Texas School Policies Violently Enforced: Police in Schools

An organizational policy, whether in an educational, religious, or business organization, is not law. Accordingly, “police tactics” are inappropriately used on people who violate policies. The proliferation of off-duty police officers in retail in more than one of the U.S. states (and perhaps in the E.U. as well), complete with lethal weapons, renders the distinction between policy and law especially relevant and even pressing. To be sure, trespassing is indeed a crime, even though some municipal police departments in Florida have refused to recognize it as such, as, for example, when a property owner illegally enters a rented apartment, but in a store, absent a decision by a manager to have a person removed from the premises, store “police” cannot legally act violently against the public as long as no crime is being committed—even if a store policy is being violated.

Since the killings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas in 2022, school districts in Texas “spent billions of dollars to station police officers” in every school.”[1] Crucially, the intent was “to protect students from similar tragedies.”[2] It is therefore more than unfortunate that school administrations, including local school boards, have allowed even elementary-school aged children to be subjected “to heavy-handed police tactics for behavior that once would have landed them only in the principal’s office.”[3] A principal is the head of a school. “Children in elementary school, including one as young as 6, were handcuffed. Teenagers were arrested, charged with crimes and even jailed. In the most extreme cases, they would up in hospitals, bruised or concussed, after being body-slammed or shocked by Tasers, which [were at the time] prohibited in [Texas] juvenile detention facilities but allowed in public schools.”[4] Under those circumstances, parents could hardly be blamed for yanking their kids out of public schools, preferring private schools, religious or secular, instead. In one public school, a student caught with a vape at school was “smashed into a wall” by an “officer,” another kneed a student in the face for fighting with a classmate, and still another animal (i.e., “officer”) slammed a student “into a metal cart” intentionally.[5] Admittedly, the student kneed and the one slammed were in the midst of physically fighting with other students, so some physicality was justified in order to break up the respective fights; it is the excessive violence that calls into question to motives of the police in the school hallways. For instance, the intent to severely harm out of sheer anger and even the intent to instill a sense of guilt in the respective students can both be subjected to harsh critique.

In his text, On the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche suggests that punishment originally arose in ancient (and prehistoric) times so the punisher could feel pleasure from inflicting pain in another person, rather than to instill a sense of moral responsibility or deter bad behavior in the future. Nietzsche argues that this original intent, or purpose, was still in force among European parents in his own adult lifetime in the mid-to-late 1800s (before he went mad in 1890).  Kneeing a student in the face and slamming a student into a metal cart are so extreme that it can indeed be wondered whether the culprits (i.e., the “officers”) were not at least partially motivated by such pleasure. Nietzsche goes on to point out that if political, economic or any other kind of elite are getting away with the exact behavior that is subject to punishment if done by other people, no sense of guilt arises from such dogmatic inflictions of pain otherwise known as punishments. Nietzsche argues that if a criminal “sees exactly the same kind of actions practiced in the service of justice and approved of and practiced with a good conscience: spying, deception, bribery, setting traps, the whole cunning and underhand art of police and prosecution, plus robbery, violence, defamation, imprisonment, torture, murder, practiced as a matter of principle and without even emotion to excuse them, . . . all of them therefore actions which his judges in no way condemn and repudiate as such, but only when they are applied and directed to certain particular ends” then no sense of guilt will arise when those actions are punished.[6] The violence of the police in the schools in Texas de facto nullifies any intended message sent by that violence qua “punishment” that violence is wrong. In fact, it might even be that the students in physical fights at school may grow up to be hired by cities as police! As such, those kids, as police “officers,” could be expected to be unnecessarily violent precisely because the use of violence in school beyond the authority of the police stationed there nullified any “lesson” that violence is wrong and therefore violent people should feel guilty, for presumably none of the police in the schools felt ashamed of themselves, and punishment inflicted on them would not have had such an effect if those police could in turn remember violence having been orchestrated by their bosses and even the impunity that those officials received from political or judicial officers of government.

What then can we expect as to how the kids in the schools were affected by the police brutality? According to Nietzsche, “Generally speaking, punishment makes men hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power of resistance.”[7] None of those can be favorable to being open to learning, so the activity of the police inside the schools beyond stopping mass shootings is contrary and thus detrimental to the mission of a school, which is to educate by imparting knowledge from teacher to student. Incidentally, it can’t be that the teachers feel comfortable being in the schools in which police are body-slamming students for carrying vaping equipment (perhaps a student is having trouble quitting smoking cigarettes, in which case vaping should be encouraged when the student feels very tempted to smoke). The result of such violent over-reaches on kids in Texas can be expected to include no longer feeling safe in their respective school hallways—not just because mass-killings have occurred in American schools, but also, and perhaps even more so, because the police installed in hallways have over-reached so from their purpose being to guard and protect students from external physical threats.

That school principals and even school boards have either given their consent or ignored the over-reaches renders those officials culpable as well. Prudent parents who love their children would be justified in voting to replace entire boards, which in turn would presumably be disposed to fire school principals who would rather than their respective students beaten up by police even for vaping than have teachers send students to the principal’s office. Police have no business enforcing school policies because policy is not law, and human beings with the means of greater power over other humans are too inclined to use it.

As Lord Acton famously wrote in 1887, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” For an organization’s management to place police rather than unarmed security guards in a position of enforcing policies is to inappropriately tempt abuses of power that cannot be said to come rightly under authority. For power sans authority can be understood to be in line with Hobbes’ description of the state of nature prior to any social contract historically. As another saying goes, give a human being an inch and a mile will be taken. Or, give someone a few centimeters and a kilometer will be taken. Take your pick, but don’t over-reach even though doing so seems to be hardwired into the human psyche, which, after all, can be said to be human, all too human. Such an innate proclivity should not be tempted whether in a managerial decision or in institutional arrangements that allow for the exploitation of an institutional or personal conflict of interest.

---

1. Claire Amari, Kristian Hernandez, and Asher Lehrer-Small, “At Texas Schools, Pepper Spray and Tasers,” The New York Times, May 30, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), Second Essay, sec. 14, p. 518.
7. Ibid, p. 517.

Police Ignoring Laws in Florida: A Case of Systemic Corruption

Systemic corruption means not only that a department or agency has an organizational culture that allows for and may even laud corruption, but also that a city hall, as well as larger jurisdictions such as member-states and even federal agencies may be enabling the corruption by looking the other way and even lying to cover-up the lower-level corruption. A study at Florida Atlantic University published in the Journal of Criminal Justice identifies 24 categories of police misconduct in Florida from 2012 to 2023. Even though it is tempting to highlight violent illegal acts by police employees, lying regarding criminal law and refusing to take reports of criminal activity may be more detrimental because such misconduct is probably more common than is the violent sort. If so, the extent of corruption and the underlying false sense of entitlement by police patrol-employees and even their supervisors may be vastly understated in the United States.

The “24 categories of police misconduct” in Florida range “from assault/battery to weapons offenses, manslaughter, homicide, extortion and false statements/perjury (lying under oath).”[1] The results of the study state that “the most considerable incidence of police misconduct offenses was related to officer failure to report and perjury.”[2] The incidence of this type of corruption was higher than “sexual-related crimes” and “(d)rug and alcohol-related offenses.”[3] The serial lying to citizens and refusing their requests for police reports reflects back on the faulty use of psychological screening on police applicants. The propensity to bully too is indicative that such screening has been substandard and therefore should be drastically fortified.

The police department in Largo, Florida, which is located just north of St Petersburg and west of Tampa, is a case in point. As of 2025 at least, police personnel who have taken oaths to enforce (and thus acknowledge) Florid law were to take reports of fraud. “It takes several people to have reported a case of fraud for us to make a report,” one police employee told me when I called to confirm the wayward policy. The statement demonstrates not only corruption, but also a sordid breach of rationality, for if no initial reports of fraud by a person against another are allowed, then it would be impossible to make a complaint after several other people have done so regarding the same culprit. Incredibly, that same police employee nevertheless maintained that in Florida, reports of fraud are made to the police local departments.

That same squalid department also has a policy that landlords, including local individuals and property-management company employees, can enter rented residential space at any time for any reason because, as I heard when I called to confirm, “there is no such thing as trespassing on a person’s own property.” The department even lies to residents by claiming that neither the town nor Florida has any laws protecting tenants from what is in fact trespassing. The Largo police department took the decision to ignore section 82 of the Florida statutes, which stipulates the conditions under which a property-owner can enter leased premises. The sheer extraordinariness of the lie should not be overlooked, for a brazen, hardened corrupt mentality can be inferred, especially when wielded like a club by police employees who have sworn an oath to uphold rather than ignore and lie about the law.

As for Florida’s Law Enforcement Agency, the official line is that there is no state-level agency in Florida that oversees local police departments; the internal affairs offices of local police departments are the only avenue for complaints. That such a pertainent agency can so easily be coopted by their “brothers in arms” opens up the ethical problem of a conflict of interest. The office of Lori Berman (D), Minority Leader of the Florida Senate, also insists that no state-level avenue for complaints by residents of local police corruption exists; only the towns and counties could take such complaints. In investigating this problem by speaking with one of Berman’s employees, I suggested that federal oversight of corrupt local police departments is also possible. The result was a patronizing, “Now let’s slow down,” reply. I had heard enough, so I called Congresswoman Anna Luna’s office, whose district includes corrupt Largo. I asked which office in the U.S. Department of Justice I could contact regarding a corrupt police department, but was told by one of Luna’s enabling employees, “We have nothing to do with the U.S. Department of Justice.” Enabling the corruption of a local police department is itself a corruption, as is lying about the oversight of federal agencies by the U.S. House of Representatives. 

There is a saying in philosophy, “turtles all the way down.” A thread of corruption extending from local fraud, a lying local police department unwilling to uphold (or even acknowledge) the law, the state of Florida that is presumably unconnected from local agencies or departments, and federal office-holders from Florida for whom federal oversight does not exist either in the Congress or the U.S. Department of Justice qualifies as the epitome of systemic corruption. Just as an unethically dysfunctional culture of a company like Arthur Anderson, Wells Fargo, and Enron is notoriously difficult to dislodge or cure with disinfectant, a corrupt local police department encased and enabled at the state and Congressional level is as intractable as they come, utterly impervious to correction and reform. Translucent sunlight may be in short supply in the sunshine state.

---

1. Gisele Galoustian, “Study Finds Police Misconduct ‘Hotspots’ Across Florida,” News Desk, Florida Atlantic University, July 30, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

On the Weakening of the Rule of Law in the United States

When law enforcement (i.e., police) conveniently exclude themselves from obeying law, the contradiction should, I submit, be sufficient for the perpetrators to be fired. It is not enough for their boss to chastise or even suspend the hypocrites, for they are inherently unfit for law enforcement, and should instead be treated as actual or potential criminals. What about when such a sordid mentality comes to proliferate through a police department, especially if it lies beyond the competence of a city government to hold even such a department accountable? What if a local political “law and order” culture tacitly exempts police and goes on to look the other way as the latter render the locality into a police state? I contend that the Phoenix metropolitan area, including the suburbs surrounding Phoenix itself, furnishes us with a case in point.

In a subway station in New York City in October, 2021, two cops shoved a passenger out of the station because he had asked them why they were not wearing masks, which federal law at the time required be worn on subways, light rail, street cars, buses, and indoor subway stations. The alpha male policeman lied in declaring to the passenger that he was “a disturbance,” and subsequently shouted. Sounds like a bully to me. Not exactly a fitting persona for people who can legally kill others, yet how many police departments willow out such misfits?

Whereas the bully component can be dramatic enough to grab headlines in the news, the presumptuous decision made by police employees—and this is what “officers” really are—that the law does not apply to them is noxious in its arrogance. As NYC mayor de Blasio said after viewing the video of the subway incident, “if you’re going to be in law enforcement, you actually have to participate in following the law.”[1] The mayor noted that the police had been given the mask-requirement instructions “a thousand times.” It was not as if the two police employees did not know that they were breaking the rule—and violating a federal regulation!—when they aggressively turned on the passenger who was motivated to see that the law was enforced. Janno Lieber, CEO of the MTA (the metro transit authority) put it well in saying, “I don’t want to see [passengers] being pushed out of the system by people who are not complying with the rules that the federal government sets. Come on, enough.”[2] 

Unfortunately, “Come on, enough” could be said of the Phoenix (Arizona) police department, which the U.S. Justice Department had found guilty of lying to the department about having denied police-accountability protesters their constitutional right of political protest. To knowingly intimidate protesters with excessive shows of guns, police employees and vehicles, and low-flying helicopters reveals an immaturity and lack of judgment on proportionality that de facto de-legitimate a police department even if such qualities are salient in the local culture.

In Phoenix, self-exemption from having to obey federal law had become overwhelmingly salient in the local culture, given the proportion of light-rail and bus passengers who did not wear masks—or wore them only covering their respective chins! Even a significant number of bus drivers had self-exempted themselves from the signs on the buses: “As Per Federal Law, Masks Must be Worn on the Bus.” Calling the mass transit authority (Metro Valley) to report some of the drivers who were disobeying company policy and violating federal law, I was stunned to hear, “Our drivers don’t have to wear masks. Don’t pay attention to the signs on the buses.” A manager of TransDev, one of the bus-operations sub-contractor, left a voicemail informing me that even though masks were required by federal law, the company had no such policy.” Interesting. Company policy trumps federal law. Welcome to Arizona.

In October, 2021, with passengers passing by to pay, this bus driver was violating federal law by refusing to wear a mask. I reminded her that masks are required on city buses. After I took my seat, she made a general announcement that if any (paying) customer on the bus feels unsafe, he can get off and catch the next bus. Notice that the driver had lowered the plexiglass "window" pane and thus was being unsafe (and thus inconsiderate). Her passive aggression in her hostile announcement added insult to injury even though she felt convinced that she was entitled to break federal law. This sense of entitlement backed up by passive (and active) aggression is salient in the local culture. I called in a complaint to the regional transit authority (Metro Valley) against that driver. 

A few weeks later, I witnessed the same driver again not wearing a mask. At least she had the plexiglass window pane up, though the federal regulation requires masks be worn by operators even behind plexiglass. I had heard back from TransDev, a subcontractor bus-operating company, telling me on my voicemail that the company policy allows drivers to go maskless, even in spite of the federal regulation. Metro Valley customer service had a week earlier informed me similarly that passengers can board the buses even though the company's signs on the buses forbit it as "per federal law." Such entitlement! Such willfulness! Such passive aggression! Such ignorance! A company policy does not outweigh a federal law or regulation. 

Seeing a managerial-level Phoenix policeman walking from his "Supervisor" car to the police substation on Central Ave near Arizona State University’s downtown Phoenix campus, I told him that I had encountered: bus drivers (and light rail security guards) refusing to wear masks and even allowing passengers to ride without wearing masks. I added that the regional transit authority and one of its sub-contractors arrogantly and ignorantly declaring that such passengers can ride and bus drivers need not wear masks.

To my profound, jaw-dropping astonishment, the police patrol manager informed me that “the only real law is Arizona law,” and my governor told us that we don’t have to follow that federal mandate.” Every law and regulation mandates, I said to correct for the man’s ignorant belief that a mandate is optional and does not have the force of law. I pointed out that state governments cannot constitutionally nullify federal law; South Carolina had learned this lesson in 1832. I also cited the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. “Where did you learn that?” the policeman asked, “At Yale?” I had told him that I had studied political theory (as well as theology) at Yale. The man’s disdain for higher education was just as salient as was his sordid ignorance, and of course he presumed that he could not be wrong. Unfortunately, the local workforce in general was saturated by unbelievable ignorance that would presume itself to be infallible and lash out as if in getting even.

I reported my conversation as well as the messages from the regional transit authority and its TransDev subcontractor to the office manager of the Phoenix mayor’s office. I even called the city manager’s office and asked for a managerial level employee to return my call. Instead, a misleading intern called me. Meanwhile, nothing changed in the mass transit system. Given the decadence in the local culture, I would have been surprised had anything changed. I was most concerned that the city government would not pounce on such outrageous statements by a police manager concerning federal law. Such utter corruption and an inert local government could produce a toxic, perfect storm beyond the reach of the U.S. Justice Department to counter, for the local police department and regional transit authority (and its two operations sub-contractors) had become infused with the local culture. 

Specifically, I am referring here to the sense of entitlement that laws can be ignored or simply dismissed if they are inconvenient, and the defense mechanism of hostility in the face of having the bloated, self-serving sense of entitlement questioned or contradicted outright. For instance, I called the police non-emergency number in 2021 to report loud bass from cars at a self-serve carwash near where I was living at the time. The offender was still present when the police arrived. To my utter shock, one of the two patrol police employees claimed that no law prohibits loud noise in a residential neighborhood. "The business owner has posted signs--right over there--citing the Arizona statues and the local ordinance number (2-22). Would you take a look?," I countered in a calm voice that belied my real objection to his ignorance. "No, I won't," he objected like a child. So the man-child would not even go to the offending pick-up truck to speak with the young men. While I was waiting for the business owner to call me back, the man-child slowly followed me as if I were a suspect rather than witness reporting an ongoing, almost daily crime that the local police had failed utterly to stamp out. The man-child's sense of entitlement was evident not only in his lying about the law, but also his abject refusal to drive or walk over to one of the signs. He assumed himself infallibly to be on solid ground, from which he then tried to intimidate me (hostility). Getting back at me for what? What sort of sordid mentality invents retribution out of thin air? A week after I had reported the man-child's behavior to his department, I received a call from a patrol supervisor, who was intent on arguing with me by insisting that the sign read "No Trespassing." "I don't doubt that such a sign exists there, but that's not the signs that I was referring to when I said that the signs read 'No loud noise, no revving engines, ...' and at the laws are cited at the bottoms of the signs--one posted at each post." The woman hung up on me. There would be no accountability within that woefully stubborn and corrupt police department, which had lied to the FBI concerning another matter: intimidating protestors who were protesting against police brutality in 2020.  A dysfunctional culture, whether of a locality or an organization, is extremely difficult to cure. 

---

[1] Liam Reilly, “NYC Mayor ‘Troubled’ by Video Showing Unmasked Officers Forcibly Removing Masked Subway Commuter,” CNN.com (October 21, 2021).
[2] Ibid.

Arizona’s Dysfunctional Business and Governmental Culture Creates a Crisis in the Coronavirus Pandemic

On January 15, 2021, the New York Times reported that Arizona had the highest 7-day daily average per capita of deaths and new cases of the new coronavirus, covid-19.[1] On one day, Arizona had 11,324 new cases.[2] “We’re the hottest spot in the U.S. and among the hottest spots in the entire world,” said Keith Frey, the chief medical officer for Dignity Health’s Arizona division.[3] “If we don’t slow this down over the course of the next days and weeks, then we will be fully into that crisis zone,” he added.[4] It would be a crisis of the state’s own making, and thus preventable but for the local culture at least in the Phoenix metro area. In other words, the crisis did not happen to Arizona; rather, the crisis was in large part homemade, and can thus be used as a window into a dysfunctional culture in the United States.

In spite of county and municipal laws and company policies on wearing masks in stores and on public transportation (buses and the light rail), many stores and the mass-transit company forbid employees from even asking incoming customers to wear a mask (or wear one correctly over the nose and mouth). Grocery stores were particularly problematic, with even their own employees walking around with impunity without masks on (properly). “We don’t enforce that requirement,” a grocery-store director told me. How, then, can the policy be considered to be a requirement? “It just is,” a store manager told me. That wearing masks was not only a company requirement, but also a city and county law was of no interest to the manager. “We don’t enforce the law,” he quipped. “But you are violating it by letting people in who are not wearing masks,” I retorted. This was not his concern.

The Phoenix metropolitan mass-transit company, and thus its two subcontracted bus-operating companies, also had a policy forbidding employees from enforcing the company’s own requirement and the local law. Some bus drivers would even not wear a mask or wear one without covering their noses and mouths! Some light-rail security employees subcontracted by the mass-transit company wore their masks over their chins too, as did a significant proportion of the rail passengers. Some security employees asked passengers to wear their masks correctly, while most of those employees did not. The notion that masks were required on the trains was a farce, and yet notwithstanding this, the company’s representatives had no problem defying logic itself by insisting that masks were required.  It was as if the company policy and the county law mandating masks on public transportation simply did not exist, and yet they did. “It’s not really a law,” a customer-service employee told me. Why? Because the county doesn’t have a legislature and only one of them can pass laws. The county board was apparently extra-governmental in nature.

Both retail and the mass transit were exploiting an exception, that of medical exceptions, to invalidate the rule. Incredibly, the stores and mass-transit company used this exception to justify refusing even to ask customers and passengers, respectively, to cover the nose and mouth area with an existing mask. People with medical conditions exempting them from wearing masks would not have masks on. The absurdity of allowing an exception (e.g., a medical condition) to condemn a requirement was permitted in the dysfunctional culture and amid a lack of accountability by regulators.

The problem was exacerbated by the political extremism that was salient in the state. A steadfast refusal to obey the law on wearing masks had a significant role in the number of people not wearing masks in stores and on public transportation. Such people could easily exploit the managerial incompetence both in retail and mass transit. It does not take long to realize that an intentionally-unenforced requirement is not a requirement, even if this point is not grasped by company managers. Yet the managerial dysfunction enabled this condition to go on for almost a year as of January, 2021. In such a political culture wherein a significant proportion of residents believe they are justified in breaking the law and ignoring company policies, it can be reckoned as inexcusable for companies to follow the invalid logic that the existence of an exception invalidates a rule (or requirement). In other words, it is negligence pure and simple. The lack of accountability, which was well-ensconced in the culture within companies as well as between businesses and local and state government, enabled the corruption that gave the virus the upper hand. It was as if the locals could not help themselves.

Moreover, the local culture wherein political extremism was salient allowed for the erroneous belief that the public good is simply the aggregate of individual wills. Where enough wills decide not to wear masks indoors in public and on public transit, the aggregate public good falls short of being above the ability of the virus to spread. The public good as merely the aggregate of individual wills thus is not good enough; it falls short of what the public good actually is (e.g., being greater than the ability of the virus to spread). The understatement of the public good can be understood too as the belief that the general will (e.g., Rousseau) is reducible to the aggregation of private wills.

The good of the whole, I submit, is more than the sum of the individual parts because some parts may even detract from the public good and thus understate it if it is taken to be merely the aggregation of individual wills. That the market value of a product is determined by the aggregate supply and demand does not mean that the public good is likewise determined. For one thing, the market value of a product is in a closed system (the aggregate supply and demand) whereas the public good is open-ended. In other words, the public good can be higher than the aggregate of the individual wills would have it because enough private-benefit-only wills can detract appreciably from what is the good of the whole. If enough people refuse to wear masks indoors in public places, and stores and even governments look the other way, the result is significantly below the good of the whole, which in this case is stopping the coronavirus. By its self-inflicted crisis, Arizona was functioning well below its own good, and a highly dysfunctional local mentality is to blame.

---

1. Jordan Allen et al, “Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count,” The New York Times, January 15, 2021.

2. Alicia Caldwell and Ian Lovett, “Arizona Is America’s Covid-19 Hot Spot and on the Brink of Crisis,” The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2021.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

Coronavirus Reveals Dysfunctional Culture in Arizona

In mid-October, 2020, when the coronavirus was again peaking in E.U. states such as France and Germany and U.S. states such as Wisconsin and New Mexico, public health experts were worried about how the upcoming flu season would interact with the new virus, especially as people gather more indoors when outside temperatures turn colder. On October 15, 2020, for instance, seven U.S. states saw record numbers of hospitalizations, according to the Covid Tracking Project, and fourteen states set records for their seven-day averages of new daily cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.[1] France and Germany had already instituted nightly curfews. On October 16, Tier 2 Restrictions went into effect in London, which include urging people to avoid public transportation. Because physical distancing is not always possible on buses, subways, and light rail, universal mask wearing was crucial. According to IHME projections at the time, universal mask wearing in general “could save the lives of more than 70,000 Americans in the next three and a half months.”[2] With New Mexico’s chief executive referring to the coronavirus situation as “the most serious emergency that New Mexico has ever faced” on October 14, it was very troubling that Arizona, which borders New Mexico, had failed to enforce laws requiring masks on public transportation. This failure is extraordinary because of the mentality behind it.
On June 19, 2020, Maricopa County, which includes the Phoenix metropolitan area, had announced mask regulations approved by the Board of Supervisors. One of the regulations reads, “All riders and operators on public transportation must wear a mask.”[3] This bore directly on the light rail and buses, which Metro Valley, the transportation authority, either ran directly or through subcontracted operating companies and Allied Security. With enforcement of the new regulation being “the responsibility of law enforcement,”[4] Metro Valley announced that it would not use its employees and subcontracted security guards to enforce the regulation. In allowing passengers to board the buses and light rail without wearing masks, Metro Valley was actually breaking the law even during the “second wave” of the virus in June, 2020. In fact, it was not uncommon to see bus drivers and security guards either not wearing masks or wearing them around their chins rather than on their mouths and noses. It was especially common to see the riders wear masks covering only the chin.
Metro Valley’s excuse for not enforcing the “requirement,” which meant allowing passengers (and employees) to be on mass transit without wearing masks even though the regulation forbid it, was that some passengers (and employees) could not wear masks due to medical conditions like asthma. Allowing this exception to break the rule overall bespoke ignorance, stinginess, and laziness. Because at risk riders could have been accommodated with the modest requirement of having their respective physicians fill out a medical form that in turn would be necessary to obtain a special medical transit ID. Medical IDs were already issued to the disabled who had a medical provider fill out Metro Valley’s medical form. The transit authority did not have to emasculate the regulation and thus the public health on account of an exception. Talking to Metro Valley supervisors, I was struck by the near obsession on the exception to the extent that I could detect no awareness of making a requirement anything but, and in so doing, violating the regulation. Small minds should not rule large companies, for the consequent harm to the public can be large.
I was thrice flabbergasted when I listened on my phone to Metro Valley customer-service employees insist that masks were required on buses and light rail and that passengers could ride without masks was not incompatible with the requirement! Declarations by ignorance that cannot be wrong have a bad odor. Such ignorance has no legitimate basis in standing on stilts above customers (or anyone). When I pointed out the obvious point that allowing maskless riders on buses and trains means that masks are not required, the standard reply was actually corrective. “Masks are required. Riders will not be turned away for not wearing masks.” How can a mind possibly hold those two thoughts together as if they were consistent? Perhaps willful ignorance enjoys being corrective because of the little bit of power that can be enjoyed—so starved for the pleasure from power is the weak bird of prey, according to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Unfortunately, neither the county sheriff’s office nor the Phoenix police (nor that of at least one suburb) felt the need to enforce the county and various city laws on masks. “You need to call Metro Valley on that,” I was told as I sought comment. Even if Metro Valley had a policy of enforcing rather than breaking the regulation (and city laws) mandating masks on public transit, it was still the responsibility of law enforcement (i.e., not a transit company) to see that the regulation (and laws) are enforced. For law-enforcement agencies of municipal governments to rely on company policies conflates governmental law with organizational policies. The lack of accountability was staggering even as the coronavirus remained as a viable threat to the public health.
The political and educational cultures in Arizona were such that efforts to enforce the regulation and correct Metro Valley’s pathetic policy were especially important. On October 17, 2020 in a conference room at a resort at Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix, two presenters with QAnon “went on a long diatribe against people who wear masks to prevent the spread [of coronavirus]. It’s a way to control people, and a symbol of submission, they argued.”[5] It bears stating that in 2019, Arizona had ranked 49^th out of the 50 American states on education prior to college. Unfortunately, a culture of ignorance can easily support and spread the message of QAnon in Arizona—“inventing an imaginary threat and ignoring the very real virus” in spite of all those people who had already died from the pathogen. Such a culture can also enable a vacuous “requirement” to be perpetuated as if it were really a requirement rather than an instance of reason turned against itself with impunity. In such a culture, a significant number of riders and employees, including bus drivers, can be expected to skirt their company’s policy on mask-wearing because it is a fraud anyway. Such employees need only have told their respective supervisors that a medical condition prevents the wearing of a surgical mask without any written documentation to support the validity of the claim. In such a culture, bus drivers would rather bar riders from sitting in the front half of the buses, meaning that the riders might not be able to keep apart spatially as per governmental and even Metro Valley’s own guidelines, than bother to wear masks while driving. Why could such drivers be required to wear plastic face guards if a legitimate medical reason exists for not wearing a surgical mask? Besides the culture of ignorance, one of a lack of regard for the public health (i.e., other people) is also part of the sordid culture that has been so ensconced in Arizona.

A Metro Valley employee and a rider covering their respective chins. 

Security employees exposing their noses and mouths contrary to company policy. It is no wonder that riders did so as well, or went without masks, even though they were "required."

At times, the bus rider on the right held his green towel by his teeth, as if this were equivalent to wearing a mask. Such minimalists were common on public transportation during the pandemic.

A bus driver wearing his mask to cover his chin. I called Metro Valley to report the unsafe practice, and yet two months later, the driver was still leaving his mouth and nose exposed (see photo immediately below). Moreover, the continued prevalence of drivers without masks or not wearing them correctly is an indication that Metro Valley and its subcontracted operator companies have been managerially incompetent in holding drivers accountable. The continued bad driving (e.g., stopping abruptly rather than coasting to a light already red) also points to managerial negligence. 

Two (of several) other bus drivers not wearing masks, hence violating company policy. Were they medically exempt, presumably they would be wearing face coverings instead. 

Seats being held/blocked contrary to Metro Valley's policy by drivers. A plastic divider between the drivers and the seats is supposed to be sufficient protection for the drivers. Their efforts at over-protection, incredibly even by maskless drivers, can be at the expense of passengers being able to maintain physical distance between each other. Even though restricting the seating violates company policy and the company is aware of the practice, accountability has been a problem. 

A security guard starring at me taking a picture (which is legal) perhaps to intimidate me while literally overlooking the maskless rider stretched out on three seats. Starring at innocent riders to intimidate them while ignoring infractions of train policies (e.g., lying over three seats) epitomizes the local police/security culture. 

Four security guards in one-half of a train car, and four in a train car on a routine basis. Such excessiveness intimidates paying customers and leaves other trains without any protection. This epitomizes the local police/security culture in which as many of three backup police cars are used for police giving a traffic ticket. Meanwhile, the police departments refuse to enforce the laws on mask-wearing in retail stores and on public transportation. Hence, "bipolar" aptly characterizes the culture, wherein minor matters deprioritize more important ones. 

A security employee prohibited by Metro Valley even to instruct riders how to wear masks correctly. 

Perhaps the overriding question is how such a badly managed mass transit company (including its subcontractors that operate the buses) could continue in such a condition of ineptitude. In 2019, I had shot lots of videos of aggressive bus drivers, bad driving (e.g., stomping on the brake pedal at the last minute), and excess security on some trains (hence with none in others). The city of Tempe’s Transportation director invited me to attend a meeting with Tempe’s transit director, representatives from Metro Valley and the director of one of the bus-operating subcontractor companies (First Trans) in the room. Reflecting the local culture, the director dismissed all of my videos because one of them shows speeding of only six miles-per-hour above the speed-limit. To my utter astonishment, the other people in the room let him get away with the illogical effort to invalidate all of the videos—even those showing aggressive bus drivers shouting at passengers (the drivers generally viewed their ridership as lower class than themselves, which would have to be pretty low). Tempe’s representative lied to the director, “The city of Tempe has no problem with the driving,” after only months earlier having told me that speeding is a real problem (to which I added hard braking). Perhaps bribes helped reinforce the pathetic inter-organizational culture there.
Also up for grabs is why the local law enforcement would decide not to enforce a law so relevant to the public’s safety/health, and let the mass transit company (and its contractors) violate the law by allowing passengers to ride without wearing masks. It seems that in Arizona, the local law enforcement agencies have too much discretion over which laws they will enforce. Anyone calling in a noise complaint there knows this to be true. 
Ironically, and reflective of the bipolar culture, residents in poor and middle-class areas have had to endure police departments' excess reliance on low-flying police helicopters, which have routinely interloped beyond their respective jurisdictions (such as a city helicopter flying over county land), flown outside of designated air corridors for fly-through traffic, and flown around more expensive neighborhoods.  
On the evening when I published this essay at a coffee shop, a police car passed by as I was about to go to the shopping center's parking lot, and a few minutes a police helicopter flew over diagonally. Both seemed to be on a routine basis and duplicative rather than on a coordinated search. Then a mile away, just after I had stopped at a grocery store, another police helicopter was making at least ten wide circles over a nice looking residential neighborhood before flying away. Then just before I reached my apartment, several miles away, I saw yet another police helicopter (with yet another in the distance). The next morning on my way to the coffee shop to edit this essay, I again saw a police helicopter. The local residents may be used to living in a police state, but we others are not and it doesn't take long for us to notice it on account of its excessiveness, just as we new-comers notice the proclivity of the local police departments to refuse to enforce certain laws. To be sure, surveillance and so many back-up police cars for traffic tickets do take up resources, including personnel. If half the effort were applied instead to enforcing masks on public transit when the E.U. and many U.S. Midwestern and Northeastern states were coronavirus hotspots, Arizona would have been in a better position going into the winter.  

[1] Christina Maxouris and Jason Hanna, “The US Has Reached 8 Million Covid-19 Cases, and the Pace of New Infections Signals a Tough Winter,” CNN.com, October 16, 2020.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Board Approves Mask Regulations Due to Community Spread of COVID-19,” Maricopa County Communications Office, June 19, 2020.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Donie O’Sullivan, “Analysis: A CNN Reporter Went to Two Different QAnon Events. Here’s What He Found,” CNN.com, October 19, 2020 (accessed same day).

Corona Crisis: Unethical and Criminal Businesses and Municipal Agencies Pervade in Phoenix, Arizona

On July 7, 2020, NBC News reported that Arizona had a record number of cases (105,094) and of deaths (1,927), with a four percent daily increase in reported cases. Also, coronavirus hospitalizations and related ventilators being used were also at record highs. A reporter with MSNBC stated, “Arizona is in crisis.” On the previous day, on MSNBC television, that same reporter had said, “Arizona is in free fall,” in that the number of cases was rising so fast. It had taken three months for the first 50,000 cases and only 23 days for the next 50,000. Observing that people were not wearing masks in downtown Scottsdale, he reported that “Arizona is out of control.” People there were not taking precautions, and the local and state authorities were not on top of the crisis. On June 22, 2020, a physician with the University of Arizona-Phoenix interviewed on The 11^th Hour show on MSNBC asserted that the Arizonans who were saying, “No one is going to order me to wear a mask,” were being selfish because refusing to wear a mask, say on a bus or in a store or restaurant/bar puts other lives at risk. Also a salient ingredient of the crisis in Arizona was the anti-science contingent of the population. In an interview at the time, Alan Alda (of the TV show, MASH) pointed to “pockets of people who still think science is just another opinion” as having a mindset that “puts us all in danger.”[1] The rigors of scientific experiment, such as the use of control groups and random selection, render science closer to knowledge than are mere opinions based on ideology and a person’s own experience. Privileging one’s own ideology and experiences counts as self-embellishing, and perhaps even self-idolatry. Such people are not likely to accept knowledge that contradicts their respective opinions and experience. Living in Phoenix at the time, I had encountered a lot of anti-intellectualism and incompetence along with refusals to enforce virus-deterring policies and even laws. Just one year earlier, Arizona’s education system through High School (K-12) had been rated as 49 out of the 50 States. Combined with an ideology in which companies and individual residents should (which implies can) self-police themselves on physical-distancing and wearing face masks indoors in public and on public transportation,  the recipe is for a greater need for respirators. 

To be sure, Arizona got to the place of crisis in part because the governor had lifted the stay-at-home order and opened businesses on May 14, 2020. His choice was in line with the wishes of U.S. President Trump, who wanted a more productive U.S. economy that would facilitate the president’s re-election in the coming November. The spike in new cases began in Arizona after the governor allowed non-essential businesses, including bars, restaurants, and gyms, to reopen. Pressure from President Trump and a shared pro-business political ideology were likely factors in the Republican governor’s decision. Meanwhile, Arizona had more than its share of political ideologues who believed that business policy or a public law mandating physical distancing and mask-wearing were tyrannical overreaches even though government has a duty to keep its people safe. 

Does mandating the use of masks indoors in public constitute tyranny? Is God against public health? Are certain political ideologies blind to the health and safety of a people? Can what is generally viewed as outlandish in most democratic societies be mainstream, and thus virtually unchecked, in one particular society?

However, other salient factors leading to the crisis in Arizona as of early July are worthy of being mentioned. Such factors include the refusal of Arizonans overwhelmingly to maintain a physical distance from other people while in public—especially indoors, such as at retailers including grocery stores, department stores, and bars. Even before mid-May, when Arizona had been on lock-down, grocery store employees got away with regularly ignoring the store policies and state law on physical-distancing because neither the store managers nor public authorities (e.g., the local police, county Environmental Services dept, city government) would see that the policy or law was enforced. Store managers of two grocery chains blatantly told me that they were not enforcing their own physical-distancing policies and thus the state law. Even on July 9, 2020, when the state’s hospitals were nearing capacity from the virus, I was stunned at a Sprouts store to see neither customers nor employees paying any attention to the store’s own regularly-announced physical-distancing policy. From a business standpoint, refusing to follow or enforce a store policy goes beyond incompetence and sheer foolishness; fecklessness, I submit, was also in the mix.

Wearing masks indoors when in public became a local law in Phoenix in late June, 2020. A few days before July 4, 2020, I went to Target, a retail department-store chain, to return an item. As I entered the store, I saw a sign indicating that masks must be wore as per the local law. 

Inside the store, I asked the assistant manager helping me with the return what is done to customers who ignore the policy and law. “Oh, we can’t enforce that,” she said matter-of-factly. 

On the evening of July 4, I (stupidly) went to a bar/restaurant called Half-Moon Sports Grill for a burger. As I approached the establishment, I heard a group of customers leaving the “restaurant” wonder aloud, “No one in there is wearing a mask.” Yet I went inside anyway, though to an isolated table from which I could see the horse-shoe bar where neither masks were being worn nor physical distancing was being enforced (e.g. by spacing out the seating). The store’s policy violated the law on both counts. 

The seats had not been spaced out along the bar. Perhaps the manager was spaced out? Many people sitting at the bar and at the tables near me were not eating anything. Even actual drinking was sparse. The customers "nursing" their drinks could have removed masks to take periodic gulps or sips, as the case may be. 

Indeed, the governor had recently closed bars (and gyms) because they had been hotspots for transmission of the contagion. A waitress told me that masks were not required when people were sitting. The law, however, stated at the time that masks need not be worn while mouths are being used to eat or drink.  The manager of Half Moon must have assumed that anytime a customer is seated, he or she must be eating or drinking. This is not what I saw, and during a crisis wouldn’t it just make sense to err on the side of caution in interpreting the local law? I was especially shocked when the waitress came up to my table twice without wearing a mask; she had been walking without wearing a mask and she had apparently decided that physical distancing does not apply to herself.

So the next day, I gave the local police a tip. On a Sunday afternoon, the cops would go to the bar/restaurant to see if any violations were occurring. I offered to send the videotape I had shot inside the establishment, but the Phoenix police refused. So the matter being corrected depended on whether the bar was busy enough on a Sunday afternoon to show a violation. No one would ever guess that the matter was urgent and important; it was as if the police were oblivious to the unfolding health crisis. The police had obviously not been paying attention when the governor had only weeks early stated in a news conference that businesses refusing to enforce local and state measures would be dealt with. Instead, the police followed their typical minimalist enforcement routine. A minimalist mentality has no place during a crisis, except, it seems, in Arizona.

The local transit authority, Metro Valley Transit, already had a sordid reputation for enabling bus drivers who were hostile to paying customers and drove badly. In early July, the company showed just how incompetent it was by having signs and a company voice (phone) message indicating that masks were required on the buses and yet Oliver, a supervisor of the customer-service department, told me that because some passengers cannot wear masks for medical purposes (i.e., there were exceptions), the company was only recommending that masks be worn. That a requirement would be treated as optional because exceptions exist demonstrates gross managerial incompetence. Such incompetence (and narrow-minded rigidity) is apparently inert even to a societal crisis (e.g., sky-rocketing numbers of coronavirus cases). That is to say, more was involved than ignorance.

Masks being worn improperly, or "minimalist," quickly became popular in the Phoenix metro on the buses, with drivers looking the other way. In the photo just above, the driver had even contorted his mirror so as to see the passengers, and yet he did not even ask the passenger pictured to wear a mask in spite of there being a "Mask Are Required" ungrammatical sign facing the entry door. This is ironic, given the driver's intent to be able to watch as many passengers as possible. The pleasure of power seized at in weakness issues out in control, yet interestingly here without holding passengers accountable. 

On July 10, 2020, I was fortunate on my morning commute to be on a bus in which not only was the driver not wearing a mask, but three passengers were not too. One of them was biting down on a small towel, demonstrating that the lack of accountability on the non-enforcing drivers was particularly risky, given the willfulness and ignorance of many riders. By the same reasoning, the lax enforcement of the public-health state, county, and local (Phoenix metropolitan area) laws by police and the respective governments on not only the bus company, but also grocery and department stores and restaurants/bars bore a high health cost given the condition of the local population. 

It was bad enough that the vast majority of bus drivers were not enforcing the mask policy in spite of the local law even though signs notifying passengers (and drivers) of the requirement were on the buses. On July 10, I discovered that at least one driver didn't think his company's policy and the law pertained to him. After he let on three passengers who were not wearing masks, I called Metro Valley's customer service number. Not surprisingly, no one from the company (e.g., the driver's supervisor) bothered to call the driver during the route. That too is typical, even though the customer service employees could see to it that someone from the company immediately calls the driver, whether he or she is not wearing a mask, enforcing the policy/law, or being verbally abusive toward paying customers. In May, I had tried calling the local police on a driver who was refusing to comply with the bus company's policy on 10 riders maximum on a standard-sized bus. "You have to call the bus company," the police dispatcher told me. "But the driver is breaking the physical distancing state law," I exclaimed, utterly astonished that a private company rather than a police department would be the only enforcer of the law. "You would have to contact the bus company," I heard again. The local police also tried to avoid enforcing the local laws on nighttime noise, so I was not surprised at the push-back itself. 
During my conversation with Oliver of the bus company in early July, I mentioned the company’s voice-message and the signs specifying that masks were required. “They are wrong,” he informed me. He even said he would change the voice-message; I was not surprised at all a week later to hear the same phone-recording that masks were required. Oliver believed that he could not be wrong even though people could die as a result. So I wrote to the city of Phoenix and the local press on the conversation. Although Oliver had no reason to fear being held accountable, given the company’s squalid management cadre, I suspect that the city may have come down on the bus company for telling customers that wearing masks is merely recommended due to there being exceptions. For a week or more later, the bus company's customer service employees were no longer telling riders that drivers do not enforce what is a recommendation. Even so, drivers were still not complying, even though the company was finally taking its own signs and voice-recording seriously. 

Despite complaints from paying customers for some time on driver hostility and bad driving (e.g., abrupt stops), the management had failed to solve those two problems. In part, the drivers’ union was too strong, but the city of Phoenix and the suburbs were not good at holding the regional transit authority accountable. So I was not surprised in early July, 2020 when a bus driver became enraged when I called customer service to report that masks were not being worn by about half of the riders, and the driver was ignoring the company’s policy on the ten-passengers maximum on a regular-sized bus. With 17 riders on the bus, physical distancing was not possible, which made the non-compliance on masks particularly risky. Fortunately, the customer service representative also heard the driver’s shouts. In going after me rather than having enforced the policies (and laws) in the first place, that driver demonstrated to me why things were out of control in Arizona with regard to the pandemic. The driver was certainly out of control mentally, and his refusal not to enforce bus-company policies with impunity means that his company was out of control managerially. By implication, the city governments in the metropolitan area were falling short in holding the regional transit authority accountable.

By early July, 2020, I noticed that the riff-raff (i.e., rules don't apply to me) on the buses were developing a sub-culture wherein masks were to either not be worn at all or just cover the chin. Because the buses are so unreliable there, the riff-raff make up the vast majority of the ridership. Even so, drivers were not enforcing the mask requirement on that ridership, which one driver confided to me is generally viewed as pathetic by the drivers. Is not a refusal to enforce a requirement also pathetic? Does this not liken the drivers to their typical ridership? Signs on the buses continued to declare that the masks are mandatory, and the drivers continued to dismiss their duty to enforce that company policy. As evidence for this investigation, I took a photo of a rider as he was dozing off; he was wearing his mask to cover his chin only. 

When this passenger got off the bus, he put his bandana on even though no one else was on the sidewalk. 

As I turned back around, I saw the driver shaking one of her fingers at me as if she were scolding a child. It is legal to take pictures on the buses and light rail in Arizona, and yet the driver felt sufficiently emboldened in her refusal to enforce the policy that she called her supervisor and took a picture of me!  Rather than realize that she had failed to enforce a requirement, she directed her hostility to me. Generalizing, given all the reports of driver hostility toward passengers, the drivers who refused to enforce company policy not only felt entitled to do so, but also aggressively went after the paying customers who felt that the drivers should be held accountable because they were putting the health of those customers at risk. Sadly, given the continued bad driving and driver-hostility generally, I could conclude that the company’s management was lax (i.e., incompetent) on holding its drivers (and bus operating subcontractors) accountable.

It is interesting that at least some retail companies, bar/restaurants, and bus companies in Arizona gave up on enforcing their own respective policies (and any underpinning laws), while Airlines, libraries, medical clinics, and hospitals had no such problem. It is not surprising that NBC News would find that things are out of control in Arizona regarding the pandemic. It is ironic that such a heavily-policed state, where intimidation from a huge police show of force/presence is presumed to be the best deterrent to crime, would be so deficient on enforcement even during a crisis. Perhaps views of the national news could finally see just how pathetic the situation in Arizona really was, and likely will be for some time.

Theists, ecologists, and ethicists could agree that a pandemic taking a particularly dire toll on such a people would make sense. Theists could point to God’s disfavor on the selfishness, lack of consideration for others’ health, refusal to do one’s duty in enforcing public-health business policies and governmental laws, and hostility. The same rationale would support a variant on the Biblical story of Noah—this time with God extinguishing our species for having refused to sufficiently stave off carbon-induced climate change. Naturalists could paint a picture of a selfish, inconsiderate people being especially prone to a pandemic. Nature abhors weakness, and thus a weak people. Ethicists might say that it is just that people who refuse to enforce policies or laws protecting the public health during a crisis catch the virus themselves. Similarly, bus passengers and retail customers whose risky behavior puts others at risk could be said to deserve to suffer the plight themselves. They would doubtless disagree, and they would insist that they could not be wrong about it, as if they were gods on stilts during a flood.

1. David Hochman, “Alan Alda Is Obsessed with the Power of Science,” AARP: The Magazine, June/July, 2020.