The Panopticon Overrules Active Fire

The death of Renee Good in Minneapolis on 7 January 2026 was unnecessary. As the subsequent news stories show, we live in the Panopticon, a society of all-seeing authority. Theorized 1785-1791 by Jeremy Bentham as a design for prisons, the conceptual model was expanded by Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish (1975). The "authority" need not be legalistic, but can be (and often is) social. Cameras are everywhere. Therefore, the police practices of active engagement and relentless pursuit are antiquated and largely irrelevant.

Criminologists Marcus Felson and Lawrence Cohen published their "routine activity theory" in 1979. It found common acceptance and, of course, criticism. The elements of crime are a (1) willing perpetrator (2) an available victim and (3) the absence of a capable guardian. The theories of community policing rest in part on the fact that the "capable guardian" might need only to be a grandmother in a rocking chair on the front porch as a visible deterrent, 

The known failures of eye witness testimony are now countered by the plurality of immediate independent recordings. 

In 2006, while earning an associate's degree in criminal justice, I was working the night shift as a campus security officer at Washtenaw Community College. My partner had completed his bachelor's at Eastern Michigan University and had returned to WCC for their MCOLES academy. (The standards are commonly required and are TCOLE here in Texas.) I had viewed a training video from the Los Angeles police department on relentless pursuit. You are on patrol with your partner and you pull up to a jewelry store being robbed. The criminals open fire. Your partner goes down. They jump in their car and drive off. What do you do next? LAPD said that you pursue. You call for medical attention for your partner, but you do not stay there. LAPD advocated relentless pursuit. My partner's voice was bitter. "Thanks, Mike. Now I know where you stand." But what about relentless pursuit? I asked. "Look," he replied. "In this day you cannot harm any protective service, not even a school crossing guard, and not have every law enforcement agency after you. Where are you going to go?" 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good

That underscores another fact about punishment as a deterrent to crime. Punishment has three aspects: swift, certain, and severe. All that counts is "certain." If a perpetrator is conscious of the fact that they will be punished, if certainty is assured, the crime does not happen. Yes, there are exceptions, especially when emotions are high in the heat of the moment. But premeditated crime is prevented by the certainty of punishment: If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. Severity is not just unimportant: it is counter-productive because publicity of severe punishment (public hangings, for example) only cause more violence later as the witnesses are affected by the violent event.

That fact explains so-called copycat crimes and the repetition and expansion of violent acts that are widely publicized, such as shootings at schools, or spontaneous protests. Violence becomes normal. 

The normalization of violence was also factor in the actions of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who as of this date was identified as the officer who killed Renee Good. Ross began his career as a soldier in Iraq, just as very many other police officers have served in the armed forces before wearing a badge. The problem is that the civilian police perceive themselves and then become an occupying army surrounded by a hostile populace.    

Community policing and community courts are common remedies offered by academic criminologists and sociologists. As with Granny in the rocker, there is empirical truth underlying the theories. One problem with community policing is that it makes everyone an informant for the State. This is the underlying power of the totalitarian regime which rules because the populace practices habitual self-enforcement. Things are quiet because there is no liberty.

Previously on Necessary Facts

Eye Witness Testimony: Popper, Wittgenstein, and the Innocence Project 

Alternatives to Prison Part 3 of 3 

Integrating Criminologies 

Minimizing the Likelihood of Bad Cops