The Wild West and Police Abuse

There was something of an unexpected dust up at the Albuquerque City Hall yesterday when a good sized group of protesters against police abuse made their way up to the eleventh floor mayor's office and walked right in to a "secure" area where they demanded to see the mayor, demanded the resignation of the police chief, and sat down to read aloud from the DoJ report on APD misconduct.

Elevators were disabled so as to prevent any more of the rabble from coming upstairs to the mayor's office. The City Administrator apparently tried to bully them out of this outer office, but they refused to leave. The police then "escorted" them out of the building. Much later, it was revealed that the mayor wasn't in town, he was in New York, meeting with "Wall Street" on the topic of "best practices." That's hopeful, no?

Thirteen were arrested, including David Correia -- who was charge with felony battery on a police officer, apparently for pushing on a door behind which a police officer was standing. Ergo, "battery" upon the poor po-po. Felony battery at that. Shades of Cecily McMillan.

Clearly they're afraid of David, an articulate and outspoken advocate for police accountability and reform. But more to the point, The Powers That Be in Albuquerque are having a collective melt down. Once again, for example, the City Council cancelled its Monday meeting over "security" concerns. The mayor has never met with those who have been protesting police abuse. They've been protesting for years. The mayor does not attend city council meetings and he has never heard the anguish of those who have lost loved ones to police misconduct and murder. Some of those on the council dismiss the concerns of the public regarding police abuse, claiming that none of their constituents have complained about police abuse, so those who do complain about it are not representative of their communities.

The police themselves have been reluctant to acknowledge any misconduct on their part, despite the abundance of evidence in the DoJ report that concluded that the department as a whole has for long engaged in "unconstitutional policing" and "unjustified uses of force, including lethal force." This has long been known in the community, long been protested against, long been ignored or dismissed by the powers that be (never, ever, has the District Attorney or the Police Department found any shooting by police to be "unjustified.")

When the autopsy results of the James Boyd killing were released last week, I read the report with a heavy heart. The man was shot in the back in a way that would lead to his death. His vital organs were ruptured and there was little chance he could have survived despite the fact that when he was taken to the hospital, he received extensive emergency treatment. He was also shot in both arms, one of which was shattered by the bullet so badly it had to be amputated at the hospital. His legs were savagely bitten by the dog that was loosed on him, and he was badly bruised by beanbag rounds which were fired from close range after he fell to the ground from being hit by bullets.

All for what? Why did this happen to this man at all?

That's the question more and more residents and activists have been asking themselves and The Albuquerque Powers That Be since James Boyd's killing, and many survivors and loved ones have been asking the city authorities for years-and-years. Why? Why is this happening.

James Boyd's killing is emblematic of a kind of killer police culture that is found more and more frequently in the United States, leading to more and more involvement by the Department of Justice in reforming and sometimes running police forces, but the question remains, "Does it do any good?"

There have been three killings by APD since the DoJ report was released, four (or is it five, I lose track) since James Boyd's killing. Only one might be considered a 'good shoot' -- in the sense that there might have been a clear and imminent threat to the police or others from the man who was shot, though he was armed only with a box cutter. The others are dubious at best. Video evidence from police is lacking in three of the four cases. Video evidence in the fourth case has not been released. Witness testimony and citizen-taken video evidence in some of these cases does not support police accounts of what happened, in fact, it contradicts police accounts.

The fact that police say something happened does not mean it did; the fact that police file reports does not mean they are true. This is the case in Albuquerque as it is and has been nearly everywhere for a very long time. False reports and fabricated evidence have a long and storied history throughout American police culture. It's by no means unique to Albuquerque.

But the rate of killing by police in Albuquerque is unique. Deaths occur at the hands of Albuquerque police at a greater rate per-capita than in any other city in the country. As the DoJ report makes clear, over and over, many of those who die are not threatening anyone but themselves, and even then, the threat is often exaggerated or exacerbated by police. In other words, the police themselves are the ones who jeopardize public safety by their violent actions.

Why?

For quite a while, I've attributed much of the trigger-happiness of APD to the survival of a Wild West ethos, something that may not always be obvious or recognized. Albuquerque is a large and in many ways sophisticated city, the largest city in New Mexico, the only city of any size in New Mexico. But it grew relatively recently from a tiny and ancient nucleus near the Rio Grande, and I suspect its growth has overwhelmed civic institutions -- such as the police. That's quite a different situation, I think, than that faced by residents and police in places like Oakland, Seattle, Cincinnati, Chicago and New Orleans, among many others where police misconduct has been reported and investigated and reforms demanded or required.

What it most closely resembles, to my mind, is the police vs resident situation in Los Angeles, a constantly tense and too often bloody confrontational situation that has led to extreme consequences for the city and county of Los Angeles more than once.

Why?

Or maybe the right question is "Who?" For not everyone in Los Angeles or Albuquerque is subjected to routine police abuse and misconduct, not everyone is necessarily in the gunsights of the police, even when they are acting out.

Certain areas of Los Angeles and Albuquerque are policed intensively, and certain types of people are subjected to police abuse at a far, far greater rate than others in both cities.

Who and why?

A lot of it goes back to the original impetus behind civic police forces as a replacement for military and militia occupation forces. This is especially true in the West.

The West, the Southwest especially, became part of the United States as occupied territory seized from Mexico in the War of 1846-48, a war of aggression against the Republic of Mexico initiated in order to acquire territory for westward expansion, the vaunted "Manifest Destiny" of Anglo-American lore and legend.

Los Angeles is a much bigger city than Albuquerque, and LA grew somewhat sooner and faster than Albuquerque, but their histories parallel one another fairly closely.  The railroad was crucial to the growth of both, as were the military and defense industry installations of World War II. The railroad overlaid an Anglo-American town and soon a city over a Spanish-Mexican-Indian village-rural settlement that had operated on very different social and political principles.

In order for the Anglo-Americans to feel secure enough to assert their own power in these lands they'd seized, they had to suppress the earlier occupants, restrict and confine them, and when it suited their purposes, they had to kill them -- or have someone in their employ, such as the military or militias, and later the police, do it for them.

This is a factor of the Wild West that's long been hidden in plain sight. The Wild West was wild partly because of the Anglo-American social/cultural (even spiritual?) necessity to exploit, control, tame or eliminate the original inhabitants of the land they seized. These were the non-Anglos, the Indians, the Spanish, the Mexicans. And later, they would include the blacks and the Asians.

In other words, the Wild West was wild in part to enable the exploitation, control, confinement, and elimination of those who were not Anglo-Americans.

Urban police forces were only necessary once there was an urban agglomeration to police. Prior to that advent, control and exploitation of non-Anglos was the work of sheriffs, posses, militias, military forces, and sometimes private forces (such as Pinkertons). When that failed, as it sometimes did, individuals would deputize themselves to "enforce the law" or lynch mobs would be organized to go wilding against those who were designated enemies and troublemakers.

This included attacks on Indian encampments and villages, both for sport and for cause, that continued well into the 20th century. It included the segregation of and exploitation of and frequently the murder of Spanish-speaking residents to "teach them a lesson" about who was boss. Very simple, very primitive expressions of power were routine and were widely considered to be socially acceptable and necessary for the Progress of Civilization. In order for Anglo-Americans to rise, it was believed by many, and is still believed by many, that the Other -- particularly those who were considered to be racially inferior -- had to be suppressed by any and all means including murder with impunity.

In some areas of the (Wild) West, the murder of Indians still isn't a routine subject for official investigation. It never was.

We hear of and sometimes celebrate the exploits of certain Outlaws of the Wild West, typically Anglo-American outlaws, rather than the more typical Hispanic and Indian "Outlaws," but from the perspective of the original residents of the West -- the Indians and Hispanics who were being turned into Outlaws by the advent of Anglo-American "civilization" in the West -- the Anglo-American newcomers and interlopers were the real Outlaws, stealing everything they could get their hands on and despoiling or destroying what they couldn't, leaving a bloody trail behind them.

That determination of who is "trouble" and what to do about it is still very much a part of the culture of the West, particularly among urban police forces such as those of Los Angeles and Albuquerque. Phoenix is notorious, of course, as is Arizona in general, for its somewhat overenthusiastic policing of the browner tinged residents of the area. But it happens in many other areas of the West as well, pretty much wherever there are significant numbers of darker-hued and/or impoverished residents, urban or rural, it doesn't really matter.

What matters is that Anglo-American rule is enforced with as much force as is deemed "necessary" for the security and comfort of the Powerful. The poor and the marginalized populations must be suppressed.

Just as it was when the Anglo-Americans came thundering into the region back in the day.

The irony in Albuquerque as well as other parts of New Mexico (and California, Arizona and elsewhere) is that many of those who exercise "Anglo-American" power against marginalized and impoverished populations are themselves of the browner tinge.

They have been acculturated to suppress/oppress their brothers and sisters, at times fatally. Frequently, the rationalization is that whoever gets killed by police "needed killing," because of their drug use, their tattoos, their odd behavior, their defiant attitude, or what have you. Victim blaming is routine. The victims always bring it on themselves and they always are deemed to deserve whatever happens to them, even when, as in the case of James Boyd (and Alfred Redwine and others) they were surrendering. Rather than accept such a surrender, it has been customary for police to summarily execute suspects. It's acceptable when the suspect is deemed to "need killing."

In the Wild West, such killings may not have been all that frequent, but when they happened, they were widely accepted as the appropriate consequence for (particularly) brown folks who out of line or for annoying someone of higher status. It was also acceptable to kill Anglo-American folks of lower status who acted "funny" or who were perceived to pose a threat of any kind to those of higher status.

Of course, killings that took place in the heat of passion or as a consequence of liquor were widely deemed to be acceptable as well -- unless someone of higher status were murdered by someone of lower status, in which case, frequently, the full force of ad hoc "justice" -- via lynch mob or other improvised means -- was often applied.

Murders among the poor and marginalized populations were "their problem," rarely troubling officials and The Powers That Be.

So long as these ideals of public order are maintained among those who hold the reins of power, so long will the killing and maiming by police continue. It is what they believe they are supposed to be doing. "Reform" really isn't the issue -- if the ideal stays the same. At this point, there is no sign that reform of the APD will even proceed, for APD is resisting even modest efforts to change the practices of the force, let alone reform the entire policing culture.

Yesterday, there was a protest at the Albuquerque mayor's office. Thirteen people were arrested, some of whom believe they have been stalked by Albuquerque police in the past for speaking out against the culture of impunity behind so much of the killing that's gone on. David Correia, one of the most outspoken members of the protest group, was charged with a felony, likely in order to shut him up.

The civic authorities are running scared. But so far, neither they nor the APD are willing to accept the inevitability of change.

Why Outdoors, and Why Specific Sites to Occupy Outdoors?

Occupation encampment at Westlake, Seattle WA.

I'm watching the Seattle GA right now on the Livestream. They have assembled in what is obviously Westlake Plaza -- after being evicted over night and this morning, with 10 or 12 arrests and confiscation of their camping gear and other property (according to reports, they will get their property back if they identify it and make a claim on the City.) They have been offered space at City Hall Plaza about 10 blocks away, but they are resisting conducting an Occupation there.

I'm fairly familiar with Seattle, but I didn't know where the City Hall was, never having any reason to go there. But it turns out that the City Hall complex is directly across the street from the Key Tower -- now the Seattle Municipal Building -- where I was working nearly every time I went to Seattle from 1998 to 2006 or so. The Bank of America Tower also looms darkly in the next block, and all of it is connected with underground access passages, shopping areas and restaurants. At least that's the way it was.

It's quite a remarkable complex of buildings, shopping areas, restaurants and so forth, with a very heavy population of executives -- both civil and corporate -- including a few banksters, I'm sure.

As I say, the distance between City Hall Plaza and Westlake Plaza is about 10 blocks on 5th Avenue, which is the main artery in the Downtown, and which is lined with theaters, hotels, galleries, and many high end retailers.

In other words, it's a perfect marching route to Westlake -- the only problem being a very steep uphill climb to get from City Hall Plaza to 5th Avenue.

But why are the Occupations outdoors at all? I still hear that question. "Why don't you get an office? A board. Raise funds. Make your mark the way all the other interest groups do? Lobby."

I would think the question answers itself, but apparently it doesn't. When I got this question the other night, I replied, "Organizations that are set up like that are everywhere, and some of them have been dealing with some of the same issues we're trying to deal with and have failed miserably. We're trying a different organizational model; it may not work, but the standard advocacy model doesn't work either, except to provide a cushy living for a handful of executives. That's the opposite of what we want."

When people say, "Get an office." I say "No." When people say, "Incorporate." I say "NO!" When people say, "You need a board of directors and a proper staff," I say "No." When people say, "You need to conduct a proper fundraising campaign," I say, "Why?" When people say, "No one will take you seriously if you don't look and act like the rest of the interest groups and follow the rules," I say, "They're taking us seriously precisely because we don't follow the rules."

Why outdoors? It's a matter of claiming public space for the public purposes of expression, debate, and preparing for petitioning for redress of grievance. The public space in question is often the city's central square (as in Sacramento) or an urban park (as in New York), or a park adjacent to civic centers (as in Los Angeles). In Seattle, the occupation chose a park that is in the middle of the shopping district, while they have been offered one that is adjacent to a very busy civic and banking area. It seems to me that the city's offered space is actually the better one for the purposes of bringing attention to corruption of government by corporate interest and money, but there are a couple of major problems with it. First, it apparently faces 4th Avenue rather than 5th Avenue. 4th is busy but not as busy as 5th, and 5th is altogether fancier. Second, and more importantly for the philosophy of Occupation, the city has offered the space at City Hall Plaza, whereas the Occupation has claimed the space at Westlake.

It is considered very important for the success of the Occupation Movement that the Occupiers claim and hold public space rather than request and receive space from civic authorities.

The evictions last night and earlier this week were of occupations that had claimed and held public space, and in some cases they had refused to move to offered space. That was true in Seattle and San Diego. I'm sure it's true elsewhere.

The Occupation-that-isn't-quite-an-Occupation in Sacramento is a daily gathering in the central square, waiting on the city to provide it either a permit or an use exemption in order to spend the night.

In Austin, the Occupation took over the steps at the City Hall, with -- they thought -- the permission of the city, but without a permit. Suddenly, the city discovered they had to "clean" the space and evicted the Occupation. They folded up their camp and took it down or across the street to await the completion of the power washing and then moved back, but they were told (if I recall correctly) that they were not allowed to sleep there.

Why is it necessary to sleep on site? This is a matter of holding the space and making clear the Occupiers' determination to stay and persist in the important work they've set for themselves. Public work that they are (mostly) doing in public.

So much of what's gone wrong in our oligarchic republic has to do with the fact that public business is often conducted behind closed doors, with a remarkable level of contempt for the public and the public interest, and essentially complete impunity. Ordinary people are locked up routinely for the most innocuous crimes ("failure to disperse" ring a bell?) while the high and the mighty just get richer...

How then do the People reclaim their rights as actual sovereigns of the nation? By playing the political game? Or by going outside and around it? By making a ruckus. And by coming up with a model of what ought to be rather than succumbing to what usually is.

Being outside is an emblem of truth, because the 99% are mostly outsiders to the halls of Power, not even recognized by the Powers That Be.

This is the basic rationale behind claiming, holding and using significant public spaces in the public interest for the work of the People. It is the rationale for not accepting space offered by civic authorities, for that then makes the Occupation a dependent of the civic authorities, dependent on their good will and continued cooperation.

OT: Off to the Hi Lo Country again

I'll be out of town for the next week, chilling as it were in the Hi Lo country of New Mexico. Oh that drive, down California's Central Valley on Hwy 99, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens country, large parts of it sucked up for suburbs during the Bubble and now forlorn and half-empty seeming and among the poorest regions in the country; then over the Tehachapis into the Mojave and through the scrub and the Joshua trees, the Panamints, and on to the Colorado River, a silver thread in the hazy distance. It's a desert, yes, but I've been chased by thunderstorms and torrential rains while driving through the Mojave. It's a trip.

It takes forever just to get out of California. It is as far from my starting point to the border with Arizona out of Needles as it is to my desitination in New Mexico from the Welcome to Arizona sign on the highway. A highway now called Interstate 40 but which parallels Route 66 most of its way, little remnants and reminders of the Mother Road all along the drive through Arizona and into New Mexico where the spirit of the Road lives as strongly now as ever.

There I'll plop myself down in our turn of the 20th century adobe, listen to the birds, do some fixing and cleaning, maybe write some things, go off to visit the ruins, maybe even go to Santa Fe -- haven't done that for a while, and every now and then venturing among the touristas to listen to their complaints about finding "nothing but art galleries" in Santa Fe can be bracing. Where else do tourists complain of too much art? I ask you.

As a friend refers to my expeditions to New Mexico, "Release and Relief."

Nothing much has changed with regard to the collapse of California's government; there is still no budget agreement; our hot-tubbin, stogie smokin gubna is still issuing his fruitless commands and demands, protestors still assemble at the Capitol -- sometimes even blockading parts of it, discommoding (at least for a little while) the routines of posturing and statement making of the higer mucky-mucks, and Dems still mewl and wring their hankies about how hard they're working to reach a compromise that Stogie-man with the Wrinkled Ass will accept.

It's nuts-making.

We're no longer doing Hospice Care at Home; glory be, the patient was discharged a couple of weeks ago, because she's made such an amazing recovery. They really didn't expect her to live more than a few weeks, and after 9 months, the hospice service said, "Well, she's not gonna die, is she? So let's put her in Home Care for a while, and take it from there."

The shift from Hospice to Home Care was smooth enough; it's basically the same, but for the fact that the visiting professionals are not on Vigil any more, and they really do have an interest now in getting her up and around, but I don't really think that's going to happen. She's still blind and very frail, becomes exhausted easily, and she continues to suffer from various ailments, some the consequences of old age, some due to her vulnerabilities from all the surgery and other procedures over the years. She's not returning to hearty hale health, but she is doing remarkably better than when she first came from the hospital last October. There are such things as miracles.

Meanwhile, since we're OT, a note about cats. Those who follow the blog know that our cat Mao died on New Year's Eve after an illness. He was deeply, profoundly missed as he still is. No other cat pal we've had over the years has formed the kind of bond we had with him.

So, a couple of months ago, we noted that a very beautiful and well-groomed tabby had seemingly moved into the garage (where we assumed she was going to have kittens, but she never did.) Then a fluffy black cat showed up. He had a red heart on his collar and after a while, I got him tame enough to pick him up and read what was on his collar; it was his name: Louie. How cute. Then a big black and white, huge, showed up. And a little black and white. The little black and white strongly resembled Mao, and she (not a he; she) marched right into the house and moved in. As if she'd always lived here and we were her guests.

And she's been here pretty much ever since. She's taken on many of Mao's characteristics, many of his places, many of his attitudes. It's quite an amazing transformation. We look on in awe.

All right, gotta finish packing, then it's back to the road. If there is an internet connection at my destination, I may be able to post about what the recession is continuing to do to that rural and thinly populated, somewhat isolated region of the old west. Last time I was there in March, it was obvious what kind of effects the economic collapse was having and it wasn't pretty.

Outlaws

When the History of this era is written, I'm pretty confident that the Bushevik Regime and all its operatives will be deemed an Outlaw regime. The question will be whether history will romanticise this set of American Outlaws or will they be condemned?

America loves its Outlaws. No matter how bad the Busheviks have been in real time, they have some supporters, not all of whom are drooling, braindead zombies.

After all, a whole cohort of financiers and others became incredibly rich under the Bush Regime, and most of them still have oodles of money with which to buy any kind of future history they want, regardless of the wreakage all around them.

But Outlaws they will be. They were put in office by an Outlaw Supreme Court majority, a majority whipped by the Court's most notorious Outlaw Justice, Antonin Scalia, a man who should have been impeached and then arrested long ago. But that didn't happen, and given all the hooey over letting bygones be bygones, water under the bridge, tut-tut, and not bringing any of the Busheviks and their running dogs and fellow travellers to account, it wouldn't be at all surprising if these Outlaws were held up as romantic idealists by writers of the future.

The stunning lawlessness of the Bush Regime will have quite a legacy, too. The formerly balky and deeply flawed Constitutional Republic is now a balky and deeply flawed Autocracy run out of the White House and its ancillaries and bunkers. That's unlikely to change any time in the near future, barring the upheaval of revolt and revolution -- something which still seems impossible in America thanks to the fact that most Americans simply don't care what kind of government they have.

And that's how these Outlaws are getting away with it.