Why Dallas Happened — Paul Craig Roberts

Why Dallas Happened — Paul Craig Roberts

July 8, 2016 

Why Dallas Happened

Paul Craig Roberts

Is the Dallas police shooting a false flag affair in behalf of gun control? Is it the result of a war veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder? Is the shooting the beginning of retribution for thousands of wanton police murders of US citizens in the 21st century? Or is there some other explanation?

We will never know. The perpetrator is dead. The authorities will tell us whatever suits the purposes of authority.

We could say that the police have brought this on themselves by their undisciplined and violent behavior toward the public. On the other hand, we can hold the police chiefs, the police unions, the mayors and city councils, the governors, prosecutors, and the Justice (sic) Department responsible for failure to hold accountable those cops who murder and commit gratuitous violence against the public.

When police execute someone, the excuse is always something like this: “He reached under his shirt to his waistband. I thought he had a gun. I didn’t want to leave my children fatherless and my wife a widow.” The murdered victim’s wife and children, if any, are of no consequence.

Conservatives, especially those taught to be fearful of crime, have scant objection to police murders. Their view is always: “The police wouldn’t have shot him without cause.” The same bias in favor of the police is why conservative jurors always convict.

The liberals tend to interpret the shootings as racism, so they want to combat racism.

The real problem is that public authorities do not protect the public from gratuitous violence. Therefore, hatred and disrespect for the police are growing. Routine murders by police–several each day, almost all of which go unpunished–are generating the kind of anger that causes people to snap and to reply to violence with violence.

If the criminal justice system applied also to the police, the police would think twice before they wantonly murder.

Being a police officer is not supposed to be risk free. A police officer should be concerned about the public, not merely his own family. We cannot accept gratuitous police violence on the grounds that the officer’s behavior is dictated by his concerns for his own family. If an officer cannot accept the risks of being a police officer, he should find a different occupation.

Police violence is out of control because mayors, prosecutors, and governors are failing the public by refusing to put a halt to it. According to conservatives, punishment deters crime, but they do not apply this to the police.

Police violence is also out of control because of the revolution in police training which teaches police to protect themselves and to subdue the suspect regardless of cost. A number of former police officers have written to me that the reason they gave up the occupation is that today police are being trained to be killers like soldiers.

If a former police officer or someone knowledgeable about this training would describe it and its history, where it originated and why, I will post it on the website.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.