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Taxonomy of the Modern Mystery Story · Revisionist History

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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Hello everyone, Malcolm Glapwell here we're continuing our
0:25
Speaker 1: build up to the main event in this season of
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Speaker 1: Revision's History, which is a mini series on guns, six
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Speaker 1: parts beginning August thirty first, which is some of my
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Speaker 1: favorite work that we've ever done, a Revision's History. So
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Speaker 1: please put that on your calendar and if you want
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Speaker 1: a Pushkin subscription anyway to get you in the mood
0:55
Speaker 1: for that series, which I will say right now goes
0:57
Speaker 1: in some very strange directions. I thought i'd give you this.
1:01
Speaker 1: It's a speech I gave at the New Orleans Book
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Speaker 1: Festival at Tulane University. I asked the organizers if I
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Speaker 1: could do it, an old fashioned lecture on murder mysteries
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Speaker 1: and police procedurals, which I have been obsessed with ever
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Speaker 1: since my dad read schrlock Holms short stories to me
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Speaker 1: and my brothers when we were kids. They said sure,
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Speaker 1: and I said, oh my god. So picture a packed auditorium.
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Speaker 1: Everyone has book bags, and while they're waiting, they're reading books.
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Speaker 1: They're not on their phones, catching up on their crust.
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Speaker 1: This is a talk to a room full of serious readers,
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Speaker 1: which is to say, a room full of people who
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Speaker 1: are more interested in being delighted than they are in
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Speaker 1: being persuaded. My kind of people. All Right, here it is.
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Speaker 1: I want to thank the New Orleans Book Festival for
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Speaker 1: allowing me this time today. I wanted to start by
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Speaker 1: apologizing for the title. I don't know if you saw
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Speaker 1: the title in the program, Eastern, Western, Northern, Southern, and
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Speaker 1: over theorized and potentially absurd taxonomy of the modern mystery story. First,
2:17
Speaker 1: a simple warning that title is dead serious. This whole
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Speaker 1: episode is going to get a little absurd and over theorized.
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Speaker 1: So don't stand up at the end and say, mister Glawell,
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Speaker 1: I found your presentation absurd and over theorized. I already
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Speaker 1: warned you. I have disclosed that risk at the outset. Secondly,
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Speaker 1: I've chosen to speak about crime novels because and mysteries
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Speaker 1: because I'm addicted to them. I read in order spy novels,
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Speaker 1: thrillers of various kinds, novels involving events that potentially threaten
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Speaker 1: the safety of the entire planet, and the category that
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Speaker 1: concerns us today police procedurals and crime stories and their
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Speaker 1: television and film equivalents. You know when you go into
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Speaker 1: the Hudson News in an airport and there's that whole
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Speaker 1: wall of paperbacks. I have read every one of those
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Speaker 1: paperbacks except for the ones with the word girl in
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Speaker 1: the title. My daughter, who is eighteen months old, spends
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Speaker 1: a lot of time in a very large playpen, and
3:23
Speaker 1: the playpen immediately abuts the bookcase where I keep all
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Speaker 1: of my thrillers, and a couple days ago she reached
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Speaker 1: up and grabbed Daniel Silva's The Kill Artist and started
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Speaker 1: to turn the pages. Now, The Kill Artist is the
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Speaker 1: first installment in Daniel Silva's series of books on the
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Speaker 1: legendary Israeli assassin Gabriel Alon, involving, in this case, his
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Speaker 1: pursuit of the dastardly Palestinian terrorist Tarik. It's one of
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Speaker 1: my favorite books ever. And I mean, I don't think
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Speaker 1: any father ever has been more proud of his daughter
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Speaker 1: than I was at that moment. But as I said,
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Speaker 1: it's stories about the police that concern us today, because
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Speaker 1: I think that stories about the police have not been
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Speaker 1: given nearly the kind of close cultural scrutiny that they deserve,
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Speaker 1: which makes no sense because the attitude of popular culture
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Speaker 1: towards the police is really, really weird. So, there are
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Speaker 1: two million truck drivers in the United States. How many
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Speaker 1: TV books and movies and novels are there about truck drivers? Right?
4:40
Speaker 1: Once in a blue moon? There are three million nurses
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Speaker 1: in the United States. How many movies are there about nurses?
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Speaker 1: Is there a genre of fiction devoted to nurses? No,
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Speaker 1: there is not. There are four million teachers in the
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Speaker 1: United States. Teachers are everywhere. There must be a ton
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Speaker 1: of teachers in this room right now. How many teachers
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Speaker 1: do you know personally? I'm sure all of us. The
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Speaker 1: list is this long. But has any sixteen year old
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Speaker 1: ever asked his girlfriend to come with him to see
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Speaker 1: the new teacher movie at the multiplex? No, the creative
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Speaker 1: role was taught by teachers, nurtured by teachers, encouraged by teachers.
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Speaker 1: But they don't want to tell us stories about teachers.
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Speaker 1: They want to tell us stories about cops. There are
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Speaker 1: only seven hundred thousand police officers in this country, but
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Speaker 1: they are massively overrepresented in the culture. My guess is
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Speaker 1: that almost everyone in this room can name way more
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Speaker 1: fictional police officers than they can name real police officers.
5:43
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard a real police officer refer to
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Speaker 1: a purp? Have you ever heard a real police officer
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Speaker 1: talk about a cold case. Have you ever heard a
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Speaker 1: real police officer say you have the right to remain silent.
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Speaker 1: Have you ever heard a real police officer say of
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Speaker 1: his partner, if you're going in there, I'm going in
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Speaker 1: there with you too. Or hold on, Jimmy, just hold on.
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Speaker 1: Remember when we were rookies together, Jimmy, No, no, no.
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Speaker 1: Virtually everything we know about the police comes from the
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Speaker 1: movies and television and novels. Right, martians currently circling the
6:27
Speaker 1: United States in a hot air balloon. If I'm sorry,
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Speaker 1: If one of those Martians currently circulating the United States
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Speaker 1: in a hot air balloon ever gets a Netflix subscription,
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Speaker 1: they will say, my god, we appear to have stumbled
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Speaker 1: on a country of people running around in tight blue
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Speaker 1: uniforms and wearing aviator classes. So today I want to
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Speaker 1: ask the question, what have we learned from our immersion
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Speaker 1: in all these police procedurals and crime novels, and what
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Speaker 1: are the social consequences of that learning? Which is an
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Speaker 1: important question, because I think all of those crime books
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Speaker 1: and movies have really really screwed us up. Okay, let's
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Speaker 1: begin with Ed McMain. Now, for those of you who
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Speaker 1: may not be familiar with Ed McBain, he was, in
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Speaker 1: the postwar years, one of America's most popular mystery writers.
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Speaker 1: He wrote police Procedurals about a fictional eighty seventh precinct,
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Speaker 1: and the officers in his precinct were all young men.
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Speaker 1: They were all had very pretty wives, they were all
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Speaker 1: happily married. They all got along wonderfully. They worked together well.
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Speaker 1: And I want to read to you from one of
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Speaker 1: the novels in that series, called The Killer's Wedge, and
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Speaker 1: it's about one of the officers in the eighty seventh precinct,
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Speaker 1: Cotton Hawes, who's just been transferred in from another precinct,
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Speaker 1: and the eighty seventh is in a bad part of town,
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Speaker 1: and he initially has all kinds of doubts about what
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Speaker 1: it would mean to work a poor part of town.
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Speaker 1: So this is Ed McBain talking about how Cotton Hawes
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Speaker 1: is making sense of his experience. He had learned that
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Speaker 1: the people of the slums were only people. They enjoyed
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Speaker 1: the same pleasures he did, and they suffered a great
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Speaker 1: many misfortunes would never have to suffer. They wanted love,
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Speaker 1: and they wanted respect, And the walls of a tenement
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Speaker 1: did not necessarily become the cage of an animal. He
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Speaker 1: had learned this from the men of the squad. He
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Speaker 1: had seen each and every one of them in action.
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Speaker 1: Then he goes on, but he was surprised to learn
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Speaker 1: that the men of the eighty seventh clung to another
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Speaker 1: concept which in no way limited the effectiveness of their
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Speaker 1: law enforcement. That concept was fairness. And within this concept
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Speaker 1: they knew when to get tough and when to understand.
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Speaker 1: They did not automatically equate slum dwellers with criminals. A
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Speaker 1: thief was a thief, but a person was a person.
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Speaker 1: Now this is eight remarkably idealized view of law enforcement, right.
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Speaker 1: I mean, let me give you another example from the
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Speaker 1: same era, eighteen fifties, which is, of course, the television
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Speaker 1: show Dragnet, created by Jack Webb. At its height, Dragnet
9:02
Speaker 1: is an astonishingly popular television show. At one point of
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Speaker 1: the twenty seven million American homes with televisions, sixteen million
9:11
Speaker 1: will be tuned to Dragnet. On Thursday nights when it ran,
9:14
Speaker 1: which is a number that has never been approximated since
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Speaker 1: it's an insane number. And Dragnet is a show about
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Speaker 1: the LPD, and it's the story of a group of dispassionate,
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Speaker 1: unbelievably professional, highly competent police officers. One of my favorite
9:33
Speaker 1: Dragnet episodes involved Joe Friday, who is the hero of Dragnet,
9:38
Speaker 1: arresting a woman for a crime and at the end
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Speaker 1: of the episode, the woman he arrests thanks him for
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Speaker 1: arresting her, which when has this ever happened in real
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Speaker 1: life ever? But it happened in Dragnet. And you know,
9:56
Speaker 1: you could make a list of the if you make
9:58
Speaker 1: a list of it's a very fun exercise of the
10:00
Speaker 1: tops the five most influential television shows of all time
10:04
Speaker 1: right sixty minutes. Probably The Real World, which kind of
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Speaker 1: invents reality TV, probably put The Cosby Show on there
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Speaker 1: for its influence on race relations. But it absolutely is
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Speaker 1: the case that Dragnet is one of the five most
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Speaker 1: influential and important television shows of all time. And it
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Speaker 1: belongs in that list because what it does is it
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Speaker 1: represents the first time on television that the same idea
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Speaker 1: that Ed McBain has is put forth, and which is
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Speaker 1: this notion that the police are good at what they do. Right.
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Speaker 1: I'm quoting here from a Time magazine article on Dragnet
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Speaker 1: when it first became a hit. The flood of Dragnet
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Speaker 1: fan mail suggests that the US completely forgets that it
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Speaker 1: is a nation of incipient cop haters when its eyes
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Speaker 1: are glued on web show, that it has gained a
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Speaker 1: new appreciation of the underpaid, long suffering ordinary policemen, and
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Speaker 1: in many cases, its first rudimentary understanding of real life
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Speaker 1: law enforcement. So this is Time Magazine in the nineteen fifties,
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Speaker 1: when it was the embodiment of Middle America, describing the
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Speaker 1: United States as a nation of incipient cop haters. You know,
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Speaker 1: today when we think of cop paters, we think of
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Speaker 1: you know, progressives, radicalized activists, civil rights zealots. You know,
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Speaker 1: back then, Time Magazine is saying America, Middle America were
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Speaker 1: the cop haters until people like Ed McBain and Dragon
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Speaker 1: Kim along and convinced Americans that their perception of law
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Speaker 1: enforcement was wrong. Right. Those shows represent a massive narrative innovation.
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Speaker 1: They introduced Americas to an idea that had never occurred
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Speaker 1: to them before, and that is the idea of the
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Speaker 1: excellent police officer. More on the taxonomy of the modern
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Speaker 1: mystery story in a moment. Now back to my speech
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Speaker 1: on the taxonomy of police storytelling. Now, this is, of course,
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Speaker 1: not the only way that the popular culture represents law enforcement.
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Speaker 1: Before Dragon came along, the dominant narrative mode was the Western.
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Speaker 1: And what is the Western? It's the parable about the
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Speaker 1: consequences of the absence of institutional authority. What do you
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Speaker 1: do in your little town on the plains when there
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Speaker 1: is no police department. Well, ordinary citizens, possessed of no
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Speaker 1: more than their own courage and a six shooter, have
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Speaker 1: to restore order on their own. Now, alongside that, you
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Speaker 1: had the rise in fiction of the private detective. Herkilpoio
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Speaker 1: Sherlock Hoomb's Philip Marlowe Angela Lansbury in Murders, she wrote,
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Speaker 1: and what is the prevailing view of law enforcement in
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Speaker 1: the world of the private detective? It is that the
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Speaker 1: police are present, but they're incompetent. They can only catch
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Speaker 1: bad guys with the help of talented outsiders. Right, babamitters,
13:19
Speaker 1: If you've read your Sholacombs, you know all about Jola Colmes'
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Speaker 1: long relationship with Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. Lestrade is honest,
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Speaker 1: he's dogged, he's hard working, but he lacks imagination and
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Speaker 1: he can't solve a crime to save his life. And
13:35
Speaker 1: there's a moment in the adventure in the Adventures of
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Speaker 1: the Six Napoleons in nineteen hundred when we have this
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Speaker 1: passage Lestrade is addressing Holmes after Holmes has just done
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Speaker 1: one of his spectacular feats of deduction and figured out
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Speaker 1: who the real criminal is, and Lestre says, we are
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Speaker 1: not jealous of you at Scotland Yard, No, sir, we
13:56
Speaker 1: are very proud of you. And if you come down tomorrow,
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Speaker 1: there's not a man from the oldest inspector to the
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Speaker 1: youngest constable who wouldn't be glad to shake you by
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Speaker 1: the hand. So at Scotland Yard they are under absolutely
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Speaker 1: no illusion about their own ability, right. They know Holmes
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Speaker 1: is better than they are. They know that they're useless
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Speaker 1: at this task of crime solving, and that the guy
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Speaker 1: with the pipe and the crazy hat from Baker Street
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Speaker 1: is the only way they're going to keep the criminals
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Speaker 1: of London under control. Same thing in Agatha Christie's her
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Speaker 1: kil Paro novels. Right, her kile Paro is solving crime
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Speaker 1: after crime to the extent the police ever show up. Right,
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Speaker 1: when they show up, they have no idea what's going on.
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Speaker 1: And he looks at them, our little Belgian with the
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Speaker 1: mustaches looks at the police with absolute contempt because he's
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Speaker 1: the only one who can ever finger the bad guy. Right.
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Speaker 1: So we have stories about highly competent cops, and for
14:55
Speaker 1: the sake of argument, let's call those Easterns. We have
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Speaker 1: stories about absent cops. Let's call those Westerns, right, they
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Speaker 1: are called Westerns. And we have stories about incompetent cops.
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Speaker 1: And let's call those northerns, which only leaves the southern.
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Speaker 1: So what's the Southern. Well, the Southern is the narrative
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Speaker 1: of the police and authority as malignant.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: Think about the great Brian de Palmer movie The Untouchables,
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Speaker 1: with Kevin Costner playing the role of elliot Ness, Right,
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Speaker 1: the incorruptible Chicago District Attorney elliot Ness who goes on
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Speaker 1: his crusade against the mob during the heart of Prohibition.
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Speaker 1: The reason it matters that Ness is incorruptible is that
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Speaker 1: all around him. The police of Chicago are corruptible, right.
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Speaker 1: They're not absent, they're not incompetent, They're not deaft and professional. No,
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Speaker 1: they have been seduced by the criminality that they're supposed
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Speaker 1: to contain. They are indistinguishable from the bad guys. That's
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Speaker 1: what a Southern is, right. So these are the four
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Speaker 1: kinds of police stories. Excellence, absence, incompetence, corruption, And this
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Speaker 1: is the first. Here's the first of my claims. I
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Speaker 1: think that every single example of a crime novel or
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Speaker 1: a police procedural falls into one of these four categories
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Speaker 1: without exception. So let's explore this. I assume some of
16:25
Speaker 1: you have read the Lee Child Jack Reacher series, and
16:29
Speaker 1: if you haven't, you need to start right after this.
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Speaker 1: The talk is over. I once said a back of
16:35
Speaker 1: the envelope calculation based on the very large sample of
16:39
Speaker 1: Jack Reacher novels that I've read, which, as it follows,
16:42
Speaker 1: Reacher kills on average twelve bad guys per book. There
16:49
Speaker 1: are twenty six Reacher books, meaning that he has murdered
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Speaker 1: two hundred and eighty four people over the course of
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Speaker 1: his life. He is the most prolific serial killer in
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Speaker 1: American fiction and yet twenty six years after Jack Reacher
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Speaker 1: first appeared in The Killing Floor, he remains at large.
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Speaker 1: This is pretty good evidence that the police are absent
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Speaker 1: in the Reacher series, the Reacher novels, the Westerns. Only
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Speaker 1: in the Western can you get away with killing two
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Speaker 1: hundred and four people and remain a large right for
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Speaker 1: the Northern For the incompetent police. We have more examples
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Speaker 1: than we can count. But the one that I remember
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Speaker 1: from my childhood, and many of you are old enough
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Speaker 1: to remember this as well, is Hogan's Heroes, the legendary
17:35
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies sitcom. For those of you who are too
17:39
Speaker 1: young to remember Hogan's Heroes, it was a hugely successful
17:43
Speaker 1: TV show set in a German prisoner of war camp
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Speaker 1: during the Second World War, in which the comic foils
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Speaker 1: of the captured German soldiers were Nazi prison guards. Don't
17:57
Speaker 1: even try pitching that show today, by the way, because
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Speaker 1: and why do we laugh at the Nazis, if memory
18:04
Speaker 1: serves Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz right, Not because they
18:10
Speaker 1: are malicious or vicious, not because they are ineffective or indifferent. No,
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Speaker 1: we laugh at them because they're inapt. Because Clink is
18:23
Speaker 1: a self important fool, because Schultz is a clown who
18:26
Speaker 1: says I know nothing, I see nothing. Right. The literary
18:30
Speaker 1: conceit of Hogan's heroes is that is that the Nazis
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Speaker 1: were the three Stooges, which is a northern That's what
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Speaker 1: it is. Right. Then there's the Southern authority as malignant
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Speaker 1: and corrupt. Who is the king of the Southern Well,
18:46
Speaker 1: I think it's obvious if you think about it, it's
18:49
Speaker 1: John Grisham. The plot of every John Grisham novel ever,
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Speaker 1: and I say this as someone who loves John Grisham
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Speaker 1: like a brother, is about the subversion of institutional authority.
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Speaker 1: How does the Pelican Brief end? The richest man in
19:05
Speaker 1: the country is under indictment, as are his closest aids
19:09
Speaker 1: and all of his lawyers. The chief of staff to
19:11
Speaker 1: the President of the United States has resigned, and the
19:14
Speaker 1: President himself has wisely decided not to seek a second term.
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Speaker 1: In the firm, our hero, played in the movie version
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Speaker 1: by Tom Cruise, discovers that the biggest client of his
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Speaker 1: law firm is a mafia crime family. The FBI gets involved,
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Speaker 1: and we think the movie is going to end with
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Speaker 1: the FBI helping Tom Cruise resolve the matter. But no,
19:39
Speaker 1: what does our hero do. He ends up making a
19:41
Speaker 1: deal with the mafia crime family and turning his back
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Speaker 1: on the FBI. Why because the FBI double crosses him.
19:49
Speaker 1: Of course they do, right, this is a Grisham novel. Right,
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Speaker 1: the law is less trustworthy than a mafia crime family.
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Speaker 1: I have argued long, at hard over the years to
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Speaker 1: very deaf ears that Grisham is the most important literary
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Speaker 1: figure of our generation. And I'm not joking. I mean,
20:10
Speaker 1: why did so many Americans think the twenty twenty two
20:13
Speaker 1: election was stolen, that truckloads of purloined ballots were ferried
20:18
Speaker 1: around Philadelphia in the back of pickup trucks, that voting
20:21
Speaker 1: machines magically preferred Democrats to Republicans. Because these are the
20:27
Speaker 1: kinds of things that happen all the time in John
20:29
Speaker 1: grisham novels. Right, And given that John Grisham has sold
20:33
Speaker 1: three hundred million books and has had twenty eight consecutive
20:38
Speaker 1: number one New York Times bestsellers, it is a statistical
20:42
Speaker 1: certainty that a good majority of the people wearing mega
20:45
Speaker 1: hats and storming the Capitol on January sixth read a
20:50
Speaker 1: Grisham book every night before bedtime, after of course being
20:55
Speaker 1: inoculated with their daily dose of Tucker cars. Let's still
21:01
Speaker 1: more difficult example. Some of you may have seen the
21:05
Speaker 1: new Apple TV series Slow Horse, based on the mickhern
21:11
Speaker 1: Spy novels. The show is about an intelligence officer played
21:15
Speaker 1: by Gary Oldham who has been exiled to a decrepit
21:19
Speaker 1: outbuilding called slow House and along with all the other misfits,
21:23
Speaker 1: all the other rejects, screw ups, weirdos who can no
21:27
Speaker 1: longer make it within I five headquarters. So what's that? Well,
21:32
Speaker 1: that that sounds like a Northern right, It's an authority
21:36
Speaker 1: is incompetent.
21:37
Speaker 3: Right.
21:37
Speaker 1: We have a group of screw ups, but then the
21:40
Speaker 1: slow House crew go on to solve some of the
21:42
Speaker 1: most pressing national security crises of the day, which makes
21:46
Speaker 1: it sound like an Eastern like a dragnet and Ed
21:50
Speaker 1: McBain like uber competent authority. So it doesn't fit, right,
21:56
Speaker 1: Doesn't that invalidate my theory? No? No, no, Slow Horses
22:02
Speaker 1: is just a hybrid, right. It's hybrids have been around forever.
22:06
Speaker 1: If you remember how many people read Scarlet Pimpernel novels
22:09
Speaker 1: growing up. What is the scarlet pimpernel. He is the
22:12
Speaker 1: nobleman who everyone thinks is stupid but is simultaneously outwitting
22:16
Speaker 1: all of the evil French.
22:18
Speaker 2: Right.
22:18
Speaker 1: Or think about Columbo, right, the magnificent nineteen seventies television
22:22
Speaker 1: detective series, but where Peter Falk pretends to be a
22:26
Speaker 1: bumbling fool but always gets the bad guy in the end.
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Speaker 1: These are Easterns masquerading as Northerns. They're Northeasterns. There are
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Speaker 1: no easters.
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Speaker 3: Right.
22:41
Speaker 1: What does Hamlet say to Horatio? There are more things
22:44
Speaker 1: in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
22:48
Speaker 1: That does not apply to my taxonomy. Okay, Why am
22:52
Speaker 1: I going on and on about the four categories? Because
22:55
Speaker 1: I think they're deeply problematic, and I think they distort
22:59
Speaker 1: our understanding of what policing is. And here I'm going
23:03
Speaker 1: to go on a digression and simultaneously get a little
23:07
Speaker 1: bit serious. The father of modern policing was a man
23:11
Speaker 1: named Sir Robert Peel, and he founds the Metropolitan Police
23:15
Speaker 1: Force in London in eighteen twenty nine, which is the
23:17
Speaker 1: first great urban police department. And Peel famously sets out
23:22
Speaker 1: nine principles that he thinks ought to govern modern police forces,
23:27
Speaker 1: and they are as applicable, if not more applicable, today
23:31
Speaker 1: than they were in eighteen twenty nine. They are the
23:34
Speaker 1: ten commandments of policing. They're what every police officer is
23:37
Speaker 1: taught on the first day of their time at police academy.
23:41
Speaker 1: And to give you a flavor, I'm going to read
23:42
Speaker 1: a couple of Peel's principles. The ability of the police
23:47
Speaker 1: to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of
23:51
Speaker 1: police existence, actions, behavior, and the ability of the police
23:56
Speaker 1: to secure and maintain public respect. He's another one. The
24:01
Speaker 1: police must secure the willing cooperation of the public in
24:06
Speaker 1: voluntary observance of the law to be able to maintain
24:09
Speaker 1: and secure public respect. There's another one. The degree of
24:14
Speaker 1: cooperation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately
24:19
Speaker 1: to the necessity for the use of physical force and
24:22
Speaker 1: compulsion in achieving police objectives. And here's the crucial one.
24:27
Speaker 1: The police at all times should maintain a relationship with
24:30
Speaker 1: the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that
24:34
Speaker 1: the police are the public and the public are the police.
24:38
Speaker 2: Right.
24:40
Speaker 1: What is the word that appears in all of those
24:42
Speaker 1: principles as often as police. It's public right, public, public, public.
24:49
Speaker 1: The police are the public and the public are the police.
24:52
Speaker 1: I would submit to you that that those two sentences
24:55
Speaker 1: are one of the most beautiful and essential lines that
24:58
Speaker 1: have ever been written about the modern democratic experiment. Now
25:03
Speaker 1: where are we today with respect to Peel's principles in America?
25:08
Speaker 1: Are we a societ that believes that the people are
25:11
Speaker 1: the police and the police are the people? I'm not
25:15
Speaker 1: so sure of that. One of the ways, for example,
25:18
Speaker 1: that we measure the health and effectiveness of a police
25:22
Speaker 1: force is clearance rates. A clearance rate is simply the
25:26
Speaker 1: percentage of crimes that are solved by the police, and
25:30
Speaker 1: the most important of those, obviously, is the homicide clearance rate.
25:34
Speaker 1: And over the last thirty years, the homicide clearance rate
25:37
Speaker 1: in this country has been falling, and not by a
25:41
Speaker 1: small amount, by a large amount. Thirty years ago it
25:43
Speaker 1: was roughly seventy percent. It's now fifty percent. So half
25:49
Speaker 1: of all murders committed in the United States go unsolved
25:54
Speaker 1: by the police. And by the way, that's an average.
25:57
Speaker 1: There are many many places where the clearance rate is
25:59
Speaker 1: much lower than that. The clearance rate in Michigan is
26:02
Speaker 1: seventeen percent for homicide. In Honolulu it's eighteen percent. It
26:07
Speaker 1: also varies by neighborhoo. But if somebody was murdered outside
26:11
Speaker 1: of this auditorium here in Tulane, the clearance rate would
26:14
Speaker 1: probably be ninety percent, but in the seventh ward it's
26:16
Speaker 1: probably I don't know, ten fifteen percent. Right, That is
26:20
Speaker 1: a very, very big problem for modern society. In the
26:24
Speaker 1: classic formulation of deterrence, deterrence is a function of the certainty, swiftness,
26:31
Speaker 1: and severity of punishment. And of those three things, the
26:35
Speaker 1: first is the most important. Right, Deterrence is really a
26:39
Speaker 1: function of the likelihood of being caught. And if we
26:42
Speaker 1: are in a situation where the clearance rates in many
26:44
Speaker 1: high crime neighborhoods is less than twenty percent, then that's
26:49
Speaker 1: the description of a failed state.
26:51
Speaker 2: Right.
26:52
Speaker 1: We live in a society now where there are many
26:55
Speaker 1: neighborhoods where murderers murder with impunity. Now, why are clearance
27:01
Speaker 1: rates falling? It makes no sense that police today are
27:04
Speaker 1: better funded, they're better trained than ever before, they have
27:06
Speaker 1: more access to technology. There's cameras everywhere. Plus murder rates
27:10
Speaker 1: have fallen dramatically over the last thirty years, they have
27:12
Speaker 1: less to do. If you watch CSI on television or
27:16
Speaker 1: Law and Order, you would think clearance rates would be
27:18
Speaker 1: one hundred percent, but they're not. They're low and they're dropping.
27:23
Speaker 1: One reason for that is obvious, and that's the rise
27:26
Speaker 1: of gun violence. Guns used to be a small percentage
27:29
Speaker 1: of homicides. They're now an overwhelming percentage of homicides. And
27:33
Speaker 1: a gun crime is a lot harder to solve than
27:36
Speaker 1: a knife crime. Right, less physical evidence, the killer can
27:39
Speaker 1: be further away. But that's not the real reason. The
27:42
Speaker 1: real reason is that the most important factor in solving
27:47
Speaker 1: a homicide is the cooperation of the public. You find
27:51
Speaker 1: out who pulled the trigger because three people come to
27:54
Speaker 1: you and said, I was there, I saw Billy pull
27:56
Speaker 1: the trigger. Right. But if those three people don't come forward,
28:00
Speaker 1: if they don't trust the police anymore, if they think
28:03
Speaker 1: of the police as an occupying force, then you have
28:06
Speaker 1: a problem. Remember that those principles from Peel The ability
28:12
Speaker 1: of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon
28:17
Speaker 1: public approval of police existence, actions, behavior, and the ability
28:23
Speaker 1: of the police to secure and maintain public respect. That
28:27
Speaker 1: is what we don't have right now. In the most
28:30
Speaker 1: recent Gallup poll, only nineteen percent of black adults said
28:33
Speaker 1: they were confident they had any confidence or trust in
28:36
Speaker 1: the police. The numbers for white Americans are a little
28:40
Speaker 1: bit higher, but they are also at historic lows. Right,
28:43
Speaker 1: how do you solve a homicide in the community where
28:46
Speaker 1: eight out of ten people don't trust you. What Robert
28:51
Speaker 1: Peel said two hundred years ago is absolutely correct. The
28:55
Speaker 1: police cannot do their job without the support of the public.
28:59
Speaker 1: Right now, you might say, well, this collapse in trust
29:04
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. Think about the last ten years. We
29:07
Speaker 1: had Ferguson, we had George Floyd, we just had tire
29:12
Speaker 1: Nichols On and on. Right, all of these stories of
29:15
Speaker 1: kinds of things that would naturally undermine our faith in
29:19
Speaker 1: law enforcement. But that still doesn't solve the puzzle, right
29:24
Speaker 1: because in every way this kind of problem was worse
29:28
Speaker 1: fifty years ago than it is today. Would you rather
29:31
Speaker 1: have the police Department of Birmingham, Alabama in nineteen sixty
29:35
Speaker 1: three or the Police Department of Birmingham, Alabama today? Would
29:39
Speaker 1: you rather have the police Department of Los Angeles in
29:42
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, when they wouldn't even let black officers
29:44
Speaker 1: ride in the same squad cars as white officers than
29:47
Speaker 1: the LAPD of today. Now, I mean, I could go on.
29:51
Speaker 1: I mean, in Atlanta in nineteen forty eight, they hire
29:55
Speaker 1: their first black police officers, group of eight men. They
30:00
Speaker 1: call them the YMCA eight. Why because they won't let
30:03
Speaker 1: them into the precincts. They make them work out of
30:07
Speaker 1: the basement of the colored downtown. Right, and they get
30:14
Speaker 1: so much abuse that half of them quit within the
30:16
Speaker 1: first year. Abuse from their fellow white police officers. They're
30:20
Speaker 1: not allowed to drive squad cars, They're not allowed to
30:22
Speaker 1: arrest white people, they're not allowed to patrol white neighborhoods.
30:26
Speaker 1: White officers would gang up against them and falsely report
30:29
Speaker 1: them for drinking on the job. White officers tried to
30:32
Speaker 1: run down a couple of them in the street. One
30:35
Speaker 1: white officer in Atlanta put up bounty on the head
30:38
Speaker 1: of the black officers, saying he would give two hundred
30:40
Speaker 1: dollars to anyone who killed one of those officers. Now,
30:45
Speaker 1: those are good reasons not to trust a police department, right,
30:48
Speaker 1: really good reasons. Not today, not today, when the Atlanta
30:52
Speaker 1: Police Department is world's better and different from that, you
30:56
Speaker 1: would have thought there was a crisis in clearance rates
30:59
Speaker 1: back then, not now, We'll be right back. You would
31:14
Speaker 1: have thought that in every way we would be better
31:16
Speaker 1: off today than we were fifty years ago. So what's
31:20
Speaker 1: to blame for this?
31:21
Speaker 3: Right?
31:21
Speaker 1: This is one of the most profound problems facing our society.
31:25
Speaker 1: I think that there are many, many important issues, but
31:28
Speaker 1: the one I want to talk about is the influence
31:32
Speaker 1: of these four narratives. The first problem with the narratives,
31:35
Speaker 1: I think is obvious, and that is that it is
31:38
Speaker 1: a dangerous thing to over narrativize a group of people.
31:42
Speaker 1: The obvious analogy is the way the popular culture treated
31:45
Speaker 1: African Americans in the movies in the first half of
31:48
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. There were only three categories of black
31:51
Speaker 1: people in the movies in that period. There was the Mammy,
31:55
Speaker 1: remember Gone with the Wind, the role played by Hattie McDaniel,
31:59
Speaker 1: And that is the big, warm, sassy surrogate mother who
32:03
Speaker 1: puts her mistress's children ahead even of her own children,
32:08
Speaker 1: and who keeps her mische in line, you know, with
32:10
Speaker 1: her straight talk.
32:11
Speaker 3: Right.
32:11
Speaker 1: That's stereotype number one. Second stereotype was the sambo. What
32:15
Speaker 1: is the sambo? The sambo is the childlike passive, deeply
32:21
Speaker 1: loyal man servant, right, the uncle Tom. And if you
32:25
Speaker 1: were a black actor or actress in Hollywood in the
32:29
Speaker 1: first forty years of the twentieth century, those are the
32:32
Speaker 1: two roles that were available to you. And the third
32:35
Speaker 1: group is the shiftless, devious, untrustworthy, lazy, subversive. Right. The
32:41
Speaker 1: screenwriters and the novelists of America put all black people
32:45
Speaker 1: into one of those three categories for one hundred years.
32:50
Speaker 1: Why because they couldn't be bothered to explore the idea
32:53
Speaker 1: that there was as much variety and beauty and complexity
32:56
Speaker 1: in black people as they were in white people. A
32:59
Speaker 1: narrative is a stereotype. It's a kind of shorthand used
33:04
Speaker 1: by writers. And these stereotypes aren't harmless. There's a famous
33:09
Speaker 1: study done in the nineteen thirties of ethnic stereotypes where
33:12
Speaker 1: a group of psychologists asked thousands of Americans to describe
33:16
Speaker 1: what they felt black people were like, and the three
33:19
Speaker 1: most popular adjectives used by white people to describe black
33:23
Speaker 1: people were superstitious, happy, go lucky, and lazy. And the
33:28
Speaker 1: kicko was that most of the white people they talked
33:30
Speaker 1: to for that survey didn't know any black people. So
33:34
Speaker 1: where do they get those ideas? They got them from
33:36
Speaker 1: the movies. Right. So the stereotypes that are put forth
33:41
Speaker 1: in popular culture matter. They are the raw material that
33:45
Speaker 1: people use to form their attitudes and perspectives about the
33:49
Speaker 1: rest of the world. And I really worry that police
33:52
Speaker 1: narratives are doing the same thing. They are doing an
33:56
Speaker 1: injustice to our understanding of the police. You know, Derek
34:00
Speaker 1: Schavan murders George Floyd, and thousands of people take to
34:04
Speaker 1: the streets and say, let's defund the police. Right. The
34:07
Speaker 1: George Floyd case activated the Southern narrative law enforcement as
34:14
Speaker 1: impossibly corrupt and malicious. Our only choice is to shut
34:17
Speaker 1: it down. But there's seven hundred thousand police officers in
34:21
Speaker 1: this country. How do you possibly label the entire group
34:24
Speaker 1: based on the behavior of a small number. You know,
34:28
Speaker 1: after the Ruddy King beating thirty years ago that led
34:32
Speaker 1: to the Los Angeles Riots, the Los Angeles Police Department
34:36
Speaker 1: was thrown into chaos, and they were accused of racial
34:39
Speaker 1: bias and insensitivity and turning a blind eyed to misconduct.
34:43
Speaker 1: And they had once, of course been the embodiment of
34:45
Speaker 1: the Eastern Dragnet was a celebration of the perfection and
34:49
Speaker 1: professionalism of the LAPD, and now they were the Southern.
34:52
Speaker 1: They were cast as corrupt and malicious, and there was
34:54
Speaker 1: a massive investigation that was launched. And what the investigation
34:58
Speaker 1: found was that of the eighty five hundred police officers
35:03
Speaker 1: in the LAPD, one hundred and eighty three had been
35:07
Speaker 1: the a subject of four or more excessive force complaints
35:12
Speaker 1: over in the period between nineteen eighty six and nineteen
35:15
Speaker 1: ninety Right, so one hundred and eighty three out of
35:18
Speaker 1: eighty five hundred forty four of those one hundred and
35:21
Speaker 1: eighty three had six or more complaints and sixteen had
35:25
Speaker 1: eight or more complaints. The investigation found that the LAPD,
35:29
Speaker 1: in other words, had a very small core of really
35:32
Speaker 1: bad apples and did a really bad job of identifying
35:35
Speaker 1: their bad apples and getting rid of them. That is
35:38
Speaker 1: not an Eastern where everyone is perfect. There was one
35:42
Speaker 1: officer who had more than sixteen excessive force complaints in
35:47
Speaker 1: the previous four years and still had his job. Right,
35:49
Speaker 1: that's not dragnet. That's something very different. That's problem. But
35:54
Speaker 1: at the same time, that is not the description of
35:56
Speaker 1: a Southern It's not a description of an entire department.
35:59
Speaker 1: That is malicious and malignant. Right, you cannot call a
36:05
Speaker 1: department of eighty five hundred people corrupt and malignant because
36:10
Speaker 1: it has forty four really bad apples. So our police
36:13
Speaker 1: narratives have made us sloppy. They've made it really hard
36:17
Speaker 1: for us to understand the nature of the problem we're facing.
36:20
Speaker 1: They blur over the subtleties. You know, you have one
36:24
Speaker 1: side saying it's all rotten, and the other watching Dragnet
36:27
Speaker 1: and reading Ed McBain and saying, these are noble, courageous
36:31
Speaker 1: men doing an impossible job against overwhelming odds. They deserve
36:34
Speaker 1: our unqualified to support. Right that neither of those narratives
36:38
Speaker 1: are true. How can the people be the police and
36:42
Speaker 1: the police be the people when the people don't understand
36:45
Speaker 1: who the police are. Problem number one. We don't make
36:50
Speaker 1: this mistake with teachers. We don't make it with truck drivers.
36:53
Speaker 1: We don't make with nurses. When we hear that the
36:56
Speaker 1: teacher is a bad teacher whose students don't learn anything,
36:59
Speaker 1: we don't say, oh, man, teaching is broken. Let's defund teaching. Right,
37:03
Speaker 1: that's a We just say that's a bad teacher who
37:06
Speaker 1: should be replaced, and let's do a better job of
37:09
Speaker 1: training and selected them next time. And the reason we're
37:11
Speaker 1: free to do that is that none has come along
37:15
Speaker 1: and constructed a magical teacher genre that allows us to
37:19
Speaker 1: assign every teacher to one of four reductive narrative categories. Second,
37:27
Speaker 1: and a more important point, is that I think we
37:29
Speaker 1: need to consider what these narratives do to those within
37:33
Speaker 1: the profession, because how the police think of themselves is
37:38
Speaker 1: also shaped by these theories. You know, it's often been
37:41
Speaker 1: said that the Godfather. I'm sure you've heard this, the
37:44
Speaker 1: Godfather started out being about the mob, but before long
37:48
Speaker 1: the mob was about being like the Godfather. Right, they
37:52
Speaker 1: all started pretending they were Marlon Brando or Cultural narratives
37:57
Speaker 1: about groups don't just reflect those groups, they also start
38:01
Speaker 1: to define those groups. So the police also watched law
38:04
Speaker 1: in Order, Right, They also read crime novels. And what
38:07
Speaker 1: do they learn from them? They learned that law enforcement
38:10
Speaker 1: is about them. It's the story of their own identity
38:14
Speaker 1: and skill. Are they any good? Are they honest? Are
38:17
Speaker 1: they as dogged and skilled and fundamental and as the
38:21
Speaker 1: police of Ed McBain's eighty seventh Precinct, or as hapless
38:25
Speaker 1: as Colonel Clink and sergeant Schultz. The great crime novelist
38:29
Speaker 1: Joseph Wambach, who was an LAPD officer for many years,
38:34
Speaker 1: one said that the modern police novel was not about
38:37
Speaker 1: the man working the case, but the case working the man,
38:41
Speaker 1: meaning that the innovation of police fiction in the modern
38:44
Speaker 1: era was to turn the spotlight on what the job
38:48
Speaker 1: of maintaining law and order did to the psychology and
38:52
Speaker 1: peace of mind and character of the man tasked with
38:55
Speaker 1: maintaining law order. And I think that's exactly what the
39:00
Speaker 1: four narratives are doing. They are simply giving different answers
39:04
Speaker 1: to that question of who the police officer is. In
39:08
Speaker 1: the Western it's it's just the ordinary man must summon
39:11
Speaker 1: his own courage to step into the breach. In the Northern,
39:14
Speaker 1: the officer is not up to the task. In a
39:16
Speaker 1: Southern the officer is corrupted by his responsibilities. And in
39:20
Speaker 1: the Eastern, our hero rises magnificently to the challenge. Police fiction,
39:26
Speaker 1: in all of those forms is an exercise in narcissism.
39:30
Speaker 1: These are not novels and shows about solving crimes. There
39:33
Speaker 1: shows about crime solvers. And where is the public in
39:37
Speaker 1: that right? Where If Robert Peel were alive today, he
39:41
Speaker 1: would look around him, and he would say, we have
39:43
Speaker 1: given police officers a picture of their profession that leaves
39:47
Speaker 1: out the most important element in their success, the people
39:51
Speaker 1: whose respect and support make police work possible. Remember that
39:56
Speaker 1: Peel principle. The ability of the police to perform their
40:00
Speaker 1: duties is dependent on public approval of police existence. I
40:07
Speaker 1: defy you to find they're in the world of crime
40:10
Speaker 1: fiction a representation of that idea. It doesn't exist. That's
40:15
Speaker 1: not the reason people write fiction police fiction, and it's
40:19
Speaker 1: not the reason why readers like me love please fiction.
40:25
Speaker 1: So what is the solution? Well, it breaks my heart
40:28
Speaker 1: to say this, but it is time for us to
40:31
Speaker 1: turn our backs on a spine novel right, No more enough.
40:36
Speaker 1: It's been one hundred years or more and it has
40:40
Speaker 1: left us worse off than we started. I'm sure all
40:45
Speaker 1: of you. I've been watching the Governor Florida on his
40:49
Speaker 1: current cultural cleansing campaign, and all I have to say is,
40:54
Speaker 1: where is Ron DeSantis when we need him? He's so
40:58
Speaker 1: busy banning Jody Picot novels that he's missed the real culprit,
41:02
Speaker 1: which is the child John Grisham, Ed McBain and our
41:09
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle let us go to the Hudson News at
41:13
Speaker 1: the Jacksonville Airport, take all of those paperbacks off the wall,
41:18
Speaker 1: put them in a big pile in front of the
41:21
Speaker 1: State House in Tallahassee, and light a match. Thank you.
41:40
Speaker 1: I have time for a few questions. I think anyone
41:45
Speaker 1: wants to come forward.
41:49
Speaker 3: Hi, I just wanted to ask if, in this new
41:53
Speaker 3: conclusion that it's time to move past the mystery novel,
41:58
Speaker 3: the spy novel. Do you think there's a room for
42:01
Speaker 3: something more nuanced, one that has evolved maybe with our
42:05
Speaker 3: understanding and our ability to capture information. You know, certainly
42:08
Speaker 3: when these the genre was born, we did not have
42:12
Speaker 3: cell phones, we didn't have social media, and we certainly
42:15
Speaker 3: didn't have instant news. And these have all drastically changed
42:18
Speaker 3: the culture around policing and at least in the US.
42:22
Speaker 3: Do you think there's a way for the genre to
42:25
Speaker 3: move on and be more incorporative of these elements and
42:29
Speaker 3: more reflective of the way policing actually is.
42:33
Speaker 1: I do think that. I mean, basically, what has happened
42:37
Speaker 1: I think is if we have exhausted the possibilities of
42:40
Speaker 1: the form and it's time for reinvention. And I think
42:45
Speaker 1: as well, that people who write this kind of fiction
42:48
Speaker 1: need to understand what their social obligations are. That what
42:53
Speaker 1: has happened, I think is that there's a generation. I
42:55
Speaker 1: think this is more true in Hollywood than it is
42:57
Speaker 1: in the world of fiction, that people have really dodged
43:01
Speaker 1: the question of what the impact of their writing is.
43:04
Speaker 1: And you make a movie, you make a really bad
43:07
Speaker 1: cop movie, and you just shrug and say it's entertainment,
43:10
Speaker 1: and you forget that actually know, what you are providing
43:13
Speaker 1: is the cultural raw material for the way we make
43:17
Speaker 1: sense of the world. And if you just mail it
43:19
Speaker 1: in and just stick to some formula that is no
43:23
Speaker 1: longer relevant to the world we live in, you're doing
43:26
Speaker 1: society a disservice. So yes, I do think it is
43:29
Speaker 1: possible to reinvent it, but I think it's going to
43:31
Speaker 1: require a change of heart within the creative community.
43:35
Speaker 3: Thank you.
43:39
Speaker 2: Okay, so hi, my name is Isabella. First of all, thank
43:41
Speaker 2: you so much for talking. I wanted to ask a
43:43
Speaker 2: little bit about kind of going along that same crime
43:46
Speaker 2: show narrative, about how much police officers are really able
43:49
Speaker 2: to do and how that kind of changes our public
43:52
Speaker 2: view and our public narrative. I'm a huge fan of
43:54
Speaker 2: Brooklyn nine nine knives out all that stuff, and we
43:57
Speaker 2: see police officers and detectives going in asking questions, breaking
44:00
Speaker 2: into things, all without warrants and everything like that. Do
44:03
Speaker 2: you think that changes the way we view police officers
44:05
Speaker 2: and how incompetent we may see them to be.
44:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's a really interesting point, the unreality of
44:14
Speaker 1: a lot of police fiction. Does it contributes to our
44:18
Speaker 1: disillusionment because we have this impression from the way that
44:23
Speaker 1: police work is represented in fiction that the police officer
44:28
Speaker 1: has an awful lot more agency than he or she
44:30
Speaker 1: actually does in real life. Right, there are, for good reasons,
44:34
Speaker 1: significant constraints on what they are able to do, and
44:38
Speaker 1: of course it doesn't make for a good story. So
44:41
Speaker 1: when we compare the there's a whole line of psychology
44:43
Speaker 1: on what's called the CSI effect in juries that juries
44:48
Speaker 1: are now more likely to acquit defendants because the level
44:54
Speaker 1: of evidence presented in the trial does not match up
44:57
Speaker 1: with the level of evidence they're used to seeing in
44:59
Speaker 1: criminal trials from CSI. And that's a good example of
45:03
Speaker 1: how like that's there's no surer path to distrust and
45:07
Speaker 1: disillusionment if the standard of police work is described over
45:11
Speaker 1: here in fiction and in real life it's over here,
45:14
Speaker 1: So I think that that is a very accurate observation.
45:21
Speaker 2: Thank you.
45:22
Speaker 1: I think I've run out of time, so thank you
45:24
Speaker 1: all very much. This episode of Revisionist History was produced
45:39
Speaker 1: by Kiara Powell with Ben Nadapph Haffrey, and Jacob Smith.
45:43
Speaker 1: Our showrunner is Peter Clowney. Original scoring by Luis Garra,
45:47
Speaker 1: mastering by Lawn Williams, and engineering by Nina Lawrence. Thank
45:52
Speaker 1: you to everyone at the New Orleans Book Festival, including
45:55
Speaker 1: Lindsay Phillips and Amy Bradshaw. If you haven't signed up
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Speaker 1: yet for Pushkin Plus, now is the time. We're about
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Speaker 1: to drop us sweeping mini series on guns in America
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Speaker 1: where we go down all kinds of strangebit holes about
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Speaker 1: our national obsession. It's going to drop August thirty first
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Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus listeners. We'll get the whole series that day,
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Speaker 1: add free. Everyone else gets the first episode and then
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Speaker 1: the balance of the series over the next five weeks.
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Speaker 1: Both good choices, but I highly recommend the first option.
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Speaker 1: Go to pushkin dot fm, slash plus to join up.
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Speaker 1: I'm Mountain Bubble