Justified Deadly Force and the Myth of Systemic Racism, by Mike Simonelli – A Book Review

I have known Mike Simonelli, the author of this book, for over forty years and he has always been an honest, talented and patriotic American.  After separating from the Air Force, he transferred into the US Army Reserves to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel.  Currently as a law enforcement officer he has been dealing with the reality of trying to keep the peace in an America where everything is upside down.  The media paints the police as racist monsters intent on harming and even killing innocent black citizens.  And at the same time the media works to paint black criminals as innocent bystanders who just happen to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” in an attempt to mask the fact that criminality is the cause of a great majority of their frequent encounters with the police.

Officer Simonelli told me that he wrote this book for two reasons.  The first is to provide a balance against the books that have appeared over the last decade that paint the false picture of the police in America as a fatally flawed product of racist objectives and behaviors.  The second reason was to provide a resource for people who need to address these false portrayals of law enforcement in America.  These may be private citizens arguing with friends and neighbors about something they heard on the news.  Or it might be an elected official who needs to dig up verifiable facts about the use of deadly force against blacks by the police.  It could even be a town police chief trying to counteract a passionate but misinformed resident at a town council meeting.  But for whatever specific need this book will serve to provide ready facts and references for the rebuttal of the endless accusations of systemic police racism as it applies to the use of deadly force against black Americans.

The majority of the book is divided into three main headings:

Part 1. Deadly Police Shootings: Racial Bias by the Press, Protestors and Politicians

This section is broken down into sub-sections on; Research Study Introduction, Literature Review Methodology and Results.

Part 2. Justified Deadly Force of Unarmed Subjects, 2019 to 2020

This section is broken down into sub-sections on; Incidents in 20219, Incidents in 2020 and Analysis.

Part 3. Felonious Line of Duty Murders of Law Enforcement Officers 2019 to 2020

This section is broken down into sub-sections on; Incidents in 20219, Incidents in 2020 and Analysis.

The sub-sections listed as incidents in 2019 and 2020 in both Part 2 and Part 3 are case histories for all the events under those categories that occurred in the United States.  Each death of an unarmed subject and each murdered policeman is given its own case study.  This is an enormous amount of research to back up the assertions and conclusions that Officer Simonelli makes in his book.

Obviously, I find myself in complete agreement with the conclusions of this study.  But it is extremely gratifying to have facts and figures at my disposal when debating the rabid Left or even the misinformed or uninformed among the general public.

One of the amazing facts that is highlighted in the book is that an almost complete analog to the George Floyd death occurred only this time with a white subject, a man named Tony Timpa in Texas who died under almost exactly the same circumstances and yet because he was white there was no outrage, no riots and arson, no vilification of the police and no beatification of the deceased.

Reading the case studies, especially the accounts of the murdered police officers, makes it painfully clear just what an impossible job it is to, at the same time, protect the public, minimize the risk to oneself and still avoid being accused of using unjustified or excessive force against a suspect.  And now in the current environment where immunity from civil lawsuits for police officers has been removed, I’m shocked that even larger numbers of police have not retired or resigned from the blue state and blue city jurisdictions.

As a friend, I hope a million people head over to Amazon and buy Mike Simonelli’s book.  But more importantly I hope everyone sends a link to this post to friends who they think might be interested in or helped by the facts that are documented in this book.  It really is a unique resource.

Justified Deadly Force and the Myth of Systemic Racism, by Mike Simonelli