Americans my age grew up to imagery in LIFE Magazine, of cops beating black protesters. Oddly, I think of desegregation as something that happened, and jim crow was a bad period we mostly grew out of.
That’s completely wrong, unfortunately.
The cops have gotten worse not better. Back in the 60s they beat people with impunity, today, they kill them. We need to look at that, understand it, and think about how to deal with it.
There are no “good cops”; that is a myth created by deliberate propaganda campaigns such as Officer Friendly. Probably at least one of the cops in that picture was Officer Friendly, at some school – it’s a disciplinary detail, now, that you can find yourself assigned to if you screw up while you’re dropping fake evidence on a suspect, or there are too many complaints that you hit people too hard.
The July, 2016, shootings in Dallas, [wp] when Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed a group of police officers and killed five, was a racially motivated incident. News has downplayed that fact, presumably because there is a fear that people will think, “that’s actually a pretty good idea.” The shooter was a member of the Huey Newton Rod and Gun Club, a group dedicated to teaching black people how to defend themselves against police. Or, they are para-militants – whatever you want to call them. That’s actually a pretty good idea.
It’s hard for me to write about the police because, frankly, I am scared and disgusted and all I feel that I can do is flail helplessly at the keyboard. Meanwhile, they openly shoot people, now, and they joke about it while they are doing it.
The media probably thinks it’s shining a light on blah, blah, blah, but I think their coverage is too soft-soap. [wp]
The Sacramento Police Department on Monday released dozens of videos related to the Stephon Clark killing – new material that showed officers muting their body-worn cameras at least 16 times, raising more questions about police action in the moments after the fatal shooting of the unarmed black man.
Look, here’s how that should be reported:
The Sacramento Police Department on Monday released dozens of videos related to the Stephon Clark killing – new material that showed officers clearly colluding to coordinate their story after the action. This is completely unacceptable.
Let’s not dance around this any more: cops are forced to wear cop-cams because cops can’t be trusted. When the cops respond by trying to manipulate what the cameras record, they are hiding evidence of a crime that they committed.
Videos show six minutes pass between shots fired and responders attempting chest compressions. Police handcuffed and searched Clark before they began first aid.
Got that? They shot him to death, then they handcuffed the body, and – eventually, after brain death was certain, they went through the motions of attempting life-saving measures.
They’re not just beating people anymore. They’re amping up the violence, not dialing it down. They know they’re going to get away with it because the entire chain of command, all the way up to the president approves.
Hiring stupid thugs and putting them in uniform is not how to accomplish anything but repression: [freep]
Michigan State Police reprimanded Trooper Mark Bessner for violating police procedures during a March 2017 high-speed pursuit.
Among the misconduct cited: Bessner joined the chase without activating his emergency lights, sirens or recording equipment.
Five months later, he was accused of violating procedures again – this time with deadly results.
The death of 15-year-old Damon Grimes, who crashed his ATV after Bessner fired a Taser at him during a chase on Detroit’s east side, was the latest and most severe in a string of disturbing episodes involving the trooper, who resigned amid a criminal investigation into his conduct.
The trooper was allowed to resign, no doubt, so that he keeps his pension and is “resigned” not “fired”; they will recycle him to some other jurisdiction and he’ll be back wearing a badge and carrying a gun – angrier and more dangerous than before. One thing he cannot possibly be is more rational or humane: this is a dunce whose idea of how to stop a kid on an ATV was to shoot them with a taser during a high-speed chase. I suppose all the cops are thinking the kid should have been hosed down with a hail of bullets.
Mark my words: the day is coming when people will start shooting cops. It’s not far off.
Records the Free Press obtained under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act show Bessner was involved in 40 “use of force” incidents in less than four years, including one just three days before Grimes’ Aug. 26 death.
The great mass of American gun nuts, who worship their 2nd Amendment, don’t appear to give a shit about the other constitutional rights of Americans. They say they want the guns in case the government turns oppressive, yet they completely ignore that the police are already oppressive. If they cared half so much about the 4th Amendment as they claim to care about the 2nd Amendment, they’d be shooting cops left and right. It would not be safe for a cop to venture outside of their pigsty. What drives me nuts about this stuff is that America can look and see what the future of this police-state looks like: it looks like Fallujah, Mosul, Kandahar, and Aleppo. Little enclaves of establishment goons in heavily fortified facilities, venturing out to bust caps and break heads until the whole thing explodes in violence and some dipshit on television says “they hate us for our freedoms!”
NYC police HQ bombing, 1970 [source]
Whatever happened to Tasers? They were supposed to be used to subdue people, but now all I hear about is people of color, and the mentally ill being shot first.
I agree with this post. Police behavior never seemed this bad when I was younger. But, I wonder how much cell phone recordings of police behavior is shining a light on what they’re actually doing than what they say they’re doing.
Anyway, one thing I have also noticed is how police and their supporters react to such accusations. My brother witnessed a shooting in which the police officer warned an assailant multiple times to put down a gun when they drew it, and it was several seconds before the police officer fired, killing the man, in what my brother observed was a clear case of self-defense.
My brother said afterward that the police officer was visibly shaken and crying and kept repeating “why didn’t he just drop the gun.” He was really upset that he had just killed a man.
These days, I see police officers showing zero emotion and lamely justifying their behavior on camera when there was no clear need to pull the trigger and do so multiple times. I saw one officer shoot a guy who got caught up in his seatbelt trying to exit a vehicle. The cop was more than ten feet away and the victim was not moving toward the officer at all. The police officer claimed he killed him because he had a knife. No weapon was anywhere in evidence. So, he starts searching the guy’s pockets as if somehow the man had decided to conceal the weapon after he was shot dead. He seemed perfectly OK with having just murdered someone.
Meanwhile, supporters justify their actions as if death is an appropriate punishment, in some cases, for not surrendering to police the way “they should” as if an unarmed person deserves to die for not quickly throwing their hands up, or having the temerity to hold a cell phone in their hand.
The lack of emotion on behalf of the cops is what bothers me most. They seem not to care that they’ve killed an unarmed or innocent person. There’s even evidence of cops bragging about killing people.
Anyone with background in accounting, system administration, security, etc … should know it’s a conflict of interest to let the police police themselves. It’s kind of like rich people writing the rules for how they’re taxed.
Elijah James Smith, 20 years old, was shot and killed this month for complying with a cop’s order. I have to wonder if he’d still be alive if he had had the good sense to be born white. There was another cop there with a stun gun, he fired at the same time as the other cop did. What in the fuck is the point of stun guns or tasers, or anything else, when there’s always a trigger happy asshole there, ready to empty his gun into someone?
Fuck, I hate cops, and they scare the fuck outta me. I had a relative who was a cop, and the stories I heard…even that percentage of cops who go into it for the right reasons, and they are basically good people? They don’t have a chance, they end up having to go along to get along, and even if they don’t go bad, they won’t stand up against the majority. A lot of ex-cops will happily tell the truth about that, but nothing ever changes, and no one ever listens.
I had thought, y’know, that my relative was a fairly good person, until he became a cop. I saw what happened to him, and I saw it in real time. He was all idealistic at first, but then he got drawn into choir practice, and the power went straight to his head, and it didn’t take long for the corruption to spread.
Can I again ask for a return of the prerogative of the victim or family and close friends of the victim to have the first opportunity to go before a grand jury to seek an indictment, so that we might use the power of criminal law against cops? We’d need to do a lot of other things too in order to make this scheme work. In particular, completely abolish qualified immunity for cops (more or less), and reimpose the historical warrant requirement for searches and seizures including detentions and arrests, and impose laws that say cops are only permitted to use lethal force in self defense according to the same standards as anyone else. For example, if I shoot someone from a distance without seeing a gun, that is murder, and the cops should be held to the same standard. Also say that the only kinds of arrest is a citizen’s arrest and arrest by warrant, even for cops. You know – basically abolish most if not all special police powers and privileges of cops.
EnlightenmentLiberal@#5:
You know – basically abolish most if not all special police powers and privileges of cops.
That would work. The bottom line is that cops have arranged things so that they are above the law. That doesn’t work, it needs to change.
I’ve always wanted to talk to gun nuts who talk about using guns to protect us against a tyrannical government and ask them whether they supported Micah Xavier Johnson when he decided to shoot some cops.
“You don’t? Good, me neither. Well, what about the guy who shot Gabby Giffords?”
“No? So if you want us to use guns to protect us from bad government, but you don’t want us to shoot cops, and you don’t want us to shoot politicians, then whom exactly are we supposed to shoot?”
Has it really gotten worse? I’m not sure.
The current rush of knowledge of cops killing people comes from the new ubiquity of cameras. They’re everywhere, so we now get proof of police malfeasance.
Was it better in the past, or did we just not know? Did we have a complicit news media that just assumed anyone the cops shot deserved it because the only living witness was likely the cop?
We know cops beat people recklessly in the past, because people beaten (sometimes) survive to give their side of events.
I’m just not convinced this is a new problem.
Tasers are a bit of a new problem. Because people have the impression that they’re safe, cops armed with tasers are much more likely to use those weapons on suspects. Unfortunately, safer than bullets doesn’t mean safe, and tasers can and do kill. Some districts have reported greater incidence of death-by-cop when they armed them with tasers than they had with bullets, simply because the cops are much more likely to use them.
@suttkus:
I’m with you and thus against the small part of the OP that is asserting the novelty of this problem. (Novelty doesn’t really matter that much to the need for solutions or the types of solutions best implemented.)
Whether we’re talking the lynching of Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner, and James Chaney, the murder of Fred Hampton (check out the google factoids about his death) and Mark Clark at 2337 W Monroe St in Chicago or the use of a mass-casualty capable incendiary device, aka a big fucking bomb, to kill 11 people, 5 of them children at 6221 Osage Avenue, Philadelphia, there are plenty of reasons to believe cops were killing folks, not just beating them, at least for decades. Given the consistent complicity of law enforcement in the phenomenon of lynching, and no clear gap between the period traditionally given as the time when the main body of lynchings were committed (1880s – 1950s, though this largely ignores pre-Civil War lynchings) and the more reliably documented killings committed by police in the US.
Policing has had a military, us-vs-them mentality since before the Civil War, with members of the underclass being killed throughout US history in various ways, with various justifications that are nowadays seen as having varying legitimacy.
Just as I’ve laughed at those who think “testilying” is a new phenomenon and who are convinced that the rate at which cops lie on reports has increased merely because the rate at which they’re caught has increased in the age of ubiquitous surveillance, I give little credence to the idea that police are more lethal today than they have been.
It may very well be that they are, but with the limitations of the historical record and with so many of cops’ excuses still being granted an undeserved credibility, there is at present no convincing reason to think that the increased availability of examples over the last decade represents anything more than simply an increase in effective surveillance of the police.
I’m not sure how correct that is. I suspect that’s wrong. I suspect that the major part of transition from “police have no special powers or immunities” to “heaps of special powers and immunities” happened later, circa 1900 and later. What makes you think that it happened so early?
Remember, I’m taking it for granted that the “police” of 1800 in the United States had basically the same powers and immunities as any other citizen, and sometime between 1800 and today, the police gained all of their special powers and privileges. Of course, I assume it was a slow and gradual process, but from my reading, I also suspect that most of this change happened after 1900.
For example, in the year 1900, SCOTUS said that it was still permissible in some circumstances to shoot a cop who was performing an unlawful arrest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Elk_v._United_States
(IIRC, the actual SCOTUS ruling was to order a retrial with proper jury instructions, and so it wasn’t a ruling that the shooting in this case was permissible, but it was a ruling that shooting a cop for performing an unlawful arrest was permissible in at least some cases.)
For example, qualified immunity doctrine is incredibly recent. As far as I can tell from a quick google and wikipedia, SCOTUS invented qualified immunity from thin air in 1971!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity
Of course, I think that a substantial portion predates this, particularly concerning the slow destruction of the warrant requirement for arrest, equivalently the broadening of circumstances that permit warrantless arrest. Permitting the police to do warrantless arrest in more cases necessarily brings along greater immunities for the police.
As far as I can tell, a lot of the loss of the fourth amendment can also be traced to the first war on drugs (alcohol prohibition), and also the second war on drugs (thanks Reagan!).
I’m also taking it for granted that if police would be held criminally responsible for malfeasance, then they would do less malfeasance, and therefore I think in the United States circa 1800, there was less of a problem of police abuse, because victims of the police had an effective remedy – pressing criminal charges.
PS:
With the introduction of police forces in some American cities, circa 1830s and 1840s? (not sure offhand), I suspect good arguments can be made that they were there mostly to put down worker riots and social unrest. So, maybe you could trace some of our problems back that far. However, I think the real problem is the greater legal deference that we give to cops, and I strongly suspect that most of the legal changes happened much later.
Enforcement of slavery.
Posses were gathered to hunt runaway slaves, and even when they weren’t local landholders felt free to capture and often to beat any Black person not on another slaveholder’s land that couldn’t give a clear and convincing account of why they were not currently engaged in slaves work and obviously under the supervision of a slave master.
Pinkertons, the private security firm, was also formed before the Civil War and was involved in quite a number of brutally violent attacks on workers engaged in early forms of worker solidarity. In fact, there was an Arthur Conan Doyle story about such an event, IIRC, though obviously the story was both written and set after the Civil War.
Except, the great legal deference given to landholders and slaveholders was its precursor. Public policing was a response to abusive private policing. Where there had been no accountability for the monied class or its hired agents, limiting that legal deference to *only* agents of the state was seen as a positive reform.
Read what slaveholders were allowed to do with the people that they enslaved. This is private policing of a Black underclass. In the post-reconstruction period, white landowners were trying to get back the power and control that they’d had before the war without running directly afoul of the 13th. To do that they not only used policing as we think about it, they used criminal convictions (deserved or not) to impose a term of slavery. Police played an important role in initiating actions that led to these convictions and these terms of slavery. This is entirely well documented, and makes it very hard to separate the tools of violence coupled with immunity to accountability that attached to the monied class before the war from the tools of violence coupled with immunity to accountability that attached to a deferential police force after the war.
That’s the basis for my claim that this goes back before the Civil War.
To Crip Dyke
Thanks for the explanation.
Random thoughts: However, at that same, they couldn’t do that same abuse to white people. I wonder if by trying to grant civil rights to black people, white people decided to throw away civil rights for everyone instead of giving proper civil rights to blacks. I’ve heard many racists today talk like that. This, I think to make your story complete, you also need to add that once blacks were afforded “full” legal rights, the whites burned down the proverbial house rather than share, and permitted cops to legally abuse everyone just to make sure that cops could legally abuse blacks.
I don’t think I thought of it quite like this before. This actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks again for the conversation!