Is it OK to judge Salvador Ramos and Payton Gendron for the worst things they ever did?
According to a basic premise of restorative justice, you wouldn’t want to be judged by the worst thing you ever did – so don’t judge others the same way.
It’s a popular concept that has caught on with criminal justice reformers and the media, especially public radio and legacy press like The New York Times and Washington Post. As a result, it’s not unusual to find sympathetic stories on prison inmates that neglect to say in any detail what the subjects did to land in prison.
In case you have already forgotten their names, Ramos killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, and Gendron killed 10 people at a Buffalo, N.Y. supermarket.
If you had already forgotten their names, it’s understandable. In Texas, the story has shifted to how the school police chief stupidly ordered officers not to immediately enter the classroom and kill Ramos.
In Buffalo, Erie County District Attorney John Flynn has charged a man with making terrorist threats after he called a restaurant to complain about a pizza and threatened to shoot up the place.
“Let this case send a message out there to any tough guy or anyone who wants to be cute out there ... or threatening to do any harm or putting something on social media,” Flynn said. “I will find you and I will arrest you and I will prosecute you.”
Meanwhile, the media and politicians will prosecute guns and inquire of the killers: Were they bullied? Were they unloved? Did they get everything they needed?
In the media, blame always shifts to guns. They are a tangible thing that can be seen and touched and presumably controlled. Not like human behavior, which is a mystery. Mental health – what’s that? Are you sure you would know it if you saw it?
There’s a naïve belief that guns create evil. Get rid of the gun, and bad people will be nice or at least won’t be able to hurt you as easily. Actually, they might get creative and more deadly – like Timothy McVeigh. Haven’t heard much from him lately. The death penalty does have some advantages.
Guns make a convenient enemy. The prosperous classes, whatever their political affiliation, don’t need them. They live in safe neighborhoods and can hire private security.
There has always been a class element to the gun debate.
It wasn’t surprising that after the massive Las Vegas shooting at a country music festival, a CBS vice president went on Facebook and said she had no sympathy for the victims because, as country music fans, they were probably “Republican gun toters.” (Hayley Geftman-Gold was later fired.)
The Uvalde shooting inspired comments on Texans’ reputation for being a gun-friendly state.
“What happened to your good guy with a gun?” was a frequent taunt.
As it eventually turned out, one of the good guys with a gun – a Border Patrol agent – defied the incompetent school police chief and shot Ramos.
Here in Portland, gun-haters might want to remember the gun owners living amongst them. It wouldn’t be surprising if some of the public gun-haters are private gun owners.
The foreign press, particularly in the United Kingdom, offered a less predictable perspective on mass shootings than the U.S. media, which tend to immediately denounce the NRA anytime there’s a high-profile killing.
The Spectator’s Freddy Gray summed it up: “The Uvalde school shooting won’t change a thing. The more America falls apart, the more Americans want guns.”
We’ve been falling apart since the 60s. Occasionally, someone is offered a pulpit to try and provide different insight, but usually it is reduced to gun nuts vs. gun haters.
Eight years ago, The New York Times acknowledged in a rare story that not all gun owners are white, right-wing Republicans. It cited a blog called Black Man With a Gun, written by Rev. Ronn Blanchard. In 2014, he could have been talking about Ramos, then 11 years old, when Blanchard quoted a firearms instructor named Marty:
“It ain’t about the guns folks, it is about the breakdown of American society. Many kids these days grow up outside of a 2-parent family. Add in dysfunctional adults raising dysfunctional children, who grew up practicing killing people on video games and what do you expect. Additionally, top it off with instant celebrity and add a good dose of mood altering drugs, taken over a long period of time, and the recipe for disaster has been made. Guns have always been available to people who want to kill. It’s just there are a lot more people wanting to kill.”
Why are more people wanting to kill? Perhaps murder is simply more acceptable. Even cold-blooded murderers invite sympathy.
Here’s another cliché of criminal justice reformers: “Hurt people hurt people.”
In other words, if you’re hurt, you will want to strike out and hurt back. This concept grew out of trying to help young, black guys who had been hurt in gang shootings. Now there are various programs based on the concept of “healing hurt people” that have nothing to do with young black guys or gangs. It’s a form of blame shifting.
In some states (including Oregon) prison inmates are no longer called prison inmates. They are AICs – adults in custody. Out of prison, being formerly incarcerated can qualify as gold-star “lived experience” status among government agencies and nonprofits looking to hire employees dedicated to serving the “most vulnerable.”
Recently, The Oregonian published a consultant’s report on the state Department of Corrections in which agency managers cited various negative factors that impact their work. Among them was a change regarding who is considered the victim.
“Focus has shifted to the trauma/harm” of the person who is incarcerated instead of the crime victim, the report stated.
This shift towards sympathy for the offender has been going on for well over a decade. The only thing surprising about the report was that corrections officials were criticizing what has become progressive gospel to help end mass incarceration.
Just this past week, the Oregon legislature held a series of Senate and House committee meetings to hear invited testimony on issues that may come before legislators. At the House Interim Committee on Judiciary, there were reports about Policing, Equity and Trauma-Informed Practices.
Staci Yutzie, who manages the Center for Policing Excellence at the state Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, reported that the agency is looking for a full-time teaching position devoted to equity. The agency also sent two instructors to a national training program on Fair and Impartial Policing that Yutzie said has “undergone rigorous academic evaluation” taught by a woman who is a “national expert” in “implicit bias in policing.”
Committee members listened politely. Only state Rep. Kim Wallan (R-Medford) asked the kinds of questions that my Portland Dissent colleague Richard Cheverton might have raised. For example, how do you define equity?
“Defining what equity is, yes, we found this also to be a challenge,” Yutzie replied.
She started off with a summation that equity training is anything that “leads to fair and impartial outcomes” then went on a convoluted word search including “touch points,” “narrative,” “gender bias,” “21st Century policing” and “procedural justice.”
Yutzie has never been a police officer. She has a doctorate in education. The closest she has come to law enforcement is working as a juvenile probation officer. https://www.linkedin.com/in/staciyutzie
How do all her words about equity translate into real police work? Is it OK for a cop to be biased against someone breaking the law? Is it OK to be biased against someone like Salvador Ramos?
Had a Uvalde-type shooter entered a Portland school, and had the Portland police charged in and shot him dead (they’ve been known to do that), the hue and cry in the media could have been: “Did you have to kill him? He was mentally ill!” or “You shot him because he was BIPOC!”
This is not as ridiculous as it sounds. Portland is currently under a Department of Justice settlement agreement because police here have used excessive force against the mentally ill.
Crime and punishment aren’t what they used to be. Everybody knows it — especially offenders.
On June 2, while Uvalde was burying their dead, news of the funerals in the Orange County Register shared the same page with another story: John Hinckley, Jr., the man who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan, will be completely free from all court oversight on June 15.
Hinckley was confined to a mental hospital in Washington for more than two decades after a jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Now 67, he has been given longer stretches of freedom to move about the community since 2003. In 2016, he moved in with his mother. Soon his freedom will be complete.
“He’s been scrutinized. He’s passed every test. He’s no longer a danger to himself or others,” said U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman at a hearing that Hinckley did not attend.
“I am confident that Mr. Hinckley will do well in the years remaining to him…,” the judge said. “This is the time to let John Hinckley move on with his life, so we will.”
The judge said Hinckley has exhibited no violent behavior or interest in weapons. Since 2020, he has worked as an artist and maintained a YouTube channel for his music.
Hinckley used a .22-caliber revolver, for which he did not have the required license, to shoot Reagan, a Secret Service agent, a police officer and press secretary James Brady, who was forever paralyzed on the left side of his body.
Brady died in 2014 – 33 years after he had been shot, and his death was ruled a homicide. Hinckley did not face new charges.
The wire story I spotted didn’t even mention Brady’s profound, life-changing injuries.
How soon before Hinckley is interviewed in the media about gun control? If he says the right things, he could be treated like a hero.
It might give Payton Gendron a new lease on life.
Evidently this sort of non-cooperation noted below is common in many cities. When first I read this the principal was named, twice. He seems to have been edited out now. I've included a link to what I assume to be a Seattle Lars Larsen guy:
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/seattle-police-say-principal-refuses-cooperate-after-school-break-in/ROH6PNDXIVF4JAFD6ZTIJ537UY/
Here he is, Baileykaze:
https://mynorthwest.com/3504742/rantz-seattle-principal-stonewalled-police-after-man-terrorized-school/
This is such good stuff. Keep up the good work. Portland needs you.