'Just say the right pronoun!' How one cop-cam video exemplifies the absurdity of 'hands-off' policing



Cop-cam videos are one of my favorite guilty pleasures. Seeing the badly behaved and the thuggish get what’s coming to them is a rare treat in an America that has abandoned personal responsibility and consequences for bad behavior.

But the pleasure turns to frustration too often. In most of these videos, the police waste minutes to an hour repeating their orders to a struggling suspect who has no intention of obeying.

Any parent of a toddler knows that you don’t negotiate with terrorists.

Take the latest viral example: a blue-haired college kid of indeterminate gender demanding that the cop “use my pronouns” before “consenting” to being arrested (yes, they do think they have a choice).

What should have been a simple arrest turns into an eight-minute installment of absurdist theater. It is truly something to behold.

Missed manners

Before we get to that, consider the general cultural context of such videos. Anyone in their 40s or older knows that standards of public behavior in America ain’t what they used to be. Manners are a thing of the past. People walk their carts up the middle of aisles, oblivious to anyone needing to get by. They sail through doors you hold without acknowledgment.

And that's just on foot. Rules of the road? Forget it. Everyone at a four-way stop is either trying to jump the right-of-way line or they’ve forgotten the rule altogether. Or they don’t care.

The other day I ran across an honest-to-God telephone booth preserved as part of a nostalgia display at an amusement park. These were built for a world with manners. People were motivated to build booths for phones because they assumed the caller wanted privacy and that the caller didn’t want to inflict his conversation on passersby. Quaint, no?

Broken windows

We're living through a nationwide experiment in abandoning broken-windows policing. It's just plain old common sense: When authorities let the "little" things slide — graffiti, vandalism, public disorder, petty lawbreaking — they teach people that the rules don't matter. Bigger offenses inevitably follow. New York City learned that lesson the hard way before Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton restored order in the 1990s by cracking down on so-called "quality of life" crimes.

It’s obviously true. But Democrats, leftists, and communists don’t like law and order. What they like is pretending that having rules for civil society is oppression. What they like even more is getting cities to defund their police departments so that criminals have a rules-free playground at everyone else’s expense. They do this by whining that mean, bad, Republican “fascists” like Giuliani were hurting “people of color” and “unhoused people” with these awful rules and laws.

You can see it in this essay on the blog Common Justice. Author “Cade T.,” who styles himself a “community organizer,” says cracking down on law and order is targeting those oppressed brown people again.

“Ultimately, the fear is that crime will become contagious and endemic in the urban environment,” he writes. “Under Giuliani, the NYPD identified neighborhoods in which to crack down on minor crimes. Not only did broken windows policing fail to reduce crime, but it also provided cover for a deliberate targeting of Black and brown communities.”

No respect

This is simply not true. Giuliani's policy resulted in a dramatic decrease in violent crime. It stands to reason. When people see police take a hands-off approach — especially toward groups the political class considers "protected" — they naturally become bolder. We see it every time hundreds of black teens riot through city streets while news anchors timidly describe the violence as nothing more than a “teen takeover.”

A large number of Americans — especially younger ones — neither fear nor respect the police. Why would they? As Forbes reported in 2020, at least 13 major American cities cut police funding or staffing in response to the BLM movement, while many smaller jurisdictions created such a hostile political climate that officers no longer felt confident their own departments would support them for simply doing their jobs. Small cities like Montpelier, Vermont, now struggle to recruit and retain enough officers.

The video below shows what hands-off policing looks like in the 2020s. Even when cops are willing to try to do their job, they’re strangely timid about effecting an arrest in a way I don’t remember police acting when I was a young man.

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Paul Harris/Getty Images

Gender special

Our protagonist is a young man I’ll call a “gender special.” He’s obese, his hair is dyed blue, and he simpers as he gesticulates, using a falsely high voice. It’s eight minutes long. If you’re pressed for time, just watch the first two minutes, and then the last two minutes. The whole thing is worth watching, though: The young man screams “JUST SAY SHE” repeatedly at the cops, jumping up and down like Rumpelstiltskin when his true name was spoken.

The encounter takes place on a Florida college campus. The cops were there to deal with a car theft. The blue-haired person begins screaming at the cops; it’s not clear why. The cops tell the shrieking man to lower his voice and stop freaking out or he’s going to be cuffed and taken for a psychiatric hold. So far, so good.

And then all hell breaks loose, and the cops waste almost seven minutes shouting repeated orders at the increasingly aggressive blue-hair. The trouble is, they don’t make good on those threats immediately. The tantrum-thrower escalates; he claims to be “scared”; he screams at the cops to stop harassing him (they’re not); and he pitches a fit at being referred to as “sir.”

He even threatens the cop with “f**king try it” when the cop warns him he’ll be handcuffed.

Tantrum terrorist

Any parent of a toddler knows that you don’t negotiate with terrorists. You give them one warning, and if they keep fussing, you bodily control them and remove them from the scene. Otherwise, the tantrum gets worse.

That’s the mistake the cops made. I watched the video and counted the number of verbal warnings and commands the cops gave before finally making good on the threat to take him down in cuffs: 14.

The blue-hair’s resistance didn’t stop there. Even after he was in custody, cops had to tase him twice before he finally stopped kicking and fighting.

Back the blue

Policing needs to go back to the way it used to be. Before recent years, we never saw cops who were afraid to arrest a disorderly suspect. Why do they keep giving orders repeatedly while their subject escalates? Don’t they see that failing to follow through on promised consequences teaches the suspect and onlookers that people can, in fact, break the law and the cops won’t do anything about it?

Yes. It does teach that lesson. And that’s part of why we now see behavior every day on the street that only used to happen in mental hospitals.

But the police are not the problem. The governments, municipalities, and mayors' offices are the problem. Cops are working in hostile territory. They know their civilian superiors not only do not support them, but are often working to target their own police force for false complaints of racism and brutality that can cost a cop his career.

If we want the boys in blue to have our backs, we have to make sure someone has theirs.

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Amnesty International frets about 'racial justice' again — just not for white people



Vickrum Digwa, the Sikh who fatally stabbed and maligned white 18-year-old Henry Nowak in the U.K. in December, was convicted of the teen's murder last week and sentenced on Monday to a minimum of 21 years in prison.

The British public now wants accountability for the police officers who responded to the scene of Nowak's murder — those who reflexively accepted the Sikh's false claim that the dying teen was a racist aggressor, arrested and handcuffed Nowak based on those false accusations, and then dismissed his final pleas.

'They just hate white people.'

Following the release of bodycam footage showing Nowak's undignified death in the custody of members of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary — one of whom has resigned — hundreds of Britons took to the streets of southern England in protest. Politicians, meanwhile, sounded off about the discriminatory policies and practices that lay the groundwork for the teen's mistreatment.

Amnesty International decided to chime in on Tuesday with a tone-deaf statement that critics seized upon as further evidence of the organization's ideological capture and moral bankruptcy.

Rather than condemn the police's treatment of Nowak, Amnesty International — a London-headquartered NGO that is purportedly committed to challenging "injustice wherever it exists," confronting "uncomfortable truths," and pushing for "transformative change, even when it's unpopular or politically inconvenient" — condemned the reactions from right-leaning politicians.

"At a time when hate crimes are rising, and violence and fear are becoming a daily reality for people of colour and migrants, calls for 'cold, hard rage' are completely reckless," stated Amnesty International.

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Britons take to the streets to protest Henry Nowak's treatment at the hands of Southampton police. Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images.

The "cold, hard rage" quote derives from a statement from Reform U.K. Party leader Nigel Farage: "The fear of being called racist was greater than dealing with Henry Nowak's murder. We should respond to this with pure cold rage. Britain's historic way of life is being thrown away."

While acknowledging that Nowak's murder "is an awful tragedy," Amnesty International said that "irresponsible narratives of two-tier policing seek to sow division and fly in the face of decades of evidence of institutional failure within policing and disparities faced by racialised communities. This includes many cases of deaths in police custody for which meaningful steps towards accountability are long overdue."

Amnesty International filed this reality-averse statement under "racial justice."

Charlie Weimers, a Swedish member of the European Parliament, said in response to the NGO's statement, "Amnesty has been morally bankrupt for a long time. A pure left-wing organization."

"Amnesty International lost its moral compass many years ago," wrote former Canadian Defense Minister and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. "Sad that an organization that used to be hugely effective in advocating for prisoners of conscience was coopted to become a boringly predictable voice for the left's omnicause."

Amnesty International has in recent years expanded its advocacy to include championing abortion, pushing climate alarmism, and advancing the cause of LGBT cultural imperialism.

Turning Point USA contributor Jack Posobiec emphasized, "It's not complicated. They just hate white people."

Amnesty International was hardly alone in its effort this week to gaslight the public about two-tier policing in the United Kingdom.

Nigel Farage demanded in parliament on Wednesday that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer "end this divisive practice of two-tier policing and make sure that all British citizens are treated the same."

The leftist prime minister, who briefly expressed horror this week over Nowak's mistreatment by police, responded by saying, "I don't believe there's two-tier policing in this country." He proceeded to accuse Farage of attempting to exploit the tragedy.

While Starmer is evidently keen to pretend the U.K. doesn't practice two-tier policing, the National Police Chiefs' Council has announced it is reviewing its anti-racism guidance that, as currently worded, explicitly calls for treating people differently on the basis of race:

Our commitment to racial equity means producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups by responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances, and experiences, with understanding that these will be racialised and with the aim of reducing harm. It does not mean treating everyone "the same" or being "colour blind" (racial equality).

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Charlie Kirk Conspiracy Grifters Exposed & Fracturing on the Right | Brandon Tatum
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Why can't Americans talk honestly about race? Blame the 'Civil Rights Baby Boomers'



“Boomer!”

The insouciant snottiness of young Americans spitting this epithet at anyone older and more knowledgeable than them is now a normal part of public life.

CRBBs don’t want 'equality'; they want infantilized black people as a permanent social accessory in which to reflect their own selfless glory.

Why even complain? After all, that's just how kids are.

Except it isn't. It was only in the 1950s that we encouraged teenagers to see themselves as a distinct population smarter than their parents and ancestors. Both the media and their feckless parents have groomed them to be narcissistic, disrespectful braggarts.

Unlike heightened sensitivity to reward and increased risk-taking, an obnoxious sense of entitlement is not a natural human adolescent phenotype. It’s just an outcome of postwar consumer prosperity.

Nonetheless, there are times when even the most stalwart "anti-ageist" (forgive me, readers) is compelled to employ the dreaded B-word.

The hippie elite

There’s a problem with a certain very prominent and vocal set of Baby Boomers, and it’s a problem almost no one will talk about. To mention it, even in a whisper, is to invite censure. It is to invite public excoriation, the loss of your job, and total reputation destruction in your church and your professional field.

If you signal that you know this thing I’m about to describe, you will be called the worst thing possible in 21st-century America: “racist.” And it won’t be only liberals; it will be older conservatives, too.

The problem comes from a subset of older people I call Civil Rights Baby Boomers.

CRBBs are the superannuated flower children of the 1960s and '70s who, according to their own lore, saved the benighted negroes of the American South. They made Dr. King’s dream come true, in their telling. Alone among their species, CRBBs were so very good, and so very socially conscious, that they were the first generation of humans to see how naughty and bad it was to treat black people like second-class citizens.

Summer of self-love

As I write, and as you read, I suspect this sounds a bit over the top. A little uncharitable, a little broad-brush.

But it isn’t.

It’s only because the social identity of CRBBs has been placed on a pedestal atop Mount Very Good People that we feel churlish about criticizing the people now in their 80s who are still standing on street corners shrieking about every lefty-liberal neurosis. It’s why people find it so provocative to suggest that maybe the young-in-the-'60s set went on their political road trips more out of self-regard and vanity than out of “empathy.”

Civil Rights Baby Boomers are Americans stuck in 1965-1970. During their late youth and early adulthood, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law. Some of them attended Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, and those who didn’t saw it on television like the rest of the nation. Anti-black racism was one of the most pressing issues of their day, so it’s understandable that the America of their youth left a deep impression on their minds.

The trouble is that they’re still living in 1965. They actually believe that white racism against black people is not only as virulent as it ever was in the antebellum South or in the Jim Crow era, but actually worse in the 2020s.

Systemic nonsense

That’s the only way to explain how huge numbers of white people in this age bracket swallow patent nonsense like the ridiculous claims of “systemic racism” in modern America. It’s the only way to explain why otherwise sane white people listen to narcissistic charlatans like black attorney Benjamin Crump, who never saw a false claim of racism that he didn’t want to take to court.

It’s the only way to explain why grandpa-age white liberals get more upset at their grandson who tells the truth about the antisocial and violent behavior of the black kids around him than about their own grandchildren getting beat up or carjacked. We all know the truth: Black crime and hostile, antisocial behavior are all around us.

That's just your opinion, man

I can point right to the FBI statistics showing that black people, while making up only 13% of the population, account for more than half of all murders. I can point out that it’s even worse than it looks, since it’s young men who commit most murders. Young black men account for much less than 13% of the population, yet there they are committing more than 51% of murders.

I could point to other statistics, but none of that matters to Civil Rights Baby Boomers. Objective facts that do not flatter black people are, ipso facto, racist to the CRBB. Try bringing this statistic up at the dinner table with a CRBB. He will accuse you of racism for noticing the fact and stating the fact. It’s that deranged.

Freedom fogies

Have you ever talked, really talked, with a CRBB?

I have. Many of my friends over the years have been CRBBs. “Linda” and “Gregory” were dear friends of mine; they’re both deceased now. They were generous, hardworking people, but they were terminal CRBBs.

Over countless suppers and gin-soaked card games at their dining room table, Gregory recounted his salad days of driving a VW bus down South to march with black civil rights protesters. His eyes lit up when he talked about “harboring” black passengers in his car and how he kept them safe from the stereotypically bigoted Southern sheriff’s deputies who, without Gregory’s presence, would probably have lynched his black passengers.

Yes, anti-black racism was a real thing, and it used to be much more widespread. But forgive me, Gregory, I think many of your tales of a modern Underground Railroad were embroidered by time, drink, and self-regard. It was hard to take them at face value when you claimed seriously that it was “dangerous” in 2015 for a black person and a white person to be seen in a car together in any state below the Mason-Dixon line.

'Street' knowledge

That’s the thing about the Civil Rights Baby Boomers. Despite their claimed goal — to end racism — they were strangely unable and unwilling to rejoice in any of the progress made legally and socially for black people. Their flower-child years were so formative and dramatic for them that they don’t want the problem solved. They don’t really want racism to go away, because then their claim to special status as a singularly selfless and enlightened generation would evaporate.

To claim that black people are in danger in the United States is a cruel farce. Your correspondent grew up in the late 1970s and early '80s, weaned on socially progressive shows like "Sesame Street" that taught color-blindness. In school, my friends were white, black, Hispanic, Vietnamese, and more. As a liberal in my youth, I was proud to be above “racism,” and like many in the 1990s, I assumed America had achieved a mature and stable social and economic system with room for everyone.

Hold the mayo

We all know the truth in 2025. Not only is anti-black racism pretty much gone (it has been for decades), it’s been replaced by anti-white racism. For decades now, it has been socially acceptable — indeed, socially praiseworthy — for black people to call white people “mayonnaise,” to say that white people “have no culture,” to talk about “eliminating whiteness,” and much more. You hear it every day on “respectable” mainstream television.

Meanwhile, it's still forbidden to talk about black crime and the dysfunctional culture that helps create it. Take the astonishingly high rate of fatherlessness in the black community: anywhere from 56% to 67% or higher, depending on your source.

Despite the predictable charges of racism that greeted Donald Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard to restore law and order in Washington, D.C., the fact remains that the anarchy in our cities — especially prevalent in Democrat-controlled cities — is disproportionately caused by black offenders.

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Photo by TIM SLOAN/Getty Images

The privilege to patronize

I live in the second-whitest state in the union: Vermont. It’s also probably the most liberal and progressive. Whereas formerly quaint Burlington used to have few shootings, they’re now a regular occurrence in our “upscale” downtown shopping district. And while the press goes to great pains to disguise the race of the perpetrators, black men are, of course, “overrepresented.”

When I used to shop downtown, I noticed black customers picking food off the hot bar at the grocery store and eating it while strolling, without paying for it. Staff saw it too. Nobody said anything about the theft, because it was black people doing it.

The fundamental irony is that CRBBs claim they are the only ones to treat black people like human beings. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Civil Rights Baby Boomers wanted a set piece for themselves, something as dramatic and world-changing as the fact that their parents’ generation defeated the Nazis. Yes, I really do believe it’s that cheap and narcissistic.

But it is the CRBBs who dehumanize black people. To treat your fellow man as an equal means to hold him to the same standards of civil, civilized, and legal behavior that everyone is held to. CRBBs don’t want “equality”; they want infantilized black people as a permanent social accessory in which to reflect their own selfless glory.

Stop listening to them. It’s past time for the Civil Rights Baby Boomers to retire from the public discourse.

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British police hiring illiterate officers, some with criminal backgrounds, in hopes of meeting diversity quotas: Report



In hopes of satisfying diversity recruitment quotas, London's Metropolitan Police prioritized immutable characteristics prized by DEI consultants over candidates' relevant skills.

An inspector tasked with assessing police forces and policing has concluded that in the pursuit of this allegedly "noble and right" end, the Met police have dropped their standards and in some instances accepted applicants that could not competently read or write in English. Some recruits also happened to have significant criminal histories.

Illiterates on patrol

The Guardian reported that former Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick and London Mayor Sadiq Khan hammered out a deal in 2021 to ensure that 40% of new recruits came from black and minority communities. This was, in part, reportedly a decision made in response to the death of George Floyd and the BLM riots that ensued in the United States.

Prior to this arrangement, the target for representation on the basis of preferred immutable characteristics had be 19% of the overall force. At the time the arrangement was made, 15.4% of the force was black, Asian, and minority ethnic, or what English authorities lump together as "BAME."

Khan's administration suggested that the initiative was "generational," constituting "the most significant changes to policing and black communities since the Macpherson report."

Former Rear Admiral Matt Parr, a submariner turned inspector with His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, told the Telegraph, "Everyone is trying to do the right thing here and they are all acting from noble motives by and large, but the upshot is they are taking too much risk with people, and where they are taking risk — and I would support them in taking risk — they are not managing it properly as well."

Parr indicated that recruiters are "taking a risk" on minorities with criminal pasts, but suggested that is not the greater concern. The greater concern is the anecdotal evidence suggesting that in the pursuit of greater diversity, the force has apparently ended up lowering its recruitment standards to onboard persons "functionally illiterate in English" — officers incapable of properly writing up a crime report.

Parr appears at pains to note the failure of this initiative so far, given that he regards it as essential that London — "which will likely be a minority white city in the next decade or so — should not be policed by an overwhelmingly white police force."

According to Parr, for London police to have too many of one racial group, regardless of their competence, is "clearly wrong ... from a legitimacy point of view, and from an appearances point of view."

Notwithstanding this shared desire to reduce the relative number of white people on the police force in England's capital city, Parr suggested that dropping standards to achieve that goal will prove troublesome.

"We have a risk of recruiting the wrong people," he said, highlighting how the new Met commissioner, Mark Rowley, reportedly indicated his desire to "dial down the requirement to meet those targets."

Bobbies from both sides of the bars

The Inspectorate of Constabulary issued a report in November revealing some of the ways that recruiters have apparently dialed down the requirements to meet targets.

Inspectors found applicants who had received vetting clearance despite having previously committed robberies, indecent exposure, DUIs, and domestic abuse-related assaults. There was reportedly little indication that recruiters took into account the possible seriousness of the offenses.

For example, one applicant who passed the recruiters' vetting had previously exposed his genitals to a female victim on numerous occasions, masturbating before her in at least one instance.

Another would-be cop had previously knocked over and robbed an 80-year-old woman. Again, he received vetting clearance.

The inspector's report also found that a number of applicants were cleared despite having close ties to organized criminal groups.

Identity politics apparently has also prevented molesters from being relieved of duty.

The inspector's report noted that a police officer had engaged in improper sexual touching of a member of the public as well as of junior officers. There were, in response, multiple complaints.

The offending officer then applied to transfer to another location. Despite knowing about the allegations, the chief constable at the second location cleared the transfer "on the grounds that accepting the transferee would make the force more diverse" — a decision in which the report's authors suggested "undue weight [was given] to diversity considerations at the expense of an objective assessment of the facts."

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