Whitewater’s police chief, Jim Coan, is a candidate for the director of public safety position in Mankato, Minnesota. I’ve written about his candidacy before, in a post entitled, Whitewater Chief Coan’s Interview with the Mankato Free Press: Dodgy! after reading his answers to questions from the Mankato Free Press.

(Readers who’ve emailed remarking that Coan’s answers were likely written are surely right. Some are also right to note that this makes the deceptiveness of his answers even more egregious, as he had time to think about what he’d write; there’s no ‘slip of the tongue’ excuse available.)

I recently teased about Coan as a chameleon who thinks he’s genuinely yellow if he sits on a banana. Coan’s an opportunist that way, crafting statements that he perhaps thinks will be effective in the moment. He seems to react, without true understanding of his reaction, or appreciation of others’ situation. That’s why, time after time, Coan says something foolish, that embarrasses Whitewater.

There’s more to Coan’s empty and ham-handed opportunism, though. He’s not just a chameleon, but a particularly tiny one: he’s small and light, buffeted by the wind from plant to plant, landing here or there, and reacting to each new destination. Landing on an apple, he’s red for a while, and during that time, red is the most highly special and excellent color in all the world. Carried off to a pear, Coan’s quick to proclaim the superiority of all things green.

(There’s your pun: Coan was himself green for a bit, advocating foot patrols opportunistically only when gas prices were high. Chief for years by that time, but a staple of community policing in a small town only came about after Coan saw the chance for a headline. People in town new better, and saw Coan’s effort for what it was — the superficial over the substantive.)

Sitting in a basket of apples, Coan must think that red’s the color to extol; nestled in a bushel of pears, Coan must assume that it’s advantageous to talk about green. In this, one finds only an ineffectual leader with no core principles except the insistence that mere words professed with sincerity are, themselves, principles.

Look back, just two short years, and one finds clearly what Coan’s leadership has meant. The paper that so servilely flacked Coan’s leadership in the face of ridicule from all sides offered a three-part police series that nicely summarized what Coan has done to Whitewater.

The second part of the Register‘s series was entitled, “A Diverse Community Presents Challenges.” (See, my post, The Register’s Three-Part Police Series, Part 2.)

From my post:

The Register lists three groups as contributing to the diversity of
our community: (1) Hispanics, (2)students, and (3) juveniles.

The inclusion of juveniles as a category constituting diversity is unusual. Every community in America has juveniles; if they’re a category leading to diversity, then there is no place on earth that’s
not diverse. When a category applies to everyone, it’s unique to no one, and useless as a distinguishing characteristic.

That leaves us with two groups that make us diverse, by that reckoning: Hispanics and UW-Whitewater students. Those groups do contribute to our diversity. I would not think, though, the most telling attribute of either group is that it presents a challenge.

Imagine how this sounds to someone not trapped in the town faction’s echo chamber: “Minorities and College Kids Present Challenges for the Rest of Us.”

That would be a headline that’s false and insulting simultaneously.

Diversity — and the official conduct that supports diversity is tolerance — has taken a bigger hit from Coan’s action and inaction as police chief than from any other cause. Coan has tolerated the
intolerance that led to federal lawsuits, a destructive raid, and intrusive questioning of motorists. I am absolutely convinced that we would have had neither federal lawsuit had Coan not led poorly, bungled thoroughly, been obstinate to the plaintiffs’ concerns, and had he not defended obvious misconduct so zealously.

In doing so, he disgraced himself, our city, and burdened many good officers on our police force with his mediocrity and mendacity. He has put his own selfishness ahead of the American political tradition of individual liberty and fair, honest conduct.

Diversity is a challenge (the weakling’s word for a problem) to those who don’t believe in it, those who support it opportunistically.

It’s not a challenge for the rest of us — it’s a consequence of the natural liberty that America recognizes.

When one sees young people or minorities as a challenge, one treats them as a problem, and to treat them as a problem is to mistreat them.

To see where that leads, one could look toward England, and see how English officials treat young people people they fear may cause problems. In a story entitled, Weaponzing Mozart, Brendan O’Neill shows how treating ordinary groups of people as a problem leads to mistreatment:

In recent years Britain has become the Willy Wonka of social control, churning out increasingly creepy, bizarre, and fantastic methods for policing the populace. But our weaponization of classical music?where Mozart, Beethoven, and other greats have been turned into tools of state repression marks a new low.

We’re already the kings of CCTV. An estimated 20 per cent of the world’s CCTV cameras are in the UK, a remarkable achievement for an island that occupies only 0.2 per cent of the world’s inhabitable landmass.

A few years ago some local authorities introduced the Mosquito, a gadget that emits a noise that sounds like a faint buzz to people over the age of 20 but which is so high-pitched, so piercing, and so
unbearable to the delicate ear drums of anyone under 20 that they cannot remain in earshot. It’s designed to drive away unruly youth from public spaces, yet is so brutally indiscriminate that it also drives away good kids, terrifies toddlers, and wakes sleeping babes.

Police in the West of England recently started using super-bright halogen lights to temporarily blind misbehaving youngsters. From helicopters, the cops beam the spotlights at youths drinking or
loitering in parks, in the hope that they will become so bamboozled that (when they recover their eyesight) they will stagger home.

And recently police in Liverpool boasted about making Britain’s first-ever arrest by unmanned flying drone. Inspired, it seems, by Britain and America’s robot planes in Afghanistan, the Liverpool cops used a remote-control helicopter fitted with CCTV (of course) to catch a car thief.

Britain might not make steel anymore, or cars, or pop music worth listening to, but, boy, are we world-beaters when it comes to tyranny.

And now classical music, which was once taught to young people as a way of elevating their minds and tingling their souls, is being mined for its potential as a deterrent against bad behavior.

In January it was revealed that West Park School, in Derby in the midlands of England, was “subjecting” (its words) badly behaved children to Mozart and others. In “special detentions,” the children are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant (the headmaster claims it calms them down) and as a deterrent against future bad behavior (apparently the number of disruptive pupils has fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.)

One news report says some of the children who have endured this Mozart authoritarianism now find classical music unbearable. As one critical commentator said, they will probably “go into adulthood associating great music – the most bewitchingly lovely sounds on Earth- with a punitive slap on the chops.” This is what passes for education in Britain today: teaching kids to think “Danger!” whenever they hear Mozart’s Requiem or some other piece of musical genius.

Readers of this website know that I have sometimes been critical of England. Critical, truly out of sadness: England has become a place less recognizable each year to a free and decent people. I know in my heart — I am absolutely convinced — that America will never make the terrible mistakes England is making. We will never be less than a free people. We will never treat each other the way the English treat their children.

Whitewater has the advantage that Chief Coan’s just not as shrewd (nor as resolute) as English officials, so he’s yet to hit upon the schemes they’ve used. Our burden is this: he is a factory of small regulations, small-minded thinking, and self-praise.

Coan’s leadership may always represent a lawsuit waiting to happen, a gaffe or indifferent remark to correct, and embarrassments to overcome. That’s our singular burden, ours to carry.