 I'm traveling this weekend, but in light of Thursday night's shooting of police officers in Dallas, we decided to run a talk I gave entitled, Whatever Happened to Peace Officers. The growth of the state, the militarization of police forces, and the increase in violence both by and against officers are all interrelated and complex. So as libertarians, we should avoid the easy emotional cliches and soundbite answers. We need to be better than the left and right who hijack every tragedy and service of their narrative. So when Rodney King famously asked 20 years ago, why can't we all just get along, it turns out that it starts with dialing back state power. Thanks for listening. For many people, police represent their only real tangible contact with the state. Sure they pay their taxes and they comply with a billion petty government rules and regulations, but in their day-to-day lives, walking around at home, at work, driving in their cars, they don't necessarily see or feel the heavy hand of government. So for the average law-abiding American who's not likely to come in contact with, let's say, the president or their local congressperson or even their local mayor, police serve as the most visible reminder of the state and its presence. And hopefully most of us don't interact with police much at all, maybe the occasional speeding ticket or fender bender, but for those Americans who do find themselves interacting with police today, the actions, attitudes, and mindset of those police officers is likely to be very different and have changed very dramatically from, say, 30 years ago. And I would say it's probably likely to have changed dramatically for the worse. Perhaps as recently as 30 years ago, we still maintained at least a peace officer archetype in our national consciousness. So the question is, whatever happened to peace officers? Well, today when we use the term peace officer, it sounds antiquated. Now dated, we might as well say floppy disk or buggy whips, I suppose. And I'm sure that some of the younger people here today have never really heard the term used in conversation. But in the 1800s, part of the 1800s, and really through the 1960s in this country, the term was widely used in America to apply generically to lawmen, sheriffs, constables, troopers, marshals, and the like. But today, the old moniker of peace officer has been almost totally eliminated in popular usage, and it's been replaced at first by police officer, now the more in vogue law enforcement officer. Now the terminology has certain legal differences in some settings, and in some places, peace officers and police officers are actually different people with different functions, different jurisdictions, different powers to execute warrants, but nobody says peace officer anymore. And it's not just the coincidence. The evolution of language, particularly when it's driven by our legal and political and media class, can have powerful implications for all of us. And I submit that the morphing of peace officers into police officers is more than just linguistic. Now the archetype of a peace officer is mostly fictitious, of course. You know, sheriffs and old westerns come to mind, stern lawmakers, they used to carry cults called peacemakers. But the problem is the why and herbs of western myth weren't always so peaceful. And of course, at least in movies, and they often use those peacemakers to shoot up the place. So, and while most Americans today can't really relate to the old west, we do have enough institutional memory. By that, that's a polite way of saying older folks, to paint a pretty accurate picture of the trusted police officer of Norman Rockwell's America in the first half of the 20th century. So fictitious or not, whole generations of Americans grew up with an apple pie view of the peace officer as a friend, not as an agent of the state to be feared. Of course, Sheriff Andy Taylor of the Andy Griffith Show is perhaps the best, most facile example of what it once met, at least in the American psyche, to be a peace officer. And it's really neat if you ever have some spare time, you can go on YouTube and find an unbelievable amount of Andy Griffith Shows. But as a peace officer, Sheriff Taylor exhibits what I would say are four key traits that profoundly distinguish him from most modern police officers. First, Sheriff Taylor is part of his community. He does not see himself nor do others see him as somehow apart and separate from the residents of Mayberry. He does not exhibit an us versus them mentality that seems so prevalent in many police officers today. He does not see himself first and foremost as a government employee or a union member. He does not resent the people he protects, but instead considers himself a fellow citizen. In other words, Andy Taylor is a true civilian police officer. Second, he truly seeks to maintain peace within Mayberry and sees his job as keeping the town safe, happy, quiet, peaceful. He's a peacekeeper, not an enforcer. In fact, he seldom uses force. He does not want a crime wave to hit Mayberry to justify an increase in his salary or budget or staff. On the contrary, he would view an increase in local crime as a personal failure. He's apt to downplay rather than exaggerate the importance of his job. His focus is on creating an environment that discourages crime in the first place. Third, in every instance, Sheriff Taylor attempts to smooth over and diffuse problems rather than escalate them. He invariably looks for simple, common sense, polite answers to conflicts rather than using his legal authority to threaten or arrest. He rarely concerns himself with technical application of law, but rather uses his judgment to solve problems and make them go away with the least fuss possible. He never makes a bad situation worse. For example, in one memorable scene, Andy and his feckless deputy, Barney Fife, have been summoned to the dilapidated home of an angry man who's causing a disturbance. And upon seeing the two officers arrive with their car, the man promptly begins firing at them with his rifle from a second-story window. Now, Barney reacts as you might expect. He pulls out his own rifle and calls in reinforcements and sort of barricades himself behind the door of the squad car, preparing for a big shootout. But Andy, by contrast, sort of knows the man to be somewhat cranky and thinks he can talk him out of it. So he crouches over and zig-zags and makes his way up to the door of the house and somehow enters the house. And then emerges in short order with the suspect, who's now much calmer. And Andy has, as usual, talked him out of it. And no arrest is made, if you can imagine that. Fourth and finally, Andy genuinely cares about and tries to help the people of Maybury, having their best interests at heart. See, for example, his gentle treatment of Otis, the town drunk. And as a result, he has the trust, admiration, and respect of the townspeople. Now, of course, as I mentioned, Andy Griffith's show was fictitional and there's no doubt that many, many small town sheriffs in America over the decades have probably been anything but peaceful. Yet it's fascinating that just a few decades ago, Americans could identify with the character of Sheriff Taylor as a recognizable ideal. So we fast forward to 2014, and clearly Norman Rockwell's America is mostly gone. Obviously, the situation today is very different, and we all know that police have suffered a very serious decline over the last several decades, both in terms of their public image and the degree to which average citizens now often fear police officers rather than trust them. Now, as it is said, some minority and poor communities have long been less trusting or perhaps less naive about the real nature of police. But today, that more jaundiced view has started to make its way into middle-class consciousness. Now, the subject of police misconduct in the growing militarization and lawlessness of police forces could fill many hours, so we won't try to cover such a broad topic today. And several libertarian writers are doing a tremendous job documenting police malfeasance. My opinion, William Norman Grigg is the best out there on the subject, and I really encourage you to look him up because he's doing important work. But today, allow me to mention a few particularly egregious recent examples of police escalating and harming rather than protecting and serving. The first case you might have heard about is very recent. Heartbreaking, the 90-pound mentally ill young man was very recently killed by three so-called law enforcement officers from three different agencies in the town of Southport, North Carolina. He was apparently having a schizophrenic episode and brandishing a screwdriver when police arrived in answer to his own family's 911 call for help. Well, some help. The first two officers managed to calm him down a bit, but the third officer escalated, the third officer arriving later escalated the situation, demanding that the other two officers use their tasers on this poor young man. And once his body hit the ground, this young person was brutally shot at close range and killed by the third officer for reasons that remain unclear. So here we really see modern police at work. Escalation, aggression, a lack of common sense, making a bad situation worse, overriding concern for the safety of police officers, regardless of the consequences for those being protected. These are not the hallmarks of peace officers to put it mildly. A second case you might have heard about happened in Fullerton, California in 2011 and Will Grigg has written extensively about this, horrific and brutal police crime, where a homeless man was sadistically beaten and suffocated by about five or six different officers after a routine loitering stop. He was a fairly slender, a build, and he did have a history of mental health issues, but the toxicology report done after his death found no trace of drugs or alcohol. And it really seems just an instance of six officers wildly overacting to a homeless man who was perhaps loitering outside of a private business. Now this attack took place over almost 10 minutes and ultimately the man died. Well, ultimately the man suffered numerous broken bones in addition to the constriction of his airway by the force of six men laying and sitting on him during this beating, a beating during which, if I might add, he begged and pleaded for his life but to no avail. And once he was adequately subdued, the police made sure to take their good time in summoning an ambulance for him. And when the ambulance did come, they made sure that it attended to the very minor injuries of the police officers first. Of course, the officers claimed that they were merely using justifiable force and criminal charges for second to remurder and manslaughter against two of the officers involved. Recently resulted in an acquittal and as a result of that acquittal, the district attorney dropped the charges against a third officer. Now, depending on one's point of view, these officers may be seen as nothing more than vicious gang members guilty of murder or for a virulent law and order type, they may be seen in exceedingly charitable light simply as overzealous cops involved in an unfortunate situation that got out of hand. But in no universe can they be seen as peace officers. In addition to the countless individual cases of police malfeasance, we've also seen the troubling development that demonstrates how far we strayed from the peace officer ideal. And that is, of course, the increasing militarization of local police departments. I saw an interesting story last week about the relatively small city of Fort Pierce, Florida, 42,000 people population. They recently acquired, the police there recently required an MRAP vehicle which stands for Mine Response Ambush Protection Vehicle for the bargain price of $2,000. And the reason for this is that the US military is unloading hundreds of armored tank-like vehicles as operation enduring freedom winds down. And it's also unloading thousands of Afghanistan and Iraq combat vets into the ranks of local police and sheriffs. The Fort Pierce police chief states that the military was pretty much just handing them out. You know, it is overkill until we need it. So that was his quote. Now a little closer to home, this is I guess amusing to me somewhat, a similar type of vehicle known as a bat, or ballistic armored tactical transport has found a home just down the road here in Lake Jackson, Texas, hometown of Dr. Paul. When Ron and Carol arrived there in the late 60s, I think the population was only eight or 10,000. It's now about 27,000. Now this bat employs thermal imaging cameras and it holds up to a dozen officers which is puzzling considering that Lake Jackson has a crime rate both through violent and property crimes of less than half the national average. Now Ron and Carol undoubtedly think of their hometown as a bucolic little place where they raise their five kids, but apparently it's ripe for a full scale riot, necessitating an armored response. So you know, we joke, but of course these are merely anecdotes. We should not be surprised when military hardware, former military personnel, and ultimately a military mindset finds its way into our local police departments and increased federal funding of otherwise cash strapped municipalities and counties only weakens the connection between peace officers, police officers, and the citizens they ostensibly serve. So how did we go from peace officers to police officers to law enforcement officers anyway? How did we go from protect and serve to apparently escalate and harm? And what's behind the militarization of police departments and the rise of the warrior cop as one writer, libertarian writer puts it. Well, as Austrians and libertarians, we should hardly be surprised when we certainly don't need a sociological study to understand what's happening. The deterioration in police conduct and the militarization of local police forces, quite simply and quite predictably mirrors the rise of the total state itself. We know that state monopolies invariably provide worse and worse services for more and more money. Police services are no exception. When it comes to your local police, there is no shopping around, there is no customer service and there is no choice. Without market competition, market price signals, market discipline, government has no ability nor incentive to provide what people really want, which is peaceful and effective security for themselves, their families, their homes, their property. As with everything government purports to provide, the public wants Andy Griffith, but it ends up with the terminator. Now there is no lack of Austrian scholarship in this area. I would call this area the intersection between security services, state monopolies, public goods, so-called, and private alternatives. But if you're interested in the topic, I would initially direct you toward two excellent primary sources to learn more about how markets could provide security services that not only produce less crime at a lower cost, but could also provide those services in a more peaceful manner. My first recommendation is an obvious one. It's Murray Rothbard's Power and Market, which opens with a chapter entitled Defense Services on the Free Market. So right off the bat in this chapter, Mr. Rothbard points out the inherent contradiction between property rights and the argument that state-provided police services are a necessary precondition to securing such property rights. Quote, economists have almost invariably and paradoxically assumed that the market must be kept free by the use of invasive and unfree actions, in short, by governmental institutions outside the market nexus. In other words, we're told that state-provided police services are a necessary precondition to market activity. But Rothbard points out that many goods and services are indispensable to functioning markets, such as land, food, clothing, and shelter for those market participants. And so he asks, must all those goods and services therefore be supplied by the state and the state only? Well, no, he answers. I'll quote again. A supply of defense services on the free market would mean maintaining the axiom of a free society, namely that there be no use of physical force except in defense against those using force to invade personal property. This would imply the complete absence of a state apparatus or government. Defense in the free society, including police production, would therefore have to be supplied by people or firms who, A, gained their revenue voluntarily rather than by coercion, and B, did not, as the state does, irrigate to themselves a compulsory monopoly of police or judicial protection. Another excellent starting point is Professor Hans Hoppe's essay, The Private Production of Defense. Here Dr. Hoppe makes the case that our long held belief in collective security is nothing more than a myth. And then in fact, state protection of private property, our system of fleets, police courts, and jails is actually incompatible with property rights and economic reality. Speaking at the Mises Institute Brazil conference in 2011, Dr. Hoppe summarized the fundamental problem with state police services as thus, and I quote, the state is a monopolist of taxation, i.e. it can unilaterally, without the consent of everyone affected, determine the price its subjects must pay for the state's provision of perverted law. However, a tax-funded life and property protection agency is a contradiction in terms and expropriating property protector. Motivated as everyone is by self-interest and the disutility of labor, but equipped with the unique powered attacks, state agents will invariably strive to maximize expenditures on protection and almost all of a nation's wealth can conceivably be consumed by the cost of protection and at the same time to minimize the actual production of protection. The more money one can spend and the less one must work for it, the better off one will be. Well, this is really government in a nutshell. Both Rothbard and Hoppe discussed an insurance model for preventing crime and aggression, which makes sense from a market perspective. Rothbard posits that private police services likely would be provided by insurance companies, which already ensure the underlying lives and property involved. And as Rothbard states, it would be to their direct advantage to reduce the amount of crime as much as possible. Now Hoppe takes this insurance concept farther, arguing that, quote, the better the protection of insured property, the lower are the damage claims and hence an insurer's loss. Thus to provide efficient protection appears to be in every insurer's own financial interest. Obviously anyone offering protection services must appear to be able to deliver on his promise in order to find clients. That is he must possess the economic means, the manpower as well as the physical resources necessary to accomplish the task of dealing with the dangers, actual or imagined of the real world. On this count, insurance agencies appear to be perfect candidates. Now compare this with the growth model of most local police departments, which continuously lobby their city councils for more and more money and more and more officers. Now admittedly, the private provision of police and security service is a complex and controversial subject, and we're only touching on it today. The rest is sure that if you read further, both Rothbard and Hoppe address many of the common objections raised when discussing private police. Attending issues like political borders, differing legal systems, physical jurisdiction and the possibility for violence among competing firms, the actuarial problems behind insuring against physical aggression, free riders and so forth. Certainly Rothbard and Hoppe's prescription is radical and perhaps hard to embrace for the average person who has always grown up conflating government with security. But increasingly, society is moving in the direction of private security regardless. Consider for example, what we now see as complex insurance networks with vast indemnification arrangements that cross borders that are especially useful to multinational firms that operate around the world. Private arbitration of disputes. We see a rise in gated communities and neighborhoods utilizing private police, excuse me, private security agencies and even technical solutions, fraud prevention mechanisms provided by private businesses like eBay and PayPal. And I think these trends can only intensify as governments, whether federal, state or local, find themselves more and more cash strapped and must spend more and more of their budgets just to service entitlement pension and debt promises with not much left over for security. So in conclusion, I'll simply say that market activity is peaceful activity while state action always implicitly or expressly involves force. If we want our police to act more like Sheriff Andy Taylor and less like military aggressors and stormtroopers, we must look to private models. Models where our interests are aligned with those of our security providers. Only then can we bring back true peace officers, private security providers focused on preventing crime and diffusing conflicts in cost-effective and peaceful ways. So I'll leave you with this. It's a line from a otherwise forgettable 1997 movie, City of Industry, but it stars the great Harvey Keitel and any movie with Harvey Keitel in it I think is worth running at least. But incidentally, it borrows the best line of the movie from a much better 1942 movie entitled This Gun for Hire with Alan Ladd playing the bad guy, or one of the bad guys, the Harvey Keitel character. But anyway, Harvey Keitel's character is seeking out a man who killed his brother. And so Keitel breaks into the house of the man's girlfriend, holds her at gunpoint, demanding the whereabouts of the killer, and she claims ignorance and asks Harvey Keitel why he doesn't go to the police. So after a dramatic pause with Harvey Keitel almost leering at the camera, he says in his best bogart, I'm my own police. So folks, it's a brave new world out there and we're not all Harvey Keitel, so let's hope it doesn't come to that. Thank you very much.