This week I’ve started practicing the Soul Trait of Responsibility for the first time. It seemed fitting somehow, as I met the Tuesday deadline for the second round of edits to my manuscript. The Hebrew word for the Responsibility Soul Trait can be translated as either “after” or “other.” The “after” translation leads one to interpret the soul trait in terms of consequences – we are responsible when we understand and account for the consequences of our actions. The “other” translation brings our attention to the needs of other people, and thus we are responsible when we are looking out for other people.
I also thought of Responsibility when Rahm Emmanuel fired the police superintendent for the suppressed video of Laquan McDonald’s killing. Emmanuel is the antithesis of responsibility, throwing anyone he can under the bus when it seems clear to me that his interest was served by keeping the video out of the spotlight during his re-election campaign. But it is not for us to kibitz Emmanuel’s spiritual curriculum. I am more interested in the “blue wall of silence” culture in the Chicago PD and other police departments, in which police officers close ranks to cover up wrongdoing by other officers by remaining silent, making false statements, or destroying evidence. Here is my Mussar perspective on the Chicago Police.
Mussar teaches that Responsibility governs our sensitivity to the needs of others, and of the consequences of our actions. Chicago PD shows neither.
Officer Jason Van Dyke, the shooter, has a history of excessive force complaints. One resulted in a $350K payout for excessive force, and in this case, -‘s mother was paid $5M. Here is my solution:
Have 10% of the funds for police excessive force or wrongful death settlements come from the police pension fund.
A police officer’s pension is highly prized, and having a portion of the settlement money come from the pensions gives every officer an incentive to get cops with repeated complaints like Van Dyke off the force. Imagine what would happen if it could cost every officer money if a cop starts to beat up a suspect? The other officers would say “knock it off” to nip it in the bud before it became a systemic issue.
Usually it is a small number of bad actors who account for the majority of excessive force complaints. For example, none of the 8 other officers on the scene fired their weapons, but all of them participated in the cover up. Let’s make a clear consequence, to give each of them an incentive to practice Responsibility. Instead of thinking of their fellow cops first, they must be retrained to be responsible to the public. And I don’t mean lecture training – I mean pocketbook-consequences training.
What do you think?
iAMResponsible
Greg
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