PRIVATIZING THE POLICE, DRIVING PHILOSOPHY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT, AND SUCKING CHEST WOUNDS - 079

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This week, on the Writer's Detective Bureau: privatizing the police, the driving philosophy of law enforcement and sucking chest wounds. I'm Adam Richardson and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.

Welcome to episode number 79 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. This week, I'm answering your questions about the perils of privatizing police work, the driving philosophy of law enforcement, and how you can differentiate your characters by how they view their jobs and what happens when a screwdriver is used as a weapon to the chest. But first, I need to thank Gold Shield patrons, Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com, C.C. Jameson of ccjameson.com, Larry Keeton, Vicky Tharp of vickitharp.com, Chrysann, Larry Darter, Natalie Barelli of nataliebarelli.com, and Craig Kingsman of craigkingsman.com for their support. I also want to send a huge thank you to my Silver Cufflink and Coffee Club patrons for supporting this episode. You can find links to all of the writers supporting this episode in the show notes at writersdetective.com/79. To learn about setting up your own Patreon account for your author business or to support the show for as little as $2 per month. Visit writersdetective.com/patreon.

Jason is back again this week and he writes in asking about the theme of soft localized collapse in law enforcement options. So Jason says, "I'd like to hear about what infrastructure and say, creative legislation may currently exist that allows for privatization of law enforcement. In the absence of such infrastructure, would you mind taking a kick at explaining what that might look like, what national or statewide events might cause it, and maybe best and worst case scenarios as to how traditional law enforcement personnel like yourself might view such things? Sheepdog instincts go haywire? Some of you guys put on masks Batman style where jurisdictions overlap? Feel free to go crazy with the speculation. Let's date ourselves again. Remember "Kuffs?" Christian Slater, I'm going to use a condition like the Police Special idea and run with it. I'd like to make it sound like law enforcement evolution gone awry, but eerie and believable."

Well, just to start as for law enforcement dawning masks like in the, "Watchmen," I don't see that happening when it comes to uniformed patrol. The whole reason we have badge numbers and name tags is because the public believes in accountability from its police. But that said, I have donned to balaclava quite often when I was serving search warrants while working in covert operations. So while there is a balance of overt versus covert, when it comes to operating the field, at least at the investigative level, not the patrol level, we don't get to hide our names in police reports or our faces when taking the stand in court. But yeah, good old Christian Slater as fourth wall breaking, San Francisco Patrol Special Officer Kuffs, circa 1992. I went back and watched a few YouTube clips of Kuffs and I'd actually seen that movie a few times when it first came out. I'd totally forgotten that the actor Troy Evans played police Captain Morino. Now, you might recognize Troy Evans as Detective Johnson, AKA Barrel, half of Crate and Barrel, that detective duo on Amazon's TV show, "Bosch." He's such a great actor.

Yeah, Patrol Specials still exist in San Francisco to this day, but City Hall and modern policing are slowly phasing out that police force. That, as far as I'm aware, is one of a kind. The San Francisco Patrol Special Police force has been around since 1847, which would've been smack in the middle of the San Francisco area's Gold Rush, and it was formed as a type of community policing force that was paid for by the local businesses and other private clients within a Patrol Special's beat. Now, that beat itself was actually a proprietary geographic area that the Patrol Special owns and can ultimately, sell when it comes time to retire to another Patrol Special. Back then, it was a novel way to subsidize extra policing in a big and growing city. But now with policing, in California especially, under continual mandates, requirements, and scrutiny as to their powers and expectations and authority, I fear that the Patrol Specials are losing a battle of attrition.

Although they still wear a police uniform, carry a gun, and a San Francisco PD radio, they no longer have peace officer powers of arrest, which means the ability to arrest based upon probable cause. Rather, their arrests are made under the citizens arrest section of the law, meaning their arrests are ones made solely when they observe a crime being committed. But unlike a security company, they patrol the public streets within their beats. So the Patrol Specials are in a bit of a legal gray area somewhere between a private security guard and a fully sworn police officer. This is a rare example that rather than being a sign of the future, Jason, is more reminiscent of a time gone by, a time with fewer litigants, lawyers, and cops. Now, a lot of interpretation to US constitution has become law since 1847 and policing is one of the few areas that modern government is reluctant to privatize and not for lack of trying. Fire departments and a significant number of our prisons have been privatized, which is a whole other ethical discussion for another podcast episode.

But the bottom line is that outsourcing our justice system to private entities is inherently against our best interests. Companies exist for profit and they will fail to exist if there is a prolonged financial loss, but neither profit nor loss should ever factor into how a police agency goes about upholding the constitution and seeking justice. That said, I can certainly see certain lobbying groups pushing for privatization of police forces in the name of fiscal responsibility. So is it really a far-fetched idea? I don't think so. But without turning this into a political discussion, let me just say that I honestly believe that removing that last brick from the wall will be the Jenga moment of Western society as we know it, where a dystopian future comes to fruition. The constitution was founded on the belief that no one owns the police force. When someone does tyranny soon follows, which brings us to Jason's next question.

So Jason had another question I wanted to get to, "Is there a single driving philosophy or source philosophy behind Western law enforcement? Do you mind touching on this, it's general history, or places I could go to learn this? I think I want to know, so that investigators with radically different understandings of the way law enforcement should work due to their relative positions on the timeline of its evolution can still find themselves hashing things out from understandings in common." And then he goes on to say, "So I've read this maybe twenty times and it makes less sense each time. I just can't figure out how I want to phrase this. If these questions make too little sense, I won't whine if this message goes in the round file." Oh, it's definitely not going in the round file, Jason. I know exactly where you're trying to go with this.

First and foremost, the core philosophy or doctrine of our criminal justice system was stated by William Blackstone in 1789 and he said, "The law holds that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." And by that, he means one innocent person be convicted. Then some years later, in 1895, the US Supreme Court echoed this where the court stated, "It is better to let the crime of a guilty person go unpunished than to condemn the innocent." So that right there is the North Star of our entire criminal justice system, or at least it should be and it goes to why I answered the first question the way I did. But to get back to how you can characterize how different investigators can hold radically different approaches to this, but still have something in common can come down to how each views their role in the community, what ultimately their duty entails, and how best to go about it. The easiest way to boil that down is Letter of the Law versus Spirit of the Law.

So, which is the Right thing to do and Right, I mean with like the capital, "R," for Right. So what's the right thing to do? To give a ticket or to give a warning? How you go about justifying what the right thing to do is, is a matter of personal ethics or philosophy. To really dig into this because, because honestly, hey, you asked, start learning about consequentialism or utilitarianism, which are pretty much the same thing and then compare that to deontology, which I know is a mouthful. It's spelled D-E-O-N-T-O-L-O-G-Y. For utilitarianism or consequentialism, check out the writings of Stuart Mills and Jeremy Bentham. This construct presents the ideas that the right thing to do is based on the outcome that brings the greatest good, which always makes me think of the movie, "Hot Fuzz,"-

Sergeant, you should be ashamed. Calling yourself a community that cares.

Oh, but we do care, Nicholas.

It's all about the greater good? The greater good.

How can this be for the greater good? The greater good.

How can this be for the greater good? The greater good. Shut it.

... which might mean giving a warning. For deontology or Kantian ethics, read up on Immanuel Kant or K-A-N-T. Kant's ideas were that you can only assess whether the act itself is right by which decision is your moral duty regardless of the outcome. There's always an asterisk to these things, right? There's also Kant's categorical imperative. So it's one where once you figured out what your moral duty is, you have to ask the question, "Is that moral decision one that is universal?" So not only is the action your moral duty regardless of outcome, is the moral decision moral every time regardless of who is involved? And again, it doesn't have to do with the outcome. We're not looking at the consequences. It's a much more black and white way of thinking, but it can arguably be more fair. Everyone who speeds gets a ticket. Everyone that is driving drunk goes to jail. Doesn't matter if you know the police chief. Heck, I hope you call them and ask for bail money because you're going to jail.

How does that fair compared to a utilitarian that gives the chief's friend or kid, let's say a ride home because of the greater good? The chief isn't embarrassed in the papers. My bosses don't get mad at me. No one got hurt anyway. Those might be the justifications that a utilitarian thinking cop tells himself. But like any parent of a teenager will tell you, not laying down the law only encourages the bad behavior. That chief's kid now knows he can drive drunk and not get into trouble. So he does, and this next time he kills a family of four and the public learns that you gave him a break the last time he got caught driving drunk. I'm not saying one philosophical construct is better than the other, rather they are tools in our mental toolbox for how we go about handling our calls and our cases.

In the course of a day, one situation may be handled under the spirit of the law and the next under the letter of the law. That is what we mean when we say officer discretion. If we only wanted letter of the law decisions, we could send out robots or only use cameras to mail you speeding tickets, but if you create a pair of characters that are kind of yin and yang, they have different views on the right way of handling things, I think you might be onto something. Just keep in mind that despite their policing tendencies, they will both likely see the end goal as the same, which is to get to the truth of whatever case they're investigating, which goes back to that North Star we just talked about.

One trope to watch out for is the, "We need to make an arrest. I don't care who it is," narrative; usually, the overly angry boss that is feeling pressure to close a case. That is not how police work is handled. Imagine Clarice Starling saying she wrapped up the Buffalo Bill case by arresting some schmo that looked good enough to be a serial killer just to make her boss and the news media happy only to have the real killer just kill again. Not only did you condemn an innocent man and leave a killer on the loose, you've lost the public's trust because you either lied or you're just completely incompetent. So please, mayors and news reporters don't dictate how we make arrests in our cases. They can certainly ratchet up the pressure, but the evidence drives the case. If the leads dry up and no one is identified as the killer, they become cold cases or open unsolved cases.

Now, before I move on to this week's next question, if you're looking for more on how to differentiate your investigator characters, I urge you to check out in the back list, episode 60 of this podcast and listen to where I talk about techniques of neutralization. In that episode, I'm phrasing those techniques of neutralization as how bad cops justify their actions, but it isn't just bad cops that do this. We all use these defense mechanisms at some point or another and it can help inform how you write dialogue between two characters. Now, I know that you, Jason, are writing a more futuristic and possibly sci-fi ish story. So if your character is very matter of fact and only believes the evidence that's right in front of him and what it logically tells him, he may take on a what is called a denial of victim mentality, which you'll hear about in episode 60, when the homeless man that was the victim of a monster attacking him when he reports it to your investigator.

Now, before I move on to this week's next question, if you're looking for more on how to differentiate your investigator characters, I urge you to check out in the back list, episode 60 of this podcast and listen to where I talk about techniques of neutralization. In that episode, I'm phrasing those techniques of neutralization as how bad cops justify their actions, but it isn't just bad cops that do this. We all use these defense mechanisms at some point or another and it can help inform how you write dialogue between two characters. Now, I know that you, Jason, are writing a more futuristic and possibly sci-fi ish story. So if your character is very matter of fact and only believes the evidence that's right in front of him and what it logically tells him, he may take on a what is called a denial of victim mentality, which you'll hear about in episode 60, when the homeless man that was the victim of a monster attacking him when he reports it to your investigator.

That detective is going to treat that homeless man like a quack and just brush him off most likely because he's essentially denying the fact that this guy's claim of him being a victim. Does this make him a bad cop? Probably not. How would you react if a homeless person adamantly claimed to have been attacked by a monster? But understanding the mentality of your characters is absolutely key in creating believable interactions in dialogue. By the way, if you haven't listened to episode 60, these techniques of neutralization were actually gleaned from juvenile delinquents justifying their bad actions. So this might sound pretty familiar if you've ever raised the teenager.

Margo Millar asks, "If someone were stabbed with a long shafted screwdriver while sexually assaulting someone, what would the physical reaction be? Might it puncture a lung? Could it kill them? How long would it take before he died? What would he sound like? Would he spit up any blood? Thank you for considering the scenario." Thank you so much for the question, Margo. I'm happy to consider it. I can say that I have seen more dead bodies than I can even count and certainly, my fair share of people that are in shock having just suffered catastrophic injuries, but I don't know that I'm necessarily the best resource to answer your question. I do, however, have a phenomenal resource for you. Much like the Writer's Detective Q&A Facebook group and my friend Patrick O'Donnell's Cops and Writers Facebook group, there's actually a Facebook group for fiction writers just for this kind of trauma question.

It's the Trauma Fiction Facebook group and there, you will find doctors, nurses, paramedics, and all sorts of other medical experts that are happy to answer your trauma fiction questions. Just search, "trauma fiction," in the groups section of Facebook and I'll also link to it in the show notes, which you can find at writersdetective.com/79. But rather than just dump you off on another resource, Margo, I will at least try to answer your question as best I can. A punctured lung is certainly possible, as is the chance of nicking a major organ or artery. The punctured lung would be incredibly painful because as the lung deflates, the cavity where the lung has been starts to fill with air, making that lung less and less effective with every breath. There would be a noticeable wheezing sound as this is what's called a sucking chest wound. The immediate first aid treatment for this kind of injury is to apply an occlusive dressing.

I suppose it's possible he'd spit up blood, but he'd be much more likely freaking out about not being able to breathe as every breath he takes would collapse the injured lung even more until an occlusive dressing is applied. What I mean by occlusive dressing is a wound dressing that is occluding or covering the hole with what is essentially a one way valve. You want the air that is in the chest cavity, meaning the air between the collapsed lung and the rib cage that is coming in through the hole created by the screwdriver, you want that air to be able to get pushed out of the chest, but we don't want to allow any more air back in. So imagine taking a square piece of Saran wrap or cling film and placing it over the hole in the chest and then taping down three out of the four sides of that Saran wrap.

Now, if the bad guy now turned patient inhales, the suction is going to hold that cling film tightly against his chest preventing outside air from coming in through the hole. But then when he exhales or does a Valsalva maneuver, that bearing down kind of pressure, air in the cavity would get pushed out under the flap of that untaped side of that cling film. Obviously, the occlusive dressings you find in an IFAK, sorry, an individual first aid kit, aren't actually a roll of Saran wrap and duct tape, but most of us do carry them as part of our individual first aid kits as this is a pretty common type of injury when we're talking about gunshot victims. As far as how long it would take for him to die, that's going to be up to you. Life and death is a very fickle thing. Sometimes people live through events that seem impossible to survive and then other times people die from injuries that you'd swear wouldn't even cause a bruise.

But here lies the rub: the most unbelievable things only happen in real life because if you try to write something unbelievable happening in fiction, your readers will have a hard time taking it at face value and will fault the story as unbelievable. So a long shafted screwdriver can certainly do enough damage to kill someone, especially if thrust into the right place on the human body. But it isn't as easy, physically speaking, as you might think. And no, I'm not going to tell you how to do it, only how to save their life. All right, so don't forget to check out the Trauma Fiction group on Facebook. I will link to it in the show notes.

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