But what would happen without police?
I don’t think I wanna live in that world.
I hope there’s some space between “police randomly bark inappropriate orders and tase anyone who doesn’t immediately comply” and “no police at all”.
Who the hell in this thread was calling for getting rid of all police?
Even the most vocal critics of American policing (raises hand) don’t advocate for eliminating the police entirely. Just re-imagining it with proper training, de-escalation, respect for civil rights, elimination of racist officers, proper oversight and substantial consequences for bad actors. I would love to live in that world.
I wish alot of Doctors weren’t overbearing, arrogant assholes. I like to have them handy when I need them, as well.
You can’t regulate human foibles and behavior.
I’ve been reading this with interest and trying to get to the end, but people are posting more quickly than I can keep up. Therefore, I haven’t read all of the posts above.
First of all, I appear to be the only one who is an honest-to-God high school band director with decades of experience and hundreds of football games under his belt. I taught for 28 years in small towns in Texas. I have been to hundreds of games just like the one in the video. I’d like to enter into the conversation what I believe a band director would think. (I do not know Mr. Mims or anyone else involved in this, nor have I attended a football game in Birmingham.)
First of all, the notion that the band directors had a beef and were trying to one-up each other is likely nonsense. I have met band directors I don’t like and, shockingly, there are band directors who don’t like me, but we would NEVER use students to settle some sort of personal score. If word got out that I did such a thing, I would be horribly embarrassed in front of my peers and it would just be unthinkable. Besides, if I don’t like the other director, what do I care what he/she thinks? My band is better, full stop.
Much is said about the safety of the students – that they (the band kids) needed to clear the stadium for their safety. That’s not how it works. If I’m in a stadium where I am concerned for the students’ safety (first of all, why am I there?), my goal will be to keep the students together and contained. The best way to do that is to GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO DO, like, I don’t know… PLAY A SONG! So, having the band play may very well be my acting in the best interests of the students. Let the riff-raff clear out of the stadium while my kids (and the other band) is playing some awesome exit music. Then, when the way out is less congested, we move en masse to the buses.
Someone up thread said that no one knew how long the song was. Please. Most such music is not subtle art music. One can tell where the song is going. Of course, the band director knew how much further 'til the end. He may have known that it would take less time to let the song play out than to cut off in mid-phrase. A CNN article I saw said that the band was in two places, so that further complicates getting the band to stop in short order. Letting the thing end on its own was probably the shortest path to utter silence.
The band director had a vision of how the song would end. So did the police officer. Often, people will ignore outside stimuli as they “finish the mission”. I watch plane crash investigation videos and one common theme is “get down-itis”. The pilots are committed to a landing when a go-around would have been the wiser choice. Disaster ensues. I think, for the band director, he likely had a similar mindset. He wanted to get to the end of the song (as did his scores of students). He knew how close the end was and that one more minute wasn’t really going to end in disaster. Oops. The officer had a similar mindset. The band is going to stop playing or else. Or else happened. Oops.
Just a bit of patience on the part of the officers would have prevented this entire thread from happening.
The rest of the Western world seems to be able to keep the peace without police doing all the terrible things that seem to be commonplace here.
I wish the police were as well regulated as doctors. I wish all that we were dealing with were overbearing, arrogant asshole police officers. I wish that police couldn’t hide behind qualified immunity when the screw up, the same way doctors can’t hide behind any kind of immunity when they do.
You absolutely can. Every single profession does. It’s not fool proof, but nor is it something you waive away as something that just is part of doing business.
There are always gonna be bad actors. Always.
Exactly true.
Imagine giving airline pilots the same waive off when they don’t live up to their professional standards. Oh, they just screwed up, crashed, and killed 200 people… oh well, there are always going to be bad actors.
There are bad pilots. And it’s happened.
Like I said you can’t control every tiny thing.
That band director wasn’t right. He should have stopped when the cop told him to. He should’ve thought of the children. He should’ve been a better example.
The kids are the ones who will pay. He’ll move on. Write a book. Do the talk show circuit. And who can tell what kind of director the school will be able to get next.
Sad.
Yes, he should have thought: “Do I want to stand up for myself and my band when we are in the right? Or do I want to show the children how bow down before an authority figure who is issuing moronic demands because his ego is as large as this stadium”
What message should he have chosen? Respect Authority and follow orders no matter what? This is why your society is currently so fucked up.
Old news: The Selma Alabama lunch counter protestors in 1960 were also disrespecting authority. Some of them even violated the laws of the time. Respecting arbitrary authority no matter the circumstances is not something I want to teach my children.
And when they find a bad pilot, he/she is no longer a pilot. When they find a bad officer, s/he is, at best, bounced from one department to another. Here we have multiple bad officers. Not one will face a consequence. The department has already circled the wagons.
Sad.
First of all, outstanding post. Thank you.
Maybe I misunderstood but I took “one up” to be more like rallying back and forth in a “we’ve got the spirit, yes we do” kind of way not a “I’m better than you” kind of way.
And as a doctor, we have in our group disciplined physicians for unprofessional behavior. Also required remedial classes on skills of dealing with … challenging patients.
We are the professionals in the room. It is nice when patients are nice but we are the ones who are being held to professional standards.
We do not just excuse inappropriate behaviors by our own because a patient wasn’t respectful enough.
Amen. In some countries the police are automatically respected as agents who work to make a bad situation better. In others they are feared and loathed, seen as power-mad authority figures protecting the elite at best and corrupt at worst and the last people you want to see in a tense situation.
The US used to be among the former but, as body cams have become more common and everyone can now see what the underclass has been saying for generations, that automatic respect has been seriously eroded to the point where ACAB – all cops are bastards – has become a common epithet.
There is a Youtube channel, Audit the Audit, in which interactions between police and citizens are shown, gleaned from other channels and websites. The particular statutes involved are referred to along with case law, both state and federal, which might affect a ruling or lawsuit. At the end a score is given for the officer(s) involved as well as the citizen(s).
Clearly, there are episodes where a citizen is looking for trouble or has no idea what authority the police can wield in the situation (I lookin’ at you, SovCits) and turn a simple traffic stop into a trip to the hoosegow, but there are also episodes where the police come onto an easily resolvable scene full of piss and vinegar and escalate a situation into a lawsuit or worse. One remarkable episode state troopers had a traffic stop on a motorist with more than thirty guns in the car including two on his person – he was an instructor of some kind. Both sides got an A score.
I’m so glad to know that. I’ve have very good luck with doctors myself. One very arrogant surgeon but his assistant was nice enough for the both of them. I had a successful outcome.
When you’re working with children in an educational setting you need to pay much more attention to the behavior you display. You are, whether you want it or not a role model.
Teachers, band directors or Administrative staff are human beings.
It’s probably the hardest profession because of the ramifications of their actions can have lifelong effects on the innocent. I feel for them.
But I’m also gonna be the first to say when I see behavior that is childish and defiant in an adult tasked with teaching/protecting people’s kids.
He was wrong. He was wrong thinking. He was wrong acting. He caused a bunch of crap for nothing . And now a whole class of band students have learned to defy authority and fight those who are there for their safety.
I’m not convinced the police were just being assholes. For all we know the administration asked them to get the stadium cleared out immediately. There is more to this story.
It will come out in the wash.
I never meant to suggest that the directors had a “beef” with each other. More like a friendly rivalry. ETA: Like someone up thread said, the “We’ve got spirit, yes we do…” type of rivalry.
But a later article I read stated that the directors had decided before the game that at the end of the game each band would play three songs, taking turns, with the visiting band going first (the visiting band pretty much always goes first). So all they were doing was following the plan they had decided on before the game. The visiting band had finished their last song and were probably getting ready to leave, and the home band was playing their last song.
Indeed. This is marching band, not orchestra. Their repertoire is going to be mostly popular songs arranged for band. When I was in band we played stuff like “Land of 1000 Dances” and “Gimme Some Loving”, and since it was the height of the swing revival craze, “Jump Jive and Wail”.
When we identify bad actors we should remove their badges and prosecute them. Until that happens your argument is basically that we have no control over police behaving badly.