Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.
I recently took a pleasant stroll through the traffic-free streets of downtown San Antonio last month with 10,000 like-minded critics of a neo-royalist regime.
While my girlfriend and I argued whether protests such as the “No Kings” march in which we participated serve as tranquilizing substitutes for more effective political action — her position — or whether they can help broaden and embolden the movement — mine — we watched a couple of drones hover high above our heads, presumably snapping photos of the protesters.
The friendly neighborhood cops who dutifully kept impatient cars from accelerating through the passing crowd were downright genteel compared to the ICE agents elsewhere whom we have recently witnessed executing citizens in the street.
In fairness though, everyday police still hold their own in the killing department. Last year, only six days elapsed in which police officers killed zero civilians, and across the nation, officers shoot more than 1,000 of us dead annually. In contrast, police in England and Wales have fatally shot less than 100 people since the 1990s.
Yet the outgoing president of San Antonio’s police union, Danny Diaz, during a February appearance on KLRN interview program On The Record, expressed nostalgia for the good old days when cops exuded “a warrior mentality” instead of the effete de-escalatory approaches he feels predominate today. Last week, Diaz announced he’ll retire at the end of May after three decades of service.
“Policing has changed in the last 30 years,” Diaz told host Randy Beamer. “Since [the murder of] George Floyd, you have ‘de-escalate’, ‘retreat.’ When I started, ‘retreat’ was a word you never heard. It was a warrior mentality.”
Surely, the warriors came out to play when three officers shot 16 rounds into 46-year-old Melissa Perez’s home back in 2023, ending her life. The San Antonio mother of four suffered from schizophrenia and was having a mental health crisis. The cops called to the scene didn’t retreat when she began swinging a hammer.
Last November, all the shooters were acquitted of any wrongdoing. The San Antonio Police Officers’ Association not only welcomed the verdict, but Diaz recommended a vote of no confidence in Police Chief William McManus for so much as arresting the officers responsible.
Perez’s killing provides the sorrowful film score for the negiotiation of a new San Antonio police union contract that’s now underway.
While I would never begrudge a worker a higher salary, whether they’re a barista or a beat cop, isn’t it odd that right-of-center politicians readily accuse teachers unions of making it impossible to fire bad educators yet fall over one another to court favor with police unions?
“Some jobs can’t have bad apples, okay?” comedian Chris Rock once quipped. “Like … pilots. American Airlines can’t be like, ‘You know most of our pilots like to land. We’ve just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains. Please bear with us.’”
To the extent there have been any concessions on removing officers with histories of misconduct from the San Antonio Police Department, we can thank ACT 4 SA, a grassroots organization dedicated to accountable, compassionate, and transparent public safety — hence the ACT part of its name.
After a May 2021 ballot initiative advanced by the organization to strip the police union of collective bargaining rights came within a hair’s breadth of passing, the union had to know they were playing with five fouls. The subsequent contract was finalized in a matter of months with minimal contentiousness.
On the February broadcast, Diaz also said “a handful” of officers have left the department following ICE’s offer of a $50,000 signing bonus to new recruits. Exactly how many is “a handful” and how many more we can expect to join the ongoing mass deportation might be pressing questions for reporters to ask Diaz’s replacement.
Meanwhile, instead of focusing on retention of the cops we’ve got, District 10 Councilor Marc Whyte asked his colleagues earlier this month to commit to hiring 65 more police officers to the tune of $8 million over the next two years.
Although Whyte likes to cosplay as a fiscal conservative interested in ensuring taxpayers get the most bang for our buck, he proposed his resolution before the Public Safety Committee, on which he also sits, even had a chance to run the numbers.
In a recent Current investigation of potential SAPD overtime abuse, Digital Editor Stephanie Koithan questioned why San Antonio keeps adding officers and piling on overtime when statistics show crime is down.
ACT 4 SA has prudently called for a cap on overtime pay and an independent audit of police overtime spending before the new labor contract is sealed. Where are the enthusiastic opponents of “waste, fraud and abuse” when we could use them?
“Countries that are highly unequal devote a significant fraction of their labor force to ‘guard labor’ — that is, the labor which is dedicated to essentially maintaining order,” economist Samuel Bowles explained in a talk 10 years ago. “The United States devotes much more of our labor to that than do the more equal European societies.” And, he added, “It’s a waste.”
If budgets are moral documents, the moral of the GOP’s is to double-down on detention camps and militarization, both at home and abroad, and leave students, doctors, farmers and union-supportive workers to fend for themselves.
More than 2 million Americans lost food assistance after last summer’s megabill, while the Trump administration’s most recent budget request to Congress features so-called “counterterrorism” funding which will lawlessly empower the FBI under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 to “proactively” target anyone with political sentiments not aligned with the MAGA philosophy.
Those who truly desire safer neighborhoods should bet on after-school programs, not punitive quick-fixes, and help build a more robust social safety net for us all. Because those with a social justice warrior mentality are likely to stay on the march.
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