Mourning Bands On: Cultural Changes Effecting American Policing

Mourning Bands On is an accessible journey into the hypersensitive world of today's American law enforcement. The reader is brought into the law enforcement world through an introduction to the history, function, and development of the American police model. With an understanding of policing's role in American society, the reader is then immersed into the raucous and contentious cultural upheaval which American policing is currently experiencing. Using well-known examples, the reader is challenged to consider how American culture is affected by critical incidents and the portrayal of those events in our media intensive world. The reader will review the cases in the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, as well as others. The cases are presented as a narrative of events supported by the findings and legal conclusions of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Each incident is reviewed with a view of how the incident effected American society and brought change to American culture and thus policing. The reader will experience how American policing has changed through legislative, societal, and cultural pressure resulting from the reviewed critical incidents. With an appetite for more, the reader is encouraged to further explore the relationship between societal norms and American policing. The work concludes with a final challenge to the reader. How do we, as a society, reform American policing to move forward after this unprecedented period of cultural change? The author offers several possible reforms to enact, what can you add to the conversation?

About the Author :
Troy Bobbitt is a retired U.S. Border Patrol Supervisory Agent. He began his career with the federal government in December 2003. During his tenure in the U.S. Border Patrol, he was stationed in both Texas and Minnesota. While stationed in Texas, he performed field work, and immigration checkpoint duties, as the field agent assigned to maintain the station's detection devices, and he served as an interdiction K9 handler. He was promoted to supervisory agent in 2008 while assigned to the International Falls, MN Station, a northern border station. In 2011, he transferred to the Duluth, MN Border Patrol Station where he served the remainder of his career. Northern border stations are usually staffed with fewer field agents and management persons. The small staff numbers mean supervisors in these small stations perform many additional duties involved in maintaining the functions of these offices. They also work directly with all personnel in the station as well as with personnel in neighboring stations. Prior to his entering duty with the U.S. Border Patrol, he was an American Bar Association Certified Paralegal for eight years in Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN. During his work as a paralegal, he worked in numerous areas of law, including employment, worker's compensation, personal injury, and 'No Fault' insurance coverage. He served as the paralegal to the managing partner and office manager in his last two assignments. These assignments meant he managed client files as well as managed other staff in the office. He completed his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Criminal Justice at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota in 1990. Yes, criminal justice is categorized as an art in educational circles, as it changes with society and culture. After graduation, he pursued a profession in law enforcement. At that time, law enforcement was undergoing significant changes, pursuing staffing models more representative of society. These were the days of affirmative action and as a result, the hiring practices tended to favor minority candidates. He spent the next several years working as a security officer and then as a surveillance specialist in a large casino enterprise. Through a career spanning 20 years in law enforcement, he reported for duty each day, armed with a handgun issued by the government. Unlike the movies or television shows, he only had to use that weapon on one occasion, to euthanize a deer struck by a vehicle. Other than the one incident, the only other time that weapon was fired was during regularly scheduled training exercises. During his service, agents trained every three months (quarterly) with their firearms to maintain their skills. During their quarterly training, they discussed and reviewed incidents and scenarios, always trying to develop new skills and remain flexible in their thoughts, reactions, and observations. Complacency, monotony, repetition; these are law enforcement officers' demons. Doing the same training over and over does not develop skills, it creates patterns. Early on in his career, a senior officer gave him this advice: "Police work is 99 percent boredom and repetition, and 1 percent sheer terror. You train to deal with the 1 percent when it comes."