Stupid Ideas Have Stupid Consequences

The idea we should give 5’2”, 112-pound women the opportunity to become police officers makes no practical sense.

Police Constable Lydia Ward. What did she think “police work is dangerous” meant? Vibes?

Today’s piece is going to be a short one, in pursuit of my never-ending attempts to write shorter essays. Maybe it’s just not my nature as a writer and I have to say that writing short essays feels like a waste of time. However, I’m also sensitive to the fact it’s not easy to get someone to read long essays, so it’s a balancing act I’ve had to maintain.

I’m going to talk about this story more in a future essay, but today, I want to focus on one aspect of it. I’ll let scholar Dr. Rakib Ehsan explain what the fuss is all about.

He writes in Unherd:

With new footage emerging from the Manchester Airport fracas, where a female police officer’s nose was broken, violence against law enforcement has once again been thrust into the spotlight.

You can review the footage here, as well as the reaction of the female officer in question, Lydia Ward, who’s seen in the photograph above, afterwards. There are two things which stand out, the first being how utterly impotent both Ward and the other female officer are in the face of violent assault. Second is how hysterical Ward is afterwards, as though she’s completely unprepared, physically and mentally, to deal with the ugly realities of the job. In both cases, it’s entirely unacceptable and unbecoming of police officers.

More from Ehsan:

Brothers Mohammed Fahir Amaaz and Muhammad Amaad are on trial for their part in the brawl with Great Manchester Police in the airport last July. Police officers had sought to arrest Amaaz after he was alleged to have headbutted another man, Abdulkareem Ismaeil, before a violent scuffle ensued. Jurors were shown footage of the incident’s aftermath, in which PC Lydia Ward was left with blood streaming from her nose. The officer — who is on record as describing herself as “petite” at 5’2” and eight stone — told the court that she was “absolutely terrified” during the experience.

Eight stone is 112 pounds. 5’2”, 112 pounds. Male or female, is this someone you’d trust as a police officer? Don’t overthink it; if you have to resort to “coulds” and “maybes”, you’ve already lost the argument.

In the United States, many police departments don’t impose minimum height or weight requirements, resorting instead to the “healthy and proportional” principle when assessing candidates’ physical suitability for the job. In other words, as long as they’re physically able to perform the required tasks without significant accommodation, there are no real barriers to entry.

The Los Angeles Police Department, for example, dispensed with height requirements almost 30 years ago.

From the Los Angeles Times in 1997:

The Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday abolished a requirement that officers stand at least 5 feet tall to join the LAPD.

Department officials requested that the minimum height requirement be eliminated, saying they have found no evidence that shorter people were less capable of performing the duties of a police officer.

It’s worth noting that, once upon a time, male candidates for the LAPD had to be 5’8”. Given that 5’0” is less than the average height of a woman in the U.S., there wasn’t really an argument against removing it altogether at that point.

More [bold mine]:

Furthermore, they said such a requirement exposed the department to potential lawsuits from candidates who were rejected solely because of their height.

A couple of commissioners asked Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams if shorter officers had a greater tendency to rely on their weapons than taller officers, and the chief assured them there was no evidence to support such a theory.

“There is no research within the department or nationally that shows that small stature individuals . . . [have] any negative impact on their ability to perform their jobs” because of their height, Williams said.

Department officials surveyed 16 police departments across the country, and none had minimum height requirements. Police officials and commissioners said the move is likely to attract more women and Asians to the department.

Context is important: the Rodney King incident and the subsequent riots were barely five years past in 1997. The Rampart CRASH unit scandal would begin that same year. It wasn’t a good time for the department and was doing everything it could to improve its image, including acceding to all sorts of demands to placate as much of the public as possible.

The question is: without the context, without the threat of lawsuits, without the pressure to hire more women and Asians, would the LAPD have eliminated the height requirement? I find that doubtful. Height requirements existed for a reason. Police officers must look the part as much as they act the part. Taller people, especially taller men, present much different than do shorter people, men or women. Some things in life are just biology.

Of course, the liberal West has an entire state apparatus built around denying biological reality. In the U.S., it’s called the Civil Rights Act, Equal Employment Opportunity, Affirmative Action, and, more recently, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. These were all attempts to defy biological reality using the power of the state. We always hear about the great things these policies brought about, but we are also past due for a conversation about how many lives have been destroyed as well by them. The Overton window has yet to shift that far, however.

I’m not a Social Darwinist, but I also believe that not only can we not overcome biological reality, it’s dangerous to try. I think policing is an area where that’s most apparent. For the last several decades, we’ve tried to make square pegs fit into round holes, only to discover that that you either destroy the pegs, the holes, or both in the process. It’s why these policies are law: if it doesn’t work, you can’t force people to accept it, unless you threaten to ruin or even jail people into doing so.

Back to Manchester. Rakib Ehsan says:

While conflict management, risk assessment, and interpersonal skills are important aspects of policing, there have been longstanding concerns that strength and fitness tests have been watered down in recruitment and training processes. One of the primary tests is the multi-stage fitness test (MSFT), commonly known as the “bleep test”, which measures aerobic capacity and stamina. While this test ensures a baseline level of fitness, there is the argument that it is inadequate preparation for the unpredictable and dynamic nature of frontline policing — particularly the need for short bursts of speed and strength in scenarios such as the Manchester Airport altercation.

During the “racial reckoning” of the 2010s, culminating in the great moral panic of 2020 which brought America closer to civil war than any of us are willing to admit, there was a strong debate, at least in the U.S., about whether police weren’t sufficiently trained in “soft” areas like policing like conflict management, risk assessment, and interpersonal skills.

It’s an argument I’m sensitive to, but it also makes a lot of assumptions about policing which aren’t based in fact. For one, a police officer’s top priority is, first and foremost, to keep the peace and maintain order. Anything else is missing the point. In America, at least, we’ve come to expect police officers to act as mediators, to resolve social encounters gone poorly, and though they can certainly act in this capacity, they cannot do this job without first establishing order.

Police officers can often escalate situations unnecessarily. They’re people, after all, and many people lack the skills necessary to manage a contentious social interaction. However, police are also rarely called upon in situations where someone doesn’t need to be de-escalated. Put differently, cops show up when something has already hit the fan, when emotions and tensions are high. The reason why people often resort to police is because they possess both the authority and - this is very important - the means of violence to impose order. If this wasn’t the case, nobody would call the police, would they?

The utility of a police officer is the very thing people hate most about them: they have the authority to use violence. The police are of no use, otherwise. Their business is violence and nobody, cop or not, should expect police to do their jobs without at least the threat of violence being on the table.

For those who want to be cops, they must accept that at any point in time, they’ll be in a violent encounter, with someone intent on either doing them great bodily harm or even killing them. It’s a tough balance to strike: we don’t want cops to think everyone’s going to kill them, but we don’t want them totally unprepared for violence, either. Yet it seems that’s exactly what this young female police officer at the heart of the Manchester incident was: unprepared for violence.

Watching the video of her crying after the incident leaves no doubt as to her unsuitability for the job. It’s also precisely why not only not everyone should be a police officer, but they also shouldn’t be given the opportunity to become one. It’s blasphemous to say so, but it’s the truth. Policing isn’t “customer service” in the conventional sense. In policing, if you make a mistake, a bloody nose is the best-case outcome. A society which scrutinizes policing so critically has seemingly forgotten how high the stakes really are. If we really took policing or any other high-stakes profession as seriously as we say, we’d be perfectly fine with denying some people the chance.

The idea we should give 5’2”, 112-pound women the opportunity to become police officers makes no practical sense. It never did. The only reason we allow it is in the name of equality. But equality isn’t something which exists in nature. Equilibrium does. Equilibrium eventually leads to Lydia Ward, who even describes herself as “petite,” being overwhelmed by a man, even if he himself doesn’t pose a large and imposing figure. Hate it all you’d like, but what happened to Ward is nature: the weak are victimized by the strong. How are you going to overcome this? I don’t think putting women like Ward out on the street to square off against violent men is the answer, but this is apparently bigoted of me to say so.

Ward’s assault is emblematic of the increasing dangers law enforcement in Britain is being subjected to:

The relationship between changes to recruitment/training procedures and the rising number of police assaults merits greater scrutiny. A BBC investigation from last year, based on freedom of information requests sent to every police force in the UK, found that there were a total of 37,786 physical assaults on officers in 2023 — an average of 103 a day and an 11% rise from the 2021 figure of 33,864. The actual figure is likely to have been significantly higher, as only 35 out of 45 police forces provided figures. Even though this increase could be attributed to Covid-related lockdowns, new figures published earlier this year revealed a total of 55,954 assaults on police officers over the past 12 months — every 10 minutes on average.

There’s a much longer conversation to be had about the reasons for and ramifications of this. For now, the point is that policing is indeed a dangerous profession and dangerous professions should be discriminatory - yes, discriminatory - in their hiring. Unlike roofers, one of America’s most dangerous jobs, police officers are out there to protect the public. If they cannot protect themselves, then how can we expect them to protect anyone else? Again, I think we all know this deep down inside, but we’ve been successfully programmed to ignore it completely in the name of ideology.

Nobody’s doing themselves any favors by handing the tremendous responsibility of protecting the public to someone like Lydia Ward. As Ehsan says, there’s a whole lot at stake:

While a variety of factors could be responsible for these high levels of violence against police officers, such as declining levels of respect for authority and a lack of trust in law enforcement, the possibility that a greater proportion of emergency workers in frontline policing are viewed as physically soft targets cannot be ruled out. When it comes to the Manchester Airport incident, there is the admittedly sensitive question of how a police constable — petite by her own admission, below the average height for women in the UK, and standing in the region of only 50 kilograms — was left so utterly exposed as officers sought to arrest a young man suspected of a violent assault.

As previously tranquil societies become more violent, policing will need to become more violent as well. Of course, the U.S. and the UK, totally captured by ideology, may refuse to change course barring some total collapse, but expecting police officers to just tolerate greater violence against them is a fool’s bargain. If they don’t resort to more violence for fear of prosecution, they’ll just leave. Fewer police is what we want anyway, right?

A more violent society will also further expose the unsuitability of most women for the job of policing. While male officers are sometimes overpowered, this is often due to facing very strong suspects or someone under the influence. However, female officers are routinely overpowered to the point that they often let suspects get away. It’s difficult for anyone, male or female, to take a combative suspect into custody alone, so the idea is to hold them until more officers can arrive on scene. However, female officers seem to have difficulty doing even that, due to strength disparities.

Look at this arrest attempt in Australia:

Here’s an incident where two female officers fail to control a male suspect, who doesn’t appear physically imposing:

Female officers are valued not just for reasons of equality, but because of the idea that they’re better at de-escalation than men. Not only is this a debateable point, but real-world experience proves that even if they are, better de-escalation skills shouldn’t come at the expense of being able to physically control suspects. You can’t de-escalate a combative suspect without violence, after all.

So - what do we do? What’s the solution for this?

First, we must concede that even as solutions exist, like most, they’re not likely to be implemented. As long as we consider equality something worth getting people killed over (and we do, prove me wrong), there’s no way to implement any of my suggestions. That said, I embrace solutions, not excuses, so here’s what I think should be done.

Second, law enforcement agencies need to impose height and weight standards and enforce them. End of story. Being big and strong isn’t everything, but it’s a lot. Men and women both need to be expected to be at least as tall as the average person of their gender in America. For men, it’s 5’9”. For women, it’s 5’4”. If this is the average height in our society, then the argument that too many people, women especially, are being excluded from law enforcement careers doesn’t hold water. Being at least of average height means you have a height advantage over a large portion of the population, also.

Third, dealing with violent suspects should always take precedence over all other skills. Yes, possessing soft skills is important. Yes, police need to be able to resolve conflicts without violence. But policing is, ultimately, in the business of violence. Cops need to be ready to go from being courteous and diplomatic to fighting ferociously in less than a second. Anyone who wants to be a police officer must do so with the understanding that they may go their entire careers without shooting anyone, but they’ll absolutely end up in a physical struggle with someone more than once in their careers. They need to be prepared for that. Someone who is good at talking people down but cannot defend themselves or others shouldn’t be cops. There are other jobs they can do.

To elaborate on the second point, we should temper the idea that de-escalation is something which can be “trained” into officers. Not in a law enforcement environment. De-escalation is something people need to learn in situations where lives aren’t at stake. In fact, police officers should already possess adequate soft skills by the time they submit their application for employment. Departments should find ways of screening individuals to better assess their people skills. By the time they’re on the job, it’s time for them to perform, not learn how to do the basics. Reinforce, yes, but never at the expense of training cops to physically handle suspects.

There are a few other less realistic, but still ideal reforms which need to take place at the societal level. Our attitude towards violence needs to change. We need to quit acting like it’s something only for bad people, while good people never use violence. This is a false and totally unrealistic expectation. It creates a world where the only people who use violence are the bad guys, who don’t follow the rules and aren’t deterred by laws or norms.

This attitude extends to policing: because cops are supposed to be the good guys, they can’t use violence. Obviously, this is a stupid and unrealistic expectation and we all know it. But it does explain why people are so sensitive to any police use of force and why the public treats criminal violence as more normal and police violence as totally off-script.

This needs to change. The law doesn’t enforce itself. It’s enforced through violence, because law itself is a declaration of intent to use force to further ends. I can understand why people might be leery about cops punching a suspect on the ground, but nobody should suffer a moral panic over a resisting suspect getting punched. Pain is the shortest route to compliance; anyone who says differently isn’t being honest with themselves. I don’t know how common police shootings are today to how they used to be, but an argument can be made that handcuffing officers (no pun intended) with respect to the use of force increases the likelihood a shooting will occur, when a less lethal, yet viscerally violent compliance technique might’ve sufficed instead.

Lastly, we need to quit looking to Hollywood for an understanding of violence. In reaction to the assault on Lydia Ward, many commenters noted that movies and television series often depict women handling male attackers with relative ease, often many at once. This is clearly not how things are in the real world, but people buy into the fantasy because it’s empowering and pointing out any shortcomings in females is socially off-limits. The failure to not only be honest about male-female strength disparities, to make fighting entirely a matter of skill, and to propagate total fantasies about the ability of females to hurt males is putting women at risk, leading them to take ill-advised chances with their lives.

Again, all of these changes are beyond the Overton window. In practice, the only way attitudes will change is for women to be killed in large numbers in the line of duty. Even then, that might not be enough. It may only reinforce existing attitudes.

We can all predict the headline:

Women Are Disproportionately The Victims Of Violence Against Law Enforcement. How Can We Better Protect Female Officers?

In closing, I’m going to share passages from an essay last year which will summarize my feelings on letting anyone, women especially, become police officers.

First:

I’m the last person in the world to ever criticize someone willing to take a bullet for others. I think we all should be willing to take a bullet for others; I can’t remember who said it, but someone who isn’t willing to die for others isn’t fit for living. That said, a willingness to die for others doesn’t mean someone should have a career where they get paid to protect others. It’s one thing to be willing to give up your life on behalf of others, it’s another to expect compensation for it and to do it day in, day out. That’s not something everyone can do, nor should they.

I feel for Lydia Ward. At the same time, it’s also true that she chose to do a job she’s unsuited for. Whether she knows it or not, people need to be forced to come to terms with the choices they make. It’s not all about empowerment. It’s also about responsibility.

Next:

Put another way, women cannot, on the one hand, routinely point out that men pose a threat to them due to physical and psychological differences, but also claim that women are just as capable of doing the same jobs as them. Those physical and psychological differences are, in fact, what makes men more appropriate for certain jobs, in turn making women less appropriate for them. Put still another way, if the average man poses a disproportionate level of danger to the average woman, why would making that woman into a police officer be a good idea, when her job would be to confront such dangerous men?

We can level the playing field through things like firearms, but if we’re going to try to reduce police shootings, you achieve that by not putting weak people out there to handle stronger, violent people. It makes no sense, but when equality is more important than saving lives, nonsensical decisions will be made.

Here’s why there’s such a push for women to get into policing:

Consider: among the most dangerous occupations in America are tree trimmers, loggers, and roofers. They have fatality and injury rates far above that of law enforcement officers. However, there’s no push for more women in these jobs. Why is that? Could it be due to the fact they not only don’t pay well, but they lack the status that comes with being a cop, pilot, and other higher-paying, high-profile occupations. That and they’re genuinely physically strenuous jobs in the sense your body is constantly under stress and strain.

This is something which has to be part of the discussion. Women want to be cops because of the status and benefits it affords. Women generally avoid dangerous work, but they’ll insist on doing it if it gives them a leg up on life. It’s why, like I said last year, that they want a job where they have to confront nasty, violent men, but they won’t dare go up on that roof or cut down that tree for a living. There’s just no advantage gained from being a roofer or tree-trimmer.

Finally:

Nobody can nor should do everything. That’s just the way it is. A man who is 5’5” would never be charged with protecting a 6’3” man. So why should a woman of the same size? Women who work in male-dominated professions claim to be held to a higher standard on the job; while this might be true in shades, it’s also true that men not only need to compete with other men, they also need to compete with women who have a leg up simply for being female. Nobody should be surprised that someone who gets the job based on a lesser standard, dealing with less competition, gets held to a higher standard once on the job. If there existed any realistic standards, there might not be any women in these jobs at all.

Women in male-dominated fields often complain about the disparity in expectations, about how they’re written off by their peers before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves. Some of this might be prejudiced, but in something like policing, nobody wants to put their lives in the hands of someone who may not even be able to protect themselves.

The bottom line:

Nobody wants to be told they can’t do something. I get it. But if we don’t tell them, reality will. Reality won’t say mean things, but it won’t be merciful, either.

Let’s talk. What do you think about having small and weak people in policing? Are police agencies allowing too many people who are obviously unsuitable for the job to have a gun and a badge? How do we ensure 5’2”, 112-pound women don’t become police officers without running afoul of civil rights law? Or is there no way?

Talk about it in the comments.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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