Ron Martinelli, Ph.D.

Copyright (C) 10-01-17

“Blue Bias” has been probably been around since the days of the Roman Centurions. I think once when I was touring the back streets of Pompeii, Italy a couple of years ago, I saw some ancient Roman graffiti that read “Centurion Artimus is a pig.”

I came “On the Job,” as the Vietnam War was winding down and the U.S. was getting Out of Dodge, so to speak. I was at the university when the anti-war demonstrations were in their hiatus in the S.F. Bay Area and other locales. But I caught the tail end of them and more. Black Panthers, Nazis, KKK; you name it and I was there in riot gear getting screamed at and ducking the occasional missile coming my way. I had been told in the police academy that some people don’t like cops, as if I hadn’t already figured that out before I got sworn in.

Whether I was in or out of uniform, I experienced Blue Bias. Caustic remarks being made under people’s breath when I was trying to gulp down a quick meal at Denny’s. Being in the “isolation zone” at parties and tolerating the “Oh, watch out. Here come the cops” remarks; or getting “Mad dogged” in the “hood.” Being a cop even cost me a short-lived relationship once.

Oh, well. Just the hazards of a job I loved, I figured. I’ve always been an optimistic, centered guy, so I really never lost any sleep over it. My analogy to myself was that I wasn’t a black guy or a brown guy; I was a “blue guy.” Back then, it helped me to sympathize with minorities, gays, overweight people and the assorted “disenfranchised” in society. Actually, it was a slightly frustrating, albeit important lesson about life, people and implicit bias behavior.

Contrary to popular thought held by some minorities, leftists and the MSM; the vast majority of cops are not prejudiced, racist, or anti-anybody. Cops of both genders, gays (I’m not really an alphabet soup grouping guy) and ethnicities really don’t think in terms of race, culture, religion or sexual orientation. They are more primal and tribal than that. Rather, cops think in terms of nice people, bad people, criminals, idiots and “a-holes” (a favorite cop term). You see, their groupings contain no one of color, culture, sex, or religion. It’s a simple philosophy that works for them. In fact, all of the current and former cops I know distance themselves from biased cops on the job and in our personal lives. If you are nice, friendly, respectful and open with us, we return the sentiments. Most cops are a lot like your favorite dog. They make great life-long, trustworthy and loyal friends. A little attention, friendliness and the occasional praise goes a long way in maintaining the relationship.

If you sense that cops don’t like you, you can rest assured that their dislike for you has nothing to do with your race, religion or sexual orientation. Most likely it’s because you fall into one of the four categories of dislike and you have amply demonstrated your classification to them.

Contrary to popular belief in some areas of the minority community on the street cops don’t stop you because they “racially profiled” you; it’s because they behaviorally profiled you and determined that you violated a law, or were about to. Cops also know that “violators” aren’t necessarily criminals and they take that into account when they approach and speak with you. Many traffic violators get off with a lecture and a warning. Some misdemeanants as well. It’s all about your “attitude” during the police encounter.

If people could just turn off their implicit bias and paranoia about cops, they would be amazed just how easy it is to get along with them. There would be far less tickets, lengthy detentions, arrests and uses of force. In fact, in the case studies I am involved in nationally, I can absolutely assert without any equivocation that if people who committed simple violations and serious crimes would have simply cooperated with the police who stopped them, there would be much lower statistics of people being seriously injured or shot by officers who were trying to affect an arrest and/or protect themselves from being seriously injured or killed.

Do the names Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Carnell Snell, Antoine Smith or Anthony Lamar Smith, ring a bell? They should because thousands of people from Blacks Lives Matter to NFL knee-takers have protested these police-involved deaths. Yet, if you were to unemotionally and forensically analyze each of these deaths, you would find that everyone of these people were engaged in felony crimes, ignored commands, resisted arrest and/or tried to seriously assault or kill the officers who ultimately were forced to kill them. The people in this country who deny this are only fooling themselves. The true facts behind these deaths are out there. The problem is that the “deniers” who show their “Blue Bias” refuse to accept these inconvenient truths because it destroys their false narratives that forwards their implicit bias towards law enforcement.

The dynamic of Blue Bias has increased nationally since the false narratives of the “Hands-up, don’t shoot” police shooting of Michael Brown. This bias has permeated national politics and has provided a growing platform for militant, Marxist anti-police, anti-government groups like Black Lives Matter, the New Black Panther Party, Antifa, the Communist Workers Party and others. It has spawned hypocritical, pseudo so-called “social justice warriors” like former NFL player Colin Kaepernick and his NFL colleagues who kneel in protest of law enforcement, while disrespecting our flag, our National Anthem and those veterans and police who have fought and died to maintain our freedoms and protect our citizens. Uninformed idiots like Kaepernick, et al., ignore that there are far more members of the NFL who have been arrest for felony crimes than cops arrested for crimes within the ranks of over 900,000 peace officers nationally.

Cowardly employees in stores and restaurants demonstrating their Blue Bias tamper with officers’ food, refuse them and their families service and write nasty notes on the receipts and paper coffee cups of officers they have never met and who have done nothing to them. It’s a growing national disgrace.

The ugly irony is where minorities, gays, transgenders, people of religion and the infirmed are protected from bias, prejudice and harassment by our nation’s Bill of Rights; police officers who are the very protectors of the Rule of Law and civil rights have no such protections. These officers who fight and die on our streets everyday protecting us are intentionally insulted, falsely maligned, threatened and discriminated against by the very people they have sacrificed their lives and well-being to protect. It’s disgusting. In my next column, I’ll discuss some options members of the law enforcement community have to combat “Blue Bias.” Turn in.

About the Author

Ron Martinelli, Ph.D., CMI-V, is a national renowned forensic criminologist who directs the nation’s only Forensic Death Investigations & Independent Review Team. Dr. Martinelli, is a retired San Jose (CA) police detective and a syndicated national columnist. He is the author of, “The Truth Behind the Black Lives Matter Movement and the War on Police” (Amazon.com). His forensic site is: www:DrRonMartinelli.com.