The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one-two punch.
The DoJ's scathing report [105 pg pdf] on the pattern and practices of unconstitutional policing in Ferguson, MO was released pretty much simultaneously with the failure of the DoJ to find fault [86 pg document file] with the killing of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, the singularity which has led to months and months of protest actions all across the country, and what's called a "national conversation" about the problems of racist policing and violent cops.
Yes, indeed.
One scathing report after another; one policeman-killer after another allowed to walk free.
It's quite a pattern, and there are reasons for it.
The dissonance is deliberate.
Yes, the police in Ferguson and many other places around the country are racists and practice racist policing. There are so many places where this is true, we might say it is all but universal. Police best practices presume the guile and the guilt of an array of minority and poverty stricken sectors of the population as a matter of course.
Statistically, the crime and criminality of minority and poor sectors of the population appears to be a fact. Thus the presumption is said to be justified. But when the statistics are broken down, it becomes clear that the presumption of guile and guilt is self fulfilling in that police interest and action is concentrated in minority communities, poor communities, marginal communities, and in many cases, police create the crime they then suppress and profit from. It's all quite circular.
When the DoJ investigates and declares a police department to have a pattern and practice of "unconstitutional policing" -- including racist policing -- it is merely pointing to the obvious. In the case of Ferguson, nearly every complaint we've been hearing in the media about the FPD is validated by the DoJ report. The local police operate as a racket, extorting money from the people, primarily the black residents of Ferguson, to fund police and city operations. It's deliberate intent every step of the way. It involves violence as well as more subtle coercion. It's been going on a long time. It is racist at its core.
Anyone who's been following the story is not surprised by these findings. We've been hearing and reading about it for months. Anybody who is familiar with the way St. Louis and the County work is familiar with the patterns and practices detailed in the Ferguson report. It's the same throughout the County. It's monstrous. And according to the DoJ, it's unconstitutional.
On the other hand, the white folks are quite satisfied, it would seem, and want nothing to change.
Similar patterns and practices are found all over the country, but perhaps the most egregious examples are found in the South -- where cities and towns in many cases have always worked this way -- and in the Border regions, such as St. Louis and Baltimore and so forth.
I've been calling it "Negro Farming" for some time, the idea being that black residents of these towns and cities are regarded as a cash crop, to be farmed and harvested of whatever money can be squeezed out of them. That's their chief -- in many cases their only -- value to the Powers That Be, and they, like any other crop, have no say in the matter.
I was thinking about this the other day in the context of what I know about city managers and their thinking. I've only had experience in this field in Sacramento where working on reform of a violent (though not particularly murderous) police force required dealing with the city manager and his office. Like most other cities, the city manager of Sacramento is in charge of the police department.
What I learned very quickly is that the city manager's office categorizes the population according to their worth to the city -- ie: how much revenue they produce, or contrariwise, how much of a cost burden they are to the city.
The city manager's constant goal is to maximize the revenue value and minimize the cost burden of the population. They segment the population by district, by age, race and gender, by income, and by occupation -- among other categories. As a rule well off white people are considered "contributors" to the civic enterprise (oh, yes, the city is itself an "enterprise" with many subsidiary enterprises all of which are treated as revenue sources or cost burdens). Well off white people are considered contributors because they own property and/or businesses which are taxed, generally quite modestly, but taxed just the same. They produce a reliable revenue stream.
On the other hand, poor people, people of color, the marginal, the mentally ill, the addicted, and so forth are almost universally considered revenue drains, costs in other words, and in every civic enterprise I'm familiar with, costs must be contained -- unless there is an off-setting revenue stream. That stream can come from an outside source -- say state or federal funding for programs or prisons -- or it can be extracted through fines and so forth from the people themselves.
Because the revenues extracted in this manner are not generally reliable, however, the place of the people from whom it is extracted is never equivalent to that of well off white people whose revenue stream is much more reliable.
This is a very simple model of what goes on in most towns and cities where populations are routinely categorized according to their civic value.
But it is the basic model that underpins how Ferguson and surrounding cities treats their populations.
In this model, someone like Mike Brown has no value.
Someone like Darren Wilson does have value.
Thus the dissonance between condemnation of an unconstitutional pattern and practice of policing -- and the failure to find fault with Darren Wilson's actions that hot day in August 2014 when he shot and killed Mike Brown in the streets of Ferguson.
The pattern and practice of policing -- not just in Ferguson but generally -- is justifiably condemned as unconstitutional, but it is based on the civic value of individuals and population segments, and the lower the value, the greater the excuse for use of force, violence and death in dealing with them.
The problems come when the costs of use of force, violence and death outrun the revenues that can be derived from the force and violence. And that's happening in city after city.
Whether it will happen in Ferguson, I don't know. Immense efforts (and expenses) have been made to protect Darren Wilson throughout this episode, efforts and expenses which are continuing. I don't know why he is being protected this way, but he is. The various "exonerations" of his actions that have taken place appear to be intended to limit or eliminate any civil award Mike Brown's family might receive, but even that is not clear. Something is going on behind the scenes in which Darren Wilson is seen as a victim somehow, whereas Mike Brown is being cast as the perpetrator. This has been going on since the killing itself. What actually happened and why is not as important as the narrative competition that's been produced. It's as if Wilson and Brown are proxies for a police/civilian culture clash that can only be resolved in favor of the police.
This is something to keep in mind: DoJ is always going to favor the police, even when they issue their scathing reports. In fact, police departments routinely defy these reports and recommendations. It's cultural. And DoJ has no independent enforcement power over police conduct. Any enforcement must come through the courts, and the courts have almost no enforcement powers independent of the police they are attempting to reform.
Consequently, if the police want to -- or they are directed to by their city managers and police chiefs -- they can and do ignore and defy these scathing reports and recommendations.
DoJ will let them get away with it, may even encourage it clandestinely.
We see it right up front with the Ferguson report and the Wilson matter: clean up your act (if you want) but no one will fault you for killing black people.
Reform itself is not enough.
Showing posts with label Murder in the Streets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Murder in the Streets. Show all posts
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Genocide, Massacres, Police Violence, and The Cult
We've made it to Thanksgiving Day, 2014.
Thanksgiving celebrates genocide. I don't know when I first came to the realization that that's what this holiday represents, but it was most likely during the Civil Rights era when so much of the American mythos was put to the test.
We had been lied to all our lives in other words, lies and damned lies about the past that made it out to have been a struggle won by the righteous. Well, no. Not so. The righteous continued to struggle, nothing had been won but a sham, it was all false -- and how many millions had been slaughtered and enslaved in the process?
How many millions? The mythos didn't know. The mythos didn't care.
We were to believe that's done is done, and we can't go back and we can't fix it. White folks are good and true and righteous, everyone else is a savage or suspect or unworthy.
That's the story we were told, but I didn't believe it from a very early age because I spent a good portion of my early childhood among people of color. They weren't called this at the time, however. They were called Greasers, Beaners and Niggers, but when you're a kid, those words don't necessarily carry the sting they do when you get older. They're just words, and they don't really have anything to do with people. It takes a while to learn that words like that can hurt badly.
I lived the first ten years of my life among people of color and I didn't become socialized to the fear of the Other that seems to influence so much of world view of white folks to this day.
It didn't occur to me that there anything at all to fear from brown folk and black folk, but I knew from a very early age that there was plenty to fear from white folk. The ones in charge, you know? Some of them were purely evil in so many ways that you had to be on the alert all the time -- or you might not survive.
We, the children, black, brown, and white, all seemed to be aware of who we had to watch out for and be afraid of, and it was always white kids and white adults in positions of power. Always. They could hurt you, and they did.
But the mythos says no, white folks were kindly and generous and righteous, and I knew that some of them were, but when they were kindly and generous and righteous, so often they wound up almost as persecuted and disparaged as black and brown folk were.
This was, after all, the era of Red Baiting and worse. Oh, much worse.
Thanksgiving celebrates the genocide of the Indians by these righteous, kind and generous white folks. They did their duty. They cleansed first the eastern seaboard, then the rest of the country of the taint of the Savages. They brought their slaves over from Africa to serve their needs and demands. They fought one another and they killed whatever they designated as the Other with impunity.
The Other scares the holy shit out of them. Murderous rampages are the result. It has ever been thus, but if you're not socialized to fear the Other, as I wasn't, you run the risk of being designated the Other and being rampaged against yourself.
How well I know. How well so many Americans know.
Police violence is a direct descendant of the genocidal, massacring, murderous rampages that made this land what it is, that we celebrate at Thanksgiving.
I've been studying police violence for decades and have written extensively about it. It has become the central social issue of the American people this year thanks to an appalling spate of police killings, so many of them driven by nothing but stark terror of the Other, that has led to the deaths of hundreds, nay more than a thousand, many of them innocent of wrongdoing, this year and every year. People are killed by police because the police in so many cases are terrified of their own shadows, specters they've created in their own minds.
It's insane -- just as the genocidal, massacring, murderous rampages that created this country were.
Recently I came across a video at the Police One site that actually explains how policing has become such a perverted killer culture, and why so many get killed by police year in and year out, and nothing is done about it.
I posted the video here as an example of how police are trained and brainwashed to regard certain designated Others as existential threats fit for nothing but killing. And how the police are trained and brainwashed to believe that killing the Other is their highest accomplishment.
This is psychological abuse of the highest order and this is what leads to scenes like the killing of Tamir Rice in a park, the killing of Michael Brown in the street, the killing of James Boyd on a hillside, and the killing of so many others, at least 1001 since January 1, 2014, according to the tracking site, "Killed by Police."
An analysis of this insane training video is, I believe, long overdue, for this trainer, (Lt Col) Dave Grossman, had been spreading his theories and philosophy of "Killology" among police and military recruits unchallenged for a very long time.
From his perspective, a perspective shared by police and military alike, the highest accomplishment of a police officer is to kill -- to kill the designated Other, with neither remorse nor regret. According to Grossman, police are sheepdogs, the Other is the Wolf -- a veritable demon -- whose death at the hands of police is the purpose of the sheepdog's life.
When Brave Officer Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown on Canfield Drive that hot August noon, he was fulfilling the purpose of his life, just as Brave OfficerLowman Loehmann fulfilled the purpose of his life when he shot and killed 12 year old Tamir Rice in a Cleveland park a few days ago.
That is what they are trained to believe their purpose in life is: to kill, without conscience or remorse, whatever is deemed a threat to the lives of the Good People, the Sheep as it were, that sheepdogs -- the Police and the military -- are assigned to "protect."
But what happens to these theories when the sheepdogs become the threat?
Who do the sheepdogs work for, anyway? It's not the sheep, that's for sure. Who or what are they protecting?
I resisted the cult and the theories that this insane freak (Lt Col) Dave Grossman propounds, but when I realized that his theories are largely responsible for the huge number of killings and other abuse by police in this country, and they probably form the psychological basis of so much of the killing by Our Valiant Forces abroad, and that it all amounts to a secular cult of killing, I realized I'd better take a closer look.
But the fact is, I don't want to look closer. It's vile. What Grossman propounds is clearly an effective means to warp and perverting the minds of police and military, too.
How to corral and overcome it becomes a fundamental question for the survival of the people who face this deadly police culture every day.
That's what the protests against police violence and murder all over the country and spreading around the world are all about.
Overcoming the madness.
I give thanks that so many people are waking up to the necessity to overcome this madness, to end the slaughter, to curb the police.
But the struggle isn't done, but more and more police seem to be waking up, too.
Let's hope so.
Thanksgiving celebrates genocide. I don't know when I first came to the realization that that's what this holiday represents, but it was most likely during the Civil Rights era when so much of the American mythos was put to the test.
We had been lied to all our lives in other words, lies and damned lies about the past that made it out to have been a struggle won by the righteous. Well, no. Not so. The righteous continued to struggle, nothing had been won but a sham, it was all false -- and how many millions had been slaughtered and enslaved in the process?
How many millions? The mythos didn't know. The mythos didn't care.
We were to believe that's done is done, and we can't go back and we can't fix it. White folks are good and true and righteous, everyone else is a savage or suspect or unworthy.
That's the story we were told, but I didn't believe it from a very early age because I spent a good portion of my early childhood among people of color. They weren't called this at the time, however. They were called Greasers, Beaners and Niggers, but when you're a kid, those words don't necessarily carry the sting they do when you get older. They're just words, and they don't really have anything to do with people. It takes a while to learn that words like that can hurt badly.
I lived the first ten years of my life among people of color and I didn't become socialized to the fear of the Other that seems to influence so much of world view of white folks to this day.
It didn't occur to me that there anything at all to fear from brown folk and black folk, but I knew from a very early age that there was plenty to fear from white folk. The ones in charge, you know? Some of them were purely evil in so many ways that you had to be on the alert all the time -- or you might not survive.
We, the children, black, brown, and white, all seemed to be aware of who we had to watch out for and be afraid of, and it was always white kids and white adults in positions of power. Always. They could hurt you, and they did.
But the mythos says no, white folks were kindly and generous and righteous, and I knew that some of them were, but when they were kindly and generous and righteous, so often they wound up almost as persecuted and disparaged as black and brown folk were.
This was, after all, the era of Red Baiting and worse. Oh, much worse.
Thanksgiving celebrates the genocide of the Indians by these righteous, kind and generous white folks. They did their duty. They cleansed first the eastern seaboard, then the rest of the country of the taint of the Savages. They brought their slaves over from Africa to serve their needs and demands. They fought one another and they killed whatever they designated as the Other with impunity.
The Other scares the holy shit out of them. Murderous rampages are the result. It has ever been thus, but if you're not socialized to fear the Other, as I wasn't, you run the risk of being designated the Other and being rampaged against yourself.
How well I know. How well so many Americans know.
Police violence is a direct descendant of the genocidal, massacring, murderous rampages that made this land what it is, that we celebrate at Thanksgiving.
I've been studying police violence for decades and have written extensively about it. It has become the central social issue of the American people this year thanks to an appalling spate of police killings, so many of them driven by nothing but stark terror of the Other, that has led to the deaths of hundreds, nay more than a thousand, many of them innocent of wrongdoing, this year and every year. People are killed by police because the police in so many cases are terrified of their own shadows, specters they've created in their own minds.
It's insane -- just as the genocidal, massacring, murderous rampages that created this country were.
Recently I came across a video at the Police One site that actually explains how policing has become such a perverted killer culture, and why so many get killed by police year in and year out, and nothing is done about it.
I posted the video here as an example of how police are trained and brainwashed to regard certain designated Others as existential threats fit for nothing but killing. And how the police are trained and brainwashed to believe that killing the Other is their highest accomplishment.
This is psychological abuse of the highest order and this is what leads to scenes like the killing of Tamir Rice in a park, the killing of Michael Brown in the street, the killing of James Boyd on a hillside, and the killing of so many others, at least 1001 since January 1, 2014, according to the tracking site, "Killed by Police."
An analysis of this insane training video is, I believe, long overdue, for this trainer, (Lt Col) Dave Grossman, had been spreading his theories and philosophy of "Killology" among police and military recruits unchallenged for a very long time.
From his perspective, a perspective shared by police and military alike, the highest accomplishment of a police officer is to kill -- to kill the designated Other, with neither remorse nor regret. According to Grossman, police are sheepdogs, the Other is the Wolf -- a veritable demon -- whose death at the hands of police is the purpose of the sheepdog's life.
When Brave Officer Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown on Canfield Drive that hot August noon, he was fulfilling the purpose of his life, just as Brave Officer
That is what they are trained to believe their purpose in life is: to kill, without conscience or remorse, whatever is deemed a threat to the lives of the Good People, the Sheep as it were, that sheepdogs -- the Police and the military -- are assigned to "protect."
But what happens to these theories when the sheepdogs become the threat?
Who do the sheepdogs work for, anyway? It's not the sheep, that's for sure. Who or what are they protecting?
I resisted the cult and the theories that this insane freak (Lt Col) Dave Grossman propounds, but when I realized that his theories are largely responsible for the huge number of killings and other abuse by police in this country, and they probably form the psychological basis of so much of the killing by Our Valiant Forces abroad, and that it all amounts to a secular cult of killing, I realized I'd better take a closer look.
But the fact is, I don't want to look closer. It's vile. What Grossman propounds is clearly an effective means to warp and perverting the minds of police and military, too.
How to corral and overcome it becomes a fundamental question for the survival of the people who face this deadly police culture every day.
That's what the protests against police violence and murder all over the country and spreading around the world are all about.
Overcoming the madness.
I give thanks that so many people are waking up to the necessity to overcome this madness, to end the slaughter, to curb the police.
But the struggle isn't done, but more and more police seem to be waking up, too.
Let's hope so.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Where is Darren Wilson? Why Did He Kill Michael Brown?
There is no question that Darren Wilson, officer of the law in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed a young man named Michael Brown on Canfield Drive in Ferguson shortly after noon on August 9, 2014, in front of numerous witnesses.
Not long afterwards, Wilson disappeared. He has not been seen publicly since the day he killed Michael Brown in front of numerous witnesses. He was placed on paid administrative leave following the shooting as is standard practice in such cases. He is said to have left his home in Crestwood, Missouri, within days of the shooting, but exactly when he left and where he went has not been reported. He is said to have lived with another Ferguson police officer named Barbara Spradling whose whereabouts is also not reported. Is she still on the job, or has she been given paid leave as well? Is she with Wilson? Why?
Where are Wilson and Spradling and who is protecting them? If there were any valid reason to believe that Wilson's life was in jeopardy because of his shooting and killing Michael Brown shortly after noon on August 9, then Wilson should be in the protective custody of a competent public agency -- given the nature of the killing, that would most likely be the Missouri State Highway Patrol or the FBI. He should not be free to wander at will, nor should his general whereabouts remain undisclosed. His precise location need not be stated, but the public should know whether he is in Missouri, in the St. Louis area, or somewhere else, and the public should know whether or not he is in protective custody. That nothing has been disclosed about his location indicates to me that it's possible the authorities don't know where he is. Perhaps only his lawyer does, or perhaps no one does.
We should also ask why Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown shortly after noon on August 9, 2014, in the middle of Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri. That question is easier to answer than Darren Wilson's whereabouts. We have numerous eyewitness reports that pretty much say the same thing about the shooting of Michael Brown and which partially corroborate the incomplete police story of the shooting.
Michael Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson were walking in the middle of Canfield Drive. They were approached by Officer Wilson who ordered them to get on the sidewalk. They continued walking in the middle of the street. Officer Wilson approached them again at speed, nearly hitting them with his vehicle. Words were exchanged. Wilson opened his vehicle door, slamming it into Brown who did not move out of the way. The door rebounded onto Wilson who was unable to get out of the car. He grabbed Brown and there was a struggle through the window of the car. Wilson apparently said to Brown, "I'll shoot you." A shot was fired from Darren Wilson's gun inside the vehicle. Brown broke free and started running away with Johnson. Wilson got out of the car and fired several shots toward Brown. One may have hit him, though that's not entirely clear. The bullet fired inside Wilson's vehicle may also have hit Brown, but it is not certain. Brown stopped fleeing and Johnson sought shelter by a parked car. Brown turned around, reportedly with his hands up, and said, "Stop shooting. I don't have a gun" or something similar. Wilson shot him several more times. Brown fell forward, and Wilson shot him twice in the head. Brown collapsed on the street where his body and blood remained for the next several hours as more and more people gathered in sorrow and outrage.
Another black youth killed by police in the USofA.
Why?
Even on that day, it was suggested by TheePharaoh on Twitter that Brown had taken some rellos shortly before he was killed, but even in America, the theft of cigars does not generally warrant death in the streets. Something else must have happened to cause Officer Wilson to shoot Brown to death -- unless we are to believe he's simply a psychotic murderer waiting for the opportunity to kill a black youth.
I think there are a couple of keys to understanding why Officer Wilson felt he had to kill Michael Brown that day.
One is his order that Brown and Johnson get out of the street and onto the sidewalk. Over the course of several weeks of protest, most Americans have had the opportunity to see the site where Michael Brown was shot down. There is a memorial of flowers and messages on the spot in the middle of the street where Michael Brown fell and his blood ran. It's a very moving memorial. The street is narrow and runs through a residential neighborhood of pleasant single family homes and garden apartments. It is not a busy street at all but a normal, curving residential street where a driver might ordinarily expect to find young people either playing or walking in the street, even in the middle of the street, as a matter of course.
For a police officer to order Brown and Johnson out of the street as he passed by them would not be particularly unusual, though following up might be. Brown and Johnson did not get out of the street, and Johnson said he told the officer they were nearly at their destination and they would move out of the street when they got there. Johnson said the officer drove on a few feet, then he suddenly stopped and backed up, nearly hitting Johnson and Brown. Johnson said that Wilson was belligerent and hostile at this point, and attempted to get out of his vehicle, but he had stopped too close to Brown and Johnson and was unable to open his door sufficiently to get out. Words were exchanged that apparently included some cursing. Wilson apparently claimed that Brown pushed him back into the vehicle and began to assault him through the window. Johnson said that the officer fell back into the vehicle when the door rebounded, and Wilson then tried to pull Brown into the vehicle through the window, drew his gun and threatened to shoot Brown. Wilson apparently claimed that Brown tried to grab his gun and a struggle for it ensued during which a shot went off. Johnson said that the shot hit Brown in the shoulder (he said he saw the blood), and at that point Brown and Johnson ran away.
Officer Wilson could then get out of the vehicle and he kept firing at Brown. But why?
According to Missouri state law (as I understand it) officers are empowered to use lethal force on a "fleeing felon" if the officer has a reasonable belief that the fugitive represents a physical threat to the officer or to others. It's been pointed out that Officer Wilson claimed that Brown assaulted him and tried to take his gun, both of which are felonies. Thus, when Brown ran away, he became a "fleeing felon."
But was he a threat?
Officer Wilson apparently believed he was -- for no other reason because he believed Brown had assaulted him and tried to take his gun. These are not provable facts, but they are apparently Wilson's statements to St. Louis County police who took over the investigation. And they are statements tailored to substantiating justification for Wilson's shooting and killing Michael Brown.
The assault Wilson claimed he suffered from Brown cannot be proved, nor can it be proved that Brown tried to grab Wilson's gun. But these are key claims by Wilson and are the primary clues to why he killed Brown.
Non-compliance to Wilson's order to Brown and Johnson to get out of the street was the initial cause of Wilson's displeasure with the young men. No statement has been made to verify it, but it is possible that Wilson heard a report on his radio that there had been a robbery at the Ferguson Market a few minutes before his encounter with Brown and Johnson. This may have been the reason Wilson stopped and reversed his vehicle to confront Brown and Johnson again, but we don't know that. It may also have been because they didn't comply with his previous order and it is suspected one or the other may have mouthed off on top of defying the officer.
When Wilson was unable to get out of his vehicle upon the second confrontation, he apparently tried to grab hold of Brown to control him in some manner, and he also apparently drew his gun and threatened to shoot Brown. Why?
The likelihood is that Wilson's inability to get out of the vehicle and the subsequent struggle frightened Wilson sufficiently that he felt his life was in danger. His threat to shoot Brown was probably intended to overpower and intimidate the much larger Brown, but the gun went off apparently unexpectedly. A bullet may or may not have struck Brown at that point (autopsy is inconclusive), but the shock of the gunfire broke the struggle inside the vehicle, Brown and Johnson were able to run away, and Wilson was able to get out of the car. Wilson kept firing. Why?
So far as he knew, neither Brown nor Johnson were armed, as neither had threatened him with a firearm.
After Wilson shot at the fleeing Brown, witnesses nearly unanimously state that Brown turned around with his hands up and stated, "Stop shooting. I don't have a gun" or something similar. Wilson, however, kept shooting until Brown was down and most likely dead.
Why?
The answer is not the law. The law protects the officer who uses lethal force, but it does not require that he do so. The answer is the department policies and protocols for use of force which in this case -- as in many thousands of others around the country, especially since the 1980s -- essentially require that under circumstances in which the officer believes his life is in danger, he must use lethal force to "neutralize the threat." In other words, he must attempt to kill the subject, and if at all possible, he must succeed.
The law will protect him, but the policy and protocols of the department demand that he must use lethal force under the circumstances.
This is true in case after case after case of police killings. It's not the law that makes them do it. It's the policies and protocols of the department. Police have vast discretion -- except when they believe or say that their lives or the lives of others are in danger in which case, in almost every department they are not only authorized to use lethal force, they are required to. It's not a matter of a "split second decision." Far from it. The protocols are mostly very clear and straightforward. Any perception of a life-threatening danger posed by a subject is enough to cause the use of lethal force, even if -- as is so often the case -- the danger is illusory. Often the perception comes long before the use of lethal force. Once the decision is made to kill the subject, that's it. Generally, there is no going back, nor is there anything the subject can do to save his or her own life. It's not the law that makes it so, it is the policy of the department that does.
There have been so many examples recently of how these protocols work to extinguish the lives of hundreds so far this year alone, but somehow the lesson never quite connects with the public. It's as if the public and the police are operating on entirely different planes, and in a sense, that's the case.
I've mentioned a New Mexico State Police sniper who has been sent to various incidents with the intent to kill. That's his job, after all. And he has killed -- twice since last December, while severely wounding another man last May.
A few days ago, Seattle police snipers were sent to an incident in Queen Anne. They shot and killed a man who police claimed was shooting at officers -- but how many times have we heard this claim only to find out later it wasn't true? The suspect didn't fire at all or he didn't fire at officers but fired in the air or away from officers.
In another incident in Bloomfield, New Mexico a few days ago, police went on a domestic disturbance call and an officer shot and killed a man who family and witnesses said was unarmed and not causing a disturbance of any kind. After the family of the dead man demanded accountability from the police for what they considered to be a murder, the investigators issued a statement that the man had been shot and killed because they believed he was reaching for a gun in the glove compartment of his vehicle.
There is no way to prove he was doing any such thing, however. There is only the statement of the officer who shot him. In this case, it is possible that the officer saw him "reach" -- whether for a gun or not, it doesn't matter -- and that's enough, according to protocol, to trigger use of lethal force. Police were alerted to the "danger" by their dispatch on a domestic disturbance call.
Something similar happened in St. Louis to Kajieme Powell. He was shot and killed by police within seconds of their arrival on a disturbance/shoplifting call on August 19. He'd taken sodas and pastries from a convenience store on the corner and he had been "acting strange" on the sidewalk outside. One of the callers to 911 -- a St. Louis alderwoman -- stated he had two knives and she was afraid of him so she was going to lock her door to keep him outside.
Powell did not threaten anyone according to video of his behavior prior to being shot. He was acting strange to be sure, and according to those who were there, he did have a knife in his hand, but he was not threatening anyone with it, he didn't raise it to threaten police when they arrived, but he didn't follow their command to drop it until after they shot him. Twelve times. It's clear they had determined to kill Powell before they got there -- if he didn't obey.
This incident was very similar to the killing of James Boyd in Albuquerque in March. The difference is that apparently the decision to kill Boyd was made long before police opened fire, not as they were approaching the scene. Boyd was also armed with knives, and like Powell, he did not threaten anyone. Police made clear that being armed in a confrontation with police is sufficient justification for police killing. Especially being armed and noncompliant with police orders.
In fact, in the vast majority of the thousands and thousands of police killings in the United States over the last few decades, the chief justification for killing individuals is noncompliance with orders, whether or not the subject is armed.
Noncompliance is itself regarded as a threat, life threatening in too many circumstances.
"Reaching for..." something (be it a cell-phone, wallet, pad of paper, or -- just maybe -- a gun or a knife) is considered life threatening and sufficient justification for opening fire on a subject.
The "waistband" gambit is tried and true. There's always a gun in there, right?
Holding a weapon of any kind while in an encounter with police is generally considered life threatening and sufficient justification for opening fire, unless you're a drunken elderly white man, in which case, no harm no foul and you will be allowed to negotiate in good faith.
Being black or brown and noncompliant -- whether armed or not -- is an almost certain death sentence, however.
I'm convinced from what I've seen that Darren Wilson decided on Michael Brown's eligibility to be killed on the basis of his noncompliance with orders to get out of the street, and his decision to act on that eligibility came when Brown and Wilson struggled in the window of Wilson's vehicle. It didn't matter at all whether Brown posed an actual threat to Wilson. What mattered was that Wilson's authority had been defied and he felt he had been assaulted by an uppity nigra.
Bam.
But even if Brown had been white, the situation may well have devolved the same way. The point is that noncompliance itself can be a death sentence in the eyes of the police, regardless of anything else, and they know they will be held harmless if they carry it out.
This situation has been metastasizing for many years, and it is time to change things.
Not long afterwards, Wilson disappeared. He has not been seen publicly since the day he killed Michael Brown in front of numerous witnesses. He was placed on paid administrative leave following the shooting as is standard practice in such cases. He is said to have left his home in Crestwood, Missouri, within days of the shooting, but exactly when he left and where he went has not been reported. He is said to have lived with another Ferguson police officer named Barbara Spradling whose whereabouts is also not reported. Is she still on the job, or has she been given paid leave as well? Is she with Wilson? Why?
Where are Wilson and Spradling and who is protecting them? If there were any valid reason to believe that Wilson's life was in jeopardy because of his shooting and killing Michael Brown shortly after noon on August 9, then Wilson should be in the protective custody of a competent public agency -- given the nature of the killing, that would most likely be the Missouri State Highway Patrol or the FBI. He should not be free to wander at will, nor should his general whereabouts remain undisclosed. His precise location need not be stated, but the public should know whether he is in Missouri, in the St. Louis area, or somewhere else, and the public should know whether or not he is in protective custody. That nothing has been disclosed about his location indicates to me that it's possible the authorities don't know where he is. Perhaps only his lawyer does, or perhaps no one does.
We should also ask why Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown shortly after noon on August 9, 2014, in the middle of Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri. That question is easier to answer than Darren Wilson's whereabouts. We have numerous eyewitness reports that pretty much say the same thing about the shooting of Michael Brown and which partially corroborate the incomplete police story of the shooting.
Michael Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson were walking in the middle of Canfield Drive. They were approached by Officer Wilson who ordered them to get on the sidewalk. They continued walking in the middle of the street. Officer Wilson approached them again at speed, nearly hitting them with his vehicle. Words were exchanged. Wilson opened his vehicle door, slamming it into Brown who did not move out of the way. The door rebounded onto Wilson who was unable to get out of the car. He grabbed Brown and there was a struggle through the window of the car. Wilson apparently said to Brown, "I'll shoot you." A shot was fired from Darren Wilson's gun inside the vehicle. Brown broke free and started running away with Johnson. Wilson got out of the car and fired several shots toward Brown. One may have hit him, though that's not entirely clear. The bullet fired inside Wilson's vehicle may also have hit Brown, but it is not certain. Brown stopped fleeing and Johnson sought shelter by a parked car. Brown turned around, reportedly with his hands up, and said, "Stop shooting. I don't have a gun" or something similar. Wilson shot him several more times. Brown fell forward, and Wilson shot him twice in the head. Brown collapsed on the street where his body and blood remained for the next several hours as more and more people gathered in sorrow and outrage.
Another black youth killed by police in the USofA.
Why?
Even on that day, it was suggested by TheePharaoh on Twitter that Brown had taken some rellos shortly before he was killed, but even in America, the theft of cigars does not generally warrant death in the streets. Something else must have happened to cause Officer Wilson to shoot Brown to death -- unless we are to believe he's simply a psychotic murderer waiting for the opportunity to kill a black youth.
I think there are a couple of keys to understanding why Officer Wilson felt he had to kill Michael Brown that day.
One is his order that Brown and Johnson get out of the street and onto the sidewalk. Over the course of several weeks of protest, most Americans have had the opportunity to see the site where Michael Brown was shot down. There is a memorial of flowers and messages on the spot in the middle of the street where Michael Brown fell and his blood ran. It's a very moving memorial. The street is narrow and runs through a residential neighborhood of pleasant single family homes and garden apartments. It is not a busy street at all but a normal, curving residential street where a driver might ordinarily expect to find young people either playing or walking in the street, even in the middle of the street, as a matter of course.
For a police officer to order Brown and Johnson out of the street as he passed by them would not be particularly unusual, though following up might be. Brown and Johnson did not get out of the street, and Johnson said he told the officer they were nearly at their destination and they would move out of the street when they got there. Johnson said the officer drove on a few feet, then he suddenly stopped and backed up, nearly hitting Johnson and Brown. Johnson said that Wilson was belligerent and hostile at this point, and attempted to get out of his vehicle, but he had stopped too close to Brown and Johnson and was unable to open his door sufficiently to get out. Words were exchanged that apparently included some cursing. Wilson apparently claimed that Brown pushed him back into the vehicle and began to assault him through the window. Johnson said that the officer fell back into the vehicle when the door rebounded, and Wilson then tried to pull Brown into the vehicle through the window, drew his gun and threatened to shoot Brown. Wilson apparently claimed that Brown tried to grab his gun and a struggle for it ensued during which a shot went off. Johnson said that the shot hit Brown in the shoulder (he said he saw the blood), and at that point Brown and Johnson ran away.
Officer Wilson could then get out of the vehicle and he kept firing at Brown. But why?
According to Missouri state law (as I understand it) officers are empowered to use lethal force on a "fleeing felon" if the officer has a reasonable belief that the fugitive represents a physical threat to the officer or to others. It's been pointed out that Officer Wilson claimed that Brown assaulted him and tried to take his gun, both of which are felonies. Thus, when Brown ran away, he became a "fleeing felon."
But was he a threat?
Officer Wilson apparently believed he was -- for no other reason because he believed Brown had assaulted him and tried to take his gun. These are not provable facts, but they are apparently Wilson's statements to St. Louis County police who took over the investigation. And they are statements tailored to substantiating justification for Wilson's shooting and killing Michael Brown.
The assault Wilson claimed he suffered from Brown cannot be proved, nor can it be proved that Brown tried to grab Wilson's gun. But these are key claims by Wilson and are the primary clues to why he killed Brown.
Non-compliance to Wilson's order to Brown and Johnson to get out of the street was the initial cause of Wilson's displeasure with the young men. No statement has been made to verify it, but it is possible that Wilson heard a report on his radio that there had been a robbery at the Ferguson Market a few minutes before his encounter with Brown and Johnson. This may have been the reason Wilson stopped and reversed his vehicle to confront Brown and Johnson again, but we don't know that. It may also have been because they didn't comply with his previous order and it is suspected one or the other may have mouthed off on top of defying the officer.
When Wilson was unable to get out of his vehicle upon the second confrontation, he apparently tried to grab hold of Brown to control him in some manner, and he also apparently drew his gun and threatened to shoot Brown. Why?
The likelihood is that Wilson's inability to get out of the vehicle and the subsequent struggle frightened Wilson sufficiently that he felt his life was in danger. His threat to shoot Brown was probably intended to overpower and intimidate the much larger Brown, but the gun went off apparently unexpectedly. A bullet may or may not have struck Brown at that point (autopsy is inconclusive), but the shock of the gunfire broke the struggle inside the vehicle, Brown and Johnson were able to run away, and Wilson was able to get out of the car. Wilson kept firing. Why?
So far as he knew, neither Brown nor Johnson were armed, as neither had threatened him with a firearm.
After Wilson shot at the fleeing Brown, witnesses nearly unanimously state that Brown turned around with his hands up and stated, "Stop shooting. I don't have a gun" or something similar. Wilson, however, kept shooting until Brown was down and most likely dead.
Why?
The answer is not the law. The law protects the officer who uses lethal force, but it does not require that he do so. The answer is the department policies and protocols for use of force which in this case -- as in many thousands of others around the country, especially since the 1980s -- essentially require that under circumstances in which the officer believes his life is in danger, he must use lethal force to "neutralize the threat." In other words, he must attempt to kill the subject, and if at all possible, he must succeed.
The law will protect him, but the policy and protocols of the department demand that he must use lethal force under the circumstances.
This is true in case after case after case of police killings. It's not the law that makes them do it. It's the policies and protocols of the department. Police have vast discretion -- except when they believe or say that their lives or the lives of others are in danger in which case, in almost every department they are not only authorized to use lethal force, they are required to. It's not a matter of a "split second decision." Far from it. The protocols are mostly very clear and straightforward. Any perception of a life-threatening danger posed by a subject is enough to cause the use of lethal force, even if -- as is so often the case -- the danger is illusory. Often the perception comes long before the use of lethal force. Once the decision is made to kill the subject, that's it. Generally, there is no going back, nor is there anything the subject can do to save his or her own life. It's not the law that makes it so, it is the policy of the department that does.
There have been so many examples recently of how these protocols work to extinguish the lives of hundreds so far this year alone, but somehow the lesson never quite connects with the public. It's as if the public and the police are operating on entirely different planes, and in a sense, that's the case.
I've mentioned a New Mexico State Police sniper who has been sent to various incidents with the intent to kill. That's his job, after all. And he has killed -- twice since last December, while severely wounding another man last May.
A few days ago, Seattle police snipers were sent to an incident in Queen Anne. They shot and killed a man who police claimed was shooting at officers -- but how many times have we heard this claim only to find out later it wasn't true? The suspect didn't fire at all or he didn't fire at officers but fired in the air or away from officers.
In another incident in Bloomfield, New Mexico a few days ago, police went on a domestic disturbance call and an officer shot and killed a man who family and witnesses said was unarmed and not causing a disturbance of any kind. After the family of the dead man demanded accountability from the police for what they considered to be a murder, the investigators issued a statement that the man had been shot and killed because they believed he was reaching for a gun in the glove compartment of his vehicle.
There is no way to prove he was doing any such thing, however. There is only the statement of the officer who shot him. In this case, it is possible that the officer saw him "reach" -- whether for a gun or not, it doesn't matter -- and that's enough, according to protocol, to trigger use of lethal force. Police were alerted to the "danger" by their dispatch on a domestic disturbance call.
Something similar happened in St. Louis to Kajieme Powell. He was shot and killed by police within seconds of their arrival on a disturbance/shoplifting call on August 19. He'd taken sodas and pastries from a convenience store on the corner and he had been "acting strange" on the sidewalk outside. One of the callers to 911 -- a St. Louis alderwoman -- stated he had two knives and she was afraid of him so she was going to lock her door to keep him outside.
Powell did not threaten anyone according to video of his behavior prior to being shot. He was acting strange to be sure, and according to those who were there, he did have a knife in his hand, but he was not threatening anyone with it, he didn't raise it to threaten police when they arrived, but he didn't follow their command to drop it until after they shot him. Twelve times. It's clear they had determined to kill Powell before they got there -- if he didn't obey.
This incident was very similar to the killing of James Boyd in Albuquerque in March. The difference is that apparently the decision to kill Boyd was made long before police opened fire, not as they were approaching the scene. Boyd was also armed with knives, and like Powell, he did not threaten anyone. Police made clear that being armed in a confrontation with police is sufficient justification for police killing. Especially being armed and noncompliant with police orders.
In fact, in the vast majority of the thousands and thousands of police killings in the United States over the last few decades, the chief justification for killing individuals is noncompliance with orders, whether or not the subject is armed.
Noncompliance is itself regarded as a threat, life threatening in too many circumstances.
"Reaching for..." something (be it a cell-phone, wallet, pad of paper, or -- just maybe -- a gun or a knife) is considered life threatening and sufficient justification for opening fire on a subject.
The "waistband" gambit is tried and true. There's always a gun in there, right?
Holding a weapon of any kind while in an encounter with police is generally considered life threatening and sufficient justification for opening fire, unless you're a drunken elderly white man, in which case, no harm no foul and you will be allowed to negotiate in good faith.
Being black or brown and noncompliant -- whether armed or not -- is an almost certain death sentence, however.
I'm convinced from what I've seen that Darren Wilson decided on Michael Brown's eligibility to be killed on the basis of his noncompliance with orders to get out of the street, and his decision to act on that eligibility came when Brown and Wilson struggled in the window of Wilson's vehicle. It didn't matter at all whether Brown posed an actual threat to Wilson. What mattered was that Wilson's authority had been defied and he felt he had been assaulted by an uppity nigra.
Bam.
But even if Brown had been white, the situation may well have devolved the same way. The point is that noncompliance itself can be a death sentence in the eyes of the police, regardless of anything else, and they know they will be held harmless if they carry it out.
This situation has been metastasizing for many years, and it is time to change things.
Monday, September 8, 2014
"Our Lives Matter: Portraits of the Unprotected"
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| Kelly Thomas by Valery Lewis. Kelly was beaten by three Fullerton, CA police officers and died on July 10, 2011 |
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Tuesday, September 2, 2014
The Upshot of Ferguson
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| Ed Crawford, Ferguson Icon |
We saw scenes of stark terror previously, as gas and smoke grenades were lobbed at protesters and residents almost at random, violent police charges took place to snatch and grab people at random from the crowds, neighborhoods were assaulted with armored vehicles and tear gas, and many people were shot and wounded by rubber bullets. The comparison between Ferguson and Gaza or the West Bank was often made. People resisting occupation were brutalized and terrorized by police. It was a goon show.
The display of force in Ferguson shocked a good part of the nation, but many observers actually applauded the authorities, not only for their over-the-top reaction to the protests but for Darren Wilson's shooting and killing Michael Brown in the first place. Many have said it was a "good shoot." How they come to that conclusion, and what the upshot of Ferguson will be is worth considering.
One thing that puzzled me was the amount of coverage #Ferguson got compared to other comparable killings by police over the summer. There were quite a few incidents after all, and enough of them were questionable that it's surprising they didn't raise more ire than they did. The death of Eric Garner in New York caused a great deal of anguish and protest, but it didn't inspire revolt. Nor did the death of Ezell Ford in Los Angeles. Both were unarmed and both were arguably murdered by police, but there was no revolt in New York or Los Angeles because of these killings by police. And neither received the kind of wall to wall media coverage that the killing of Michael Brown in the little 'burb of Ferguson did.
We may ask why. ("Oh, don't ask why..." I love the Nina Simone version...)
For one thing, there was a revolt in Ferguson, and it was essentially spontaneous due to the murder itself and the bewildering level of nonchalance and contempt shown by the local authorities toward the -- largely black -- community. The authorities in Ferguson apparently believed they owed the community nothing but the back of their hand, and they responded to the growing outcry as if they were old-time crackers putting down a slave rebellion. Oh, that's what it looked like from my distance, that's what it felt like, and having once lived and worked in suburban St. Louis, I was quite aware of the contempt a lot of the white folks there have for the nigras. Oh my yes. It's deep-rooted and virulent. There's little or nothing to justify it but deleterious habit, old animosities and unspoken fears. Missouri was a slave state, and St. Louis was a center of the slave trade. The consequences still linger. (I've seen much the same, perhaps worse, in Maryland.)
The community had had enough and they revolted. The revolt was spontaneous and remarkably nonviolent. Few indeed set out to hurt anyone or cause damage, though there was damage and some were hurt. This led to the wide-spread belief that there was rioting by Ferguson residents, but so far as I could tell, there was not, not at any time. There was abundant rioting by police, however, and there were incidents of looting and destruction that the rioting police seemed to enable or at the very least to allow.
Though many people were injured by teargas, grenades, and rubber bullets (how many is unknown, and the authorities have bizarrely insisted "no one" at all was injured) only one man in Ferguson was shot by police after the killing of Michael Brown, and apparently he had nothing to do with the protests.
Given the constant propaganda about the violence and rioting by Ferguson residents, it's something of a wonder that more of them weren't shot to death by the massed armored authorities during the disturbances. In fact, they held fire far more than they shot their weapons, and the weapons they did use were (mostly) "less lethal." This despite the fact that they claimed, apparently falsely, that they were under constant "gunfire" by shadowy figures shooting from the darkness. They also claimed, falsely, that they were under attack by "Molotov cocktails," and that they'd been pelted with "bottles of urine." So far, there has been no evidence at all of gunfire aimed at the police, of Molotov cocktails thrown at police, nor of any pelting by bottles of urine. There have also been claims that officers were injured by bricks thrown at them by members of the crowd, and there's been no evidence of that, either. No one was arrested for any of these purported assaults despite the fact that police conducted numerous snatch and grab operations during the demonstrations. In other words, it's very likely that the police in Ferguson were not assaulted by the crowd, at least not in the manner described by the police.
In the picture at the head of this post, for example, that is not a Molotov cocktail in Ed Crawford's hand, it's a grenade that was fired at the crowd which he is throwing back at police. Many of the grenades police fired at the crowds were thrown back, and that is probably what gave rise to false claims by police of being attacked with Molotov cocktails.
An upshot of Ferguson, however, is bound to be continual propaganda and lies regarding the behavior of crowds of rebels in the face of police riots. Those riots themselves are bound to be another upshot of Ferguson.
Snatch and grab actions by police, which have been utilized extensively during National Special Security Events and were used during Occupy, particularly in New York, are likely to become routine responses to civil unrest.
Random attacks on neighborhoods bordering areas of active protest are liable to become routine as well.
Media representatives and politicians were arrested with some frequency in Ferguson, and the upshot of it is that the authorities now know -- if they didn't before -- that they can get away with it. We'll no doubt see more of it.
The police overreacted, but the upshot of that overreaction in Ferguson was the involvement of clergy and politicians in suppressing the revolt. How much of that was due to coercion may never be known, but the clergy were the ones managing the crowds after some of the worst excesses of the police state. We're liable to see more of that in the future, as "stakeholders" and community leaders are recruited to tamp down civil disobedience that arises from any cause. We're liable to see the rise of official vigilantes as well.
The case of Officer GoFuckYourself is one of the more remarkable developments from Ferguson that bears watching closely. Lt Ray Albers of the St. Ann police department (an adjacent community to Ferguson) became enraged and pointed his assault weapon at many in the crowd, threatening to kill them if they didn't "get back," though exactly where they were supposed to get back to (Africa?) wasn't entirely clear. He was forced to resign after his escapade was documented by numerous media on scene, but there were many reports of other officers behaving in essentially the same way, some of it documented on video, but none of them were disciplined, let alone fired, for their efforts -- at least none that we know of.
Albers was therefore a scapegoat at worst; he may have been a deliberate provocateur, however, and his "forced" retirement was pre-planned. We don't know.
At any rate, there are bound to be more incidents of officers seeking out opportunities to threaten civil disobeyers with immediate death.
The upshot of Ferguson by and large is the discovery by officials of what they can get away with. They are learning quickly, learning well. The crowds? Hard to say. But there will be more revolts in the future, and those revolts will be put down with calibrated levels of force, levels calibrated based on lessons learned from Ferguson and other examples of civil disobedience dating from the Battle of Seattle to the present.
And of Mike Brown? What of him and justice for him?
The likelihood is that the process will be slow-walked even more than it has been. There will probably not be an indictment of Officer Darren Wilson, and the Justice Department will probably not release a report on civil rights violations in Ferguson for years to come -- if ever. The issue will be allowed to fade into the mists of time.
Another uprising will occur somewhere else, media will focus their attention there for a time, and the cycle will repeat.
Meanwhile, the killing will go on and on and on and on. More than 100 killed by police in August alone, and the numbers of dead just keep rising.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Police Rioted In Ferguson Again Last Night -- Governor Calls Out The Guard
What I saw last night was that thousands of people took to the streets of Ferguson, MO, to march and chant and carry signs in solidarity honoring Michael Brown and to make a very clear statement: "Stop Killing Us." It was by far the biggest demonstration yet, and it was as multi-racial, multi-cultural, and as inclusive as any I've seen in Ferguson to date.
There appeared to be several marches converging on W. Florissant, thousands of people coming from several directions toward what has become the central symbolic focus of the town, the "town square" if you will, the burnt out QT market and gas station, where much of Ferguson's sense of community has been expressed and solidified over the ten days or so since Michael Brown was shot down in the street nearby.
I stepped away from my computer to do other things -- one does have other things to do after all -- and when I returned about an hour later, I was confronted on the livestreams with a line of roided-up police and armored vehicles, behind which the media cameras were assembled ("Stay behind the yellow line and you'll be all right") while blasts from the sound cannon were directed at a good sized group of demonstrators some distance away. So far as I could tell, the demonstrators were... demonstrating. "Peacefully." In the sense that they were not doing anything untoward at all, simply marching in the streets expressing solidarity with one another and being blasted by sound cannon, while media, far away, looked on apprehensively.
I was watching the "I Am Mike Brown" and FOX 2 livestreams simultaneously. They showed similar views from behind police lines, and there was no commentary with either most of the time.
[NBC News compilation of stories and pictures...]
And then the tear gas and smoke grenades started being launched, and the police line moved at a slow and steady pace at the crowd of demonstrators, firing tear gas, flash bangs and what not the while.
For what?
It was more than an hour before the ostensible curfew at midnight, and so far as I could tell, the crowd was not violent or even particularly belligerent. They were loud and boisterous and determined, however, even in the face of sound cannon and what I'm sure they could tell was a coming assault and riot by police.
They were targets and they knew it, and they stood brave and tall.
"No justice, no peace!"
I watched the police riot for an hour or so, and saw and heard a roided up police officer threaten Mustafa Hussain of Argus Radio ("I Am Mike Brown") with summary execution for turning on a light behind police lines, and I knew things could only devolve from that point. I turned it all off and went to bed. Had horrible dreams.
They rioted again. The police rioted again against peaceful, determined demonstrators. They assaulted, gassed, and some say shot demonstrators in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, yet again, and now, according to reports I haven't yet had time to read, the Governor has called in the National Guard.
None of this would be happening or be considered necessary by the Powers That Be if:
if Michael Brown hadn't been shot down in the street and left dead in that street for hours afterwards.
if authorities had not immediately responded with dogs and assault rifles to community anger and anguish at the initial killing and mistreatment of the body and the insult to the community
if police had not set out to suppress subsequent demonstrations with force
if authorities had been forthcoming with information about the shooter and the investigation
if the mostly white authorities had shown the least bit of respect for the people of Ferguson as a community rather than treating them as targets for their weapons.
This is well beyond the assholitry and incompetence of any number of named officials -- we all know who they are by now. The situation in Ferguson, and the adamant refusal of officials to address the serious concerns of the community except with violence and suppression, and their ostensible adherence to the importance of "procedure" above all, is surreal.
The violence of the police started this sequence of events and the violence of the police has kept it in motion ever since.
I saw a tweet or heard something last night (I don't remember which) that suggested that the police riot last night was triggered when a woman was shot several times in front of one of the stores on Ferguson -- I believe it was Sam's Meat Market. The police apparently blamed the shooting on someone in the crowd, while members of the crowd nearby blamed the police, saying the police had shot her four times. She was said to have been transported to the hospital by someone in the crowd, not by any form of emergency services on scene. In fact, during the police assault on the crowd, I did not see any evidence of Emergency Services on scene to care for anyone who might be injured in the assault, whether police or demonstrators. In the past, authorities have falsely claimed that "no one was injured" in previous police riots/assaults, when obviously many were injured.
Later on, as the police riot continued, the PIO for St. Louis County Police (often the bad actors in previous police riots) stated that he could confirm that "shots were fired" and "fire was being taken" and the media may have to disperse for their own safety. Of course the immediate question was "who was firing, who was taking shots?" There was no answer.
And now the Guard has been called out, presumptively a declaration of martial law, but I haven't checked this morning's reports yet.
Jeebus this sucks.
And I put full and complete responsibility on Authority. There is no excuse.
There appeared to be several marches converging on W. Florissant, thousands of people coming from several directions toward what has become the central symbolic focus of the town, the "town square" if you will, the burnt out QT market and gas station, where much of Ferguson's sense of community has been expressed and solidified over the ten days or so since Michael Brown was shot down in the street nearby.
I stepped away from my computer to do other things -- one does have other things to do after all -- and when I returned about an hour later, I was confronted on the livestreams with a line of roided-up police and armored vehicles, behind which the media cameras were assembled ("Stay behind the yellow line and you'll be all right") while blasts from the sound cannon were directed at a good sized group of demonstrators some distance away. So far as I could tell, the demonstrators were... demonstrating. "Peacefully." In the sense that they were not doing anything untoward at all, simply marching in the streets expressing solidarity with one another and being blasted by sound cannon, while media, far away, looked on apprehensively.
I was watching the "I Am Mike Brown" and FOX 2 livestreams simultaneously. They showed similar views from behind police lines, and there was no commentary with either most of the time.
[NBC News compilation of stories and pictures...]
And then the tear gas and smoke grenades started being launched, and the police line moved at a slow and steady pace at the crowd of demonstrators, firing tear gas, flash bangs and what not the while.
For what?
It was more than an hour before the ostensible curfew at midnight, and so far as I could tell, the crowd was not violent or even particularly belligerent. They were loud and boisterous and determined, however, even in the face of sound cannon and what I'm sure they could tell was a coming assault and riot by police.
They were targets and they knew it, and they stood brave and tall.
"No justice, no peace!"
I watched the police riot for an hour or so, and saw and heard a roided up police officer threaten Mustafa Hussain of Argus Radio ("I Am Mike Brown") with summary execution for turning on a light behind police lines, and I knew things could only devolve from that point. I turned it all off and went to bed. Had horrible dreams.
They rioted again. The police rioted again against peaceful, determined demonstrators. They assaulted, gassed, and some say shot demonstrators in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, yet again, and now, according to reports I haven't yet had time to read, the Governor has called in the National Guard.
None of this would be happening or be considered necessary by the Powers That Be if:
This is well beyond the assholitry and incompetence of any number of named officials -- we all know who they are by now. The situation in Ferguson, and the adamant refusal of officials to address the serious concerns of the community except with violence and suppression, and their ostensible adherence to the importance of "procedure" above all, is surreal.
The violence of the police started this sequence of events and the violence of the police has kept it in motion ever since.
I saw a tweet or heard something last night (I don't remember which) that suggested that the police riot last night was triggered when a woman was shot several times in front of one of the stores on Ferguson -- I believe it was Sam's Meat Market. The police apparently blamed the shooting on someone in the crowd, while members of the crowd nearby blamed the police, saying the police had shot her four times. She was said to have been transported to the hospital by someone in the crowd, not by any form of emergency services on scene. In fact, during the police assault on the crowd, I did not see any evidence of Emergency Services on scene to care for anyone who might be injured in the assault, whether police or demonstrators. In the past, authorities have falsely claimed that "no one was injured" in previous police riots/assaults, when obviously many were injured.
Later on, as the police riot continued, the PIO for St. Louis County Police (often the bad actors in previous police riots) stated that he could confirm that "shots were fired" and "fire was being taken" and the media may have to disperse for their own safety. Of course the immediate question was "who was firing, who was taking shots?" There was no answer.
And now the Guard has been called out, presumptively a declaration of martial law, but I haven't checked this morning's reports yet.
Jeebus this sucks.
And I put full and complete responsibility on Authority. There is no excuse.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Is This the Killer Standing Over Michael Brown's Body?
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| Moments after Michael Brown was shot |
Some pictures of Darren Wilson, Michael Brown's killer, have surfaced on the Internet:
I'd say the similarities are pretty strong.
The first picture was taken and posted by TheePharoah moments after he witnessed the shooting outside his apartment.
Looks to me like it's the same officer, and though the image is fuzzy, there might still be a smoking gun in the officer's right hand.
-------------------------------------------
Thanks to Teri49 this is video shot from above directly after Michael Brown was killed by Officer Wilson, seen on the right.
It seems to me that the shopkeeper who was robbed was a hell of a lot braver than this coward, and that goes triple for all the roided up officers deployed against the good people of Ferguson subjected to night after night of police riot and terror.
Friday, August 15, 2014
Transformative
I haven't been writing here much lately in part because so many of the events of the last week have been so overwhelming, draining, and frankly appalling.
The murder-by-cop of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, was shocking to anyone with a shred of conscience, and we saw over and over again that the powers that be in St. Louis simply had no shred of conscience, compassion, or simple human decency.
From the moment young Brown was shot down in the street by a still unnamed Ferguson cop who seemingly was completely out of control, apparently the only concern of those Powers, was to keep those Negroes suppressed.
At first they called it "crowd control," and they got the dogs and the riot gear out, and the police stormed and stomped around to frighten and intimidate the onlookers, the witnesses to the killing, and the family of Mike Brown in actions that didn't surprise anyone who's been paying attention, but which certainly shocked anyone with a grain of empathy in their souls.
The dead body of Mike Brown was left bleeding out in the street for hours and hours that awful Saturday, while police chased away family members and went around confiscating cell-phone cameras and other potential evidence.
There were dozens of witnesses, but the man who was with Mike Brown and was closest to the murder when it happened was somehow ignored in the media rush to find some excuse for the police behavior. Oh, he was interviewed by media shortly after the killing, but only the CBC in Canada put his statement on the air, and others who had things to say about what they saw were largely invisible for days while the police issued statement after statement that seemed patently false or protective of the officer without regard for truth or justice.
The people of Ferguson were understandably upset at the official stonewalling, lying, and wagon circling. They were "allowed" a bit of "space" to gather in the streets to protest, but on Sunday that protest turned into what has been deemed a "riot" during which a number of businesses were looted and one was burned. The one that was burned, the convenience store at the Quick Trip gas station down the street from the site of Mike Brown's murder, was where there were initial claims that Mike Brown had "stolen a cigar." But it turned out that no such claim had been made by the proprietors. It was one of many false rumors that were circulating in Ferguson in the first hours and days after Mike Brown's homicide, rumors apparently intended to impugn the young man's character so as to more easily justify his summary execution.
Yet even on Sunday, as the "riot" progressed, there were suspicions that provocateurs were at work and the looting and burning going on sporadically in the community was not an expression of spontaneous rage at all. No, even then, the "riot" was being seen by many in Ferguson as the work of agents of chaos, not the people. The burning of the Quick Trip convenience store was even attributed to the proprietor as a means to obtain insurance money. The "riot" itself was seen as a means to distract attention from the killing of Mike Brown and put the focus and the onus on the community because it's largely black and working class and supposedly gang-ridden.
In other words to make it seem that Mike Brown's death-by-cop was a natural consequence of the innate criminality of the residents.
There was an immediate and strong push-back by those residents and the family of Mike Brown. They denounced the violence, and they wanted answers from the authorities, answers which were not and so far are not forthcoming.
In fact, it seemed that everything was being done by those authorities to cover up what had happened, to blame the victim, and to control the mob of angry Negroes.
It was a scene out of the brutal South of yore. It was absurd. It was terrifying. It was wrong.
As protests continued, the authorities, who I took to calling the Cowards of the County, escalated their repressive measures, until finally on Wednesday night, while people were in the streets demonstrating non-violently, a military-style operation was launched against them. It was the kind of thing we've seen over and over again, especially since Occupy suppression in 2011 and 2012, in which police deploy overwhelming military-style force against angry but generally non violent citizens and residents for the purpose of instilling terror.
Wednesday night's operations were even more outrageous than other similar instances in that it was entirely uncalled for. There was no violence, no riot, no effort on the part of the people to do anything but let their presence and outrage at the actions of Authority be seen and known as widely as possible. They defied repeated orders to disperse sufficiently quickly and thoroughly enough to be subjected to a terroristic operation in which assault vehicles were deployed, snipers positioned, machine guns were trained on the crowd and individuals "painted" with laser targets, and ultimately sound-weapons, tear gas, grenades and rubber bullets among other ordnance were deployed liberally by camo-fatigued "troops" "sweeping" the streets with automatic weapons pointed in battle array.
It was an absurd level of overkill, and it was promptly and forcefully denounced by military veterans who pointed out that even in the overseas war-zones where they'd served, they weren't as armored up as the St. Louis County and other police in Ferguson were (there were said to be 15 police agencies deployed in Ferguson on Wednesday under the command of St. Louis County police) and they were forbidden to go through the streets firing weapons or even pointing them at citizens and residents.
As was pointed out by Ferguson residents and as was obvious to anyone watching more than the national news about what was happening, the police were, time after time and essentially from the beginning, starting with the murder of Mike Brown itself, the ones instigating and precipitating violence, not the citizens and residents of Ferguson.
The police were using violent tactics against nonviolent protest. They were apparently attempting to incite violence by the protesters so as to excuse their own violent behavior in suppressing the protests. It was stark and appalling and for those who saw more than the national news about it, the tactics were obvious.
As it happened, a number of media workers were directly subjected to those tactics, including arrest, tear gassing and being told to "leave the area," and to "shut off cameras." A Huffington Post reporter and a Washington Post reporter were hustled out of a McDonald's restaurant by camo-fatigued police and arrested -- apparently for not moving fast enough to suit the officers. A St. Louis alderman was pulled out of his car by camo-fatigued officers, arrested and held overnight in jail, apparently for "being there" and bearing witness to what was going on. An Al Jazeera news team was tear gassed and their equipment dismantled -- apparently because they were bearing witness and broadcasting/recording what was happening. Other independent media were fired on, gassed, and threatened throughout Wednesday's operations.
This does not sit well with media types, and there was an immediate outcry.
Apparently, the outcry reached the Attorney General's office in Washington, and even the President on vacation on Martha's Vinyard became aware.
Something had to change.
And it did. Literally overnight.
Eric Holder issued one of his harshest and most direct statements yet regarding police action and misconduct, practically ordering the Ferguson and St. Louis regional police apparatus to change its behavior toward the people of Ferguson immediately.
The President came out from socializing on Martha's Vinyard to suggest that things were a bit out of hand in Ferguson, and they ought to cool it.
The Governor of Missouri who had been absent through the turmoil showed himself in town talking with the faith community.
Senator Claire McCaskill showed up to say that the militarized response to the protests was inappropriate and doing more harm than good.
Then the Governor held a press conference at which he announced that the St. Louis County Police Department, which apparently had been in charge of the armored response to the public outcry was being relieved of duty for policing protests in Ferguson, and that the State Highway Patrol would henceforth be the lead agency in command. A captain named Ron Johnson would be in charge. There would be changes made in the approach to the people and a different tone would be set going forward.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
And so it was.
Captain Ron Johnson became a rock star within seconds of his appointment. He said he would be out on the streets and so he was, leading a march down W. Florissant Avenue, talking with the people, wearing a casual uniform without even a hat -- let alone a helmet -- and bringing with him a number of other officers also in casual uniforms, all of whom mingled with the people and respected their dignity and their rights. '
Armored backup was staged some distance away, but it was never deployed during the boisterous protest/party (hashtag #Partest) proceedings yesterday and last night. Police kept their distance and didn't interfere despite the fact that thousands of people were on the streets until late into the night, and cars honked their horns incessantly as they passed by what has become the community gathering grounds at the burned out QuickTrip gas and market.
There were constant reports on the scanners of gunfire in the area, but the one incident that could be confirmed indicated that a man accidentally shot himself in the leg. Others turned out to be fireworks. Some were apparently bogus. There were a couple of incidents of fighting or assault and battery reported -- and confirmed -- but in each, the victims were promptly cared for, and the fights broken up by #Partest participants. There was no necessity, in other words, for police involvement in these incidents, and so far as I know, police were not involved.
They stayed well in the background, and in one case I'm aware of, they were "invited" to leave the McDonald's parking lot. Which they did.
The #Partest wound down some hours after I went to bed, apparently without incident.
The people of Ferguson used the opportunity last night to celebrate liberation from a brutal military-style occupation, and used the opportunity to dialogue with one another about what needs to be done to improve the situation and deal with the issue of police misconduct in the specific case of Michael Brown's murder but in the broader context of policing and civil society as well.
It was transformative.
There were dozens of solidarity demonstrations around the country last night as well. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people turned out in city after city for a National Moment of Silence observance to honor the memory of Michael Brown and everyone who has been a victim of police brutality and murder. Thousands showed up in St. Louis at the park in front of the Old Court House facing the Gateway Arch, and at 6:20pm, they raised their hands in common cause, in the now iconic gesture based on reports of Michael Brown's upraised hands as he was shot dead: "Hands Up! Don't Shoot!" All over the country, thousands and thousands of people were doing the same thing at the same moment.
In city after city, people marched and declared their solidarity with the people of Ferguson, and with the many thousands of named and nameless victims of police brutality everywhere.
The optics changed radically overnight.
And perhaps today behavior will change.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
The Blood Summer Strikes Again
I've been trying to digest the story I first heard yesterday or perhaps the day before about two homeless men bludgeoned to death in Albuquerque while they slept. Three teens, the youngest 15, have confessed to the crime and seem to be boasting that they have committed altogether fifty or more other attacks on the homeless in the last few months. Fifty or more.
Caveat: I don't know any more about this incident and the series of incidents that it seems to be part of than what has been in the news, and I've been shocked and appalled at what I've seen and heard, I really haven't wanted to follow it in any detail, so I suspect that a good deal of what I write about it here will be very incomplete and/or erroneous.
Fifty attacks in the last few months. Yes, there has been some mention made from time to time that this or that homeless wanderer has been attacked while he (generally it's a he) sleeps somewhere on the streets or in a vacant lot or wherever he can find a moment's rest, a little shelter. There have been stories of men or women run over by drivers seemingly looking for homeless wanderers to brutalize and kill. There have been stories or bludgeonings and frantic escapes. There have been so many stories of pain and misery and bloodshed.
Victims rarely report the crimes, they rarely go to the police, they're terrified of the police. They are terrified not solely because of the executions of the homeless which the police commit with impunity but because the police treat any homeless wanderer with routine contempt and violence; they are no protectors of the vulnerable. That's for Father Rusty at the St. Martin's homeless shelter. He'll get right on it.
The men who were killed over the weekend were called "Cowboy" and "Yazzie" according to reports, and they were from the Gallup area. Navajo. Not unusual for Indians to travel around, to live off the land, to get drunk and get by as best they can. Their friend, called "Skeets", was beaten up but survived and escaped and described the killers to police. Within a day, the boys, Alex Rios, 18, Nathaniel Carillo, 16 and Gilbert Tafoya, 15, were rounded up. Police say they confessed and provided extensive details of their other attacks on the homeless in Albuquerque the past few months.
Almost as if they were boasting.
They were doing their part, no? To clean up the riff-raff, the vermin, the losers lower than them.
Doing their part.
The police want others who might have been victims of these boys to come forward and make reports, but the victims live in fear, fear of the police certainly, but also of a system that has no regard for them, no place for them, wherein they have no home and no voice. They will not go to the police willingly. So the police are doing what they call "outreach," by sending plainclothes detectives among the homeless -- "our homeless" they're being called by suddenly compassionate news outlets -- to conduct surreptitious surveillance and interviews, to try to further develop cases against these boys. It's not, in other words, on behalf of the homeless, it is on behalf of the system, and on behalf of the police themselves.
The authorities will get to the bottom of this!
Well, no. No they won't.
The system the authorities serve has no use for drunken Indians (for God's sake!) out of Gallup who somehow made their way to Albuquerque and died there with their skulls crushed by rogue youths out for a lark. Too bad, so sad. They are simply surplus, disposable -- and anybody would understand they were going to die anyway. There was no way the system was going to salvage them, so maybe it's better for them and for everyone that... they're gone now, to their reward in Heaven or wherever... human waste disposal took care of it.
Too bad for those three boys who will now have to live with the consequences of what they did for the rest of their lives -- or at least until they are 21, when they might, under other circumstances, be released from juvenile detention. In fact, we're told, they will be tried as adults and face adult consequences for murder most foul, and that might be some consolation, but for the fact that there are no doubt others who think like they do, and when the spirit moves them (what kind of dark spirits are afoot), they will go on their own killing sprees, disposal efforts, removals of the unwanted...
I can't say what motivated these boys to do what they say they did, but I do know that they, like all of us, are immersed in a culture of impunity, a culture in which crimes of this sort are committed by authority with complete impunity (as with, for example, the cases of James Boyd and Mary Hawkes in Albuquerque, and how many tens or hundreds or thousands of others all over the country?) Abuse and killing of the homeless by authority is hardly considered worth the time to discuss these days -- except as a caution to others not to get out of line, or it could happen to you. Yes, you.
The situation in Albuquerque has been highlighted since the execution of James Boyd in March, and the situation in Albuquerque is definitely bad, awful, appalling and all the other terms used to describe police misconduct in this country, but in actuality, the problem is nationwide and getting worse.
Police misconduct, murder, abuse and impunity has reached epidemic proportions, at least if you follow the news. There are stories at least every week of some horror committed under color of authority including numerous questionable killings. There are entire YouTube channels devoted to documenting police misconduct, and (primarily libertarian) think tanks have devoted whole sections of their operations to studies and reports of police misconduct. It's a cottage industry in the land of the free and home of the brave.
Statistics show somewhat less certainty that things are getting worse, but statistics can be manipulated to show pretty much anything. Statistics appear to show that overall murder rates have plummeted to nearly an all-time low, which may be part of why so many murders now seem to gain so much attention, whether committed under color of authority or just because. They are actually so rare, at least according to statistics, that murders almost command attention by their very rarity. Seems counter intuitive, but there you are.
Police killings and abuse may or may not be on the rise. It is hard to say because data is scattered. There is no comprehensive statistical data. From what is available, it appears that police killings of suspects and bystanders run about 500 a year, year in and year out, practically without change. But that figure may be low. Reports of abuse run into the thousands, tens of thousands, but it's hard to say whether it's worse over time. Those with some memory of the past will often say that things were once far worse than they are now...
Yet we are conditioned to believe that the situation we face today is the worst it has ever been... It's always bad and getting worse, unless we fight.
Nevertheless, murders like those committed over the weekend in Albuquerque tear at the conscience and the heart. It's not a matter of "why" -- it's a matter of such horrors happening at all, and it's a matter of the overall sense of powerlessness in the face of such monstrousness.
This is what millions of Americans feel, but also what millions, perhaps billions, of people around the world feel in the face of the mounting cruelty of the world as it is and is becoming, and the blank-faced disinterest of those in power to do anything about it.
Powerlessness that's being countered to an extent, even on the mean streets of Albuquerque, by notions of common interest, mutual aid, concern. No only are the police doing "Outreach to Our Homeless," so are the many, many, many agencies and offices set up to help.
Even the frequently absent mayor of Albuquerque says "we must do more."
Well. Good.
Yes, do more. But understand, when authority is allowed to behave with impunity toward those who... don't fit, let's say, whatever standards of behavior or appearance that are required at any given moment, is it any wonder boys like those who confessed to the murders of these homeless men do what they do?
The problem starts at the top, not the bottom. Change the culture at the top, and what happens below changes too.
Caveat: I don't know any more about this incident and the series of incidents that it seems to be part of than what has been in the news, and I've been shocked and appalled at what I've seen and heard, I really haven't wanted to follow it in any detail, so I suspect that a good deal of what I write about it here will be very incomplete and/or erroneous.
Fifty attacks in the last few months. Yes, there has been some mention made from time to time that this or that homeless wanderer has been attacked while he (generally it's a he) sleeps somewhere on the streets or in a vacant lot or wherever he can find a moment's rest, a little shelter. There have been stories of men or women run over by drivers seemingly looking for homeless wanderers to brutalize and kill. There have been stories or bludgeonings and frantic escapes. There have been so many stories of pain and misery and bloodshed.
Victims rarely report the crimes, they rarely go to the police, they're terrified of the police. They are terrified not solely because of the executions of the homeless which the police commit with impunity but because the police treat any homeless wanderer with routine contempt and violence; they are no protectors of the vulnerable. That's for Father Rusty at the St. Martin's homeless shelter. He'll get right on it.
The men who were killed over the weekend were called "Cowboy" and "Yazzie" according to reports, and they were from the Gallup area. Navajo. Not unusual for Indians to travel around, to live off the land, to get drunk and get by as best they can. Their friend, called "Skeets", was beaten up but survived and escaped and described the killers to police. Within a day, the boys, Alex Rios, 18, Nathaniel Carillo, 16 and Gilbert Tafoya, 15, were rounded up. Police say they confessed and provided extensive details of their other attacks on the homeless in Albuquerque the past few months.
Almost as if they were boasting.
They were doing their part, no? To clean up the riff-raff, the vermin, the losers lower than them.
Doing their part.
The police want others who might have been victims of these boys to come forward and make reports, but the victims live in fear, fear of the police certainly, but also of a system that has no regard for them, no place for them, wherein they have no home and no voice. They will not go to the police willingly. So the police are doing what they call "outreach," by sending plainclothes detectives among the homeless -- "our homeless" they're being called by suddenly compassionate news outlets -- to conduct surreptitious surveillance and interviews, to try to further develop cases against these boys. It's not, in other words, on behalf of the homeless, it is on behalf of the system, and on behalf of the police themselves.
The authorities will get to the bottom of this!
Well, no. No they won't.
The system the authorities serve has no use for drunken Indians (for God's sake!) out of Gallup who somehow made their way to Albuquerque and died there with their skulls crushed by rogue youths out for a lark. Too bad, so sad. They are simply surplus, disposable -- and anybody would understand they were going to die anyway. There was no way the system was going to salvage them, so maybe it's better for them and for everyone that... they're gone now, to their reward in Heaven or wherever... human waste disposal took care of it.
Too bad for those three boys who will now have to live with the consequences of what they did for the rest of their lives -- or at least until they are 21, when they might, under other circumstances, be released from juvenile detention. In fact, we're told, they will be tried as adults and face adult consequences for murder most foul, and that might be some consolation, but for the fact that there are no doubt others who think like they do, and when the spirit moves them (what kind of dark spirits are afoot), they will go on their own killing sprees, disposal efforts, removals of the unwanted...
I can't say what motivated these boys to do what they say they did, but I do know that they, like all of us, are immersed in a culture of impunity, a culture in which crimes of this sort are committed by authority with complete impunity (as with, for example, the cases of James Boyd and Mary Hawkes in Albuquerque, and how many tens or hundreds or thousands of others all over the country?) Abuse and killing of the homeless by authority is hardly considered worth the time to discuss these days -- except as a caution to others not to get out of line, or it could happen to you. Yes, you.
The situation in Albuquerque has been highlighted since the execution of James Boyd in March, and the situation in Albuquerque is definitely bad, awful, appalling and all the other terms used to describe police misconduct in this country, but in actuality, the problem is nationwide and getting worse.
Police misconduct, murder, abuse and impunity has reached epidemic proportions, at least if you follow the news. There are stories at least every week of some horror committed under color of authority including numerous questionable killings. There are entire YouTube channels devoted to documenting police misconduct, and (primarily libertarian) think tanks have devoted whole sections of their operations to studies and reports of police misconduct. It's a cottage industry in the land of the free and home of the brave.
Statistics show somewhat less certainty that things are getting worse, but statistics can be manipulated to show pretty much anything. Statistics appear to show that overall murder rates have plummeted to nearly an all-time low, which may be part of why so many murders now seem to gain so much attention, whether committed under color of authority or just because. They are actually so rare, at least according to statistics, that murders almost command attention by their very rarity. Seems counter intuitive, but there you are.
Police killings and abuse may or may not be on the rise. It is hard to say because data is scattered. There is no comprehensive statistical data. From what is available, it appears that police killings of suspects and bystanders run about 500 a year, year in and year out, practically without change. But that figure may be low. Reports of abuse run into the thousands, tens of thousands, but it's hard to say whether it's worse over time. Those with some memory of the past will often say that things were once far worse than they are now...
Yet we are conditioned to believe that the situation we face today is the worst it has ever been... It's always bad and getting worse, unless we fight.
Nevertheless, murders like those committed over the weekend in Albuquerque tear at the conscience and the heart. It's not a matter of "why" -- it's a matter of such horrors happening at all, and it's a matter of the overall sense of powerlessness in the face of such monstrousness.
This is what millions of Americans feel, but also what millions, perhaps billions, of people around the world feel in the face of the mounting cruelty of the world as it is and is becoming, and the blank-faced disinterest of those in power to do anything about it.
Powerlessness that's being countered to an extent, even on the mean streets of Albuquerque, by notions of common interest, mutual aid, concern. No only are the police doing "Outreach to Our Homeless," so are the many, many, many agencies and offices set up to help.
Even the frequently absent mayor of Albuquerque says "we must do more."
Well. Good.
Yes, do more. But understand, when authority is allowed to behave with impunity toward those who... don't fit, let's say, whatever standards of behavior or appearance that are required at any given moment, is it any wonder boys like those who confessed to the murders of these homeless men do what they do?
The problem starts at the top, not the bottom. Change the culture at the top, and what happens below changes too.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Horrible and Stupid
While the focus was on the Ukrainian Junta Military advancing -- or not -- on Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, it appears the real action was in Odessa, where street fighting between pro- and anti-Kiev activists became intense and bloody, leaving perhaps 40 or more dead, dozens or hundreds injured.
The fighting went on all day and climaxed with an assault by pro-Kiev activists on the Trades Union building, where -- apparently -- 30 or more died from gunshots, injuries and smoke inhalation when the building was firebombed with Molotov cocktails.
I watched a good deal of it on the UStream. It was awful. Some are suggesting that what happened in Odessa today will be the pretext for a Russian invasion. Maybe, maybe not.
But what happened will not be soon forgotten.
Howard Amos was live tweeting throughout the mayhem and has written his impressions for the Guardian:
Not getting better out there...
The fighting went on all day and climaxed with an assault by pro-Kiev activists on the Trades Union building, where -- apparently -- 30 or more died from gunshots, injuries and smoke inhalation when the building was firebombed with Molotov cocktails.
I watched a good deal of it on the UStream. It was awful. Some are suggesting that what happened in Odessa today will be the pretext for a Russian invasion. Maybe, maybe not.
But what happened will not be soon forgotten.
Howard Amos was live tweeting throughout the mayhem and has written his impressions for the Guardian:
Ukraine clashes: dozens reported dead after Odessa building fire
Police say people choked to death on smoke or were killed jumping out of window after assault on trade union building
People wait to be rescued from the trade union building in Odessa, after it was set alight during chaotic clashes. Photograph: Reuters
EmailMore than 30 people were reported to have been killed in violent and chaotic clashes in the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa on Friday as pro-Ukrainian activists stormed a building defended by protesters opposed to the current government in Kiev and in favour of closer ties with Russia.
Odessa's large Soviet-era trade union building was set alight as pro-Ukrainian activists mounted an assault as dusk fell. Police said at least 31 people choked to death on smoke or were killed when jumping out of windows after the trade union building was set on fire.
Bodies lay in pools of blood outside the main entrance as explosions from improvised grenades and Molotov cocktails filled the air. Black smoke from the building and a burning pro-Russian protest camp wreathed the nearby square.
Pro-Russian fighters mounted a last-ditch defence of the burning building, tossing masonry and Molotov cocktails from the roof on to the crowd below.
Medics at the scene said that the pro-Russian fighters were also shooting from the roof. At least five bodies with bullet wounds lay on the ground covered by Ukrainian flags as fire engines and ambulances arrived at the scene.
Some people fell from the burning building as they hung on to windowsills in an attempt to avoid the fire that had taken hold inside. Pro-Ukrainian protesters made desperate efforts to reach people with ropes and improvised scaffolding.More.
Not getting better out there...
Monday, March 31, 2014
Uproar in Albuquerque
We were in town yesterday but we missed this because we were attending
other events and didn't take Central or I-25 on our way out of town. So
we didn't find out what was going on until we saw the news on teevee.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Blackwater's Youngest Victim
A film by Jeremy Scahill for the Nation and Democracy Now! and Rick Rowley for Big Noise Films.
Check out additional information at Rebel Reports, Democracy Now!, Big Noise Films, and The Nation Magazine.
We often get told how superficial and vapid our national media and discourse is. The people and organizations involved in this story are anything but that. Sometimes we need a reminder that real journalism still exists, real reporters still go after and report the real stories of real people living and sometimes dying in the real world, not a cocktail weenie in sight.
Jeremy Scahill, the Nation, and the Democracy Now! crew have risen to the top of the heap along with a few other intrepid, dauntless souls.
And we need to remind ourselves of that when we shake our heads or cluck our tongues over the latest piece of tabloid trash to infest the "News".
Don't let this story fade away.
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