The Derek Chauvin Murder Trial

 Finally justice?

No.

"The Police Just Went Nuts"

I've been reviewing some of the stories of police abuse coming out of literally everywhere since the start of the George Floyd protests. I thought I had been shocked to the core by police misconduct years and years ago and that nothing would come close to events I'd witnessed in person or virtually in years gone by. Little did I know.

The George Floyd murder-by-cop in Minneapolis triggered mass demonstrations in the streets all over the country and all over the world. It was an egregious -- and very deliberate -- act of police power over the black body of a man pleading for his life while that life was being crushed out of him by one officer whose knee on his neck wouldn't be removed until George Floyd was good and dead. Three other officers either participated in the murder or idled nearby doing nothing to intervene. All captured on video taken by bystanders, some of whom attempted to intervene but were blocked by officers.

I've seen similar scenes before, many times, but nothing quite as appalling in its tortuousness and murderous intent. Second and third degree murder charges have been laid against the officer whose knee eventually killed George Floyd and the other officers have been charged as accessories aiding and abetting, but the calls for first degree intentional murder charges have only increased as the anger against police brutality has led to massive demonstrations that continue to this day.

The police response in many cities has been grotesquely out of control. That lack of discipline and control is the essence of what is being protested, the reason why so many people are marching against police brutality, and over and over and over again, day in and day out, police are showing themselves to be unworthy of public trust or support.

One of numerous incidents in Philadelphia involved police firing chemical weapons and rubber bullets at thousands of protesters, many trapped on an embankment with nowhere to retreat, injuring hundreds, and arresting "dozens." The fourteen minute overhead video captures much of the scene, but doesn't really show the affect on so many.



This was perhaps the worst of what I've seen so far, but it's by no means unique. The police in many cities have adopted a hostile and deliberately cruel attitude toward protesters leading to constant abuse of the public, much of it documented on video, far too much of it defended by police chiefs and elected officials because somebody did something somewhere at some point, and order must be maintained.

We see this justification from the White House practically daily as the blowback from the "clearance" of protesters from DC's Lafayette Square on Monday using tear gas, munitions, mounted officers and brutality intensifies. All so Trump could pose in front of St. John's Church, holding aloft a book he claimed was a bible and then assemble his sycophants for more pictures before shambling back to the White House bunkers.

Damn,

There have been a few contrasting scenes of police trying to show solidarity with the protesters by marching with them, kneeling with them, expressing outrage at the murder of George Floyd, etc. But those are rare compared to the violence and yes, murder by police committed too often in too many places as unrest continues.

Our rulers like to try to shame China for the treatment of demonstrators in Hong Kong, but truly, Chinese police and troops in Hong Kong have been utterly restrained compared to the US. The world looks on in bemused horror.

I don't know how this episode of police outrage will be resolved, if it will. But many see it as the death rattle of a failed regime -- not simply the Trump regime, but the general apparatus of neoliberal rule. Maybe. We'll see.

In the meantime, given everything that's going on -- pandemic disease, economic collapse, wilding by police, looting by the overclass -- the next few months will be somewhat more than "interesting."

Stay well and safe.

The Riots This Time

They say it's different this time. The uprisings in the cities over the last few days show no signs of abating any time soon. Much damage and destruction so far, but observers say it's just the beginning. The rage has been building for years, the outlets are few, and a lot of people aren't going to take it any more. Well...

Those of us who have been down this road a few times aren't convinced yet that these uprisings will accomplish much in the end, at least not much that we could call positive. You never know, though. We live in interesting times. And chaos has reigned in this country for years. The riots are inevitable given the conditions and situation so many Americans endure. I think our rulers knew, too, that any spark could set off a conflagration.

Well the spark came in Minneapolis with the police murder on video of yet another black man, George Floyd. It was so egregious, I sometimes thought it was a deliberate provocation. The officer knew his actions were being recorded. He knew the video(s) would go viral. He knew he was killing his captive as he witnessed George Floyd's life slipping away beneath his crushing knee. He should have known, and I believe he did know, that his actions would trigger outrage and likely insurrection and riots.

Add in the widespread burden of the virus and economic collapse on marginal communities -- young people, non-white people, poor and near poor people especially in cities, etc -- and the wonder is that it hasn't happened before now.

But it is happening now.

Where and how it will end is anyone's guess.

I could speculate but for now, no. There will be time enough for that.

A Spate of Police Killings Hits the News

[Note: as this hiatus continues, I've been going to physical therapy to try to deal with my increasing left-side lameness. Mixed results: able to walk a bit better most of the time, but various hip and back pains following treatments suggest the onset of sciatica -- which the therapist acknowledged might be triggered. What a drag it is getting older...]


There's been a fairly regular spate of police killings in the news lately, reminding me a bit of the coverage uptick after Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, MO, all those years ago. (Can it be almost four years now?) Of course, it was the shooting of James Boyd in Albuquerque in March of 2014 that set off numerous protests, not just of his killing by police, but of dozens of killings over the previous few years. I was involved in some of those protests though not as much as I might have wanted to be -- thanks to my lameness even then.

The killing of Stephon Clark in his grandmother's Sacramento backyard was very disturbing. I didn't know him, but I know the Meadowview neighborhood where it happened, and it's easy to imagine how terrifying the whole thing has been. Meadowview is not an easy place to live, but many people who live there have no choice. They have been pushed out of other neighborhoods, either through gentrification or because of some stain on their records.

I understand Stephon's grandmother had lived in the neighborhood for decades, and for all the trouble with the law Stephon had been in, he was a potential community leader with a magnetic personality and a vibrant presence who was "turning his life around."

This is a common enough story in many communities of color throughout the nation. What's also common is that up and coming black male community leaders are intentionally or accidentally targeted for elimination.

This seems to be an "accidental" elimination perpetrated by a couple of panicked cops on the hunt for someone who was reported to be breaking car, truck and house windows. They found a Negro who they thought had a gun and blasted away at him until he was a riddled mess of bullet holes and then let him bleed out until he was dead, dead, dead.

In New York, Saheed Vassell, well-know to be a harmless kook in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, was shot down pretty much on sight by specialist crew of killer cops deployed because of reports of a Negro with a gun threatening people on the streets.

In American society, cops consider an armed Negro or the report of an armed Negro -- doesn't have to be with a gun -- to be an existential threat to be neutralized promptly. Saheed was reported to have a gun. He didn't, but it didn't matter. The reports were sufficient, and apparently cops are not trained or required to ascertain the truth of the matter; in the case of Saheed, they were deployed to kill, which is what they did, BAM, BAM, BAM. Dead.

There was a recent incident in Portland, OR, in which a deranged white man, said to be armed with a knife, was being hunted by police based on accusations of a carjacking earlier in the day and a wreck of said car on the poor side of town. Man enters homeless shelter, shirtless and acting bizarre. He has a knife and (apparently) is threatening to kill himself with said knife. Police converge, man is cornered and (according to reports) man starts stabbing himself in the neck. Police "deploy lethal force." Man is "deceased."

And so it goes. It should be stated this goes on all the time. More than a thousand times a year, every year (looks to be even more this year) are killed by police, and some of these killings become news items that garner a lot of attention nationally and internationally. The US has a widely recognized problem with gun violence, police killings and mass shootings, a problem that seems completely intractable on some levels, is rather easily dealt with on others.

Police killings are an issue because the officers involved are almost never held to criminal account, are rarely even reprimanded by their departments. Many times, officers who kill -- regardless of circumstances -- are rewarded and hailed as heroes, in part because police consultants like David Grossman and William Lewinsky have been going around the country for decades telling police that killing the Bad Guy is their highest accomplishment, and they'll have the "best sex of their lives" afterwards. No lie.

Many of these killings are nothing but summary executions disproportionately afflicting black,  brown, and poor white subjects, many suffering mental health crises for which no treatment or services are available. Obviously something is wrong but supposedly nothing can be done about it.

Much like periodic episodes of mass shooting, it's just something Americans have to live with as "the price of freedom." Or something.

It's happened so much for so long, I believe we're dealing with deliberate, cynical and cruel policies of murder/mayhem that are intended to keep the Rabble in fear and helplessness... Over and over again, the Rabble are shown that they cannot rely on police or officials to protect them; over and over again, they are shown that they are helpless in the face of American Gunners. Over and over again, they are shown that they are targets of whoever wants to target them, and there is nothing they can do about it.

So here we are, again.

And what do we do about it? Ideally we change it, but our policy makers don't seem to be interested. They're satisfied with things as they are (except for the movements and demonstrations that arise). A relatively steady number of police killings, infrequent but increasingly deadly mass murders, constant low-level gang and other murders, constant suicide by gun, all of it just fine with our Overclass -- because it never (or very rarely) affects them. It is always something for the Lower Orders to deal with. Too bad if they can't.

I'm too old and infirm to have much of an effect on these things anymore, but I hope and pray the young folks will make the changes necessary. As many people have testified in the recent cases, "We know what's wrong and we know what to do about it."

Yep.

On The Apology For Past Racial Policing

I've been fuming about this for a while. It's not that the statement by the head of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (a new outfit for me) isn't welcome, it is that it frames the problem of abusive policing as historic, not current, and it essentially absolves police themselves of responsibility, blaming vague social and political forces for the policies and actions of departments and officers.

That argument can be made, but it is just that, an argument. It's not an apology, it's not a correction, it's not restitution, it's not reform.

Here's what the statement said:

There have been times when law enforcement officers, because of the laws enacted by federal, state, and local governments, have been the face of oppression for far too many of our fellow citizens. In the past, the laws adopted by our society have required police officers to perform many unpalatable tasks, such as ensuring legalized discrimination or even denying the basic rights of citizenship to many of our fellow Americans.

While this is no longer the case, this dark side of our shared history has created a multigenerational—almost inherited—mistrust between many communities of color and their law enforcement agencies.

Many officers who do not share this common heritage often struggle to comprehend the reasons behind this historic mistrust. As a result, they are often unable to bridge this gap and connect with some segments of their communities.

While we obviously cannot change the past, it is clear that we must change the future. We must move forward together to build a shared understanding. We must forge a path that allows us to move beyond our history and identify common solutions to better protect our communities.

For our part, the first step in this process is for law enforcement and the IACP to acknowledge and apologize for the actions of the past and the role that our profession has played in society’s historical mistreatment of communities of color.

At the same time, those who denounce the police must also acknowledge that today’s officers are not to blame for the injustices of the past. If either side in this debate fails to acknowledge these fundamental truths, we will be unlikely to move past them.

Overcoming this historic mistrust requires that we must move forward together in an atmosphere of mutual respect. All members of our society must realize that we have a mutual obligation to work together to ensure fairness, dignity, security, and justice.

It is my hope that, by working together, we can break this historic cycle of mistrust and build a better and safer future for us all.

The lead in to this statement asserted that thousands of police officers have been killed and hundreds of thousands injured in the line of duty "over the years," and this apparently is to make palatable the coming "apology" among the Brethren in Blue. If you want to play the Dead Game, it might be worthwhile to point out that "over the years" hundreds of thousands of Americans have been killed by police and millions have been wounded. Families have been ripped to pieces and whole communities have been oppressed and destroyed by abusive and violent policing. The relatively few officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty, generally more in car wrecks, accidents, and heart attacks than by any other means, cannot begin to compare to the number of lives lost in civil society by the actions of police.

To cast this as historical and ignore the current situation simply beggars belief.

But that's where we are in this Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

That's where we are. And a number of commentators have pointed out that this statement is "better than nothing." "It's a start..."

I've pointed out that -- statistically -- we're in a less violent period of policing and social violence than at almost any other period of our history. It doesn't seem so in part because there is far more available documentation of police violence now than there has been in the past. Some of it is truly horrifying, and so much of it demonstrates that police too often shoot or otherwise engage in violence when objectively there is very little or no threat to them or anyone else, and their use of violence is simply not necessary.

They do it because it is expected of them and because they can.

They can do essentially anything in the line of duty and get away with it so long as they use the Magic Words, "fearing for my life and the safety of others".

That's what's wrong. Police are jacked up to fear literally everyone and every thing. Their lives are always in danger from some shadowy source; the safety of others is constantly at risk. Even when there is no objective threat. They fear that something might happen and react to the potential rather than the actual threat.

When force protection is the prime directive, as it seems to be, then harming and killing those who are perceived as threats becomes the means to implement the directive.

And it so happens that men and boys of color are perceived as definitional and existential threats to police officers, far more than white men or most women.

The perception does not match the reality, but that doesn't matter. According to the law and much police training, the officer's perception at the time is all that matters -- so long as it conforms with a mutable standard of "reasonableness." That standard is that another officer would perceive the situation and the necessity to use force (lethal or non lethal) in the same way. If all of them are trained to perceive black and brown men as existential threats of course they're going to see the situation and the need to use force the same way. Even though there may be no objective threat at all.

When their chief requires them to use force, including lethal force, whenever they perceive a threat -- which might be nothing more than disobedience -- it's no surprise that's what officers do. They follow commands -- for if they don't, they'll be disciplined or fired. Under those circumstances and rules of engagement, it's better for the officer to use force, even if the situation is dubious, than risk the wrath of their commanders for not using force.

It puts civilians in a bind, because under many circumstances, there is no way for them to comply to avoid the use of force against them. As we've seen, in some circumstances, black males purported  to be threats, not actual threats at all, have been shot and killed on sight, simply because someone said they were threatening. In other cases, black males who do not immediately obey confusing or conflicting commands are shot and killed. Black men "armed" with cell phones or packages or nothing at all are shot and killed and the officers who kill under such circumstances face little or no consequence. "Reaching" for anything -- including ID pr a cell phone -- is cause enough for summary execution.

We can go on and on and on listing the many ways a black or brown man can be legally murdered by police. It happens essentially every day.

Hundreds are killed every year -- God only knows how many are injured -- who are objectively no threat at all, except to the fevered and fearful perceptions of police officers who kill them.

Even most of those who are objective threats do not "need" killing. I've said and I will repeat that police killings can be cut by 90% or more -- which some cities have done (prominently, New York City) by changing the rules and the authorities under which police use force, including lethal force.

It's not rocket science. It can be done.

To apologize (sort of) for historic injustices is fine, but to do so without acknowledging the current problem of racialized and violent policing gets us nowhere. To assert that the situation isn't as bad as it looks, since so relatively few individuals are abused or killed by police -- relative to the number of police encounters overall, for example -- is beside the point when it is possible and necessary to further reduce abusive and violent policing to the point where it is essentially nonexistent.

Ideally, police should be modeling 'good behavior' not violent and abusive behavior. I would say that for the most part, 'good behavior' is what they try to show in most of their encounters with the public. Most officers try not to be overtly racist, abusive or violent most of the time. Most of their encounters are resolved peacefully-- or at least nonviolently.

The excreptions tend to involve young men of color far more often than white men or women of any color, or they involve disobedience, unsubstantiated reports by callers to 911, misunderstandings of police commands*, misperceptions of threat by police officers, inability to obey due to mental or physical problems and/or (ab)use of substances, or some combination of these and other factors.

[*Note: police should not be in the business of issuing "commands" to civilians. It is completely the wrong relationship between the People and those charged with serving and protecting said People. Officers follow the commands of their chiefs and supervisors, they should not be issuing commands to the public.]

The fact is that there is a current and ongoing problem of abusive and violent policing, a good deal of which grows out of the historic patterns and practices of police departments. They started in many instances as slave catchers and militias for the purpose of chastising Indians and other undesirables. That's kind of hard-wired into many police departments. Apologizing for history is fine, but it's not enough. Corrective action is necessary, and there's no indication that this association of Chiefs of Police recognize that.

That is not to say that there is no recognition anywhere within the police culture. In fact, recognition that correction is necessary is relatively widespread among police chiefs. And it is strenuously resisted among police officer unions -- whose members feel threatened every time they put on the uniform, and who, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, assert they are under assault every moment of every day.

Resolution of that contrast of perception may not be possible, though certainly many officers and chiefs are trying to find common ground.

The "national conversation" about race and abusive policing has been going on -- and on and on -- for years, and it seems always to be stuck in the same place, as the dead continue to pile up. There have been changes in some police departments that reduce the killing, but in others, there's no change, and the number of dead at police hands is still about 100 a month, year in and year out. To change that, requires a goal -- to cut the number killed by police in half year by year until the number is reduced by 90% or more.

It can be done.

But the goal has never been set let alone met in more than a few jurisdictions. It must become a national goal.

The chiefs have to set the goal for their departments.

It's not about victory, it's about justice...

The trial of Dominique Perez and Keith Sandy, acknowledged killers of homeless, schizophrenic camper James Boyd in the Sandia Mountain Foothills of Albuquerque, ended in a hung jury yesterday. Whether they will be retried depends on the wishes and interests of the incoming DA who won't be installed until January.

Their mug shots -- Keith Sandy,  L, Dominique Perez, R

Charming duo, aren't they? Actually they were, I won't lie about it. When they took the stand in their own defense, they came across as a couple of choirboys, no pun intended, who would never hurt a fly in anger or intentional malice. They were (wait for it)

JUST DOING THEIR JOBS



when they shot and killed James Boyd that chilly afternoon March 16, 2014, setting off a roiling series of protests and demands for police reform in Albuquerque, including an end to the killing spree APD had been on for years. I played a very minor supporting role in the efforts to bring some kind of accountability to the police department and an end to the killing, and I reported some of it here. My involvement in these efforts over the years, in both Albuquerque and Sacramento has caused some strain in my household because Ms Ché, a retired court official and the granddaughter of a sheriff's deputy, strongly supports the police; I, on the other hand, am the son and grandson of attorneys, and my uncle was charged with murder in the death of his wife -- in a highly political trial that ended first in a hung jury, then in acquittal.

So we have a disagreement about these things, Ms. Ché and I. While she respects my point of view and has actually been very supportive in my efforts, she rather vehemently disagrees with me. To her credit, she does not denounce those I've worked with to bring accountability and an end to police violence. But she does see these incidents through the prism of her own experience in court, and through the eyes of the police officers she's worked with and come to know very well. I've known some of her police pals, and for the most part have found them to be fine, upstanding gentlemen -- who wouldn't hurt a fly out of anger or intentional malice. If they ever engaged in violent policing or use of lethal force (so far as I know, none of them did), they would only be doing their jobs.

And this is the problem of violent policing in a nutshell. When it happens -- and statistics suggest it happens much less often than it once did -- it is almost always regarded by departments, officials, and the public as "just doing their jobs." In other words, it is what officers are expected and required to do under the circumstances.

Prosecutor Randi McGinn asked after the mistrial was declared yesterday whether this was the kind of policing the people of Albuquerque wanted, whether "shoot first" anticipating that someone might be a threat was the right and proper way to approach people like Boyd who was clearly in another world but who was not objectively a threat to officers, or should there be another way for police as representatives of the community, to approach people like Boyd.

In a way, she's back in the past, because the APD policies in these matters have changed radically since the Boyd shooting. In fact, the whole approach to his minor offense of camping in the mountains and his insistence on self defense with folding knives would be significantly different by APD and support staff than it was on the day he was killed.

Crisis intervention would be allowed to continue until there was a successful resolution. The ROP (Repeat Offender Project) team that Keith Sandy was part of has been disbanded. If SWAT (Perez was a SWAT officer) had been called at all (not necessarily) they would not have been obvious nor would they necessarily have been setting snipers ready to kill at a moment's notice. The K-9 officer whose actions helped precipitate the killing might not have been there at all.

And so on. Rather than setting up to kill this man, APD would be doing everything possible to preserve his life. That would be their jobs.

That is a radical change, and that is part of the change we were after.

Three of the jurors believed Sandy and Perez were guilty of 2nd degree murder, 9 voted to acquit. 

The jury told the judge that they were hopelessly deadlocked, and the judge declared a mistrial. 

The matter goes back to the DA's office. Randi McGinn, the prosecutor, was a special appointee, not the DA. The DA, Kari Brandenburg, recused herself when she was accused of conflicts in this case, and she appointed McGinn to conduct the prosecution. Brandenburg chose not to run again for DA this year so she will be replaced by Raul Torrez in January. Whether he will attempt to retry these ex-officers is anyone's guess, but I suspect he won't, partly based on the fact that APD has undertaken significant reforms since Boyd's killing, and they are currently under a DoJ consent decree to address their issues of unconstitutional policing and other failings -- including one of the worst killing sprees of any police department in the country (based on population.)

McGinn said it's up to the community to decide whether they want police training to emphasize "anticipatory" killing (ie: neutralizing a potential threat) or focus more on preserving the life of even a suspect like Boyd. I think that conversation has already been had. It's not subject to a vote. The community came out strongly in favor of doing everything possible to preserve a life, including that of Mr. Boyd. Thus policies that led to Boyd's death -- and the deaths of many others prior to and briefly after Boyd's killing -- have been changed significantly. Albuquerque Police Department now kills very few individuals -- three this year so far, compared to more than a dozen per year in the past -- and they deploy crisis intervention much more often than in the past.

The problem of police killing in Albuquerque and the rest of New Mexico has not gone away, however. While APD doesn't kill the way it used to, other agencies, particularly US Marshal, Bernalillo County Sheriffs, and New Mexico State Police continue to kill in a pattern that follows prior "force protection" models rather than "sanctity of life" models. They never had as high a rate of killing as APD, so it didn't seem like they were as trigger happy as they are. But now that APD has taken a very different approach to these matters, the other law enforcement agencies with jurisdiction in Albuquerque who haven't changed their approach seem to be much more violent and lethal -- though their actual rate of killing is probably not any higher than it was before APD changed its ways. 

It's a never ending challenge to maintain both accountability by police forces and to reduce their use of violence and lethal force. Police unions resist strenuously any effort that would interfere with officers' use of force or require accountability by police. In some cases -- Seattle and Oakland come to mind -- they refuse to abide by rules of conduct they don't agree with. This is in effect a mutinous action that should lead to discipline or dismissal, but until recently, it hasn't. APD vocally resisted reforms, but in the end accommodated them fairly well for which they are to be congratulated. 

I've pointed out the drop in killing by APD in several internet fora, only to be met by skepticism because it hasn't been reported in major online  media. True enough. It hasn't even been reported locally. But it's true, as any review of the data (as collated by Killed by Police and the Guardian) will demonstrate. But that's work, and few want to bother with it if they don't have to.

Meanwhile, the trial of Sandy and Perez did not end with an acquittal, which is what I thought it would. There may or may not be a new trial, but if there isn't one, it will not mean that these men were acquitted of murder, only that the charges were dismissed.

I can only hope that the reforms instituted by APD will continue in force and that violent policing will be curbed nationwide.

But it's a long and exhausting struggle. I'm old and ill, and I'm not at all sure how much more I can do. Time for the young to step up...

Killer Cop Trial in ABQ Goes To The Jury

I've been periodically watching the trial of Dominique Perez and Keith Sandy on the Livestream for the past two weeks or so. These are the APD officers who shot and killed James Boyd in the Sandia foothills on March 16, 2014, triggering an outpouring of public rage against the constant killing APD had long been engaged in. The protests were large and sustained, and while there was a spate of killings by police in Albuquerque following the Boyd execution in the mountain foothills, eventually the DoJ came down hard on APD for their infamous 'pattern and practice' of 'unconstitutional policing.'

It took a while, but things have changed, and we haven't seen another killing (by APD) like Boyd's execution for a couple of years now, and the rate of killings by APD has been drastically cut. That isn't to say that people aren't still killed by law enforcement in Albuquerque. The rate is still rather high -- though not as high as it once was -- because other agencies such as US Marshals are doing most of he killing these days. For whatever reason, they appear to immune to accountability, but that's another issue for another time.

Perez and Sandy were originally charged with Murder 1 by discredited Bernalillo County DA Kari Brandenburg in January 2015. This was the first time she had ever charged any police officer in the death of a civilian -- after 16 years in office and dozens and dozens of police killings many of which were judged to be "unconstitutional."

But the combination of massive protests, a growing national reputation for a police department out of control, the economic impact of people staying away from Albuquerque and New Mexico because of the poor reputation of the police force, and the scathing DoJ report on the manifest failures of the Albuquerque Police Department spurred her into action, action for which she has been decried by some, praised by others.

In the end, she withdrew from the prosecution under pressure, appointing another attorney as special prosecutor, Randi McGinn. McGinn has a reputation for going hard against police misconduct, but watching her performance at this trial, I have to wonder about her level of competence. She seemed poorly prepared, disorganized, and at a loss when a blizzard of objections by the defense were sustained by the judge. According to what the judge said during arguments over jury instructions, McGinn was trying to apply a civil case standard to this criminal trial, and it didn't work. That was an interesting comment, though I'm not sure the judge was correct. It looked to me like McGinn wasn't thoroughly prepared and she had only very modest backup. In other words, it was a sketchy prosecution from the get-go. 

On the other hand, the defense was thoroughly prepared and appeared to be very competent and in charge. It sounds sexist to say since both lead defense attorneys were men, but they had a very competent and prepared woman on their team whose skill at examining and cross examining witnesses was excellent. Nevertheless, the male lead defense attorneys were loud and belligerent, and their constant objections essentially forced the trial to favor the defense. The prosecution hardly objected at all, and most of their objections were overruled.

So. Ultimately the two killers (no one denied they killed Boyd) testified in their own defense and both came across as reasonably decent men who were "just doing their job." Which was of course to kill.

Perez was a Marine who'd served two tours in Iraq. He'd been badly injured in an IED explosion during his second tour, and when he got out of the Marines he decided to try for a position with the Albuquerque Police Department SWAT team. He was hired and had been with SWAT for a number of years when the "Boyd incident" happened in 2014.

Sandy had a more checkered past. He was fired from the State Police for double dipping which was considered dishonesty. He applied to APD as a 'lateral' transfer, and because APD had lowered its standards, he was promptly hired and put on the ROP team. ROP -- Repeat Offender Project -- has been disbanded due to intense criticism by the DoJ in their report on APD, but at the time of Boyd's killing, it was notorious as essentially a death squad. But then, given the rate of homicide by APD in those days, the whole department was seen by many as a death squad.

SWAT was more prestigious and advanced, and they had a wider range of options when confronting the Bad Guys, but they were no slouch when it came to killing. On the other hand, ROP was more informal and testosterone poisoned, and their whole reason for being appeared to pivot on their use of firearms no matter what. The dead piled up.

In Boyd's case, both Sandy and Perez were on the mountain as "lethal cover" for other officers -- or so they said -- who were preparing to arrest Boyd and take him into custody using force. It appears that Perez was assigned to the mountain by his SWAT supervisor whereas Sandy assigned himself, though that's not entirely clear. He was in communication with his supervisors, but I didn't hear whether they told him to go to the mountain or he decided to go on his own and informed his supervisors while he was en route. There was already another sniper on the mountain ready to take out Boyd if and when the order came.

Boyd was confronted by open space officers on the morning of March 16, 2014, due to a complaint lodged by a nearby homeowner. According to his somewhat strange testimony, Boyd had been camping on the hillside for a month, and this homeowner was increasingly alarmed because he was... there. This homeowner's garage became the assembly point for the dozens of officers who eventually made it to the mountain to observe and attempt to get Boyd to come down. The open space officers were unsuccessful in getting Boyd off the mountain, and I believe that when they confronted Boyd, he used his two knives to defend himself. He pulled them out, at any rate, and the officers withdrew. 

They recognized, however, that Boyd was not in his right mind, and a CIT officer was called to the scene to negotiate with Boyd and to attempt to bring him down from the mountain. Other officers were called to the scene as back up. The crisis officer was making slow progress with Boyd when he was called off by SWAT(?) officers arriving on scene. They had their own negotiator, though it's not entirely clear that he engaged in any negotiations with Mr. Boyd. There were other instances I'm aware of where SWAT "negotiations" consisted entirely of shouted orders and commands, leading to the death by sniper fire of the suspect/subject.

The crisis officer who was pulled off the mountain testified that he had negotiated hundreds of times with mentally ill and otherwise in-crisis individuals, and every one of those cases was resolved "successfully" -- meaning that none of them led to the death of the subject.

Boyd was 38 and was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. He'd been in and out of mental health care facilities, homeless shelters, jail and prison for much of his life. He'd been convicted of aggravated assault on police officers -- but the circumstances weren't exactly cut and dried. Apparently his sojourn on the mountain in his own camp was precipitated by an incident at the last homeless shelter where he'd been staying. He got into some kind of altercation with another resident, and it led to his ejection from the facility. Camping alone on the mountainside was his choice apparently, and for the month he'd been there, he had not gotten into any reported trouble. But the nearby homeowner could see his camp and for whatever reason, he was becoming increasingly alarmed. Eventually, he called the city's non-emergency number for someone to go out and check on Boyd. That call led to Boyd's death. I doubt that was the intent of the caller, but you never know.

Boyd was reluctant to leave his camp, in part, apparently, because it was a successful home-place for him in contrast to all the other places where been and wound up in conflict with others. Nothing like that was happening to him in this campsite. He was clearly delusional in his conversations with the police officers who came to get him off the mountain, but he was also quite clear that he didn't want to leave his camp and that he was afraid of the police -- because, he said, they were there to kill him.

Initially they weren't, but as the day wore on, and more and more officers arrived armed to the teeth, it became more and more obvious that's exactly what they were there for, at least to Boyd. When officers started pointing their guns at Boyd, he pulled out his knives in self-defense. This back and forth went on for hours. Eventually, it appears that officers decided to affect Boyd's arrest before it got dark.

To do this they formulated a plan of action that apparently wasn't communicated to all the officers on the mountain (there were 19, I heard, when Boyd was shot, 43 had been involved throughout the day). Keith Sandy was apparently the chief planner and he would be the one to implement the final act.

 The plan was to disorient Boyd with a flash-bang, then loose a dog on him and fire a taser shotgun to disable him. He would then be taken into custody. The plan went wrong. Sandy tossed the flash-bang which landed some distance from Boyd. He didn't appear to react. The taser shotgun had no perceptible effect and may have missed Boyd altogether. The dog was loosed, but when it got close to Boyd, he pulled out his knives. The dog turned back, and as its handler went after the dog, Sandy fired at Boyd with his rifle. Two shots struck Boyd in his arms gravely wounding him. As Boyd began to fall, Perez then fired at Boyd, striking him in the back. Boyd fell to the ground paralyzed and bleeding. Officers approached shouting at him to "drop the knives!" He said he couldn't move. The dog was loosed on him again and he was mauled. He was shot with beanbag rounds. Orders continued to be shouted at him and he continued to say he couldn't move.

Eventually, brave officers approached his body and kicked the knives out of his hands. In time, paramedics were called up from their staging area at the foot of the mountain. Boyd was given first aid and transported to the hospital where one of his arms was amputated in an effort to save his life, but his other wounds were so severe, and he'd lost so much blood, it was essentially too late and he died the next day.

The prosecution claimed that Boyd was not an imminent threat to officers when he was shot, nor was he an imminent threat at any time during the confrontation. He was a potential threat, in that he was armed with knives and he said he would use them. But he was never close enough to officers to carry out that threat, and he never moved toward officers as if to attack them, even after he had been subjected to the flash-bang grenade, the dog, and the taser shotgun. He was actually in the process of surrendering when he was attacked by officers. The officers advanced on him, he didn't advance on them, and thus the officers were solely responsible for putting themselves in danger. Boyd had done nothing to endanger the officers.

Thus, murder.

Unfortunately, the final argument -- that the officers had caused their own danger -- was the one disallowed by the court. That, the judge said, was a civil case argument, inappropriate in a criminal trial. What effect that will have on the jury, I don't know. My sense all along, however, has been that there was little likelihood of conviction. "Just doing their job" has long been an adequate defense in court for police officers.

We'll see...

Doing What Needs to Be Done to Reduce Violent Policing

Americans have become accustomed to the rat-a-tat-tat of police shootings and to the stories of other means police use to "control" suspects -- sometimes unto death. Americans are also accustomed to the protest that frequently arises from this or that act of violent policing.

Efforts to control or reduce violent policing have been under way for many years in many communities, and they've been met with resistance from line officers and their unions, from police chiefs and sheriffs, and often from the justice system itself (DAs and courts) which will typically defend and exonerate officers no matter what they do or how egregious their violence toward the public.

And yet progress has been made, slow and painful as it may be.

Ways to reduce police violence and use of lethal force are well-known and understood. Some of those ways and means have been widely adopted, but we still see almost daily examples of men and women in crisis, particularly if they are black or brown, violently abused by police or summarily executed by officers who ritualistically cite "fearing for my life and the safety of others" to justify and excuse what they have done.

Simply being in psychological or emotional crisis and being black or brown can be sufficient to trigger the deadly fear response in officers, and almost always that fear is sufficient to officially justify use of whatever force the officer deems necessary.

There can be no second guessing of the officer's split-second decision to use lethal force or any other force necessary to control the subject.

We see it over and over again, practically daily, and many Americans are fine with it. Since they believe that police violence would never be directed at them why should they worry or be concerned about police violence directed at others?

Often this means that white-folks don't care if police are violent or deadly toward disobedient or otherwise recalcitrant black and brown individuals. It's what they deserve. If only they would obey, nothing bad would happen to them. And yet we see over and over again, that's not necessarily true at all. Obedience will not necessarily protect an individual who's been targeted by police for execution. People are shot and killed or tasered and killed while in the process of obeying police commands. It's simply a fact. There are too many examples documented to continue to believe that "obedience = safety."

It doesn't.

The problem is not so much the disobedience of individuals as it is that police officers are trained and conditioned to experience the disobedience of some individuals (particularly black and brown men) as existential threats to their lives and others' safety. Obedience can be interpreted by officers in exactly the same way because of their training and conditioning. When they determine that an individual is a subject or suspect, everything that individual does or doesn't do is subject to being interpreted as a threat.

Police are trained and conditioned to neutralize threats when they perceive them, and the only standard is the officer's perception at the moment he or she chooses to use force, lethal or otherwise. There is a "reasonable" standard, but it is limited to what another officer in the same situation would perceive and do. When they are all trained and conditioned in the same way, they are likely to perceive threats and act on them in the same way. Consequently the reasonableness standard for use of force based on officer perception is no protection for individuals subjected to use of force.

This is due largely to court decisions and police department policies which deny civilians ('subjects') the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or indeed any rights at all that an officer is bound to respect, when the officer perceives a threat from the individual.

How do we get past that? In so many cases recently -- but we can cite similar cases going back many years -- the use of lethal force against individuals who do not present an objective threat is practically routine.

One case I've featured is that of Joseph Mann in Sacramento. He was shot and killed in July by two jacked up officers who raced to the scene apparently specifically to "neutralize" the subject. The problem with their action -- which included trying to run him over with their vehicle and then gunning him down when that proved unsuccessful -- was that Mann was not an objective threat to anyone, not the officers on scene, certainly not to the officers who killed him, and not to bystanders or pedestrians in the vicinity. He was not perceived to be a threat by other officers on the scene, at least not to the extent that he needed to be "neutralized" -- euphemism for killing.

His threat matrix was that he was armed with a small knife, he was disobedient, and attempted to elude police. He was falsely accused of many overt threats toward police during the five minutes or so he was being pursued by them, but apart from tossing a mug or thermos at a pursuing police car,  he never demonstrated an actual threat toward police or anyone else.

And until the two officers who killed him arrived on the scene, the other officers were trying to defuse the situation, de-escalate the confrontation, and bring Mr. Mann into custody non-violently.

They had really only begun their efforts when the two killers arrived.

De-escalation in cases of mental or emotional crisis includes such things as:

Calm the situation, by using the following tactics:

 Request backup.

 Move slowly.

 When possible, eliminate emergency lights and sirens and disperse any crowd that may have gathered.



 Assume a quiet nonthreatening manner when approaching and conversing with the individual.



 If possible, avoid physical contact if no violence or destructive acts have taken place.



 If possible, explain intended actions before taking action.

 Take time to assess the situation.

 Provide reassurance that officers are there to help.

 Give the person time to calm down. Communicate with the person:

 Keep sentences short.



 Talk with the individual in an attempt to determine what is bothering that person.

 Acknowledge the person's feelings



 Ask if the person is hearing voices and, if so, what they are saying.

 Avoid topics that may agitate the person.

 Allow time for the person to consider questions and be prepared to repeat them.

Additionally, POST trains police officers to “not threaten the individual with arrest or in any other manner,” explaining that “threats may create additional fright, stress, or potential aggression.”

This is all well-known and understood and is standard training for officers in their interaction with individuals showing signs of crisis or mental illness. There is no mystery about it. And yet over and over again, police use lethal force rather than these de-escalation tactics. They do so because they know they can -- and can get away with it -- on the one hand, and because they are conditioned to see the subject (no longer a human being) as an existential threat, no matter the objective reality. On the other hand, officers who are allowed to use crisis intervention and de-escalation techniques, as well as mental health professionals who use these techniques, are almost always able to defuse situations involving mentally ill or in-crisis individuals without resort to violence.

In other words, fear, conditioning, and the expectations of threat -- not the actuality of it -- drive most officers' inappropriate use of force.

It's an induced form of cowardice that's masquerading as courage.

Other officers on the scene of Mann's killing were frustrated by Mann's failure to obey and his attempts to elude them, but they did not appear to be in fear. They were protected by their vehicles, for one thing, and they were always at a safe distance from Mr. Mann. They had no cause to fear for their lives, and as for the safety of others the situation appeared to be non-threatening as well. There were a few other people on the street, some of whom got quite close to Mr. Mann, and he is not seen to threaten them in any way. He may not even have been aware of them.

911 reports, while apparently false about his possession of a gun, and they did not claim that Mann was threatening anyone with his knife. They said he was tossing it in the air and catching it, and the only claim was that he was acting strangely, was probably mentally ill, and callers said they were concerned because of the presence of children in the area.

They also reported that Joseph Mann was black.

Which may have been the determining factor in his death.

What I want to know is whether someone in the department ordered the killers to do their job and kill Joseph Mann. Given the way they raced to the scene with the intent to administer great bodily harm to him and when they were unsuccessful, they killed him, I have a strong suspicion that they were ordered to do what they did, regardless of anything else. It happens more often than we know, and there are very few mitigations to protect the public. There are other means to reduce violence and death by police apart from simply abiding by policies already in place. I'll try to get to some of those in another post.

Cops Who Shouldn't Be On The Street

While I'm all but certain that Keith Sandy and Dominique Perez (executioners of James Boyd in Albuquerque in March of 2014) will be acquitted of murder, it's unlikely either one will go back to policing. The behavior of Albuquerque police has changed for the better since that killing, and neither one of them would be given the kinds of assignments they had on chilly hillside in March. For one thing, crisis intervention would be allowed to continue without the necessity of cover (as those engaged in negotiations would be a safe distance away from their subject), SWAT or other heavily armed response teams would not be visible, perhaps not even on site, and threats of bodily harm, expressed or implied, would not be made to Mr. Boyd.

Meanwhile, we have seen situations all over the country in which black men in crisis have been gunned down by trigger happy police who seem eager to bag them a trophy. It's insane. In some of these cases, the cops are clearly crazier than the men they kill.

One of those incidents happened in Sacramento in July when two crazed cops shot and killed Joseph Mann on Del Paso Boulevard in front of witnesses and cameras. As I reported previously, the Sacramento Police Department issued a narrative filled with lies and fabrications on the day of the killing, and it has only been through persistent pressure by Mann's family and the Sacramento Bee that something closer to the truth has come out. SPD was determined to withhold video of the incident, for example, in order to "protect" the "investigation," but as long as video was unavailable to the public, the SPD was free to spin the incident narrative to their advantage.

Their (false) story was that an erratic, disobedient Negro armed with a gun and a knife was reported by residents of North Sacramento who were scared. SPD said that this crazy Negro refused orders to drop his weapons and charged officers with his knife. One officer was injured in pursuit of him. This officer had to be hospitalized. Mann was pursued on foot by two other officers and was shot and killed when he lunged at them with his knife.

Almost none of this story was true.

A citizen video, taken by a witness, was released by Mann's family's attorney in August. It did not show the shooting itself, and some of it was shaky and difficult to decipher because it was taken at a distance, but it strongly indicated that the SPD narrative was false. Throughout this video, Mann attempts to get away from cops, he does not lunge at them or charge them. He does not obey them nor does he threaten anyone. Police issue "commands" via loudspeaker. A number of police vehicles arrive on the scene and they attempt to corral Mr. Mann as he attempts to elude them. They do not get out of their vehicles, nor do they pursue him on foot until just before he is killed. Officers on foot are seen to come from somewhere unknown, rushing up to Mann, and shots are heard. The camera pans away as the witness appears to duck; the next visual is the body of Mann lying on the sidewalk quite a distance from the witness and police rushing up to the victim.

It's not entirely clear from this video what happened, but it is clear enough that the police were not entirely truthful in their account of the incident.

The family demanded to see dashcam and any other video in police possession, but SPD adamantly refused and continued to stick with their largely false narrative of events.

Then the Sacramento Bee obtained and released surveillance footage that much more clearly showed the shooting itself. (This footage was released before the family saw it, and they were somewhat annoyed.)  This video footage showed Mann running down a sidewalk on Del Paso Boulevard, stopping as police cars come ever closer, then trying to get away again, stopping again as two officers on foot approach. Mann raises his arm but does not "lunge" at officers -- who are approximately 30 feet away -- as they open fire. Mann falls to the sidewalk, and officers approach his body, one apparently kicking him.

Shortly after release of this video, SPD released three dashcam videos which showed different parts of the incident from different viewpoints. None of the dashcam videos clearly showed the shooting itself, but taken together, they showed a fairly comprehensive overview of the situation and the scene. They demonstrated the falsity of the police narrative and when combined with surveillance video and witness video, they confirmed that the police had simply lied about what happened, and in a perverse twist, they continued to lie, citing one dashcam video in particular as evidence that Mann "charged at" officers.

In fact, it showed the opposite of what police claimed it did. On initial release, there was no sound with this video, so the conversation between the officers in the car was not heard. Nevertheless, it appeared the car was rushing to the scene traveling west on Del Paso Blvd at high speed. When it arrives near Mr. Mann, the police narrative was that Mann "charged" the car, but it looks like the car is actually 'charging' him, and he's trying to avoid getting hit. As he passes by the car, the driver turns the car around and continues pursuit on Del Paso Blvd, stopping when it reaches the median. Mann crosses the street, and shortly two officers appear on foot following him. Within seconds, shots ring out (so there was sound after all!) and other officers rush up to the obscured scene.

Two days ago, the Sacramento Bee re-released this dashcam video with officer conversation in the car -- which had been muted in the original release by SPD. This conversation clearly indicates that these officers rushing to the scene intended to hit Mr. Mann with the car, and when they were unsuccessful, they were the ones who rushed up to him as he stopped on that sidewalk and they were the ones who shot him dead from almost thirty feet away.

Here's the story as it appears in Newsweek.

Here's the original story as it appeared in the Sacramento Bee.

And here's the video with sound:

This is actually quite shocking because it demonstrates intent. These officers are intent on gravely injuring Mr. Mann by striking him with their vehicle at high speed, and when they are unsuccessful, they exit the vehicle and rush to within thirty feet of him and shoot him dead. This is obviously intentional homicide, voluntary manslaughter at the least, murder 1, more likely.

There can be no "fearing for my life and the safety of others" defense, though I'm sure it will continue to be offered. There was no threat to these officers at all; they were the ones threatening great bodily harm, not Mr. Mann. In fact they attempted twice to run over Mr. Mann, and when they were unsuccessful, they ran from their car and shot him. They shot him from a distance where they were not objectively in any danger from Mr. Mann who, in any case, did not threaten them. Nor were any other officers in any objective danger from Mr. Mann at that time, as they were all still in their vehicles.

There were a few people on the street, and some observers have tried to make the case that Mr. Mann was a danger to them. That argument is weak due to the fact that Mr. Mann is never seen threatening anyone on the street, and further, the initial calls to 911, while falsely claiming Mr. Mann has a knife and a gun, do not in any way indicate that Mr. Mann is threatening people. They say he is throwing his knife in the air and catching it, and claim falsely that he is taking out his gun and putting it back in his waistband. That is all.

At no time in any of the videos is Mr. Mann able to be an objective threat to officers in their vehicles, nor is he seen to charge or lunge at officers with his knife (the only weapon he actually has.) At no time is Mr. Mann seen to threaten bystanders or pedestrians. The only things Mr. Mann is seen to do is try to elude police (not very well as he stays on sidewalks and streets) and he appears to tell them to go away/leave him alone. At one point he throws what was later said to be a mug or a thermos at a pursuing police car. That is literally all he is seen to do that might be interpreted as a "threat" to anyone.

Until the two cops who kill him arrive, the other officers are safe in their vehicles and are relatively patiently trying to corral Mr. Mann with their vehicles in an effort to contain him prior to disarming him. He is able to get away, but not very effectively. He never actually threatens police or bystanders.

Police officers in their vehicles have him almost contained when the other officers on foot rush up and kill him.

Under the circumstances -- and given all the other police killings of black men recently -- these officers should be held to account; they should be arrested and charged with murder an the lesser included voluntary manslaughter, and they should be put on trial.

I don't know whether they would be convicted, but the death of Joseph Mann should not be allowed to fade into the background noise of police killings. This one, perhaps more than the others (except for the execution of Terence Crutcher in Oklahoma), should be seen for what it was, an intentional and egregious killing, a murder in a word, of a man in crisis, without so much as a moment's hesitation.

Let's see what happens...

Another Video, Another One Dead, and Changing the Dynamic

Practically every day lately we hear of another black man killed by police, another video disproving police claims, another city in uproar, another call for calm and peaceful protest while the power structure gets to the bottom of another tragic incident.

Again and again and again and again. This is America the Exceptional. And indeed, no other developed country has the American level of police violence and murder, nor does any other country have the American level of incarceration. These are two signs among many that the vaunted American Way isn't working all that well.

There was another police killing in Pasadena yesterday. A black man in crisis had himself called 911 for help. Right there, of course, was a mistake. By now it should be clear to nearly every one that calling 911 for help with a black loved one or one's black self is calling for an almost automatic death sentence. They'll be helped all right, right into the morgue.

That's the American Way, and if people haven't figured that out yet, I wonder what they have been paying attention to instead. These incidents are not aberrations. They're routine.

No, not every person in crisis winds up dead. But a black man acting erratically is liable to.

I watched the video that El Cajon police released yesterday of the execution of Alfred Olango, and very little but the broadest outline of what happened was visible in what was shown initially.

Contrary to one news report of what the videos show, Mr. Olango is not in the street, he is in a parking lot off of one of the main streets. He is pacing and is being followed by a police officer. It's not clear whether the officer has his gun drawn. His left hand is down at his side and his right had is gesticulating.

Mr. Olango appears to have one hand in his pocket, but again that's not clear from the washed out and indistinct video that was released (a video of the broadcast of the video that was projected on a screen.)  As the officer approaches closer and closer to Mr. Olango, they mirror one another's actions. They step right, they step left, and the officer gets closer and closer. Another police car drives up from the side. When the first officer is perhaps four feet from Mr. Olango, the second officer gets out of his car and approaches. In the initial video release, one cannot see Mr. Olango raise his arms and assume a "shooting stance." In fact, the still that was previously released by the police that shows him in that stance might have shown something that lasted only one frame -- in which case, it would not have registered on the consciousness of the officers.

At any rate, in one of the released videos, Mr. Olango falls to the ground. In the other -- the one from which the still is allegedly taken -- four shots are heard, Olango falls to the ground and a woman screams.

In both videos, a woman who I assume is the same one who said she was Mr. Olango's sister and who had called three times for help is seen at the left, following the officer with the gun, getting quite close in fact, and after the shooting she is seen running away. I assume she is the one who is heard screaming on the cell-phone video, but there are reports that it was actually the woman who took the cell-phone video who did so.

At any rate, later clearer and more contrasty versions were published, and it appears that the first officer does have his gun drawn in his left hand during the whole -- very brief, mind you -- encounter. Mr. Olango is backing away from him the whole time. At no time is he seen to make any threatening motion toward the officer. When the second officer arrives, he seems to be momentarily disoriented, but the "shooting stance" visible in the still frame the police released is not visible in either of the videos that were released. If it happened at all -- and I'm assuming it did -- it was extremely quick, and I would argue it was not intentional.

See for yourownself:



Why is this important? Police have been justifying the latest rash of street executions on the threat (quote-unquote) posed by the crazy or otherwise disobedient black victim. But as we see in video after video, the threat is largely or completely imaginary. The black man may be disobedient, and he may actually have some kind of weapon in his hand -- or maybe not -- but at no time (repeat) at no time does the victim pose an actual threat to the officer. According to convention and law, however, that doesn't matter. All that matters is that the officer perceives a threat.  As those of us who have been following these matters learned long ago, that perception is almost a given whenever an officer is in confrontation with a crazy, disobedient black man -- or in some tragic cases, in confrontation with any black man at all.

In other words, according to some police conventions, any black male is a potential existential threat, and must be regarded as a threat until and unless proven otherwise. In some cases, there is literally nothing that a black man can do to disprove the threat he represents in the eyes of the police: comply or don't comply, it doesn't matter. Be armed or unarmed, it doesn't matter. Be polite or hostile, it doesn't matter. Sometimes the police don't even give a black male the opportunity to respond before firing away. By now, there is no mystery or surprise about these things. It's obvious as sin. Police see an existential threat to their own lives and the safety of others when they see a black male. (To go Godwin for a moment, this was much the same situation in Nazi Germany when Jews and other despised minorities were encountered by police; sometimes they would be killed on the spot, and it was always because of fear for lives and safety. The very presence of a Jew or other despised minority could trigger the killer-cop to act violently or lethally. And this was happening well before the Final Solution was implemented. Much the same happens in Israel and Occupied Palestine today whenever Israeli police or military are in confrontation with Arabs or Palestinians. Summary execution is routine -- and the excuse is that the Arab or Palestinian male (especially) is inherently an existential threat.)

These actions may or may not be due the inherent racism of the individual officer, but it is certainly an induced racism that comes from intense training and conditioning. (Black officers suffer from the same training and conditioning, and they can kill black victims just as easily and with almost as little empathy or compassion for their victims as white or Hispanic officers will.)

Of course these killings have been going on in this country forever, and from time to time execution squads have been organized to go around assassinating particularly troublesome black men. It's part of the hidden history of the USofA. Let's not forget the lynching era, either.

Some of the black people I correspond with see the current spate of police killings as an evolution if you will of lynch law. Nowadays police take it upon themselves to execute blacks rather than await the mob. But the rationale is essentially the same as if a mob had done it.

There are two important factors: it doesn't matter if the victim is guilty or innocent of a crime (as that's never adjudicated); and the victims are essentially randomly and arbitrarily chosen though the rate of killing is fairly constant. To be clear, black victims are not the only victims of this New Lynch Law, but they are victims far out of proportion to their population percentage as was true back in the day as well.

A common thread found in the recent spate of street executions is mental illness, disability, or psychological/emotional crisis of some sort. In each case, disobedience is a trigger factor for the ultimate execution, but it's not the only factor. Being black and male is just as strong a trigger factor if not stronger.

It's as if police believe it is their "job" to execute crazy Negroes on sight. Well, maybe it is.

Here's the thing. Police officers are not operating independently in a vacuum. They are part of a system and culture of policing that takes orders from commanders (police chiefs, sheriffs, etc.) who in turn are taking cues and orders from... whom?

I find I have to make this point over and over again because so many people either don't understand how police departments operate or they are being deliberately obtuse. Police departments, like the military, are hierarchies. Officers receive orders from their supervisors who in turn receive orders from their commanders. Officers must then carry out their orders. If they carry them out they are rewarded. If they don't they are disciplined. In some cases, they will be dismissed. That's a very simple outline, but that's how it works. Officers on the street are not independent (ie: "rogue") agents, at least not usually. The "bad apple" argument depends on these "rogues" running wild, but that's not how police departments operate.

No, they have chains of authority, orders, and a cultural/historical perspective. Many people have pointed out that modern police forces are in many cases (all?) descended from slave catchers and semi-private militias sent out to bring "Law'n'Order" to the frontier and keep the Negroes (and Indians and Mexicans and Asians) in their place.

Organizationally, police forces are semi-military -- like the militias of yore -- but they are highly bureaucratized, too. In a sense, like public education, they're being administered to death. In other words, the seeds of their own institutional collapse have long been planted.

The recent killing spree is not really new; what's new is the sight of all these killings via video -- some of it from the police cameras, some of it from citizens, some of it from pervasive surveillance cameras. People may or may not have known it was going on before the advent of universal cameras, but in fact there has never been peace between civilians who are designated "Others" and police.

Despite the frequency of police killings -- average three a day -- statistically, there are far fewer now than in eras past, just as far fewer police are killed by civilians than in the past. We are actually living in a relatively bloodless period, though it doesn't seem like it. Because we didn't see so many police killings on our teevees back in the day, it didn't seem like there were so many, but there were.

Police killings are almost always justified by two things: fear, and the actions (or failures to act) of the victims.

"Comply or Die" is not just a catchphrase, it is the operational theory of much of modern policing. In other words, in confrontation with police, the civilian has no rights which officers are bound to respect. Obedience and compliance are the only acceptable responses to police command, and often they are not enough. Swift and sure punishment can be applied at the discretion of the officer whether or not the civilian complies and obeys. This punishment can include the use of lethal force but it doesn't have to. Whereas 1,200 or so are killed by police every year, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands are injured, sometimes gravely, by police in the performance of their duties. They are not counted yet, so we really have no way of knowing how frequently people are injured as opposed to killed by police.

Understanding how police departments operate and knowing the principles by which they operate is part of the key to changing them for the better.

Proviso: some police departments are not reformable (Chicago comes to mind but there are many more just as bad or worse) and should be abolished.

Reform has been implemented in some cities with remarkable reductions in the number and rate of police killings. In fact, over a period of two or three years, the number of police killings in New York City was reduced 90%. In other cities, the number has been reduced by half or more in a very brief period, largely by changing the rules of engagement and use of force, and by a key factor: issuing the command from the top to STOP THE KILLING.

Strangely, or maybe not, officers obey.

I use Albuquerque as an example because that's the city I'm closest to and that's the one I've been most recently involved in activism against police violence. At one time, the kill-rate of APD was proportionately the highest in the nation. Albuquerque police were killing as many as two a month, which doesn't seem like a lot, but given the half-million or so population, it was huge. Many, too many, of these killings were simply outrageous. Mentally ill and suicidal individuals were being shot and killed routinely. People who were not armed, not threatening, who were running away or surrendering, you name it, they were being shot by police and killed over and over. Sometimes they were caught on tape, but even when they weren't the reports were horrifying. The Deputy County Manager's son was killed by police. A Valencia County judge's daughter was killed by police. A suicidal man who was not threatening anyone but himself was shot by a police sniper. A homeless schizophrenic surrendering to police was shot and killed. On and on and on, the bodies kept piling up. Albuquerque was getting a reputation for police wilding second to none in the nation.

Activism against this police violence had been going on for years, but nothing seemed to affect police conduct, not even the tens of millions of dollars the city was paying out to survivors of loved ones killed by police. And then... it changed. Practically overnight, the killing stopped.

A number of factors went into it, of course, including a scathing report of "unconstitutional policing" from the DoJ, but key was the order going out to STOP THE KILLING. (Another factor may have been the incident in which a police supervisor shot up one of his undercover officers in drug sting gone bad, but we'll never really know...)

For almost a year, APD killed no one, and ever since, the rate of killing by APD has been very low. Three, maybe four a year, compared to dozens in the past. You wouldn't know this though because there has been no coverage by the media -- not even locally -- of the change in the kill rates by APD, nor has there been any investigation into why. For the record, there have been three killings by APD so far this year.

It's as if blinders went on as soon as the killing (almost) stopped.

But other cities, such as Las Vegas and Oakland, also experienced steep reductions in police killings when the order went out to Stop. And their reductions have received at least a little bit of coverage in the media.

The point is that police killings don't have to happen. The killing is a choice made by departments, not an immutable fact of life and death or "split second decisions." It's always a choice, and in my view, based on my study of hundreds of killings by police and the experience of cities where police killings have been reduced significantly, 90% or more of police killings are simply unnecessary -- regardless of whether they are ruled "justified."

And in the cities where police killings have been reduced, it doesn't take years of "dialogue" and "conversation" -- it can happen almost overnight if the order goes out from the top to STOP.

I think we're almost at the tipping point where police departments have to stop. They simply can't keep killing like this and preserve any legitimacy with the growingly restive public. The recent spate of killings has been gawd-awful, and the efforts by police departments to hide the evidence, to lie and spin these killings in their own favor, to taint the investigations and sway the public by selective release of snippets of information and evidence, and particularly to blame the victims, just isn't working any more. The lies, the false narratives, the withholding of video evidence, the refusal to be open and transparent with the public, the arrogance, all lead the public to delegitimize the police, and once that happens it's all but impossible to restore confidence in an institution that is seen as an enemy of the people.

I have hope, I always have hope, that this situation will change for the better, sooner rather than later, but I've been an activist against police violence for decades. It's seemingly never-ending.

But change can come, and I'm not about to give up...

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For the record: When Yelling Commands is the Wrong Police Response

An Absence of Empathy

The National Conversation that has been roiling for years now over the constant litany of police killings of so many black men and others seems to be getting us nowhere. The killing continues like clockwork, three a day on average, day in and day out, year by year. Bam! Another one dead, another family loses their father, brother, son. Another grieving widow. Another question, "Why?"

And so it goes, over and over. Americans become desensitized to the killing. It's normalized for the most part. The narrative is already written, the sequence of events laid out. A disobedient Negro refuses to follow this or that command by police. The police see a gun, whether there is one or not, and they fire as the Negro attempts to comply. Or the Negro is running away. Or he's standing still and confused. He may be mentally ill or on drugs, or maybe he's just been in a car wreck and is injured and disoriented. Doesn't matter. If he doesn't obey -- or even if he does obey -- he's a dead Negro because cops are scared witness and mindless by the sight of or even the report of a Bad Negro -- or sometimes any Negro -- on the lose.

He is axiomatically a "threat to be neutralized" -- even when he's no threat at all. (I don't mean to leave out the many women who have been killed by police during this period of National Conversation. Black males are the iconic emblem of police killing, and they die in numbers far out of their proportion of the population. Too many women die at the hands of police as well.)

The common thread that runs through almost all these killings is an absence of empathy.

Police are rigorously conditioned to have no empathy for those they encounter, harm or kill. Those who fail conditioning and maintain some empathy for those they encounter are weeded out or placed in positions where their empathy will not interfere with its absence elsewhere.

"De-escalation" is one of the buzz-words we hear a lot in this National Conversation over Race and Policing (and Other Matters), and in so many of the cases that come to National Attention, the police are not de-escalating, they're deliberately escalating the situation.

It happened in the case of Joseph Mann in Sacramento where police are seen to be escalating the confrontation from their first encounter with him.

It happened with Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, where the officer who shot him is yelling at him and threatening him with her gun, while he calmly walks to his vehicle with his hands up. He is in no way threatening her, and when her back up arrives, she shoot him. It's almost unbelievable to witness but it happens more often than we realize.

In Charlotte, once again we see the police escalating a situation, yelling and screaming at Keith Scott, threatening him with their guns, while he sits apparently quietly in his car, until slowly and carefully, he gets out of the car, while police continue shouting at him. He looks around, sees multiple men with guns drawn, and slowly takes a step or two backwards with his arms at his side. Bam! He's shot four times from behind. He may not even have seen the officer who shot him.

He may or may not have had a gun in his hand. Whether he did or not, he was not visibly threatening the officers or anyone else. He was not being aggressive. The officers were threatening him. They were aggressing against him. And they escalate their threats and aggression as more officers arrived on scene.

In these and so many other instances, there was no rational cause for police to kill their subjects. There was no objective threat to officers or anyone else -- or in the case of Joseph Mann, the potential threat was largely contained, and I'll try to get into that in a bit. All the escalation was done by police in an essentially misguided effort to gain dominance and control of a person or situation, regardless of the outcome -- which in each of these cases was the death of the subject. How often this happens each year is really anybody's guess, as not all of these encounters end in death. Those that don't go largely unreported.

The common theme is a total lack of empathy on the part of police, and lack of empathy leads directly to the tragic outcome. Over and over and over again.

I'll try to use the Joseph Mann case as a teaching tool. There have been many similar cases, so it's not an outlier.

Joseph Mann was a 50-something homeless black man suffering from mental illness that was described a bit like schizophrenia. He also may have been under the influence of an illicit substance. He was reported to police by residents of an apartment house in a fancy neighborhood in north Sacramento who said he was acting strange and had a knife and a gun. They said they were scared for the children in the area. They did not say he was threatening anyone. They said he was acting strange. This is important.

A police cruiser arrived within minutes and residents told the officer that Mann was just down the street. Sure enough, there he was. The officer, through the loudspeaker of the cruiser ordered Mann to "drop the knife." He did not comply. Instead, Mann crossed the street and walked away. The officer followed, continuing to order Mann to "drop the knife."

At one point on his leisurely stroll, Mann engages a telephone pole with karate moves. Clearly this fellow is not in his right mind, a clue -- if any were needed beyond the prior statements of residents -- that Mann was mentally ill and possibly under the influence.

During his stroll, too, Mann comes close to encountering several pedestrians. He threatens none of them. This was observed by the officer following him in the police car, and it should have been another clue that even though Mr. Mann (apparently) had a knife in his hand, he was not threatening others. Indeed, in the calls to 911, residents described him as "throwing the knife in the air" and catching it, not directing it at anyone else. They also said he had a gun -- but that was false. I'll try to get into false reports like this and their consequences before the end of the post.

Shortly, Mann reaches the main street, the police cruiser still following him and orders still coming at him from the loudspeaker to "drop the knife." Mann finds an object in the median and throws it at the police car. The object, later identified as a mug, strikes the car -- though it was initially reported to have struck an officer.

Mann runs from the police car as others start arriving. He comes within a few feet of pedestrians but makes no threatening gestures toward them. He is pursued slowly by several police cars as they attempt to corral him. He runs away and in doing so, he runs toward a police car, gesturing toward it as if to say "get out of the way!"

He runs across the street and along a sidewalk as police cars continue to follow. He stops at one point, apparently to catch his breath, and the police cars converge, attempting to corner him, but he runs away, and makes it a few dozen feet down the sidewalk, still followed by police cruisers, when suddenly two officers run up on him and from about 20-30 feet away shoot him dead.

Until that moment, it appeared that the police had the situation well in hand. Mr. Mann was eluding them and was being disobedient, true, but he was not threatening anyone, and he was not so elusive as to be un-apprehendable. It may have taken time to tire him out enough to make apprehension possible, but his actions were not those of someone who posed a serious threat, nor were they ones of someone trying to hide from police.

The sudden appearance of officers on foot who shot and killed him was a shock. Where they had come from and who had directed them to shoot -- if anyone -- is still a mystery. If it had not been for the Sacramento Bee finding and publishing surveillance video of the shooting, we would not have known this had happened, as the SPD were refusing to release any video of the incident and had already fabricated lies about what happened (detailed in a previous post.)

Their false narrative essentially blamed Mr. Mann for his own death, which is Standard Procedure in almost all cases of police homicide. The victim is always and completely at fault.

Victim-blaming is so routine it almost goes unnoticed. The public takes it for granted, no matter what happens or how much the visual evidence contradicts the police narrative.

"If he had just obeyed, this wouldn't have happened." We know that's not necessarily true, but it's beside the point as well. Not every suspect or subject is capable of obedience either immediately or at all. When that's the case, police too often resort to summary execution, not as a last resort but as an expedient one.

That appears to have happened in this case.

It appears to have happened in the case of Keith Scott. He was said to have suffered a traumatic brain injury in an accident the previous year, he may have been smoking marijuana and he may have been taking other medication that made it difficult for him to comprehend what was happening and may have made it impossible for him to immediately and completely comply with shouted orders from gun-wielding police. At any event, he was not threatening police or anyone else, even if he had a gun -- which is not at this point established or certain by any means.

It appears to have happened in the case of Terence Crutcher as well. According to reports -- and we don't know how true or false they are because they come from police -- Mr. Crutcher stopped his car in the middle of a more or less rural road in Tulsa, got out and was wandering around apparently bewildered when confronted by the officer who eventually shot and killed him. She ordered him to show his hands and get on the ground, but he did not immediately do so. When video of the incident emerged, however, he had his hands high over his head and he was slowly walking away from the gun-wielding officer toward his car (which was reported to be idling with its front doors open, but in the videos, the doors are closed, and it is impossible to tell whether the engine is running.) When Mr. Crutcher  reaches the car, he puts his hands on the car and appears to be waiting to be searched or arrested. The officer apparently continues screaming at him to do something or other as her backup arrives. Mr. Crutcher starts to put his arms down, perhaps in an attempt to comply -- after disobeying -- and he is immediately shot with both a taser from the backup officer, and a bullet from the initial officer.

He falls to the pavement while the officers who shot him and other arriving officers back away slowly. The two officers who fired on him eventually hide crouched behind a police patrol car while other officers take over the scene, and two of them begin to render first aid to the dying Terence Crutcher.

Mr. Crutcher was unarmed and he is not reported to have threatened the officers in any way. He simply did not obey sufficiently fast enough to satisfy the officers who shot him with a taser and a bullet simultaneously. Given the fact that he was later said to be impaired by an illicit substance -- whether true or not, we don't know -- it's likely he could not obey directly, but from the available visual evidence he appears to have attempted to obey indirectly, only to be shot and killed for his efforts.

As in the case of each of the other incidents detailed here, the police initially issued false narratives about what happened, narratives which essentially absolved the officers involved of any culpability and placed all the blame on the victim.

Those narratives were contradicted by video evidence. Tulsa's PD promptly released video evidence which showed their initial narrative to be false. As they corrected the record, an arrest warrant was issued for the officer who shot Terence Crutcher to death.

In the cases of Joseph Mann in Sacramento and Keith Scott in Charlotte, police departments issued false narrative (ie: lies) about what happened and adamantly refused to release any police video of the incidents citing "integrity of the investigation." This is nonsense because they have already compromised the integrity of the investigation by issuing lies about what happened.

In the face of this kind of stonewalling in both instances, other video was produced which demonstrated that the initial police narrative was false. Both police departments held to their refusal to provide evidence from police cameras as long as they could -- in Sacramento's case, it was months, in Charlotte's it was days -- but in both cases, police eventually yielded at least partially and produced video evidence which showed that their story was not... what happened.

It became obvious that police escalated situations which were otherwise under control, or at least were not threatening to them or others. The "fault" in other words lies at least as much with the police as with the supposed culprits. The police were the threatening parties in all three instances. The police were aggressive while the supposed culprits were simply disobedient.

Of course the fact that they were black factored into the police aggression.

In all three instances, the police who fired the fatal shots displayed no empathy at all with the plight of their victims. Some of the other officers on scene interestingly did show traces of empathy, however. First aid was rendered by other officers in Tulsa and Charlotte (so unusual as to be remarked upon as officers routinely do not render first aid to those they have shot). It's not clear whether any officers in Sacramento rendered first aid to Mr. Mann. From the video evidence and the later narrative provided by SPD -- which corrected some of their initial lies -- officers waited for the arrival of EMTs some five minutes after Mr. Mann was shot 14 times. But prior to the shooting, apart from yelling at Mr. Mann over their loudspeakers, the officers arguably behaved appropriately in trying to corral Mr. Mann rather than harm him. While they weren't completely successful, they were were able to tighten the cordon gradually.

Experts in the control of mentally ill or substance impaired individuals could easily have advised other methods that might have worked better, but they were not consulted or on scene. People who work in the field know how to do it without harming or killing their patients/clients. Police do not, or they have those skills, their firearms skill too often overrides their other means and methods.

It's an empathy and a priority issue. The "sanctity of human life" is not a priority for many police officers and police departments. Asserting command and control is, regardless of the consequences to human life.

In our ongoing efforts to change the situation, the Conversation needs focus on the purpose of police and a definition of their primary objective. Right now they believe it is command and control, self-protection, and the protection of property, when in fact it should be -- must be -- the preservation of human life and protection of public well-being, including the lives and well-being of suspects and subjects.

They must be sensitized once again to empathize with people who aren't like them, maybe don't like them, and who perhaps cannot obey them instantly or at all.

It's not an impossible task but as the National Conversation continues, this task must come to the fore.