Daniel Vinyard – The Unz Review July 31, 2020

I was born and raised in a small suburb east of a major southern California city. I went to the local Catholic school and had the standard blue-collar, lower middle-class childhood. My only significant experiences with black people were during Pop Warner football games, when our team traveled to the “urban” parts of the city. What I remember most was the awful condition of the “field.” Hardly a blade of grass lived on the gridiron, and the yard markers were upturned plastic waste baskets with the yard lines spray painted on them.

Our black opponents would intimidate us by their noticeably larger size and by warming up with thigh-pad-slapping pre-game chants. The shouting and hollering were nothing any of us had ever seen before. I remember their imposing size and demeanor almost as much as I remember the spitting, pinching, and groin punching in the scrums after a play.

In what was perhaps a peace offering on my part, I remember picking up the loose helmet of one of my imposingly large opponents and handing it to him. The inside was greased up to the point that I could barely get a grip on it. I was unfamiliar with the black ritual of applying chemical straightener to hair. I could see the boy’s shiny hair under the clear shower cap they all seemed to wear beneath their helmets. That was my first real experience with blacks.

My childhood was good, and I grew up doing the usual things: tackle football, playing army, and shooting BB guns. I never experienced violent crime. I went to an almost all-white high school with about 1,500 students. There were so few black people, I can still remember their names. There were occasional fistfights, but they were almost always between white students. There were rules: Fights were always one-on-one — no “jumping in” — and no weapons. Once a boy was defeated, there were no cheap shots or dirty moves. The crowd that always gathered would have punished any violations. Years later, I was disgusted when I first saw large mobs of blacks attacking each other and passersby in dirty, cowardly ways.

During high school, I had the usual menial jobs: paperboy, fast food, roofing, construction site cleanup, etc. By a stroke of luck or fate, I entered law enforcement at the age of 18 and became a cadet for the local county court agency. As an unarmed cadet, I had several jobs. I was responsible for county courthouse interoffice mail delivery, monitoring the X-ray machine and metal detector at the courthouse, and serving court documents on people.

It was during this job that I first began to experience blacks and what I would later learn was their distinctive behavior. When I worked security at the courthouse, I was, first of all, astounded at the number of blacks coming into court. If I ever ventured up to the actual halls upstairs, they were choked with black men and women, shouting and roughhousing. The sanctity of the courtroom and its procedures were lost on them.

Many blacks seemed not to understand what a metal detector does. They would walk through with large knives in their pockets, fistfuls of change, huge belt buckles, and the like. It got to the point that I would stop them before they went through and remind them what counted as “metal.” I remember a black woman who put her infant car carrier on the X-ray machine conveyor belt with the baby still soundly sleeping inside. Blacks often put full coffee cups on the belt.

One of my duties was to serve eviction notices. I will never forget one street, where I served several eviction notice each day, five days a week. The public housing buildings were pale green and there was not a blade of mowed grass and every window seemed cracked or broken out. No matter the day of week or time of day, there was always someone home to accept service. There were always big crowds of able-bodied black men from about 17–40 years of age roaming around. I remember naively thinking, “Wow. They must all get Tuesdays off of work.”

Once, when I knocked on a door, a gigantic, muscular black man answered the door. He yanked the paperwork from my hands and slammed the door. At the end of my shift, my sergeant summoned me to his office. He was aghast to learn that I, a baby-faced cadet wearing a “badge” and a uniform, would go down that street. I was forbidden from ever going to that location again. I was made to understand that my naiveté about black people had nearly got me killed.

When I was about 20, I went on a ride along with an officer who worked for the largest police agency in the county. He worked in the division that was known to have the highest black population and therefore, the highest level of violent crime. Ironically, it was the same area where I had played pee wee football games. The ball fields had only gotten worse. As I rode along with the officer, I was immediately struck by the large groups of blacks near liquor stores, convenience stores, and on street corners. Almost without exception, when the police car came into view, they would all take off running in different directions. I remember following behind the officer as he tried to catch stragglers. I watched in awe as he pulled out large bags of crack cocaine and/or handguns from their pockets.

Later, the officer took me with him to serve a narcotics search warrant. I was allowed inside (that would be forbidden today). After the warrant was served, I saw bits of crack cocaine scattered all over the living room floor where the suspect had thrown them when the officers came in. There were three little black kids in the house. They were filthy and in diapers that were long past changing. The excitement and adrenaline of that ride-along encouraged me to go into law enforcement.

Something else I noticed: The sparsely furnished apartment was ridiculously hot. All four burners of the stove were on, and the oven was at 400 degrees with the door open. As I later learned, the apartments of blacks were, without exception, ridiculously hot. In Southern California, it was rarely necessary to need heating, but blacks always had their living spaces heated well above the comfort level for most white people. I later learned that blacks used the stove for heat so often that they referred to chilly nights as “four burner nights.” Maybe they wanted their places hotter than the heating system would get it, or maybe they were saving on heating bills. Either way, this practice of using the stove for heating often led to house fires.

In the early 1990s, when I was trying to get a job as an officer, affirmative action was in full swing. Whites all assumed that it would be nearly impossible for us to get a job in this “climate.” The lines just to take the written exam were hundreds of people long, and almost everyone was white. Most of the applicants were recently discharged military, and I remember everyone was well dressed and carrying himself in a professional manner. We knew that the proctors of the written test were members of the agency to which we were applying. Affirmative action made it an uphill battle, so we wanted to make as good an impression as possible. I still remember, almost 30 years later, sitting in my truck in a suit and tie, pouring over my study guide one last time before going in to take the test.

I tested for four different agencies, scoring in the top 5 percent each time. I never got an offer. Finally, three months after I turned 21, I was hired by an agency to the south of the major city in the area.

I attended the academy with about 125 other recruits, and whites were the minority in a class with many blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. I was amazed to see some of the black candidates drive up in cars with hydraulics and booming stereo systems blasting “gangster rap.” I took my training seriously, and was the top shooter and one of the top 10 runners during physical training. I clearly remember four groups for physical training: “gold,” “silver,” “silver two,” and “bronze.”

The “bronze” team was almost all black, except for a few obese white officers. I remember watching blacks feign injury or intentionally run into things to hurt themselves and avoid running. Time after time, they would be excused from physical training. The 10 members of the “gold” group — the top runners — were all white men. We worked harder than the others and held ourselves to a much higher standard; we wanted to be the best. One of the other men in “gold” was a former drill instructor for the Marine Corps. One of my fondest memories of the academy is hearing him call cadence as we ran.

Blacks were subpar in report writing and shooting skills as well. Time after time, my classmates and I noticed obvious failures on the shooting range, in the classroom, or during practical exercises, yet nothing was ever done. I graduated near the top of my class; I was not yet 22. Many black officers who should have failed out of the academy were put onto the streets.

We all started in the FTO or Field Training Officer phase. For several weeks, we rode together with experienced officers, who thoroughly documented and critiqued every move we made. Only after successfully completing the FTO program did we become one-year probationary officers who could ride alone in a squad car.

I will never forget my very first radio call for service. I responded to the local 7-Eleven with my training officer. The 60-year-old clerk was bleeding from the top of his head and showed us security camera footage. Four large black men, all clad in matching purple sweatshirts and sweatpants, came in, each armed with a full-size shotgun. I watched the footage and saw the elderly clerk hand over the money. After getting $80, one of the suspects hit the man over the head with the barrel of his shotgun. As a naive young officer, I wondered, “Why did he feel the need to hurt him after getting what he wanted?” It was at this moment that I became aware of the violent tendencies of blacks.

I remember a call after a customer tried to enter a video rental store and called police because he found it strange that the store was locked at 5 p.m. After the owner showed up and let me in, I found the four employees bound and gagged in the back office. Two armed black men had come in and robbed them. After tying up the employees, they took their driver’s licenses and told them they would kill their families if they cooperated with police.

I will never forget the look of fear on the employees’ faces when we found them. They were terrified and crying, pleading with their eyes to be untied. There were three men and one woman, and I started with the woman. I was mortified to think of the horror they had gone through. Did they think they were going to be shot and killed? Was the woman afraid she would be raped? Were they thinking of their loved ones; begging for their lives? I couldn’t stop thinking of all that agony — and for what couldn’t have been more than $1,000 in the till.

The suspects were later caught doing the same thing in a different part of the state. This kind of crime is called a takeover robbery — a gang of men bursts into a store and “takes over.” As in the movies, they may fire a shot through the ceiling. The idea is to terrify people and take complete control.

One day on patrol, I saw two blacks sitting in a Volkswagen Jetta with Vermont plates. This piqued my interest, so I turned my car around and stopped them. The driver parked and the two walked away in different directions. I found one of the men hiding behind a dumpster in an alleyway and my partner detained the other in a trailer park across the street. The car was not reported stolen and neither of the men had warrants for arrest. The driver was unlicensed, but we did not ordinarily tow a car unless the driver’s license was suspended.

My intuition told me something was wrong — call it racial profiling if you like — so I let the men go but took the risk of angering my sergeant by having the car towed. I still remember thinking I was rolling the dice on that one. I returned to the station to finish paperwork and was paged over the intercom to call dispatch right away. The car had just been reported carjacked by two blacks.

We rushed back to where I had left the two and, astonishingly, they were still there, so we arrested them. The carjacking had taken place in the eastern part of the county. The men kidnapped the owner and took him to several different ATMs to withdraw money. Then they put him in the trunk and drove towards my city. They stopped along the freeway, took his shoes, and let him go. The man had to walk to the nearest freeway exit to call and report the crime. Later, I told one of the suspects that he was being charged with kidnapping and robbery. “Kidnapping?” he asked. “How can it be kidnapping if we let him go?”

One incident with an elderly couple affected me deeply. The gentleman was a WWII veteran. He told me that he couldn’t sleep, so he went into the kitchen for milk and cookies. He saw candle wax on the kitchen floor and followed it to his wife’s room (they slept separately). He found his 75-year-old wife raped and severely beaten. She described her assailant as a black man and I was required to ask her vile, embarrassing questions: “Ma’am, what was he saying to you? Did he ejaculate? What did he do when he was finished?”

I will never forget that interview. As is customary with black-on-elderly rape, the assailant stole the woman’s jewelry. I’m not sure why the woman did not cry out for help; maybe the man threatened to kill her and her husband if she made a sound.

We often hear that all black families have “the talk” with their children — especially boys — to explain that any white officer is looking for any excuse to kill them, so they must always cooperate and be polite. If there is a “talk,” it must be a mother telling her children (fathers are almost never around) that they don’t have to do anything the police say or follow any of our directions, that they should talk back to us and be as hostile as possible. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of black suspects who have been “meek, calm, and cooperative.” From the beginning of my career in the early 1990s to today, almost every time I have dealt with a black suspect, he or she has been confrontational, complaining of “racism” or “profiling.”

Even victims are hostile. Either they are angry that we have not immediately caught their attacker, or they refuse to cooperate. I have stood over black or Hispanic shooting victims, moaning in pain, as paramedics work on them, asking basic questions: Who did this to you? Who were you with? Where were you? The answer was almost always, “I dunno” or a shrug of the shoulders. They wanted to “handle the problem” on their own with street justice, and they saw any type of cooperation with the police as a sign of weakness. I took many attempted murder reports for which there was absolutely no suspect information or leads to follow up on — because the victim or witnesses refused to give us any.

One of the more common practices after a shooting was for the friends of the victim to drive him to the emergency room, dump him outside the door, and drive away. That way, they can get help for their friend but avoid any contact with the authorities.

Regardless of the call or reason for the contact, there is conflict between the police and blacks. With the national hoopla today, it has gotten much worse. Now, it is almost a requirement that black suspects shout that they are being “profiled” for “no reason” and to resist both verbally and physically.

Even when I started my career, it was very common to be “complained on” by blacks — they would file formal complaints with the department — but it is a thousand times worse today. Officers are therefore especially careful to give no grounds for complaint when they must deal with blacks.

During police contact, adult black men often telephone their mothers, and this often ends with the mother demanding to speak with the officers who are detaining their precious angels. A black suspect’s mother often shows up on the scene. You can decide for yourself whether she is there to encourage cooperation or to harass and argue with us. Add to this the invariable presence of large groups of hostile blacks filming an officer’s every move, and you may get a faint idea of how frustrating it is to deal with blacks.

The media are constantly on the lookout for any story that can be spun into victimization of blacks, so I make a point of warning command staff after virtually any contact with blacks. Anything can blow up into a big news story, and if the department is called upon for a comment, it has to know the basics of what happened. All this means officers are reluctant to get involved with blacks.

There were many Hispanics in the area where I was first hired, and their most common crimes were domestic violence, drug sales, and robbery. Nearly all the gangs in our city were Hispanic, and they claimed specific territories.

Hispanics would prey upon any race of people for robberies, burglaries, thefts or other crimes for material gain — usually to buy drugs. As for violence, they mostly attacked other Hispanics, since shootings and stabbings were usually either gang or — strange as it may seem — family related. During our pre-shift briefings, when our sergeant told us he had received intel that there would be a quinceanera party that evening, the shift would let out a collective groan.

A quinceanera is a celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday, and most Hispanics throw the most lavish party they can afford. Almost without exception, it would culminate in a stabbing, shooting, or large brawl, for which there were only two causes: a distant uncle would drink too many Budweisers (the beer they drank almost exclusively) and would “disrespect” another family member. The other cause was when the Hispanic gang of the area tried to crash the party, and the family tried to keep it out — which would mean a fight and maybe some stabbing and shooting. One of those two outcomes was almost inevitable.

It was very rare for Hispanics to commit “random” violent attacks on whites, old people, or women of the kind so frequent among blacks. There was a lot of domestic violence, but Hispanic women never called police on their spouse/boyfriend; if we were called, it was always by someone else. The main concern for the woman was that the sole breadwinner of the household might be arrested. A huge majority of the Hispanics were illegal immigrants and feared deportation above all else. I have seen frightened, horribly beaten women sitting on a couch, staring silently into space as I interviewed them through an interpreter; they refused to cooperate. There were always children wandering around the house who must have seen their mother being beaten. I often wondered how many beatings the woman had suffered without the police being called.

I also dealt with many white criminals, mostly for property crimes, methamphetamine (possession and intoxication), and the occasional violent crime. Whites did not commit the shocking and abhorrent crimes common among blacks, whose preferred activities seemed to be takeover robberies committed by organized groups, violent assaults on the elderly, rape, carjacking, and shootings. I was always struck by incomprehensible, gratuitous black violence. I have no recollection of any memorable or shocking Asian crimes during my time with this agency.

Over the years, I worked with officers of nearly every race. One of my partners on a drugs taskforce was a highly intelligent Hispanic. He was a college graduate and was very articulate. He achieved great success and was quickly promoted. He and I worked very well together and assembled evidence for several very good cases. I later learned that he became involved in unscrupulous sexual activity and was eventually fired for stealing 20 dollars’ worth of equipment and lying about it. I was shocked.

There were a number of lazy and less than competent white and Hispanic officers, but almost all the black officers performed poorly. They could rarely pass the rigorous testing process for promotion, and always seemed content to do the minimum amount of work. Blacks rarely applied to become detectives, for example, because there was a strict selection process. For whites, detective was a coveted position, but they had to fight extreme affirmative action to get it. I can’t even count how many times a highly qualified and dedicated officer was passed over for a barely competent and borderline illiterate black officer.

I was convinced then and still am that blacks work so little in order to avoid exposing their incompetence. I remember one very large black officer who would consistently give incorrect or non-existent locations when he called for assistance on the radio. On several occasions, we went on wild goose chases looking for him. This was so common that responding officers would ask him what landmarks he could see.

Another black officer was caught lying about the location he was responding from when he got a radio call for help. This would be his excuse for taking up to 20 minutes to respond to a call. When he was investigated for poor response time, it was found that he was having affairs with several women and was servicing them while on duty. That investigation was swept under the rug and he was “promoted” to detective to remedy the problem. I remember once he tried to pick a fight in the locker room when a white officer challenged him about his long response times. Needless to say, he was a perpetual “victim,” and an incompetent, confrontational employee for his whole career. The “promotion” to detective was a good outcome. Off the street and behind a desk was the best place for him; that way, no one would have to rely on him for help. But I don’t recall his ever putting together a noteworthy investigation.

I was hired along with a black woman who entered the training program with me after the academy. She was ridiculously incompetent, and her training program was extended for two extra months. Any other officer would have been fired. She could not grasp a single aspect of the profession, and it was clear she had been hired to make the department look good on paper. Each of her field training officers thoroughly documented her incompetence day after day, but the department wouldn’t fire her. Eventually — to the benefit of the community — she was finally let go.

You sometimes hear that black officers treat black offenders more harshly than white officers do because they want to punish them for preying on “the community.” I never saw that.

I was a successful and productive officer. I was quickly selected to the gang unit and later to a county-wide drug and gang taskforce. Once, I was parked in my unmarked car waiting for my partners so we could serve a search warrant. I was wearing a marked, police-department tactical vest and my badge was around my neck. A black transvestite walked up and rapped on the car window. When I rolled it down, he asked, “You looking for a date, honey?” Incredulous, I looked down at my badge and the large “police” patch on my vest. He said, “Nigga, I don’t give a fuck if you’re a cop. Do you want a date or not?” I had been on the job for about six years and was beginning to have had enough.

Three final incidents pushed me out of California law enforcement. We served a drug warrant on a house, and the black suspect ran to the back as we entered. He scattered crack cocaine all over the floor and tried to get to a handgun in the closet. After a short, violent struggle, we got him into custody. The squalor of the place was appalling. As we cleared the rest of the house, we found his three children sitting on the bed in the master bedroom. Their eyes were glued to the pornographic movie the man had been watching. They must have paid no attention to the commotion of the arrest. I suspect the man just parked his children in the bedroom and kept them distracted with movies while he did his drug business.

Near the beach, there was a large parking lot where hundreds of black men and women congregated every weekend to drink illegally, blast music, and sometimes shoot each other. They made the neighborhood unlivable. To stop the partying, we flooded the area with police, and stopped every vehicle with a code violation. If a driver was driving on a suspended license — an offense so common among blacks, it was almost a guarantee — we could tow the vehicle.

I stopped a woman for several violations and learned she was suspended. I had her get out of the car, and she gave me the obligatory verbal abuse when I told her the vehicle was going to be towed. Her three children began to wander through the parking lot. It was dangerous; lots of cars weaving in and out, and the children could have gotten lost in the crowd. She yelled at one child, about two years old, “Dante, come hold yo’ sister hand!” When the child ignored her and kept walking, she shouted, “Dante! Motherfucka, come hold yo’ sister hand!!” It was about this time that I learned I was going to be a father. I couldn’t understand how someone could speak to any child that way, much less her own flesh and blood.

The final incident involved my neighbor across the street. She had gone to the local gas station/convenience store. She went inside to pay for her gas and left her six-year-old daughter and infant son in his car seat inside the vehicle. A black man got into her still-running vehicle and she came outside to try to stop him. As she struggled with the carjacker at the driver’s side door, the six-year-old heroically took her infant brother from his car seat and escaped. Seeing this, the mother stopped fighting and watched her minivan screech out of the parking lot.

I will never forget the look on her face as she told me that story. The thought of her children falling into the hands of that man clearly made her blood run cold. It was at that moment that I knew I would not raise my daughter among blacks and I certainly wouldn’t send her to a school that I knew would be plagued with black crime. Looking back 22 years later, it was the smartest decision I ever made.

I applied at a similarly-sized agency in the northwest and was quickly hired. I picked the location because it was mostly white, and I was not disappointed. I immediately noticed there was almost no violent crime. Our major service calls were for theft, restraining potential suicides, traffic accidents, and drugs. There was no graffiti, no gangs to speak of, no auto theft, and, most notably, nearly zero gun crime — despite the fact that nearly everyone carries a gun here.

I joined officers from dozens of other heavily black cities. We have officers from Seattle, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Boston, Baltimore, and many other places. The running joke among officers who relocate here is, “Why did you leave the warm, beautiful city of ? There wasn’t enough snow?” The overwhelming majority came to escape black violence and rear their children in an area where they won’t be subjected to “diversity” in the schools and violence in their neighborhoods.

For two decades, I have enjoyed a different style of police work. No longer do I have to delay my patrol as large groups of blacks deliberately drag their feet crossing the street to make me stop my car. I don’t have to deal with elderly convenience store clerks shot in the chest after giving up $50, black men raping and beating elderly women, open-air drug markets, or street prostitution. After my experience with Hispanics in California, I am amazed by how seldom I have been called for wife beating.

We have very few black officers, but their work habits fit the pattern. There are one or two who are professional and relatively competent (each has a white mother and an absent black father). For the most part, our black officers are the same as they were in my first agency. They do the minimum amount of work, never seek promotions or try for specialty assignments like being a detective. Instead, they like off-site work, such as guarding city buildings or schools. They can hide; they never have to respond to a potentially violent service call.

I have never had to fire my weapon on duty, but I have drawn and pointed it thousands of times. Police officers draw their weapons “in anticipation of danger.” There are many circumstances in which I draw my firearm but these are the most basic reasons: I see something that alerts me to potential danger, or I am responding to someone who has just committed a violent crime. I draw my weapon not just for self-protection. A show of force and instant domination of a potentially violent situation gives me the advantage and shows dangerous suspects that I am prepared to stop any violent threat.

I have been in several situations where I could justifiably have fired my weapon but didn’t. No officer wants to have to shoot someone, even to protect his own life. Police officers voluntarily took a job to protect and serve, and we all agreed to take calculated risks to ensure public safety.

In my nearly 30 years of police experience, I have never mistreated a suspect because of race. Today’s anti-police hysteria would have you believe that police start and end their shifts hunting for black people to stop, but the reality of police work is simple. We have radios and computers in our cars that dispatch us. We don’t just appear where black people happen to be. We are sent there. We don’t control who commits crime. We don’t control the victims or witnesses who call 911. We stop, investigate, and arrest blacks disproportionately because of one indisputable fact: Blacks commit more crime.

If the radio or computer in our car tells us a green Martian wearing a silver spacesuit just committed an armed robbery, we go to the location and look for a green Martian wearing a silver space suit. If the radio or the computer tells us that a black man just shot several people, we flood the area and look for — you guessed it, a black man. George Floyd, Michael Brown, Rayshard Brooks et. al. weren’t randomly chosen. In every incident, they were committing crimes that had been called in by victims or witnesses. The fact that they chose not to cooperate or to attack the police was entirely their choice.

Our job is to enforce the law. If a suspect resists, we are allowed to use force. Each of those black men would be alive today if he had followed lawful commands and had submitted to lawful arrest. There is no disputing that fact. Police officers want to arrest dangerous criminals to protect their community, and we will go wherever that call for service takes us.

Unfortunately, the city where I now work is destroying itself in the name of “diversity.” As the federal government foists hundreds, if not thousands of African refugees upon our town, crimes that were unheard of are becoming common: children stabbed to death, gun crime, and murder for hire. I now see sub-Saharan Africans walking down Main Street with 40-pound bags of rice on their heads. People from Third-World countries full of squalor and corruption come to our city and demand special treatment while contributing nothing. No politician can complain without committing career suicide. I am now in a supervisory position and can say, without hesitation, that every major crime here involves a black person. The most dangerous service call of each shift for the last several months has involved a black man with a gun or large mobs of violent blacks.

As the “defund the police” movement gains momentum, police officers are leaving the profession in droves. My agency is no exception. Soon, very few people, if any, will apply for this job. In order to fill vacancies, agencies will have to eliminate written tests, lower hiring standards, and look the other way on questionable backgrounds. This has all been tried before in the name of “diversity,” and led to incompetent, untrustworthy, corrupt officers. This is a disaster for any society.

White people are too frightened to talk about the rampant black crime that is documented every day. Whites have become the “silenced majority,” in order to protect their livelihood and to avoid being called the word against which there is no defense: “racist.” This police department is full of men and women who can tell city council exactly what happens when a city submits to the corrosive grip of the black hand. Will they listen before it’s too late?

Perhaps more important, will the officers themselves speak up? No one wants to be the one who stands up and takes the heat. Officers all over the country are trying to protect their pensions and their very livelihood. And would it even make a difference if they risked their careers and told the truth? There is no easy way out.

Mr. Vinyard has been a police officer for almost 30 years. He has worked SWAT, gone undercover as a narcotics detective, and been a street-crimes officer and gang officer.

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