Some things to consider...

After yesterday's detention hearing for the guy who assaulted me -- our neighbor calls him Ben but that's not the name he's being held under -- I thought much more about what happened, who those of us involved are, and what may be the larger meanings of it all, or if there are any.

One thing that instantly popped out was the absence of police brutality. The officer who arrested "Ben" or whatever his name is arrived within five minutes of my call. I saw him in the front courtyard of the house across the street apparently idly chatting with "Ben" who appeared to be sitting calmly on a bench shortly after his arrest. 

At the hearing yesterday, the officer stated that he knew "Ben" from a previous arrest. He didn't say what for, but I assume it was the joyride "Ben" took in the police chief's car in April. 

He described the most recent arrest this way: he saw my wife in the street and asked her where the suspect was. She pointed to the house across the street from ours. He got his automatic rifle and went to the front door and... knocked. "Ben" opened the door. The officer said he saw two knives, one in each pocket of "Ben's" jeans and that "Ben's" left hand was concealed behind the door. He ordered him out of the house and onto the ground. "Ben" did not immediately obey, but was somehow persuaded -- without violence -- out of the house and onto one knee in the front courtyard. The officer handcuffed him and relieved him of three weapons, the two knives in his pants pockets and the hatchet/tomahawk he'd assaulted me with.

And then they waited for backup. "Ben" sat on the bench; the officer stood beside him. The officer said that, yes, he knew "Ben" from a previous arrest.

During the hearing, an extensive arrest record was mentioned as well as sentencing to prison and probation for previous offenses. "Ben" is no stranger to The System.

He is, however, arguably severely mentally ill. While he rattled off a litany of diagnoses, it comes down to paranoid schizophrenia and addiction with violent tendencies. They are only partially controlled by medications and counseling. And in this case were not controlled.

I had this grand notion of how I would want him to be treated post-conviction. Held in prison for up to a year, then in a locked mental health care facility for up to three years while he undergoes training and therapy to manage his condition. then in 24/7 supervised release where essentially his is under observation of a minder all the time for as long as necessary. 

Seems, at least in outline, that's the treatment he was under, and yet he was able to slither away from custody rather easily and engage in mayhem.

He'd been remanded to a locked Department of Corrections drug and mental illness treatment and recovery facility (for I don't know how long) and after two days he was out and about. He said he was denied his anti-psychotic meds at this facility and he began to act out so much that he convinced the staff to transfer him to a hospital where he may or may not have received any treatment (apparently no treatment and did not receive his medications) and where he was able to call our neighbor to come and get him. This is not quite the story she tells, but anyway... he said that someone else came and picked him up and took him to our neighbor's house where he had stayed without meds for he didn't know how long (a few days) before he was arrested for assaulting me. 

He was on probation, he was under court order to complete treatment at the locked recovery facility and to report to his probation officer regularly. He did neither, and he was able to basically walk away from the hospital where he was taken when his psychotic behavior manifested at the treatment facility.

The treatment I suggested was actually partially under way, and it was ineffective; given what I heard, it was grossly counterproductive.

So.

Where do we go from here? That'll take a while to come to grips with.

Be Like Water

Been following some of the hundreds and thousands of daily/nightly/constant protests around the world with a focus on Portland, Oregon. I want to see whether any of this is going to amount to anything good. So far, I can't say.

What I can say from what I've been seeing on the various livestreams is that there are far too many police, and most of them are doing nothing useful at all. Their primary task in Portland and many other places is protection of their fortresses. That's it. Nothing else. Night after night, day after day, the police assemble in multitudes while the public assembles their on their own account, and then they do battle in the streets. Or not. All to protect and defend the police and (in)justice offices, courts, jails, headquarters, fortresses.

They march. They run. They pant. They brutalize. They run. They halt and catch their breaths. They run and brutalize. They tumble and fall over people running away from them. They halt. They pant. They yell. They thwack people who don't run fast enough. They confiscate bicycles, umbrellas, back packs, water. They pop the tires of the Snack Van, over and over and over again. They run. They pant. They yell.

This is Portland, but it's also hundreds of cities and countries around the world. Minsk. Paris. Beirut. Bolivia. Thailand. Hong Kong. Chicago. Baltimore. Washington, DC. Seattle. Los Angeles. On and on.

The protest movement is like water. Everywhere. Nowhere. All at once. Intermittent.

The issues: Dignity. Justice. Community. Peace. The issues: corruption, injustice, racism, no-future. Increasing suffering. Hunger. Homelessness. Debt. Illness and death.

And most police do nothing useful at all. They are emblems, symbols of a useless, death-dealing ruling class, united against the people they fear and despise.

Police Reform? Not If It Is Allowed To Be Solely About Race

Stephanie Lopez was arrested by Bernalillo County sheriffs deputies on charges of child abuse and witness intimidation. This is a real thing.

Stephanie Lopez is the president of the Albuquerque Police Officers Association, ie: the APD officers' union. I've seen her in action for some time thanks to my own activism against police violence in Albuquerque and around the country, and compared to many other police union presidents she seems quite sane and even compassionate. She looks out for her officers' interests, but she's also very conscious of the need for police accountability and for the need to reduce police brutality and the number of police involved killings.

She's on administrative leave from the police department and the union while these matters are sorted out in court. Her replacement as union head is Shaun Willoughby who has not typically been as sane. But then, there's been an element of good-cop/bad-cop in their public presentations throughout Albuquerque's police-reform saga (a saga that's still going on.)

Police reform in Albuquerque has meant that APD no longer routinely kills suspects. At least one of the sniper squads has been disbanded, and there has been a real and sustained emphasis on deescalation of force and crisis intervention. Obviously, the word went out from the top to "stop the killing" and it has almost stopped -- at least by APD. There are other police forces at work in the area, including sheriffs, other city's police departments, and state troopers, none of whom seem to have gotten the message, and all of whom have kept on killing.

Since the reforms kicked in last year, an APD officer was killed and a number have been wounded (one by friendly fire that is suspected not to have been friendly at all...). The two APD officers who executed James Boyd as he was surrendering have been charged with murder, but they are out on bond until their trial sometime next year, and the officer who shot and killed Mary Hawks successfully sued to get his job back despite his repeated failure to follow procedures regarding his body cameras and other matters.

Let's say that reform of APD has meant two steps forward and one back, which is progress, yes, but not enough.

In Albuquerque, though there was a racial component in the abuses that were protested and which ultimately led to reform, the focus was not on race. The focus was on failures by the department and the city which led to so much abuse and killing. Failed mental health care and homeless services. Failed crisis intervention. Failed apprehension and custody tactics and so on. All of which led to a constant litany of death and destruction, most of which was avoidable.

Race and class were part of the overall picture of abusive, violent and deadly policing, but they weren't the whole thing, and the reforms did not focus solely on class and race issues.

The reforms seem to be working, but whether they'll become permanent, who knows? The arrest of Stephanie Lopez, however, makes me wonder. There is so far no sign that her arrest was arranged -- shall we say -- to eliminate her relatively conciliatory approach, but that's the upshot. Willoughby is not a conciliator and may prove to be problematic as the reform effort continues. We shall see.

Meanwhile, there is apparently a media push to acknowledge that the "national conversation" about policing has reached a climax of sorts and that "reform" is now the leading topic of discussion. The reforms being discussed by the "nation", however, appear to be almost exclusively focused on race and the disparate level of police violence and killing employed almost universally in this country against communities and people of color.

Wait. No. The problem of violent policing is not and has never been entirely a matter of race, and if the "national conversation" (which is really a matter of the elites talking to one another and has almost nothing to do with what the public wants/needs) devolves the problem into one exclusively of race, then quite simply the problem will not be solved, in fact, it may be made worse.

I've said many times here and elsewhere that police in general see armed people of color, particularly males, whether or not they are actually armed and whether or not they are threatening others, as existential threats to be neutralized with as much firepower as can be brought to bear. We see the videos of such summary executions -- which is what they are -- all the time, practically every day. They are horrible and in almost all cases, they are egregious, unnecessary. In some cases, regardless of "justifications" they are outright murder.

More white folks die at the hands of police, it's true, but the rate of killing by police falls most heavily on black and brown men. Abusive policing in general falls most heavily on black and brown men. Mass incarceration falls most heavily on black and brown men. Mentally ill black and brown men are exterminated at a profoundly disturbing rate. But they are not the only ones.

What seems to have happened during the media-memed "national conversation" about violent policing is that it has been characterized in almost exclusively racial terms. The Black Lives Matter movement has tried to avoid that exclusivity while at the same time focusing attention on the disproportionate levels of violent policing experienced by the black community. That seems to be recognized relatively widely today, and it is acknowledged as a problem even by many police chiefs. Something should be done about it. 

The problem of disproportionate policing is one thing, the problem of police violence and murder is another, and yet they have been conflated by a media which seems to want to keep the focus on policing the Negros, while barely recognizing that police violence is systemic. One has to deal with both the disproportionate policing that has virtually destroyed millions of lives and families and communities, and the violence the police routinely employ against civilians of any color or gender, violence which can and way too often does include summary execution.

If the issue is allowed to be solely about race, there will be little or no reform of police conduct; the killing will not stop. Mass incarceration may pause for a while, but the destruction wrought by violent policing will not be remedied.

If there is to be real and lasting reform of police conduct, it has to be system-wide, top to bottom, and I detect real resistance at the top to engaging in that kind of reform, starting at the very top with the DOJ and the FBI, neither of which even bother to collect let alone analyze statistics of police violence. At the top, the Attorney General and the FBI Director defend police conduct, almost without exception and almost regardless of how egregious. The FBI Director has falsely and repeatedly claimed that something called the Ferguson Effect (ie: scrutiny of police conduct) is responsible for a spike in violent crime, a spike for which there is no statistical evidence. Neither of the recent Attorneys General will hold police accountable for their actions, pretty much no matter what they do. The numerous consent decrees mandating reform of police departments throughout the country are primarily designed to regularize and professionalize police conduct,  not to reduce the killing and the violence police employ but to rationalize it.

Make it consistent. Make it defensible. This can mean an even greater level of violence by police, because there is no real intent to reduce the violence, at least none that I've seen, in the consent decrees.

Some police departments take it upon themselves to ratchet down the levels of violence they have been using against the public, but many do not. Some actually increase the use of violence in the face of protests, and their chiefs show utter contempt for the public in the process.

That internalized contempt is part of the problem of reform, and part of why I'm not convinced the kinds of reforms that are necessary are possible. Abolition may be the only viable way to do it, but there's very little sign that abolition is even conceivable in light of current "conversations."

Of course abolitionists of yore faced the same -- indeed worse -- odds.

James Boyd was executed by two police snipers as he was surrendering in the Sandia foothills in Albuquerque in March of 2014. Those snipers were later charged with murder, and their trials are scheduled for some time next year. I don't expect them to be convicted, but the fact that they were charged and will be tried is "something." Protests against that killing got under way in Albuquerque soon after Boyd was killed, and they triggered protests against police violence and killing much more generally. Those protests have continued relentlessly all over the country ever since, and it's been almost two years now. People are not letting this issue go.

Many police chiefs have recognized there is a problem with violent policing and mass incarceration, and some have taken steps to address the problem, but so far the rate of killing by police has not been reduced, in fact, it has increased since the protests against it went viral.

Control of police violence has to be exercised from the top. The police departments are hierarchies. When the chiefs and their bosses, the mayors and city managers, tell the police to stop killing, they will. So far, that order has only gone out in a very few cities.

Many more police chiefs need to hear the call and issue the stop killing order before the bloodshed will be significantly reduced. But it can be done.

Maybe next year....

Emmett Till

I have vague memories of the news stories of Emmett Till's murder 60 years ago. I have more memories of the outrage at the acquittal some weeks later of the men who did it. But I also knew that at the time in Money, Mississippi, whatever white men did to black folks was considered right and just and proper by definition, and there wasn't a damn thing black folks could do about it.

It wasn't just in Money, Mississippi, either. Los Angeles (where I lived at the time) and many other parts of California had rules almost as broad regarding the impunity of white people to do to black and brown folks pretty much whatever they wanted. There was very little the victims could do about it in California, either.

That was the way it was.

The outrage over the murder of Emmett Till and the subsequent acquittal of his murderers was somewhat muted, therefore. It's not that people weren't upset and angry. Even plenty of white people were. It's that the conditions under which these things happened -- and they did happen with shocking regularity -- were time-honored, even integral to the national sense of itself.

In those days, blackness (and brownness, indeed, every skin-color but whiteness) was criminalized, and that criminalization justified oppression, exploitation, and occasional murder.

That was the way it was.

I've mentioned previously that in those days -- indeed, for all my life until moving to Northern California in 1959 -- I lived in an integrated neighborhood. So far as I was aware, there was no racial animosity. But as I think back about the people who lived there, I suspect there actually was a good deal of white animosity toward the "colored" in the neighborhood -- "colored" which included blacks, Latinos/Chicanos, and Japanese that I can recall, and may have included others I don't recall -- but it was not expressed openly or frequently. Now the neighborhood is almost entirely Latino as is most of the San Gabriel Valley, but from the pictures I've seen recently it appears to be little different than it was 60 and more years ago when I lived there.

Street where I lived facing east c. 2015

Street where I lived facing west c. 2015; our house was the yellow one on the right

While ethnically it has become an almost entirely Latino neighborhood, visually, it is almost the same as it was when I lived there. A few houses have been extensively remodeled, but most haven't been. Some still look like they did when I walked or bicycled through the neighborhood as a boy.

Living in an integrated neighborhood was somewhat exotic in California at the time, but I thought nothing of it because I had never known anything else. It seemed perfectly natural to me. And the story of Emmett Till -- what little we children knew of it at the time -- was frightening to us because it was easy for most of us and for me to identify with him. He was older than I was and so he must have been wiser to the ways of the world, and still he was killed -- they say for whistling at a white woman? That didn't make any sense at all. Boys did that. Nobody paid more than a minute's attention to it unless it got out of hand, annoying, and then some grown up would tell the boy to stop. That's it. So they killed Emmett Till for something most people would simply ignore? What madness was this?

All we children knew of these things was that some adults were just out of their minds crazy and brutal. We all knew it. We had our own mystery stories of kids being killed by grown ups, by their own parents sometimes. We knew it happened. But this case... no, something was bad-wrong, and what was wrong was that two white men killed this black youth, "Negro" was the word then used, out of... spite? Or just because they could? And somehow they knew they'd get away with it if they did.

About 20 years ago I was asked to write a play about Emmett Till's murder, his lynching as it was being referred to. So I did a lot of research on the story, and it was very ugly indeed, especially with regard to that part of Mississippi, to the two men who killed him, and with regard to the so-called "justice" system which acquitted them.

Everything about it reeked.

As I was doing my research, I found a story about a white boy who was kidnapped and murdered at about the same time. I don't remember his name, nor can I recall where the incident took place (it may have been Michigan), but I felt that these stories were parallel examples of something uniquely American, a social and cultural belief system that devalues and enables the extermination of certain lives while protecting the lives of certain others.

The white boy, ultimately, was no more protected and valued than Emmett Till was, you see, and his killer or killers remain unknown to this day. They weren't let off like Emmett Till's killers were. They were simply never found. That's because -- in my estimation -- that incident was swept under the rug. It wasn't investigated more than superficially, and if the authorities had a suspect or suspects in mind, they never pursued it. The boy was dead and it was just as well... or so it seemed.

So I wanted to parallel this case with the case of Emmett Till as an indictment of the broader American social environment in which these sorts of things went on all the time. Well, that didn't fly with the professor who'd asked me to write the play. He didn't want any "white boy" messing up the story of Emmett Till. While I understood his point of view about it, I told him that I thought it was important to broaden the picture by including the similar murder of a white boy and showing how his life in the end was worth no more than that of Emmett Till, but we could not reach an agreement on that aspect, so the script was never written.

The Black Lives Matter movement is trying to hammer into American consciousness and conscience the fact that to a horrifying degree, black lives don't matter, especially to police and the interests whom the police serve. They are instead killable, disposable, pretty much at will. Until recently, it was almost impossible to get a police officer indicted for the clearly outrageous uses of force employed wildly disproportionately against black and brown people. While indictments are now being issued periodically, provided the case is outrageous enough, we aren't seeing convictions, and still, too often,  police are getting away with murder.

The current situation is remarkably similar to the situation in Money, Mississippi, in 1955, where a black youth could be murdered pretty much at will, and hardly anybody cared a whit. Except for his immediate family, of course.

We aren't seeing so many civilian lynchings -- though they still happen from time to time. Instead, we are seeing a daily body count, four to five a day, of men and women and sometimes children, killed by police who, in effect, have become the delegated lynching squad. Police encounter a black person mouthing off, getting uppity, not being submissive enough or obedient fast enough, or being belligerent, or even doing something wrong, and police feel perfectly justified in killing them, summary execution style, or taking them in and torturing them, or whatever they want to do, because... they think it's their job.

When lynchings by civilian mobs were commonplace in this country, the powers that be thought little or nothing of it. That was the way it was, and nothing could be done about it. Until something was done about it. What was done was mostly social shaming. That took decades to bring the number of lynchings down from hundreds a year to a few to -- officially -- none. Shaming works, but it takes a long time.

President Franklin Roosevelt twice refused to sign anti-lynching legislation proposed and (I believe) passed by Congress in the 1930s. They say he refused to sign so as not to piss off his Southern Democratic base which was filled with crackers, rednecks and lynchers, too. But it wasn't just the white trash he was concerned about. It was the white elites in the Southern Democratic Party, old line Confederates in many cases, those who suffered from Reconstruction or at least white folks claimed to have been its victims. Memories were long. The Lost Cause lived and breathed through these survivors and their descendants. To an extent, it still does.

By the 1930s, the number of lynchings per year had been on the decline, thanks in part to some brave Southern women who were fed up with the mob violence that characterized their part of the country more than any other -- violence which brought shame upon the South. You feel many echoes of it in the story of Tom Robinson as told by Harper Lee in "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Life was froughtful for black folks in the South -- it was froughtful everywhere, truth to tell -- and death came often in the night and hideously. Black folks lived in mortal peril every minute.

Emmett Till was from Chicago. He'd been sent South to stay with relatives in Money, Mississippi for the summer before he returned to school in Chicago in the fall. That day was coming soon when he went to the shop in Money to buy some chewing gum (I believe it was) and as he was leaving, they say he whistled at the proprietor's wife who was helming the store in her husband's absence. They say. Accounts vary regarding what Emmett Till actually did -- or didn't do -- that day. The point was that in no way was what he did or didn't do a threat or indecent or what have you.

He had, apparently, "broken code" though. He (apparently) did what black folks in Money, Mississippi, were not allowed to do -- under summary penalty which any white man was allowed to administer by common custom.

That summary penalty could include fiendish tortures and death. A mob may no longer be openly involved, but the result was the same, and the point of it was also the same: to perpetuate white dominance by terrorizing the various "Others" into submission and compliance.

Whatever Emmett Till did that day, his companions knew he was in trouble for breaking code. The assumption is he didn't know that there were certain things he must not do while he was in Mississippi if he valued his life. Yet I suspect he did know most of what he couldn't do, and whatever happened at the store was either a deliberate act of mischief or of defiance. I suspect he did know because he'd been there long enough, he seemed to be extremely social and bright, and it appeared he could pick up social cues well beyond what he was told he could or couldn't do. He was known in the town, too, as were the relatives he was staying with.

He was no stranger.

And he was going back to school in Chicago soon enough.

Whatever he did at that store was no doubt innocent of bad intent, I would say, but it must have rankled Carolyn Bryant to the point that she felt something had to be done or this uppity nigra boy would give the rest of the nigras in the area the wrong idea.

So she told her husband when he got back to the store that something had happened with that nigra boy from Chicago and she didn't like it a bit. Time to teach that boy a lesson, don't you think?

There were certain things in rural Mississippi that simply couldn't be allowed.

Carolyn Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam went out to the house of Emmett's great uncle with whom he was staying and they demanded that the boy be turned over to them for... discipline, I suppose you would call it. The white folks as a rule never saw what they did to black folks as wrong in any way, any more than police today see what they do as wrong when they kill or brutalize to terrorize the way they do.

When you believe that black folks -- or any designated "Other" -- is nothing more than a savage animal, rabid by nature, and should be put down at a moment (the legendary "split-second decision," no?)  and it's your job to do that, to put down the savage, rabid animal, that's what you do, and you do not let conscience or any other form of empathy enter into it.

So Roy and J. W. -- good ol' boys in the time honored Southern tradition -- only did what they had to do. They took Emmett out to the river, beat him senseless and bloody, then shot him in the head and threw his corpse into the Tallahatchie River weighted down with a cotton-gin fan, and then went home and had a beer while they told of their bravery and cunning.

That nigra boy from up North wouldn't cause any more trouble, oh no. And I don't doubt they laughed about it, laughed out loud. They felt proud of what they had done. Remorse wasn't an option.

No more remorse than they would have had killing a stray, rabid dog or a thieving raccoon or a stink-spewing skunk or a skittering palmetto bug. They did no more than any upstanding white person would have done. They got rid of a pest.

The fact that they had to go on trial for their action was an inconvenience but there was essentially no chance whatever that they would be convicted of anything, let alone murder most foul, any more than police officers today -- even if indicted and handed over for trial -- are likely to be convicted of anything at all, no matter what they do to suspects or "subjects" as they are known in the trade.

A white man protecting his white woman from the predation of a rabid, savage black is only doing his proper and necessary duty. Right?

This is exactly the same attitude that informs so many police today. They are told and they are trained to believe that killing is their highest and most honorable duty to those they serve. They are told and they are trained to believe that the greatest threat to themselves and their women are black males. They are told and they are trained to believe that their first duty is to protect themselves, and that black males are the biggest threat to their personal safety and security; they must be on constant guard in any encounter with a black person, particularly with black males. And they must be ready to kill instantly if they perceive anything that might be a threat from the subject.

That's what they are told and are trained to believe.

They act as if they must make periodic examples of blacks and browns and designated Others -- by maiming and killing them -- or the rest of the "savages" would get the wrong idea and get out of line. So they kill. And kill and kill some more. Just doing their jobs.

Roy and J. W. were doing the same thing in the backwater of Money, Mississippi back in 1955. I guess the big bellied sheriff wouldn't have done it for them. Well, no. He actually was the one who arrested them. No, if the good ol' boys had gone to the sheriff about Emmett Till's offense, the sheriff would have laughed in their faces. Emmett broke code but he did not break a law, no matter how the good ol' boys tried to exaggerate what happened. The sheriff likely would have told the good ol' boys that they would have to take care of it theirownselves. And they might get into a bit of trouble if they did. "Good luck, boys."

Police are left to use their own judgement in their encounters with the public, especially using their own judgement with regard to use of lethal force against... "subjects."  They may have to account for their actions, but they will most likely never face serious consequences -- such as conviction in a court of law. That's reserved almost entirely for gross corruption and sexual impropriety. Not for killing and brutality while on the job.

White men had to act on their own in rural Mississippi back in 1955 because the law would not do it for them.

In 2015, however, police take care of these problems so white men don't have to do it on their own.

Progress, right?

The murder of Emmett Till and the acquittal of their murderers in 1955 caused such a strong reaction among so many people because it was so outrageous -- and ultimately so frightening -- that it couldn't be allowed to pass without notice. The murder victim was a child. The murderers were a couple of no-account white bucks, tobacco spitting, arrogant creeps, the infestation and ruin of the South. Something had to be done.

But nothing was.

Roy and J. W. went to their graves free men.

That's the way it was in America and that's the way it still is in much of America today.

L to R: Roy Bryant, Caroline Bryant, Juanita Milam, J. W. Milam. Acquittal. America.

The confession that appeared in Look Magazine in 1956:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/sfeature/sf_look_confession.html

Neither a Warrior nor a Guardian Be -- Advice the Cops Need

Sometimes when I explore the issue of violent policing and police abuse of the public, it seems perfectly obvious where their beliefs and attitudes come from, why so many die at their hands or through their neglect of basic human decency. It's a matter of character -- individual and institutional -- and it's a matter of training and inculcated beliefs (brainwashing) about their jobs and the people and institutions they serve.

A key to understanding is that the police don't serve the public. They serve the powers that be operating through governments. In many jurisdictions, "the public" are enemy forces to be corralled and suppressed by any and all means necessary, including use of lethal force, so as to maintain "order" -- which is to say established systems of authority, control and exploitation designed and implemented to protect wealth and the property of the wealthy, not in any way to serve and protect the Rabble.

To the extent they are not violently and abusively policed, the public should consider themselves lucky. To the extent they are violently and abusively policed, the public should realize they deserve it. Thus runs the mindset in many, too many, police departments.

Recently a column appeared at PoliceOne.com, the often controversial website maintained by a cadre of retired police officers, equipment and training suppliers and consultants and by others as a means to foster and enhance police "professionalism" -- a term much used and misunderstood in the field -- in service to... well, that's typically left unstated, but it's not the public.

The column lambasted President Obama for his call on police to adopt a guardian as opposed to a warrior mentality as a means to overcome some of the objections to their behavior that have been raised during the lengthy "national conversation" about police and their appropriate role in the 21st Century.

This call grew directly out of the presidential task force, "Policing in the 21st Century" (116 page final report, pdf), empaneled last year after the so-called riots in Ferguson, MO following the summary execution of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson PD, apparently for the crime of having demon eyes and disrespecting the officer's authority in broad daylight.

This killing followed on the heels of many others, and there would be many more to come. Summary execution has become one of the favored tools of US police forces and is employed some 1,000 or more times a year, frequently on unarmed individuals and those in mental health or other crises, with nearly total impunity. All the officer has to say to avoid criminal responsibility and liability for these killings is that s/he "feared for my life and the safety of others." Bingo, home free to their families and who knows, maybe a medal and parade on top of it.

On the other hand, the city is often left liable in civil court for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in awards to the victims, survivors and families of those subjected to summary execution and abusive policing. Oh my yes. The awards seemingly have become more frequent, and the amounts awarded are growing. This despite the fact that it is all but impossible to charge and convict a police officer for crimes committed while on duty -- apart from sexual indiscretion or impropriety.

The columnist at PoliceOne, Lt. Dan Marcu (ret) disputes the call on police to adopt a guardian as opposed to a warrior mindset, a call that came from a task force that had a heavy police presence and represented mostly an establishmentarian point of view.

No, says Marcu, the police must maintain warrior competence and vigilance, because the Persians are at the gates, and the police are the Spartans at Thermopylae, holding off the invading horde and protecting Democracy. I kid you not.

Guardians will fail in the task according to Marcu. Only warriors can keep us safe from the Persians at the gates.

This is nonsense on stilts, but it represents the kind of thinking that infects police departments throughout the land. The idea that the police must behave as self-described Warriors to prevent the Persians -- or any other foreign entity -- from invading and having their way is insane and ridiculous. Marcu even cites the threat of ISIS in his defense of Warrior Policing.

No. No. No. No. No.

I'm not a fan of Guardian Policing, either, because it assumes that the public, the Rabble, are nothing more than incompetents and infantile, unable to look after themselves and their own communities without the sometimes heavy hand of the police to guide and protect them from... themselves, primarily.

I tend to be more of an abolitionist, truth to tell. But I realize that police cannot be abolished without thinking through the means and methods and the many consequences thereof. We're nowhere near that point yet. The thought process for abolishing police has barely begun.

But the cult of Warrior Police is out of control, and people like Dan Marcu and David Grossman -- who retails the cult of the Sheepdog-Warrior Police -- are a big part of the reason why.

Marcu's argument is that the President is wrong because he calls on police to "abandon" the Warrior mindset, whereas, according to Marcu, every police officer is already a guardian, and inside each and every one,

there must reside the beating heart of an honorable warrior ready to be summoned at a moment’s notice...

What he and so many others of his ilk seem incapable of comprehending is that that's the problem you fools!

That so-called "honorable warrior" is shooting down people they've been called on to help each and every day; that "honorable warrior" considers any questioning or challenge to his or her authority to be an existential threat to be neutralized with whatever force the officer can muster; that "honorable warrior" sees a black man with a weapon or thought to have a weapon as an existential threat to be neutralized with lethal force; that "honorable warrior" sees all residents of certain sections of their jurisdictions as insurgents or potential insurgents who must be made to obey with whatever force and intimidation tactics the officer chooses to utilize. They must be made to obey -- or they must die.

This is absolutely the wrong way to deal with the American public, but it is the way the police have come to believe they must believe and behave or... the Persians will overwhelm the Spartans at Thermopylae. The heroic Spartans who are only defending Democracy, after all.

Which is complete and utter bullshit. It's ahistorical bullshit besides.

But it's the belief. It's one of the underlying beliefs that drives the killing spree the police have been on. It's a big reason why they feel it is necessary to shoot down various categories of threats:

•  The mentally ill -- just because.
• Anyone addled by drugs whose actions are not under complete control and whose compliance is not 100% at all times -- and even then, execution may be carried out... just because.
•  Negroes, Mexicans, and/or American Indians, whether armed or unarmed particularly if standing still, driving or running away.
• Anyone challenging the authority of the officer, particularly if armed -- but not white people if open carrying
•  Non-compliant individuals who may be demons or Hulks in disguise and therefore may pose an existential threat to one and all.
• Anyone -- and/or any pet -- in a structure at which a warrant is being served who does not immediately comply with any and all commands issued, no matter how contradictory, incomprehensible, whether or not accompanied by grenades and bullets.

These are the people -- and animals -- who die at the hands of police at mind numbing rates.

These are warrior actions that are completely inappropriate in a civilian/domestic context, and were (or still are) inappropriate and counterproductive in the context of the military occupations they have been derived from.

Thousands upon thousands of completely innocent civilians in our overseas satrapies have executed by troops in much the same way domestic police forces have been summarily executing civilians in the United States.

As observers and critics have long been pointing out, most of this killing is completely unnecessary, and it leads inevitably to distrust of police/military and rebellion against their authority. Inevitably.

They are not protecting anybody, not even the masters they are in place to serve. They are not even protecting themselves. They are acting crazy. Causing more problems than they solve. Precipitating chaos not order.

The police and the troops they emulate are the problem, not the solution.

But it's clear that powerful forces and voices within the police and military want it this way and will not brook opposition or counter arguments.

They want more killing, not less; they demand more chaos, not order; their rules of engagement are madness. They are actively destroying what they pretend to preserve.

A stop must be put to it.

Cops must become neither guardians nor warriors but become the servants of the People they were long mythologized to be. They must cease their contempt and violence toward the public, stop the killing and abuse, and de-police communities rather than becoming ever more intrusive and violent. The commando mindset must be eliminated. Military equipment and trappings must be removed. Laws which protect police violence must be revised or overruled, and the system of injustice which the police serve must be overhauled top to bottom.

Given the kind of resistance and full-on paranoia and insanity that pervade police departments nationwide (not all of them, but far too many of them)  the kind of necessary reforms that are being mentioned more and more simply can't happen -- or at least they can't happen soon enough to preserve life and liberty of the public. The police are infected with a cult of death. They cannot comprehend that what they are doing is crazy and destructive. They can't imagine that they are doing anything wrong.

It doesn't occur to them to change their ways to suit the interests of the public. The only thing that occurs to them is that they have the power and authority to use whatever force they deem necessary at any given time to enforce obedience to their command. And they can do so with impunity. No matter the consequences.

That's what they know.

That's all they know.

And that's why I think abolition is the necessary solution once the means, methods, and consequences are sufficiently thought through.

On Violence -- An Albuquerque Perspective

While events were swirling in Baltimore the other day, a Bernalillo County deputy sheriff shot and mortally wounded a man in the South Valley neighborhood of Albuquerque. His name was Billy Grimm and he died in the hospital several hours after he was shot. He was not provided any medical attention for 2-3 hours after he was shot (sheriff's department says 1 hour and 45 minutes, witnesses say 2 hours or longer) because, they say, he didn't follow commands after he was shot to get out of a vehicle and get on the ground.

The sheriff's department has provided an audio recording of the moments leading up to the shooting and the immediate aftermath. It is truly an appalling record.

http://www.abqjournal.com/581200/news/girlfriend-begged-for-ambulance.html

Deputies surrounded the vehicle but didn’t try to enter it because they feared Grimm was still armed. In the recordings, the deputies can be heard giving Grimm verbal commands to exit the car.

The Sheriff’s Office called for K-9s and deputies with rifles to form a perimeter around the car. Deputies can be heard saying they saw Grimm moving inside the vehicle.
“Tidwell was going for the extract,” Grundhoffer explained to another deputy who arrived on scene. “I looked through the windshield on my side and he started pulling it up. That’s when I yelled ‘gun’ and engaged him.”

During the lengthy standoff, Grimm exited the passenger side of the truck and was moving on the ground. The Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that the deputies couldn’t see his hands until a K-9 was unleashed and moved Grimm into the open. Deputies started first aid until paramedics arrived.

Deputies surrounded the vehicle but didn’t try to enter it because they feared Grimm was still armed. In the recordings, the deputies can be heard giving Grimm verbal commands to exit the car.

The Sheriff’s Office called for K-9s and deputies with rifles to form a perimeter around the car. Deputies can be heard saying they saw Grimm moving inside the vehicle.
“Tidwell was going for the extract,” Grundhoffer explained to another deputy who arrived on scene. “I looked through the windshield on my side and he started pulling it up. That’s when I yelled ‘gun’ and engaged him.”

During the lengthy standoff, Grimm exited the passenger side of the truck and was moving on the ground. The Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that the deputies couldn’t see his hands until a K-9 was unleashed and moved Grimm into the open. Deputies started first aid until paramedics arrived.

There you have it. A textbook example of terrified LEOs shooting and mortally wounding a man they fear has a gun refusing any sort of medical assistance after shooting him until they feel "safe."

It happens all the time, and it used to happen in Albuquerque routinely until the APD was told to cease fire and stand down. Stop killing.

Initially, this incident in the South Valley was reported as the first BCSO involved shooting/killing of the year, but that was not so. It was the third. By comparison, APD has shot and killed one person so far this year.

Ultimately, the killing of Billy Grimm will be added to the statistics of police killings and will largely be forgotten, as most of the deaths by police gunfire are forgotten. This one will probably not generate the kinds of protests and demonstrations that some of them do in part because there was a gun found in the truck in which Grimm was a passenger. We will probably never know whether he in fact had any contact with this gun or whether the cries of "Gun!" from Deputy Grundhoffer  as he shot at Grimm 9 times, hitting him once, were accurate. The audio recording of the incident is terrible, but it is not particularly informative about the facts regarding Billy Grimm and any threat he may have offered to officers. I detected no threat at all from him or from his girlfriend Destiny Cardenas in the audio. Disobedience, yes. But disobedience is not, a priori, a threat. Something that APD has apparently learned, but BCSO has not.

Another BCSO story appeared in the Albuquerque Journal today. A lawsuit has been filed against the BCSO over the treatment of a detainee at the Metropolitan Detention Center (the county jail). The inmate claims to have been tasered by jail personnel 30 times in one day as he was being restrained for transport. The suggestion is that this sort of brutality -- and worse -- is commonplace at the jail, and it needs to stop.

http://www.abqjournal.com/581955/news/taser-allegedly-used-on-inmate-30-times-in-day.html

Stories have been coming out of this and many other jails, prisons and detention centers for years about the pervasive violence, torture, brutality and neglect that have long characterized the treatment of people who are held in these lock-ups. This story is particularly egregious because the officers involved in torturing the inmate -- whose name is Mark Martinez -- continued to tase and abuse him at the hospital where he was eventually taken for treatment of injuries he sustained that day, and when hospital personnel attempted to intervene, they were threatened by officers as well. It's insane.

As we see over and over and over again, obedience and instant compliance are demanded by law and corrections officers, and when they don't get it, they become violent to the point of using lethal force,

Even when they do get compliance, as in the case of Lateef Dickerson in Dover, DE a couple of years ago, violence by police is still routine.



Until recently, all the officer had to say was "I feared for my life and the safety of others" to win exoneration for almost any form of violence, including lethal violence, they choose to engage in. It doesn't matter a bit whether the officer's "fear" was justified by the facts. All that mattered was that the officer use those magical words, and s/he was home free.

Now, after seemingly endless protests and several uprisings against violent policing, that's starting, slowly, to change.

It's not enough change, and it's by no means fast enough -- numbers of people killed by police actually seem to be increasing rather than declining as I had hoped -- but the constant violence by police is no longer being treated as "normal." It will have to end, but not before many more people are dead and injured.

Albuquerque has done a great deal to reduce the level of police violence since last summer, but it's not enough. As we see, the message hasn't yet penetrated to the BCSO or the State Police, both of which continue their killing as if nothing (much) has changed.

I hope the activists who brought so much pressure to bear on the Albuquerque Police Department last year can gear up similar protest actions against BCSO and the New Mexico State Police this year.

Down Country and the Persistence of Colonialism in New Mexico

I've been thinking about colonialism as endemic to New Mexico.

It's part of Pueblo culture and other Native culture, too, including Diné/Navajo.

I've been reading Lucy Lippard's magisterial "Down Country" (mostly) about the Tano people of the Galisteo Basin, just to the north over a ridge from our own place in the Estancia Basin. The Tano came as colonizers from the north and west in -- perhaps -- 1200AD or so; there were already scattered settlements in the Galisteo, some a thousand years old, perhaps (then again, maybe not so old.) The inhabitants were overwhelmed, driven out or incorporated into the new Tano pueblo villages, the ruins of which are found all over the Galisteo. The Spanish, in their turn, overwhelmed the Tano pueblos, and eventually, they were all abandoned, the remnant Tano people moving to Hopi-land where their descendants still are.

The Spanish settled in after a while, and they in their turn were overwhelmed and the Anglo colonists moved in. Galisteo itself has been a Tano pueblo, a Spanish pueblo and it is now (mostly) an Anglo artist colony, an offshoot of Santa Fe's art colony.  Fancy people, all 250 of them,  in their fancy houses and studios, with their fancy (non-functional) mailboxes, lording it over... well, their own domain. A domain taken from others, who took it from others, who in turn took it from others still.

I'm a colonist too. Ms Ché is in a slightly different category being Native and all, but Cherokee are not the local indigenous even so.  Cherokee are more or less in charge of IAIA, and even though it is Indian-centered and Indian run, IAIA is very much a colonial enterprise.

Where we are, the Empty Quarter, has a similar pattern to that of the Galisteo Basin, though much attenuated, as no one (much) lived here to take the land from, and there were few resources easily exploitable.

The closest pueblos were fifteen/twenty miles away. This was an open grassland where buffalo roamed. The deer and the antelope played in the hills and mountains round about, among the cholla, pinon, and juniper. Before the Spanish, the Tompiro people coming from the west established a few outposts which became large pueblo trading centers, the chief product being salt which the people collected from the salt ponds to the east, the remnants of the once mighty lake that had filled the Estancia basin. The trade was between the local pueblos, the pueblos along the Rio Grande on the west side of the mountains, and the Plains tribes, chiefly the Kiowa and Comanche who roamed and were fierce in their war paint wherever and whenever they wished. They followed the buffalo, but so did the Pueblo peoples whose hunts were legendary.

The Tompiro fought the Spanish and submitted to the Spanish and that was their undoing, for once they sumitted, they no longer were able to rely on their own customs and resources to ensure their survival, they had to rely on the Spanish -- who literally had no concern for the well-being/survival of the People, only for themselves. Ultimately, the remnant Tompiro people (perhaps only a few hundred by then) left en masse and joined the Rio Grande pueblos, chiefly Isleta, just before the outbreak of the Pueblo Revolt.

They never came back. The land was empty -- except for the birds, the buffalo, the deer and the antelope, the coyotes and the occasional forays from the Kiowa and Comanche, who now had to scale the mountain passes to get to the pueblos and the Spanish settlements for slave-raiding and trade. Such an inconvenience, but they managed somehow.

This land became part of contested and competing land grants and was used primarily for sheep-raising when it was used at all. It was wild-country, no-man's land.

There were a few Spanish villages along the east foothills of the Manzanos and there was a ranch headquarters at Estancia, and that was pretty much it for settlement. The ruins of the stone-built pueblos did not dissolve back into the ground like adobe would but still stood stark, rigid and crumbling, not unlike tiny versions of Chaco and Mesa Verde.

Anglo colonists came from Texas with their multitudes of cattle and claimed the land for their own, demanding that the sheep-ranchers and their sheep withdraw forthwith. There was a notorious shoot-out after a friendly poker game. The colonists came from Texas, but the Anglo colonial enterprise was directed from California, via Boston, or vice versa. I had no idea until after I'd lived here for a while that the cattle operation was owned by the Whitneys who had a vast ranch and experimental farm outside of Sacramento which turned into one of the many microchip suburbs and where I had worked from time to time. The Whitneys came from Boston at the tail end of the Gold Rush. In New Mexico, the Whitneys claimed to be from Boston, though their entire expansion program was being run from their California ranch. Colorado didn't escape their ministrations, either, I'm told, but that's another tale for another time.

(I'm sure I've told this story before) The Whitneys fought the Oteros on the ground and in court for decades for control of the land, and finally they both lost at the Supreme Court, and the land was opened for Anglo homesteading/settlement. The railroad promptly laid tracks, and the remnants of history are all around, as are the many ruins of broken dreams. Our house was one of those ruins until we, colonists from California, "rescued" it and rehabbed it enough to live in. With the skunks underneath and the song birds nesting in the eaves.

Now and then, we still hear a coyote howl or see an eagle soar. There are no buffalo, though, no more. I don't know why not. There are vast ranches nearby where they could be raised and roam, ranches that host numerous cattle, horses, llamas, or goats, and if they can host any of those, they can host buffalo, but they don't. The pronghorn, they say, are not the Native variety -- they were hunted to extinction in historic times -- they are an imported variety from Wyoming; colonists you might say, in their own right, like the cattle, the horses, the llamas and the goats.

The Russian olives are colonists as are most of the plants that now cover the grasslands. The farms and most of their crops are colonists, though corn, beans and squash are raised in abundance and are highly sought after by city-folk who flock to the country at harvest time. Colonists. The farm nearby where the cranes roost in the daytime is a working farm, but also an "attraction," hosting thousands of school children bussed in from the city every year to see what a "real farm" is like.  Colonists.

All I'm saying is that there is no escaping colonialism in New Mexico. Even the Diné/Navajo are colonists -- coming in from the north so late in the game they were practically simultaneous arrivals with the Spanish, within a hundred years or so. They were raiders like their cousins the Apaches. The pueblo peoples feared and despised them. Some still do. Colonists all.

The question is whether colonialism will continue to be imposed by force and bloodshed. That's the issue of police violence in a nutshell. That's the issue raised by so many of the Indians we've come to know in New Mexico -- who say, almost to a one, "It didn't have to be this way."

The violence was never necessary.

The taking and the stealing and the use of force and bloodshed was never necessary. Matters could be worked out (relatively) peacefully. Accommodations could be made. They still can be.

That's what I'm hoping to see happen in the next phase of opposition to police violence -- and implicitly to the violence of Anglo-colonialism.

The Spanish and the Indians learned -- the hard way -- to accommodate one another in this harsh and unforgiving land. As I've heard said, they're all related now, they're children of one another's mothers, and though they may maintain distinctive cultures, they are still family. They often unite to oppose more Anglo colonial impositions and these days they can and do succeed in their opposition.

The question is whether the Anglos will learn there is another way. In my view, they must learn.

Burst of Action, Rage and Outrage in Ferguson

Well.

How much will these developments matter in the long run?

Ferguson's city authorities have been overhauling their little fiefdom by shuffling around some of the city's personnel and getting rid of some of the more egregious masters of the Negro Farm. The city manager was duly separated from his overseer seat; the police chief resigned; the municipal court judge who had been so good at harvesting the Negro crop for the city left town -- but he's still right next door; two police commanders who had chuckled over their racist email "jokes" took off for parts unknown; the racist court clerk who thought the Negroes were so funny also departed.

Things were looking somewhat positive in Ferguson for a change, though who would be stepping into the vacancies was anybody's guess. Given the economic structure of many of the municipalities in St. Louis County, it's hardly practical to bring in a more, shall we say, public-service oriented team.

The problem is that these tiny fiefdoms grandly called "cities" in St. Louis County are simply not economically viable unless the population or a significant portion of it is "farmed" as a cash crop might be. They do it in St Louis through the constant petty extractions of the municipal courts, backed up by predatory policing. It's a system worked out over many generations.

These things don't change overnight.

But overnight, shots rang out at the Ferguson Police HQ and Muni Court Building, an iconic symbol of the oppression the residents -- well, the black residents -- of Ferguson feel, and the sight of numerous protests and demonstrations since the outrageous killing of Mike Brown by FPD officer Darren Wilson last August.

Two police officers were wounded, though apparently neither of them were FPD officers.

There have been endless claims of "shots fired" during the protests against police violence in Ferguson, literally from the first moments of outrage after Darren Wilson shot and killed Mike Brown on Canfield Drive that hot August noon last years. Literally from the first moments of protest and outrage in Ferguson, the claim has been made by police that shots were fired. This statement was made over and over again during protests, but there was no proof of it, certainly no proof that members of the protest crowds were firing at police.

What we witnessed instead, through Livestreams and other mean, was police firing tear gas, flash grenades, smoke bombs, and rubber bullets at protesters. Time and time again. The police would only confront "peaceful protests" -- and they did it with such over the top armaments and technology that the scenes often turned chaotic and absurd, thanks to the police response to protesters. The police never interfered with arsonists, vandals, and looters, however. Never. They only responded to non-violent protests with overwhelming force.

And often their excuse was that somebody had fired at them, or they heard gunfire somewhere, or somebody not involved with the protests was arrested somewhere and they had a gun. They would show off the guns they had taken from people they arrested -- people who had nothing to do with the protests -- and they would often imply that these guns were being used by protesters against the police. But no such thing was happening, and there was never any evidence or proof whatever that protesters were firing at police.

There was abundant evidence that the police were firing at protesters, however.

All the police had to do was make the claim that they were being fired on by the protesters to justify in their own minds and the minds of their supporters their violence against nonviolent crowds.

It was an obvious tactic to garner support for their often outrageous actions. In the end, the claims of shots fired made their way into the DoJ's report on the Darren Wilson matter, as a justification for many actions -- such as leaving Mike Brown's body in the street for hour after hour. "There were reports..." of gunfire nearby, and as we know, force protection is the prime directive of all police forces and public entities everywhere, all the time. Thus, if there is any suggestion or suspicion of danger, protecting the force (and their fort) comes first and foremost.

So last night, as a protest demonstration in front of the Police Fort in Ferguson was winding down, shots really did ring out, and two officers -- neither from FPD -- were wounded. An "active shooter" situation was declared, police guns were drawn on the remnants of the crowd, and the fort was protected. Flying squads of police were dispatched to the site where the gunfire was thought to have have originated, well away from the few remaining protesters.

There were reports -- not confirmed that I know of -- that there were four shots, all of which reached their targets. In other words, two shots hit each police officer. The distance was calculated at about 200 yards, perhaps farther, as the exact location of the shooter was not determined. Obviously, however, whoever shot the officers was a skilled marksman, no doubt using a high powered rifle, perhaps with a nightscope.

A pro.

Immediately, there was speculation that this was a provocation, a false-flag operation by someone interested in stirring things up a bit. Could be. This is America, and false flag operations are as American as apple pie and motherhood.

But who knows. Sometimes what seems to be clear... isn't.

At any rate, the hand wringers are out in force; this incident will "kill the movement," yadda yadda, which, not surprisingly, is exactly what a false flag operation would be designed to do. "We must practice non-violence! Gandhi! King! etc." Yes, well, those who are so loudly invoking King and Gandhi at a time like this simply falsify history, but that's been going on so long, hardly anybody knows the real history of King's and Gandhi's movements, and those who do know are often loathe to dispute the received narrative.

The shooting of the officers in the Bronx was supposed to "kill the movement," too. Of course the police and the defenders of their violence and murder utilize any incident like the one overnight -- incidents which are very, very rare -- to claim that the police are under constant assault and attack from the murderous public. We hear it all the time. It's false, but now and then there are incidents in which police are attacked and even wounded. Now and then.

What happened in Ferguson overnight is anybody's guess, and given the way "gunfire" has been investigated throughout the protests against police violence, I expect we will never know what happened or who was responsible.

Finding that out is not a particular priority.

The priority is to declare the people at war with the police, and thus to justify any level of suppression deemed necessary.

We'll see how it shakes out in the daylight...

Relentless

Despite the fact that the protests against violent policing continue -- though not on as large a scale as they once were -- nothing seems to have changed, and the killing by police continues as well. Men, women, children (well, not so much children...) shot down or run down in the streets, three a day almost like clockwork, pow-pow-pow. The dead continue piling up.

The dead tell no tales. It's been said that one of the rationales for so many of the killings is to ensure that there will be only one "side" to the tale of what happened, the police side. And of course, we hear all the time that the police are not allowed to "shoot to wound." They are trained to "shoot to stop," which means they must aim for center of mass or head, whichever seems most effective in "stopping" the culprit, and unfortunately for the culprit, that means they frequently... die. Oh well!

The fact that the police and media are eagerly complicit in smearing the dead after their demise has been noted as well. The point of the media campaign launched with nearly every police-involved shooting is to justify the killing on the basis of the deceased person's presumed "badness." It doesn't matter what happened in the incident in question, at least not usually. What matters -- really all that matters -- is the deceased's "long record," his (or sometimes her) tattoos, his/her drug use, his/her demeanor.

So every mug shot will be paraded around, his/her relatives' run ins with the law will be highlighted, the criminal statistics from his/her neighborhood will be bandied about, some traffic warrant from years ago will be cited, on and on.

What happened in the incident that got the culprit killed will not be clearly stated, even who killed the culprit will not be known for days, weeks, or months as the "investigation" goes on. The "investigation" is most often conducted by the killer's own comrades, and it can drag on indefinitely, as the killer's comrades "piece together" the events that led to the killing and the events of the killing itself. Almost always, the killing will be ruled justified and what is "pieced together" is mostly what was going on in the mind of the killer. He or she was scared. He or she was reacting to a "reaching" movement by the culprit. The culprit "lunged," therefore the officer fired in self-defense. There's a litany of approved justifications, and as long as the killer-officer invokes one or more of them, it's all good.

 Investigations tend to be lengthened when there is serious dispute over what happened and the culpability of the police is highlighted. Nevertheless, police will generally not be held liable for anything they do in the conduct of their jobs -- so long as what they do can be excused via policy, protocol and training. Thus, for example, the killing of sweet little Aiyana Stanley-Jones is ruled "just one of those things." The officer walks free. Of course.

There's a must-ness about it. There's a must-ness about three-a-day killings by police, and there's a must-ness about letting officers who kill get away with it, no matter the circumstances of the killing. They must go free (to kill again?)

I'm not the only one who's noticed the relentless pattern and commented on it, but the whys of it remain a bit murky.

*Why three-a-day almost every day?

*Why are killer-police enabled and almost always set free to kill again?

*Why are the victims almost always smeared by the police and media acting in concert?

*Why can't this pattern be broken?

Who do you protect? Who do you serve?

I continually run into claims that the People should be going to City Council meetings and getting in the face of mayors to demand an end to police violence. It's fine if they do, but I point out that doing so will rarely make much difference because the police are usually not under the authority of the Mayor and Council. The person with authority over the police is usually the City Manager or his/her equivalent. The City Manager is not elected, and s/he only listens to the voice of the People to the extent s/he must in order to pursue his/her civic agenda. In other words, the City Manager operates nearly independently of the Mayor and Council. The Mayor and Council can direct that the City Manager (or "Staff") do something, but the City Manager/Staff don't have to comply or can comply in such a way that their "compliance" is actually "defiance."

When it comes to the police, City Managers will rarely ever do what electeds and the public want unless what they want coincides with the City Manager's agenda. There is little or nothing the electeds and public can do to force a resistant City Manager to do what they want. In a pinch, they could get another City Manager, but more than likely any replacement would have the same agenda or a similar one as the Manager who has been dismissed. But even dismissing a City Manager is typically difficult, requiring a supermajority on the Council, and generally requiring a very expensive buy-out of the Manager's contract with the city.

It's much the same with school district administrators, indeed with high ranking civic officials of any kind.

City Managers rarely listen to public officials, rarely have any interaction with the public at large. Often enough, the public has no idea who they are or what their authority really is. In most municipalities, however, the City Manager or the equivalent is the one person in actual charge of every or nearly every aspect of city government. He or she is the one who runs things. Not the Council, not the Mayor, not the Chief of Police.

City Managers talk to one another, and they listen to the Powers That Be in their cities -- the men and women who have wealth, power, and influence. They typically don't listen to the Rabble at all.

The nearly universal practice of violent policing in this country comes from a consensus of City Managers directing their Chiefs to implement certain protocols and policies which are considered "best practices" in the field. They are often not the announced "best practices," they are instead a set of protocols and policies which authorize and underpin a hostile relationship between police and communities. In other words, they are "best practices" which posit the police as a "protective-occupation" force rather than a protective-service force. One of the consequences is a vast increase in the utilization of para-military SWAT teams, often for the most mundane of police activities. Police departments now routinely have and deploy snipers where none are called for. Any Negro-with-a-gun scenario and many domestic violence scenarios are treated as "active shooter" situations in which the police are expected to advance and "neutralize the threat" -- whether there is a real threat or not.

The mentally ill are often treated as if they, too, were "active shooters."

All this comes from a spate of school shootings in the 1990s and the everlasting effects of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

A so-called War on Crime that had been going on for years was transformed into a War on Threats. Anything or anyone who either posed an immediate threat or might pose one was to be "neutralized" -- often that meant killed -- forthwith. No quarter, no mercy. Potential threats were seen everywhere, in every police encounter, and in every deviation from the norm. To be black was to be an ever present danger and threat. Depending on where you were, to be Indian or Hispanic was also considered an existential danger and threat to police and everyone else.

This has been going on so long, many people just assume it's natural, but it's not.

Violent policing was not always the rule, though it was frequently the exception to the rule.

The relentlessness of violent policing comes from policy decisions made in City Managers' offices throughout the land, made in concert with the "best practices" as determined by consensus of the Managers themselves. Violent policing is the rule because City Managers have determined and declared it to be the rule. They don't want another Columbine. They don't want another 9/11. Not on their watches. So, if a few darkies or other members of the Rabble get a bullet in the head to prevent something much worse from happening, so what? "Protect and Serve," get it?

But who tells the City Managers to implement such policies?

Where do they come from?

They come from people like Bill Bratton and Dave Grossman who have studied the matter closely. Bratton, of course, is NYPD commissioner now, as he was in the past, and he's apparently decided to go full Bull Connor against the uppity Rabble-Terrorists. No more Mister Nice-Guy, beat the crap out of them and kill them he will. Or at least hold the perpetual threat over their heads.

Grossman is in the shadows, whereas Bratton is right out front. Grossman psychs the cops up to kill and kill some more, relentlessly and without remorse. That's his function. Bratton soothes the Rabble with talk of "community and peace." Grossman celebrates and energizes a cult of punishment and death among the police. That is their calling, that is their job, to rain punishment and death on the populace.

The policies of violent policing also come from the Department of Justice in Washington, and from numerous court rulings which say in essence that when push comes to shove, police are above the law and absolved from wrong-doing.

We note that the relentless killing spree and practice of violent policing has not abated -- except for anomalies here and there such as the apparent stand-down of the Albuquerque police and the temporary slow-down of NYPD actions during supposed disputes with the Mayor.

In St. Louis, there are suggestions of reform -- or maybe not. In Seattle, the police continue their resistance to change and acting out violently at the least provocation or none at all.

Chicago, on the other hand, celebrates their reform of the police -- while actually changing very little if at all.

The problem of violent policing is nationwide, almost universal. City-by-city "reform" is not really addressing the problem adequately. How many thousands more must die before "reform" is implemented nationwide?

The way to stop the killing, from a policy perspective, is to put "preservation of life" policies in primary place and remove or reduce policies which posit "neutralizing the threat" as the most important objective of policing.

It's actually not that hard.

"We Support! Our Police!"

Public authority is breaking down in St. Louis. I've witnessed it through a number of livestreams, but Bassem Masri's has been among the most compelling, in part because he puts himself in the middle of the action and comments fearlessly and fiercely while he's documenting the events he's very much a part of.

During a rally at the St. Louis County (In)Justice Center in Clayton the other day, Bassem waded in to an almost entirely white and hostile "Pro-Police" crowd of a few dozen, maybe 100, chanting "We Support! Our Police!" and was set upon by the crowd which was turning into a mob. I have little doubt that they would have killed him if they thought they could get away with it -- if they had "permission," in other words --  just like a lynch mob. And Bassem got it all on video:



Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

It's long, an hour and forty minutes, so feel free to scroll.

As Bassem suspects, these people are not really supporting the police at all. Instead, they're expressing their contempt and outrage for the protesters who have been disrupting their little lives since Mike Brown was killed by Darren Wilson in August. They'd be happier if the police would withdraw and let them handle the thugs* themselves. But the police on that day (Monday) intervened to prevent the mob from following through on its implicit threats of harm to Bassem and the others there to counter their.... for lack of a better word.... bullshit.

*"Thug" is the new N-word it would appear. 

The people in the streets love them some Bassem, his stature rises with every action he is a part of. He always claims he's not a leader of the protests, and that's true enough from the evidence of his livestreams. He doesn't lead the protests, but he often inspires the protesters with his personal bravery and his unshakable sense of justice. 

And then, on Monday, he let it be known that he was a heroin addict in recovery, that he's been clean -- and more or less sober -- for the last 16 months.

Oh my.

Well, I'm neither surprised nor horrified. Years ago, I dealt with addicts of all sorts when our theater company was "adopted" by an NA/AA group. One of them (that I know of) was a heroin addict, and he was the one who raised the most ruckus, caused the most problems, and did some of the most astonishing -- and often very brave -- work of any of the others.

When I see Bassem's livestreams and hear and read his commentary, I am reminded...

Heroin, they tell me, is one of the most difficult drugs to get off of, and even when an addict is able to get free from it, there are often irreversible changes in personality, behavior, and perspective that come about due the addiction and stay with the addict for the rest of their life. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's simply something to notice. Heroin changes addict's personalities, but not necessarily in a bad way.

One of the consequences of heroin addiction -- at least in some cases -- is bravery in the face of injustice, and empathy for those who suffer. I really can't object to those consequences. Some of the people at the rally documented above could learn from them.

When Bassem told his story of addiction and recovery on Twitter, there was an immediate outpouring of love from his many followers and fans. It was remarkable to see, but not surprising.

He made his case that he's changed his life, and now he's on a new path, a path of service to his people. That would be the people in the streets of St. Louis and so many other cities where opposition to police violence is a matter of principle and a matter of community building and a matter of strength. That would also be the Palestinian people (Bassem is a Palestinian-American) who are under brutal Israeli occupation.

Like many others, Bassem sees direct parallels between the Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestinians and the widespread police violence and murder in the United States. They're not the same by any means, any more than the Apartheid regime in South Africa was the same as Jim Crow in the American South. But they echo one another, and there are direct interactions between the Israeli oppressors and the American police forces.

Those who support their police are simply and directly saying to those who protest police violence, "You don't count matter."

That's it in a nutshell. You don't count matter .

One man at the rally insisted that everyone killed by police in the recent past  -- all those names of men and women and children who have died in repeated hails of police gunfire -- deserved to die.  And a big reason why? They showed disrespect.  Their pants were too low, they threw gang symbols, they had guns or knives or something that a police officer interpreted as a threat, they insulted an officer, they disobeyed, they were black, they were standing there, they were advancing, they reached for something... etc, etc. In every case, the killing was justified in the eyes of most of those rallying on Monday primarily because the victim showed disrespect, contempt of cop.

Not much different than whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi, is it?

You do that -- boy -- and you deserve to die.

If one of the ralliers showed similar disrespect for authority -- as many of them no doubt do in their daily lives -- of course it would be different, and it would be different because they are white and right, and authority must yield to their demands.

That's the proper way of the world.

"We Support! Our Police!" 

And you don't matter.

What I Learned This Year -- Part The Third

Activism works.

Of course I knew that from long experience, but we have been living under a system which insists that only "approved" activism works. Color revolutions only, you see?

The revolt against police violence and abuse seemed to take the Powers That Be by surprise (putting it mildly), and they still haven't figured out what to do about it. My sense of the situation has been that they will try to crack down, hard and all at once, much as they did with Occupy, but something tells me now, before the New Year, that they may try a different tactic:

Taking out or buying off the "leaders" who aren't slippery enough to escape their grasp.

I've seen many signs of it already.

The massing of military style police forces, just like an occupying army would do, after James Boyd was killed in Albuquerque, then after Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson, along with the massing of police-troops all over the country to counter the protests that ensued became something of an embarrassment to Our Rulers given the constant rhetoric about freedom of expression and assembly and so on.

No, it wouldn't work.

Military-style forces were told to stand down, and for the most part they did, though in St. Louis they were held in reserve "just in case" the Negroes got too far above themselves. Faith leaders and even the New Black Panthers were recruited to manage the protest crowds instead. The police continued their false claims of being fired on and assaulted by members of the crowds of protesters, but for the most part, protests went on relatively unimpeded, except when the feelings of the police were hurt -- as in Berkeley (CA), Oakland (CA), New York, and St. Louis, where the po-po are always butt-hurt over something or other.

Direct assaults against protests were limited; the snatch and grab tactic along with arrests and/or smears of protest "leaders" were substituted. By taking out the most outspoken or the most eagerly followed activists, it was thought that the protests would collapse. Didn't happen though.

I remember at one point, Antonio French, who was seen as a leader of the protest movement -- he isn't though -- was arrested and held for quite a while, but it only further inflamed the protests, it didn't cause them to collapse. That was because Antonio French wasn't leading the protests.

A concerted effort was launched to smear Mustafa Hussein who had been valiantly livestreaming the protests for Argus Radio News.  So far as I can tell at this point, Mustafa has stepped back and is no longer in the vanguard of livestreamers from Ferguson. He was clearly hurt by the smears and other assaults he faced. But it didn't end the livestream coverage of the protests. If anything, there are more streamers now.

Another livestreamer, Bassem Masri, is currently being smeared. He's also been arrested a number of times on bogus charges, and there have been reports that he's been offered "something" to turn against the protesters or to serve as a mole of some sort. Whether any of that is true, I don't know. But he's still out there covering the actions as best he can, and not solely in Ferguson and St. Louis. He's been traveling quite a bit around the country, and has made a number of mainstream television appearances.

An outspoken member of the Ferguson Commission was arrested for something, I forget what, the day after he was at the White House meeting with the President; another outspoken activist was arrested for arson and burglary for setting fires the night Antonio Martin was killed in Berkeley (MO).

A livestreamer in Los Angeles, Bryan Hayes, was run down by a driver from Rhode Island the other night -- no consequences to the driver, apparently. The running down/running over of protesters has become one of the "things" anti-protesters do, as the protests have been blocking streets and freeways as civil disobedience tactics.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of protesters have been arrested since August. Some have been charged with felonies for trivial offenses. That too is part and parcel of the government tactics against this uprising

There have been reports that all of the protest "leaders" are being monitored by the FBI -- COINTELPRO on steroids.

The primary tactic, however, appears to be to wait out the protests on the premise that they will go away on their own. A few bones will be thrown now and again to divert attention from the problem of police violence and abuse, but nothing substantive will change.

Except that substantive changes are being made in the way the country is policed, and radicals are actually proposing and here and there implementing alternatives that will eliminate police as we have grown accustomed to them.

Big changes are afoot.

Peter Gelderloos has written a pretty profound manifesto regarding "A World Without Police." Whether we'll get there, I don't know. But his insight and powerful rhetoric on the topic will have an influence, no doubt.

Albuquerque's police culture appears to have changed dramatically in the last several months. New York's police unions are focusing on change there. We're seeing the spread of change throughout the national policing culture. Activism works.

It is a profound lesson that needs to be relearned from time to time.

So This Is Christmas.....

[Unfortunately, Vines tend to freeze or crash my browser. I generally won't use them or link to them for that reason. If this one causes your browser to have problems, my apologies. I'm looking for livestreams of the event, so far without success...]

Outside the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis last night, some people mostly dressed in black, bearing a poignant sign reading :

BLACK 

LIVES 

MATTER

gathered during Christmas Eve Mass. During Mass they gathered and chanted "Black Lives Matter". Outside the Cathedral Basilica...

The police were summoned and assembled in all their riot get-up, fully armed for "Righteous Battle" against the predators and wolves, the criminals and thugs who would dare to stand in the cold outside the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, during Christmas Eve Mass and disturb the gentle reveries about the Christ Child in the Manger,  and Peace on Earth, and... Goodwill Toward Men.

And then the police marched in protective phalanxes. They took up positions beside the Cathedral doors. They menaced the small crowd outside -- the crowd outside with their hand-lettered sign reading BLACK LIVES MATTER. 

The police threatened and intimidated. They made mock by their presence of the Joy to the World proclaimed in Bethlehem so many centuries ago. They cast fear and dread before them. They denied the very godhead they claimed to be protecting.

From what were they protecting?  From whom? And why?

In their minds, in their sad and addled minds, they were protecting the flock -- the sheep inside -- from the dreaded wolves baying at the doors outside. "Black Lives Matter!" means "let me kill you and eat you!" in this warped vision so many police carry in their heads, and so many Good White Folks sheepishly go along with. 

Black lives don't matter you see in that context. Black lives are dangerous by definition, and the only thing that can be done with them is to corral them in their multitudes and to kill them. And kill them. And kill them.

It's the American Way, the only way Americans have known throughout their history. 

I saw this image on Bassem Masri's Twitter feed this morning, Christmas morning, and I literally broke down in tears; it is too fucking true. Too fucking true for too fucking long.  In this, the greatest nation that ever was. Or so we have been led to believe.

There are those believers who insist that our nation's greatness is due to... that. The slaughter, the murder, the plunder, the rape. All of it protection from the Demons and soul-less un-humans, the thugs and the wolves and the savages and the animals, who would  run wild and devour the Good Honest People, the sheep, the dedicated achievers, the (shhh) white folk (shh) for whom God Himself granted this land, this New Jerusalem, this Shining City on the Hill.

They cannot imagine not killing the wolves at the door. It would be so... wrong.

This is the attitude of so many police and their masters. Kill and kill some more before the wolves get in and kill and eat you. 

For in their minds, that is what will happen if they ever stop killing the wolves at the door of the Cathedral.

They sincerely believe that the Thin Blue Line (now they often wear black, but you know...) is the only thing that stands between Civilization (white folks) and Utter Doom.

They sincerely believe it, and it is false.

So many are so sure that the killing must continue uninterrupted or Civilization itself will perish from the face of the Earth. And they are wrong. 

So this is Christmas... 

And I pray for the Awakening, for true Joy and Glad Tidings.



[Another Vine, I know... sorry... Vines are the only visuals I've found this morning of last night's action at the Cathedral... ]