Culture

IN THIS SECTION:   Why Culture Important    A Good Mix     Male Gender Roles     Machismo     Fatwa Discussion     Turfing and Everyone Wants to Rule the World     Why Considering Culture is Important We bring our upbringing as well as racial and religious issues into the police departments Crimes, including those by and against police officers, don’t occur in a vacuum.  Group associations and male gender roles can impact how an officer thinks and operates.  Various roles can express themselves in police work as an extension of those found in church, early childhood raising with male role models, an area’s social networks including family and friends, and more.  Also a sense of other can create a sense of us against them, as in civil rights contexts.  This might push certain tendencies to the forefront because a racial group feels themselves to be under stress or otherwise fighting against the system, including the one that employs them.  The other problem is that they might want to rework this system to make it more like their culture.  This can include erasing and supplanting the old system with another one.  When that happens, the original best intentions of United States laws and practices can be thwarted.  In police systems, this can spell disaster.  Police persons who do not genuinely agree with the American system need not become police officers in the United States.  They need to take their cultural and religious agendas elsewhere. A good mix One way to prevent abuses in a police department, or any other governmental agency, is to firmly commit to the ideas that true diversity include a good mix.  In some areas of the country, we have to encourage people to seek a good mix that includes whites; in other areas, we have to make sure the good mix includes African Americans or some other non-white aspect.  Too much of a good thing can spell disaster.  How willing are your non-white employees ready to hire a white person in an all Hispanic department?  How likely are they to bully or disenfranchise that white, or play various secretive games against him or her, including setting him up or letting him take the rap for someone in the family whether inside or outside the police force? Once raised to management, how likely is a Hispanic in that department to only hire Hispanics or Native Americans, excluding whites, from that time forward? Do they realize racial multiplicity does in fact include white persons, not just a variety of non-whites?  On the other hand, in an all white department, how likely are the hiring managers to hire an African American or other person of color?  How likely are they to exclude a person of color from a sense of being on the team, advancement or pay raises?  Is there any bullying? How willing are both white or non-white managers to play fair in hiring practices and on-the-job-treatment with persons of another race?  Is there a sense of teamwork and reciprocity between races and genders? These questions apply to all government jobs across the country.  Again, too much of a good thing can spell disaster for American security.  It can prevent proper police work from adhering to American laws designed to protect people.  A good mix can help push back anti-American agendas, white supremacist tendencies, religious cults and regional quirks.  It can help keep things from going underground; can encourage creative thinking; can bring in outside ideas and innovation; can help prevent abusive tendencies from becoming a bad habit. Cultural  Issues That Can Impact Police Work Male Gender Roles  - see below   Machismo: see below https://rivergold.net/hum-machismo.html Shariah Islamic Fatwa and Shariah in general: - see below https://rivergold.net/religion_middle-east-islamic-fatwa.html Religiously connected sexual abuse that can impact police systems one way or another Catholic     https://rivergold.net/religion_catholic_abuse.html  Mormon    Protestant    https://rivergold.net/religion_baptist-abuse-southern-baptist-and-similar-types%20of-protestant- fundalementalism-sexual-abuse.html Religious Fanaticism Also see Shariah Islam Dominionism  (Extreme Christianism)  https://rivergold.net/religion_dominionism.html Male Gender Roles   Machismo https://rivergold.net/hum-machismo.html Machismo lends itself to resistance and rebellion against mainstream gender equality practices in the United States.  The idea is the man should handle it in social contexts with women.  This includes ego sensitivities of various sorts, the most pronounced being sexual.  There is a pride of male sexuality, a tendency to take a conversation with a woman toward the sexual - it can get graphic fast, including visual images in his head while talking to her; a crude but unfortunately realistic example is where he wants to show her how his penis is and how good he is in bed; there might be sexual jokes running through his head or uttered against her with the other guys in the room once she leaves the room, the jokes are at her expense and designed to reconfirm male superiority.  There can be an unwillingness to get down to business or to respond to her questions or requests for help.  He can become irritated inside in his mind, whether or not he says anything about it, or he can find himself wanting to turn the conversation toward sex.  There can be a tendency to not really listen to what she has to say and to resent the fact she is taking up even brief dialogue space by focusing on herself or what is on her mind. There can be a reluctance for her to go into male turf, including areas like an automotive garage or a male- only police department. The men can want to control certain activities of the woman, including body language, forms of speech, when, how and where to eat, types of dress and more.  Frequently machismo can be connected to deep insecurities of manhood; it is suggested strong ties to the Hispanic/Italian Catholic system can have influences. Where there has been sexual abuse of the male to male sort, it can make men feel confused about their gender roles and sexual orientation; as a result, they might feel the need to put on more exaggerated attitudes of manhood to cover up those troubling feelings.  When confronted with machismo, the men might make superficial signs of change, pretending to comply with American value systems for gender equality, but down inside they are fighting it the whole time.  Also, their tendency is to convince themselves they are being nice and fair, but there is something missing in their understanding of what it really feels like to be honestly fair with a woman.  The most difficult part of machismo is this aspect where they convince themselves they are complying when they really are not.  Somehow they just don’t get it; call it early childhood programming, mind control, culture, whatever, but down inside this guy just doesn’t get it because he cannot and will not empathize with how the woman feels by sensing how he would feel in her shoes if the tables were turned.  Somehow he just simply is not able to bridge the situation to be able to see it from her perspective.  This is the gap in communication that prevents machismo from truly evolving. Beyond this,  it is suggested here machismo is linked to ancient historical behaviors with roots across various races and cultures, such as Asian, Far Eastern and Jewish peoples who spread into the Mediterranean and Spain.  Italy and Spain have similar issues as Hispanic peoples of the southwestern United States.  It is taught early through speech and inflections, body language, male role models and group dynamics between uncles, grandparents, siblings, extended family across geographic distances.  The programs run deep, making it hard for men to stand back and look at themselves in order to make changes that are real and lasting.  It is suggested here that police departments be leery of hiring males exhibiting signs of exaggerated machismo because it can lead to problems later - violence, sexual aberrations, lawsuits, unnecessary killings, aggression during off hours, backtalk, retaliation against people who anger them, playing favorites with family members, divulging secrets to cohorts and the lack of willingness to adapt to new ideas.  Machismo takes away from the cool-headed professionalism needed to stay out of trouble. Shariah Islamic Fatwa and Shariah in general https://rivergold.net/religion_middle-east-islamic-fatwa.html The reason Fatwa is included on Police Factor is that more Islamic influences have occurred in this country than many people realize.  It enters the door through various channels, including Civil Rights groups, war zone players who are influenced, cartels and gangs who have had interplay with Islam in Mexico and Latin America and beyond. The danger of Islamic Shariah and Fatwa is the way it can slip in largely unrecognized and unnoticed.  You need to think of it as letting Dracula in the door.  Once vampires get in, they go after the blood.  They often seem charming and amenable on their way in the door, but the fact is they have a plot to take over.  Groups infected can be Christian fundamentalists, conservative Republican sectors, media, American land space, strategic locations next to American governmental and military facilities.  The people often have funds for training so can come in through college and high tech jobs.  People tend to over-simplify how potent the danger is.  Fatwa is about attacks on women, but its roots in Shariah Islam need to be understood from the context of broad anti-American agendas.  In this regard, it’s about both women and men.  Fatwas are the single- minded goal to fight a woman who speaks out against the problems of Shariah Islam.  Shariah Islam is a male-dominated approach to life which subjugates women to intense civil rights abuses of every kind.  It is an extremist, totalitarian system of annihilation of a human’s dignity, self-respect, ability to think for herself; it attempts to control her every thought, utterance and movement, including the control of her finances and dress. The men behind Fatwas try to convince themselves it is in the best interests of Islamic society to destroy people who contest their view of reality.  The people involved are deeply programmed to the point you cannot just simply talk them out of it.  Wanting power through violence and force to subdue enemies becomes a whole way of life.  There is single-minded purpose to subdue the enemy. Prison Culture Can enter society, police systems, certain social services sectors Cartel Culture Can enter society, police systems, certain social services sectors DISCUSSION Culture is a complex subject, a big topic.  Various ways to look at it.  Each person is likely to have his or her own slant on it. For the purposes of this website, the term refers to social aspects around a group that are identifiable from any other group.  For example, a Native American culture, a Chinese culture or a white American culture.  Most people have a general sense about that. Culture might be seen as a template you use in a word processor document; it is like a set of features added to a blank page.  A person born into this world is like a new document awaiting its template called Greek,  Eastern European, Jew, Muslim, Southern Baptist…..and so on…. The subject is taken further here  to flesh out ideas about how certain group behaviors can lead to and support crime. Usually crime does not operate in a vacuum.  In addition, one society’s crime is another society’s freedom fight or resistance movement.  Our culture is about who raised us and where we grew up.  We learn from our parents, aunts, sisters and brothers, ministers or priests, coaches and school teachers.  At least a piece of our childhood culture sticks with us for a lifetime even if we move or marry someone from another culture. Culture includes language, body language, sounds in language - for example, we can be speaking the same language but our intonation, slang and preferred choice of words can be different based on nuances in our culture.   Culture can include visual aspects, like clothing, tattoos, hair styles, OK cars to drive and not OK cars, types of houses or neighborhoods and a whole lot of other things.  It can include taboos and things people can say or talk about and what they cannot discuss.  There can be punishment for breaking spoken and unspoken rules of conduct or going across certain lines.  Please see Wall of Silence in https://rivergold.net. This subject about containing a social group in an identifiable subset of the greater population or globe takes us to who is boss and how power is distributed or not.  Some cultures want to pay more attention to this than others as a matter of what is heard at home over a lifetime or how gangs can dominate and punish the local people for not conforming.  If a child has been beaten and verbally attacked into submission until he finds he has to become a tyrant to stop being squashed all the time, this is part of a cultural issue. As police officers and federal agents, a person comes to the job with a cultural background because no one is born and raised in a vacuum.  How a job is done or not done can be attributed at least partly to cultural patterning and beliefs.  For example, religious beliefs might create a tendency to think and respond in a certain way when confronted with some real world problems.  Some people might put a priority on religion over country, knowing that   certain laws are expected protocol but their beliefs are another thing.  In a world of Nazis, following spiritual principles might be a good thing, but in the USA in which the country did try to set up fair laws to protect people from vigilante behavior, it might be something else to follow one’s principles and not the law.  For example, if one’s religion suggests most women are sinful and need to  lean on their husbands or a primary male leader in the group, that individual in the USA might not play fair with a woman needing help.  The same thing can hold true in Afghanistan when a young boy is being chained to a bed and sexually abused by a dominant male elder in the group; that group can say it’s OK to do that because of the culture; here in the USA the laws indicate it is not OK to do that.  One person’s social beliefs would clash with the American laws in that case. Culture in policing can impact how people think and operate with themselves in the policing community and the public.  For example, it might be thought of as “cool” to keep your mouth shut about a fellow officer who is doing something wrong.  Also, a new police officer might find he is experiencing group pressure to follow along with beating members  of the public pulled over for a basic traffic stop.  There can be intimidation to play along or lose one’s job or even one’s life. Social pressures in policing communities can include mixed races and cultures clashing for dominance and the way to run this country, and to indicate who is really boss here.  For example, a La Raza member in a police group might want to work things so that a certain Hispanic orientation is the way to go, not the general American way.  That person could be fighting the system from within.  He could be working within and from a broader cultural network outside the police system, like familiy members and friends from his old neighborhood, the prison system and even places like Mexico and certain areas in Latin America. On the other hand, a white cop with strong Irish Catholic tendencies might be working from another cultural predilection, one in which the anger is over having gang fights between whites in his neighbhorhood and blacks from a certain gang nearby.  There can be strong ideas about abortion, women’s role in the house and world and other things that could cloud his judgment on the police job.  He might  have old historic family ties to Irish Catholics in their fierce longterm battle against the British.  This can include old family secrets and stresses and strains which impact his judgment and behavior in other aspects of his life, including on the job. No matter how culture impacts us, the more sensitive and educated we become, the better we can think through the possibilities and curb vigilante behavior.  We can also be better problem solvers and more assertive about seeking help when confronted by bullying or negligence on the job.  Turfing and Everyone Wants to Rule the World Turfing often refers to gangs taking over an area by putting up lots of graffiti in that place, having some dons or head chiefs intimidating the area.  It can include clothes, symbols and more.  Police should see turf controlled areas as military priorities in this day and age.  They require strategic counter-operations on a government and military level so we can take back our cities and towns from these thugs.  Everyone who wants a normal and safe life, no matter their skin color, culture or religious orientation should be on board in this priority operation.  It requires both police and members of the public work together and have good communication with mutual trust.  It will require a high level of coordination and organization.  Part of the problem is we likely have had shadow operatives in with the planning against gangs, keeping things from really happening all the way: somebody is paying somebody off, somebody is making money from international drug networks supplying stuff to that area and so on.  It is not that anti-gang operations have not been attempted in this country.  They have, many times in different ways over the years.  It’s that we have a shadow operation keeping things in the old status quo.  We need to start unraveling the real players in these enterprises by exposing the various types of possible.  The police need to believe we can counter organized crime; many have lost hope in this country that this is actually possible. With that in mind, turfing involves oppression.  Sometimes the dominant culture is white, sometimes it is African American, Mexican American, Native American, Chinese.  When any one area in the USA seems to have succumbed to negativity and discrimination against any one race, watch out.  Sometimes the main race in the area is providing a cultural theme for everyone else as if it is the only game in town. What we want to watch for are “good mixes” in this country to help push back things becoming imperialistic.  We want everybody to be safe, have equal employment opportunities and have equal representation in all of the government services offered the public.  If there is too much of one race or culture in government and large national employers, we need to say Watch Out - who is really running the show here - a mafia?  A planned organized crime network geared toward just one kind of person?  A religion?  A civil rights group type, like one dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood?  Why aren’t there any whites here?  Why aren’t there any blacks here?  Why only whites?  Why only Hispanics?  Use your eyes and ears and be prepared to go into the places you hand out your money to and look around.  Is this a place that would hire YOU?  If not, why not?  And if not, do you want to spend money here? Police people need to be sensitive to their own racial, cultural and religious situation in terms of how it is played out in the community they serve and their own work places.  Most are very sensitive already to these subjects, but how can we take it to a higher level so that we are all working together no matter our differences?  For example, do we have Hispanic or Irish officers playing out a Catholic theme in their neighborhoods?  Is there a group of people in town, including police officers, bus drivers, Salvation Army deliverers and more trying to get everyone “on board about Jesus” or about “Mohammad” or any other religious belief to the point they are sharing inside information on a non-believer and targeting that person in certain ways as he or she moves around town?  Are police part of the problem, not part of the solution, in a network violence case like this?  If so, how do we investigate and stop it? Cultural fanaticism often starts with religious fanaticism, but this is not always the case.  Communists running through civil rights movements and college campuses have been applying sinister agendas on a largely unaware American public for decades.  This brand of Communism can operate like a fanatical religion.  Please see the author David Horowitz for more on this topic; he was a Jewish Communist associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s and pulled out after a violent murder of one of his work associates made him realize it was an organized group of thugs who were more about violence and oppression than any real civil rights.  Police need to realize that hidden agendas in organized crime, often disguised as civil rights movements, can impact many aspects of their jobs and can suck them into one side or the other of  a plotted war game designed to get everybody mad, mixed up, hating each other, pulling in groups like the ACLU for mega-bucks lawsuits, paying off the media for fake news stories, screwing with judges and court cases, paying off or killing real witnesses, creating fake suicides, disappearing people and the whole nine  yards.