The 13th is a documentary about cops and crooks that doesn't have any cops or crooks. Also absent are victims. Instead, the audience is provided with opinions and perspectives of community activists, politicians, journalists, sociologists and other academia.
I was a police officer for a very long time. From Reagan to Trump. I had more knowledge than a rookie police officer because I had more training and experience. The people in The 13th don't even have the training or workplace experience of first phase training car rookie. Ask yourself, how could they? Isn't it impossible to have workplace knowledge when you don't work at the place?
Los Angeles in the early 1990's typically had more than 1,200 murders every year and most of them were gang related. At the time I remember hearing "If white people were doing this you something would be done, but it's black people killing each other so you don't care." The government acted. Powder cocaine wasn't the problem so it didn't get the attention.
As we witnessed during the pandemic, when prevention and measures are taken to ameliorate or mitigate potentially negative circumstances, the success of the actions are often viewed as being unnecessary or overbroad. The number of homicides in Los Angeles and across the country plummeted. Cops and crooks (but not the people on this show) will tell you it's the same people, over and over, that are doing the crimes. Locking them up for 25 years to life meant they weren't able to commit crimes, over and over....and the crime rate dropped, exponentially...or over and over.
Mass Incarceration is also known as effective police work. Those folks have to get caught before they can go before a jury or plead guilty. A tacit implication runs throughout the documentary that nearly everyone convicted of a crime isn't guilty. They were the victims of an oppressive system. Attached to everything is growing up in poverty, poor education systems, drugs and alcohol, lack of parental guidance.
This notion mass incarceration destroyed or played a role in undermining families should be rejected outright. The suggestion is offensive; things would be better if he was here to sell drugs. After all, we're talking about someone that wasn't conforming when they got arrested.
Everybody knows the difference between right and wrong from age five and up. To reach the level of the majority of people doing state time a person typically has a significant juvenile criminal history, involving juvenile hall, camp, guidance counselors, attorney's, had judges preach to them, etc. They become adults, get caught, get caught, get probation, have probation revoked and reinstated, serve county jail time, get caught, get caught, get probation......eventually the go to prison where they are ultimately labeled a victim of a racist oppressive system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8&t=1542s
The notion that law enforcement is immune from racism is ridiculous. I never witnessed blatant, obvious racism from another police officer. But, I probably wouldn't because I'm black. I knew who was racist at work the same way I know who's racist at the bank or supermarket. Over the years I've had discussions with retired officers about the people I suspected of bias. Specifically, targeting black criminals because they were criminals.
It's difficult to complain about a person shooting at your if you are giving them the ammunition.
In many ways that summarizes The 13th. "Yeah I did it and I would have got away with it if you weren't racist."
I didn't use a probable cause to arrest as my standard. I used proof beyond a reasonable doubt. A jury uses reasonable doubt so I didn't want to present a probable cause case. As a result, I only arrested people that were guilty. I saw them do it or the facts and circumstances were so obvious no police training was needed to know a crime happened and the particular person did it. I arrested thousands of people during my time in law enforcement. I testified in a tiny percentage of my cases because the people pleaded guilty. People plead guilty if they are guilty, otherwise they use their free lawyer and fight the case. People plead guilty if they know they are going to lose, and, if you know you are guilty and the evidence against you it's foolish to continue.
I could have gone to work and done nothing for 28 years, 2 months and 22 days. In the eyes of The 13th I would be "...the good cop out there..." Instead, (for a good 20 years) everything I did was to continue inmate labor, peonage or otherwise inflict harm and oppress others.
The criminals in this documentary sold drugs to member within their own community. They knew that crack was extremely addictive and responsible for thefts, child abuse, murder, blight. They didn't care and they said so. "I don't give a !" They were called predators. They were.
If it's big, grey, has a trunk, eats peanuts and lives in a zoo, it's probably an elephant.
The educational system being blamed has a problem. It doesn't work for kids that don't go to school. So far it only teaches those that attend class. The 13th ignored the multiple warnings, the "if you don't graduate from high school" the "at least get yourself a high school diploma" the "you'll never get a good job if". These folks often get a GED in jail but for years are preached to and preached at. They want to do things "their own way". They got kicked out of class, sent to the principals office, the vice principals office, expelled, sent to continuation schools and eventually drop out entirely. After a life of crime and incarceration a documentary called The 13th comes along and waives a magic tinker fairy wand and, poof!
Officer Larry is someone The 13th documentarians have met. Officer Larry (not his real name) works in beat 12 for three months, beat 9 for three months and beat 6 for six months. During that time almost no crime is reported. "Did you want to file a report or did you want to let us know about it?" "How about extra patrol....because a report's just a piece of paper. I'll put in an extra patrol request."
Officer Larry has been a cop long enough to know which reports to take and which ones to kiss off. He knows 90% of people never get a copy of the police report so he documents the incidents he must, like things going to insurance companies with a major national business as the victim. Officer Larry tells the John to go home to his wife and refuses to take the report about the nice young woman "..saw walking and decided to give a ride." Officer Larry doesn't take rape reports from prostitutes. To him they should call OSHA. His reasoning is he doesn't look for prostitutes when they rip off Johns so he's not looking for angry customers. Officer Larry will get back in his police car and drive away if you are drunk because he doesn't want to deal with you, and because no one will ever find out about it. "10-8 with a warning" That's what he'll say to dispatch.
I was Officer Larry, when I felt like it. So is every other officer, when they feel like it. Perhaps not to the extent of the prior paragraphs, but in some cases, to the extent of the examples provided and worse.
You don't know what a police officer doesn't do at work. The crimes not reported. The criminals that get away because they aren't chased. The only victim statistical category worth anything has to do with murders, traffic collisions, domestic violence and missing persons. On a department level, where the personality traits, work peculiarities and other nuances are known, yes...it is possible to get a total understanding of crime. But you have to work there. That has to be where you shower, dress and go to. Where you spend twelve or more hours every day between work and the drive. Where you do that for years and years.
Instead, we get The 13th. Folks, "this is what we have to work with" is the same as wrong. The data and information they provided for most things related to crime was a combination of inaccurately low colliding with undeterminable unknown. It doesn't matter what number they come up with, it's too low and furthermore, the true number can't be known.
How about this? Laws are written in the name of the people and are there to regulate conduct. Without a written law saying it's illegal, it isn't illegal. People want murder, rape, child molest, etc. to be classified as crimes. They wrote it down, so be it. Those laws cover things like drugs. The purpose of the law isn't to prevent misconduct, but to state what is or isn't allowed and assign penalties for violations.
So how about society saying some people break the law, do so willingly, and sometimes get caught. Why don't we stop making excuses for them? People aren't arrested as an institution. People aren't arrested as a system. They are arrested at 11:11 pm, with a gun in the car, after driving 64 mph in a posted 40 zone, and while under the influence of weed and alcohol. People are arrested on an individual basis.
The only thing they have in common is an industry of experts. The experts don't work in law enforcement and they aren't hardened criminals. The experts have a degree and published a book. They are asked questions and provide answers. The audience listens. However, only the cops and crooks know that the experts are talking about things they haven't done, at places they've never worked.
I worked patrol and I was a collision reconstruction subject matter expert. If someone came to me and asked about bank check fraud and forgery I'd tell them who to go talk to about it. Turn on the TV and what do I see...a person with a PhD that knows more about me than me.
The documentary barely touched on the generation of crack babies that were held and rocked by foster parents. It completely ignored the millions of victims of crime directly or indirectly related to those incarcerated. It is Dunning School, lost cause Millennial (late Gen X) history retelling.
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