that it is blatantly selective.
No such courtesies were extended last month when sheriff’s deputies in Riverside County, Calif., clubbed two illegal Mexican immigrants with their batons in a beating caught on videotape. Neither of the immigrants appeared to have been resisting the officers.
No such courtesies were extended to a woman who was pulled over for speeding Jan. 8 by a South Carolina state trooper. The trooper was caught on his own videotape throwing the woman to the ground, forcing her face-down on the pavement, threatening to cut off her clothes and cursing at her. The officer was fired. South Carolina Public Safety Director Boykin Rose said, “I can’t begin to imagine what was going on in this trooper’s mind.”
African-Americans still are waiting for a high-profile demonstration of patience from law enforcement.
Last week, it was revealed in federal court that Philadelphia police never pursued a peace offer in their 1985 siege of the black radical group MOVE’s row house. MOVE members were willing to talk as long as three members of the media were present. Instead, police firebombed the house, killing six adults and five children and destroying 60 adjacent houses.
In the Montana freemen standoff, special agent Ernst said, “I can’t comment on the past, but it is very calm here. There is no sense of frustration or deadline involved. When the people decide to come out, they decide to come out.”
But when media member Barbara Grant tried to tell police she was willing to help end the MOVE dispute, “they just turned a cold shoulder to us,” she said.
Law enforcement officials are learning they can wait out a great flood of nonsense and carnage threatened by loony white men. But we will have to wait to see what happens to the next crazy black folks who defy the government. Evidence does not exist yet that law enforcement is “walking in their shoes.”