Category: Tragedy-free policing

See our “in the news” items relating to “tragedy-free policing” in the feed below.

Identified by Thomas Lemmer, “tragedy-free policing” as a misleading and ultimately dangerous political worldview. The view draws upon a utopian desire, and holds the police should never take any actions that could cause any harm, their actions should never use any force, and the police must act without ever making a mistake.

Within the defining article on this topic, “Tragedy-Free Policing or Else: The Need for Critical Thinking,“ Lemmer provides a detailed analysis as to how this worldview is unreasonable. A comparison to the medical field demonstrates how a “tragedy-free medical system” is not demanded. Why? Because tragedies occur within the practice of medicine. Inherently, we know how insistence on the perfection of tragedy-free medicine would crush that profession. As with medicine, such a worldview is unrealistic in policing. In reality, the police are regularly thrust into circumstances that are already tragic or at grave risk of quickly turning tragic. Given human fragility and imperfection, there will be tragic incidents involving the police.

Anti-police activists have coupled an “or else” to the demand for “tragedy-free policing,” and in so doing created an unattainable policing standard. With this “standard” unwittingly accepted by many, and advanced in the media, whenever the police are involved in an incident that has a tragic outcome, then rage, violent protests, and looting are falsely “justified.” Acceptance of this standard causes severe damage to the police-community relationship that is essential for public safety. A weakened level of public safety is an environment where lawlessness follows, and what we know with certainty is this: Lawless place are always inevitably violent ones.

Our founder also addressed how “tragedy-free” policing has been utilized to demonize the police in the article, “Demonizing the Police Breeds Lawlessness.”

The two articles linked above are highly-recommended. The posts below relate to the topic and those articles.