(This article appeared as an op-ed in Florida Today, this date: 6/8/21 )

by Marshall Frank

Whoever coined the adage “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” was spot-on, because it’s true.

Firearm-related crimes often involve guns that are stolen or purchased illegally. Background checks have little effect on getting to the root of gun crimes, because such checks mostly involve people who are law-abiding. We rarely find violent criminals or the mentally ill via background checks, because the black market gun business is easily accessible for people with criminal intent. Mass shootings continue to terrorize Americans.

We are spinning in circles instead of getting to the heart of the problem, which is two-fold: unshackling law enforcement to reduce crime and properly dealing with the mostly ignored mentally ill.

Why do we try to reinvent the proverbial wheel when we have evidence of success? Do we study what works and what does not? Politicians in every city and state should educate themselves about the astonishing accomplishments of Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg in New York City,  between 1994 and 2013, and learn what measures actually worked. That’s when gun crimes in NYC dropped to record lows and people were safer. The rising anti-cop movement may cause some officers of today to look the other way, if they can.

Without question, severe mental illness is the most complex of problems. It’s where our leaders have fallen short of facing facts. Suicides, gun crimes and mass shootings are many times a product of psychotic individuals. But we do nothing, except perform background checks. Then, there’s jail.

Times have changed drastically over the decades. In the 1960s, mentally disturbed people in Florida who showed symptoms of severe psychosis could be held in a psychiatric facility for further testing and evaluation. If determined by a judge to be a danger to himself or herself or others, that person could be remanded to a psychiatric institute for long-term care, with periodic reassessments.

I was one of those officers who brought such people to court. It was a process that worked far better in 1964 than in 2021 — for everyone.

Thus, prisons and jails have assumed the role of mental institutions. A myriad of studies have concluded over 26% of prison inmates today suffer from severe mental illness. One study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice found that the mental health crisis is greatly pronounced among female prisoners, whereby 75% of women incarcerated in jails and  prisons suffered from mental illness.

It takes only one deranged person to kill 10, 20 or 50 people in a single event. In 2020, 19,379 died by gunfire, including 611 in mass shootings, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive. That does not include more than 24,000 suicides by gun.

In 1955, more than 558,000 patients occupied beds in mental hospitals. Today, that number has diminished to 35,000 in a period when the national population more than doubled, from 158 million to 331 million. So where is the extreme overflow of 2021 coming from?

Correctional facilities are struggling with the reality that they have become the nation’s de facto mental health care providers, although they are ill-equipped for the job.

While America is rife with sick, homeless, drug addicts, gangsters and sexual predators, we are apparently unable to help the mentally disabled, until they’re caged like animals. According to HUD, there are more than 580,466 homeless living in squalor today.

Millions of mentally challenged people who are fighting afflictions on their own commit crimes just to eat. Crimes translate to victims. It is the victims who we must protect and serve. I fear we are not doing a very good job at that.

In America 2021, the bottom rung of all mental health treatment is prison. 

Who cares? We better.

Marshall Frank is a retired police captain and author of 15 books. www.marshallfrank.com

(Published in the Op-Ed page, Florida Today, 5/24/2021)

                                                                                DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE ABOUT SYSTEMIC RACISM

                                                                                                                 By Marshall Frank

Americans are often made to believe that systemic racism is widespread throughout our nation, particularly on the part of law enforcement agencies. It has become a constant drumbeat. Purveyors want the public to believe that black people, in particular, are the victims of such attitudes.

     Not only is that grossly exaggerated, it’s simply untrue. Not in 2021. If anything, police today go through a plethora of training and education to ensure such biases do not exist. Yet, the media and some leftists relentlessly invoke fervent assertions that cops are programmed as monsters who seek out blacks for unfair treatment or physical abuse. Some holdovers from the old days, may privately harbor ill-feelings toward blacks, (or other minorities). But to allege that police are systemically biased across America is absurd.

     Cops are among the finest public servants in America. I’ve been immersed in law enforcement for sixty years, half that time an active duty cop in Miami-Dade, Florida, where I served for 30 years, working Homicides 16 years. Police officers, white, black, male and female, or whatever, are all breathing, feeling human beings with needs and responsibilities like all citizens, while raising families and caring for the oppressed.

     Number one priority on a cop’s list is to come home every day in one piece from the streets – mentally and physically.  Police officers pray daily hoping they will not have to engage in any violent confrontations. Thirdly, police (for the most part) are immaculately professional, and protective, as they inch closer to a lifelong pension at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

     There are 800,000 cops in America. It is their job to run toward, not away from, the most dangerous of scenarios to save lives and enforce laws to keep us safe. That’s not a choice, it is required. They risk their lives, not just for paychecks, but to protect you and me, and people of all nationalities and colors. On rare occasions, a cop will screw up. But it is not systemic.

     The 911 system reports roughly 240 million calls a year are dispatched for police, fire and medical needs. Of those, 12 million (or five percent) involve potential dangers for police. That’s a huge number of volatile conditions in a single year. In 2020, 119 officers lost their lives in the line of duty, mostly from firearms. This doesn’t include 145 police officers who died from contracting Covid19 on the job.

     The last thing any cop wants to do is participate in any form of violent action. Sometimes, there is no choice.

     I know about systemic racism. It was around me in early childhood growing up in segregated Miami, until well into my police career. When hired, racism prevailed in Miami-Dade. And, it was definitely systemic. Less than one-percent of the department’s police were black. Rest rooms, drinking fountains and restaurants were unwelcoming to blacks. They weren’t the only victims of racism. Some Miami Beach hotels displayed desk signs that printed, “Gentiles Only.”

     But changes occurred. Eventually, many folks worked jobs shoulder to shoulder with others and schools were integrated. Police agencies also changed enormously. The notorious beating death of Arthur McDuffie by a ring of Miami-Dade cops in 1979 ignited the positive changes that followed. The department modernized rules for hiring and training, with emphasis on treatment of minorities. In the early 1980s, blacks became important members of management teams in police agencies throughout America. Today, 44 percent of the police chiefs amid the fifty most populated cities are black. Systemic racism has evolved into a 180 degree turnaround.

     No cop wants to hurt anyone, black, white or purple. But it’s true that blacks, in general, are disproportionately victimized by violence far more than whites or Latinos. According to the FBI, 89 percent of blacks killed in 2018, were killed by other blacks.

     Racists? I don’t think so.

     Better to say: All Lives Matter.

                                                         —————————————————————

Marshall Frank is a retired police captain and the author of 15 books. www.marshall frank.com

In the November 6^th issue of Florida Today, the Associated Press issued an article about the renaming of a road in Miami to honor 17-year old Trayvon Martin, who had been shot and killed in Sanford, Florida in 2012. The article would have us believe that Martin deserved the honor because he was an innocent kid wrongfully murdered by George Zimmerman, a local resident serving as a neighborhood watchman. Readers would naturally assume Trayvon Martin was victimized by a racist-born madman. Martin was considered by some as a hero, especially because he was unarmed. It was also emphasized that he was black and Zimmerman was not. Sadly, the often media fails to tell the whole story.

     Trayvon Martin was no hero. He was in Sanford visiting his father, because he had been suspended from school for ten days for possessing illegal drugs. Zimmerman spotted the lanky teen after sundown, walking through the neighborhood wearing a hoodie. Some might conclude that Zimmerman was wrong to follow the teen. True or not, that doesn’t justify Trayvon Martin’s actions from there.

     Based on a myriad of evidence and eye witnesses, it was determined that Trayvon Martin angrily turned and confronted Zimmerman, a pudgy 29 year-old. Martin suddenly punched Zimmerman in the face, knocking him to the sidewalk, then sat on Zimmerman’s body flailing more punches, battering his head on the concrete. Bloody trauma to Zimmerman’s head and face supports that accusation. Then, and only then, fearing for his life, Zimmerman removed the pistol from his clothing and fired one shot.

     Had Zimmerman failed to act, he would likely have been the corpse and not Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman knew that.

     As a retired 30-year cop who handled hundreds of assault cases, including the jailing of some police officers, I fail to grasp how and why Trayvon Martin should be honored when, in fact, he was committing a deadly assault on the watchman.

     These kinds of cases and the manner in which the media sometimes portrays an event, is what stirs hatred, particularly when it’s unwarranted.

     Per Associated Press: “The teen was unarmed and walking back from a convenience store when he was shot by George Zimmerman.”  

     There was far more to that story.

     This is also reminiscent of the killing of 18 year-old Michael Brown by Police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. The officer was ruthlessly vilified by the press and other citizen groups. One cable newscaster I watched went into an outrage stating, “A police officer shot and killed an unarmed boy.”

     That “unarmed boy” had just robbed a convenience store. Minutes later he was confronted by Officer Wilson on patrol, telling him to get back on the sidewalk and off the street. Weighing over 300 pounds, Brown suddenly punched Officer Wilson through then driver’s window, then reached in and grabbed the cop’s pistol, unsuccessfully.  Dazed and bloodied, Officer Wilson stepped from his car and warned the large teen to halt, that he was under arrest. Brown turned around and began charging Wilson in a menacing manner. Wilson fired shots. Brown went down, dead.

     These are facts as determined by a Grand Jury and a number of on-scene witnesses. Hate had nothing to do with it.

     This case spawned the group known today as “Black Lives Matter,” forging the perception by millions that it was a “racist” assault upon an innocent black teen. That simply was not true. Zimmerman came from a racially mixed family.

     Then began the ill-conceived chants among haters, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” as though the officer killed Michael Brown for folly. Officer Darren Wilson actually did nothing wrong. But he and his wife still live in seclusion for fear of retribution by hate mongers. His police career is finished.

     We also remember the New York City haters, marching the streets and chanting: “What do we want? Dead Cops?” over and over…while those targeted cops had to stand by, face to face, sucking it up, knowing how the press and local politicians stood by in accord. 

     The media has an obligation to be fair, neutral and non-presumptuous. Stirring emotions with errant reporting or purposeful omissions, means the reporters are guilty of manipulating facts in order to produce a volatile story.

    These are two incidents in which the media and people-mobs acted upon ill-conceived falsehoods, wrongfully castigating the innocent. Sometimes the bad guys are actually good, and the good guys are actually bad. It’s much about preconceived conclusions.