Antsy

We're still pretty much confining ourselves to home. Not that we can't go out if we want, and I go out for supplies or to get the mail fairly regularly, but we still don't do or go places like we used to. I notice, too, that we're spending more than we did before the pandemic-shut down, even though we're not eating out or traveling. It seems to me, though I can't be certain, that basic food and supplies are costing 20%-30% more, and that's the main reason why our expenses are higher.

There is still no hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, isopropyl alcohol, disposable gloves or face masks to be had locally. It's not because people are still hoarding -- though they certainly did at the beginning. The lack of these essential supplies is due almost entirely now to the fact that they are not being delivered or are being delivered in such small quantities the supplies are immediately sold out. Everything is back-ordered, and those orders are not being filled, and may not be for months to come. I suspected this was happening at the beginning when people were panicking. Merchants put out what stock they had, sold it -- in part to hoarders -- and that was it. Weren't no more to be had.

Toilet paper and other paper products have reappeared in limited quantities, and washing products like soaps and bleach are available, though we're still sometimes seeing unfamiliar brands and prices are sometimes high. This is true of flour, sugar and other baking supplies as well. Yeast is still not seen all the time, though it does periodically appear on the shelves. In some cases, prices are double or even triple pre-pandemic prices for some essentials.

I don't know what it's like in more populous places. We don't go shopping out of town. We get some things online, but there are problems with delivery that can sometimes be complicated. When we order, we don't necessarily know how the items will be shipped and we can't find out until after the shipment is processed. Sometimes, merchants will say they use UPS or FedEx, for which we must provide a street address. Then we find out they are actually using SurePost, which means the items go to the post office for final delivery. Trouble is, the post office here doesn't deliver to street addresses, only to PO Boxes. Every time this happens, items risk being returned to sender. Some people we know have not received packages they ordered because of this quirk, and the post office is no help much of the time. On the other hand, even when things are shipped UPS or FedEx, skipping the post office, the street addresses can be tricky for drivers, and boxes wind up on our porch that we didn't order and we wind up being the final delivery service to neighbors who did order the items. So we confine ordering online to things we're certain we need and can't get any other way.

And for the record, free Target's "two day shipping" is a cruel joke. Ordinarily it takes a week, on occasion, it will take two weeks. I think only once was shipping actually "2 days" -- from Albuquerque.

All of these things are minor annoyances magnified by the fact that we're focused on them because we are at home most of the time. I think that factor had something to do with the armed "Haircut Rebellions" that swept the nation a while back and seemed to force the immediate "reopening" of some businesses that had been shuttered during the lockdowns. It was really amazing how suddenly state and local governments complied with the demands of "Haircut Rebels."

Antsy. People were getting antsy at having to stay home so much. They still are. Even though many or most restrictions on movement and activity are lifted in most places. And in many of those places, the virus is having a party.

Of course it needs to be said that the armed rebels who stormed around were not met with force by the authorities. Far from it. There were few rebels, for one thing, and their firearm fetish didn't result in more than empty and/or implied threats. Nevertheless, most of their demands were instantly met.

On the other hand the mass marches in the streets against the lethal brutality of the police have been met with -- more and worse brutality. Dozens of people have had their eyes shot out by so-called "less lethal" projectiles, and uncounted thousands have been injured, some severely. No count has yet been made of the dead but police killings continue apace. Police have been killed, too, but so far, all of them have died at the hands of "Boogaloo" and other rightist bands of brothers. Interesting, then, that police action is almost entirely focused on suppressing what they think of as "leftist" rebellion. And simply put, US police forces in too many places too often outdo their Hong Kong colleagues in brutality and vicious tactics. It's gotten so bad that there are international calls for US police to be condemned for egregious human rights violations.

It's still surprising that "Defund the Police" is a seriously considered thing, that it is being done in some places, and that pissed off police are refusing to go to work unless they are "appreciated."

Oh my.

Police are being fired right and left, police chiefs are resigning, some police are being charged with assault, manslaughter, even murder, far faster and in far greater numbers than ever before. We've never seen anything like this shake up of police forces, and the suddenness of it is shocking. What is going on?

Obviously, people who matter are calling the shots, and they are simultaneously demanding that "leftist" rebellion be suppressed and that misbehaving police be held to account immediately, not years down the road which had long been the protocol. Police are in shock, but so is the public. What is going on?

The more the situation devolves, the more antsy the public becomes. Limited police "reforms" are being far more widely instituted than ever before, but the brutal suppression efforts and police killings continue almost as if "reform" was not happening. Like it hasn't happened so many times before. Cosmetic changes aren't enough, but maybe that's all we'll get this time, just as in the past.

I've referred to this period as a paradigm shift, but it's looking more and more like a generational shift. We're entering a different era and doing so with considerable difficulty. People my age are mostly not going to be around to see the outcome, "bye-bye Boomer!", but some of us had something to do with setting the stage for what's to come. Let's hope it's better for everyone.

Curbing Violent Policing... Why and How

Violent policing is routine in this country and in many other crisis-ridden societies. It's not a new standard by any means, even though Americans tend to look at the current state of police conduct as something new and unprecedented.

According to statistics I've seen, though, policing now is less violent and deadly than at almost any time in our past. We see it as unprecedentedly violent in part because there is far more visual evidence of police violence than ever before. The ubiquity of video of police conduct means they can't hide behind their traditional curtain of lies, though they still try and they will lie outright even in the face of contradictory video evidence. It is their way, and efforts at police reform doesn't change that.

Though this arguably a less violent policing era, there is still too much violence inherent in the culture of policing, and there is far too much brutality and death at the hands of police. It is not a law of nature that police behave the way they do. There is no law of nature that requires them to kill on impulse. There is no law of nature that requires the public to obey police orders immediately or face a bloody beating or die.

Obedience will not necessarily save you in any case.

The problem is that police are given too much authority to use force and very little concept of their responsibility for the sanctity of life. They are filled with negative notions about the "scum" and "trash" they have to deal with, but they have few or no concepts which will lift people up. They do not value the lives of those they come in contact with, every one of whom they consider a potential existential threat. If their contacts are black, brown, mentally ill, homeless or disabled, they too often respond with an utter lack of insight, compassion or empathy. Thus the dead and wounded pile up, even though in absolute terms, the number seems to be quite low compared to previous eras.

The point I've made many times is that realistically, the police don't have to use lethal or even less lethal force more than a tenth of the number of times they do. I use statistics from cities like New York and Oakland and others where police killings have been reduced by up to 90% simply by changing the rules for use of force and enforcing those changes on officers in the field.

In these and other cities, the goal was set to reduce the killing and to curb police violence -- and it was done. It's not rocket science, and it is not an insoluble problem. It doesn't require endless conferences, task forces, public meetings and a "national conversation" to accomplish.

It requires orders from the top that the killing stop. It requires clear and enforceable rules for the use of any kind of force during encounters with the public. And it requires violations to be punished.

To endure, it also requires changes to police culture, particularly the "us against them" belief system, and the "comply or die" behavior.

The reason for doing this is simple: violent policing is modeled by society in general, forming a basis for dealing with almost any problem. Beat the shit out of somebody or shoot them dead. Threaten. Belittle. Demean. Dominate. Demand submission. Immediate compliance or face the consequences. Victim blaming. One could go on and on describing the destructive results of violent policing on society as a whole.  Other destructive results include the kind of blowback we've seen, where snipers target police. It's a wonder it doesn't happen more often. But it's the kind of blowback violent policing is bound to produce. Reduce violence by police and there will be a parallel reduction in violence against police. Again, it's not rocket science. It's common sense.

The "national conversation" has been going on for years, seemingly with little to show for it apart from the widespread recognition that policing has an inherent racial bias. Black and brown men especially are targeted by police as Bad Dudes, regardless of their actual threat. They are seen as dangerous simply by their presence. This is due in part to training and conditioning which assumes that black and brown men are the primary perpetrators of crime and will be the most commonly encountered threats to officer and public safety.

This assumption is partly due to a misuse of crime statistics, partly due to institutional racism (as in the origins of police departments as slave patrols, posses and militias to hunt down and 'bring to justice' disobedient Others) and partly due to a cultural belief within policing that sees police as anti-crime troops sent to occupy Tiger Town. Of course to justify their occupation, crime of some sort must flourish. How ironic, then, that as crime rates have plummeted from historic highs a few decades ago to historic lows today, police budgets and the number of police have increased exponentially, while the number of dead at police hands continues at an average of three a day, every day -- a good third of whom present no objective threat to police or anyone else, and almost all of the rest could have been dealt with without use of lethal force.

Of course I've mentioned two police consultants who go around the country training and convincing police officers and their supervisors that killing is their highest accomplishment, and aggressive and violent policing is the correct means of dealing with "today's" potential threats from terrorists and active shooters and such, which means that every encounter should be approached as if the subject were a terrorist or active shooter because potentially they might be. You never know.

"Better to be safe than sorry."

Shoot first, worry about the consequences afterwards, and don't worry about the subjects they kill at all. Their departments will inevitably smear and blame the victim. Inevitably.

This is too often just what happens.

I am reluctant to blame the officers for this state of affairs because they aren't the ones who come up with the policies which lead to so much death and destruction. They carry out their orders. If they don't, they can be disciplined or fired, such as what happened to the young officer in Weirton, WV, who didn't kill a suicidal man, and who was fired for not doing so -- thus "endangering" other officers. [In the linked story, the tradition of lying about events is honored by the police department and the city manager...]

The problem is not so much officers in the field though they are the ones committing most of the violence; the problem is at the top where policies are made and expectations are set.

The "top" includes police chiefs and sheriffs as well as city managers (who have authority over most police departments) and county managers (who are in authority over even elected sheriffs departments) and local elected officials (who have theoretical authority but little practical authority over policing policies).

Policing power actually flows from local elites and moneyed interests through layers of government. Police essentially serve as guards and guarantors of those elites and moneyed interests.

Policing policies and practices will change when the it is in the interests of those elites to change them.

Economic pressure is the surest way to force change on a resistant elite.

There are growing calls for economic boycotts and other forms of economic pressure where violent policing practices continue to be fostered and implemented. On the other hand, we're seeing the demise of the Warrior Cop in city after city where maintaining those principles of policing is proving to be counterproductive.

We're close to the tipping point where police departments can no longer be celebrated for acting like occupying troops in communities of color, but it will be a long slog to transform them into positive elements in a complex social, economic and political matrix. It's under way but inertia is so hard to overcome.

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.

Betrayal -- the Gliniewicz Thing and So On and So Forth

So he killed himself for fear of being exposed as an embezzler and worse, and he staged it to blame the fictive "War on Cops" for his death. I see. Thousands poured out for his funeral wherein he was hailed a Hero, yadda yadda, and media police departments and media fell all over themselves to laud the man and his sacrifice to serve and protect the rest of us.

Only none of it was true. It was all false.

It was all false. The man was a veritable demon, an example of the kind of monstrosity police departments are infested with, often led by as was the case here, and the kind of things the police have been allowed to get away with for generations. Literally, they can do just about anything they want so long as what they do does not inconvenience or discommode the powerful.

Anything.

Murder most foul, so far as we know now, was not one of Gliniewicz's specialties, but as more information comes out, we may learn of this or that murder at his hand.


We do know that a police officer who shot an unarmed man in the back twice, killing him, after tasing the shit out of him was acquitted of all charges the other day -- because, according to her lawyer, "she feared for her safety."



Yes, well, obviously the officer is out of her fricking mind as she repeatedly fires off her high voltage taser while screaming incomprehensibly at the man she kills -- who is writhing in pain on the ground. Whenever he does or doesn't do something, she screams some more, and then after firing off her taser again, inexplicably she shoots him with her firearm twice in the back and then she continues to scream at him.

This is insane behavior of a roided up madwoman who should never, ever be allowed near a firearm again and should not, under any circumstances be employed as police officer. By rights, she should be in custody and in rehab.

But no. Her statement is "I shall return to police work." Which is the utter last thing she should be doing. She is unfit in every imaginable way.

No doubt she justified her actions in her own mind, much as Gliniewicz must have justified his somewhat less lethal (so far as we know) but outrageous actions in his mind, because they are possessed of god-like powers that society (or the law at any rate) has granted police officers -- so long as they don't interfere with the High and the Mighty, the Powerful. After all, Mearkle only killed another druggie on the run. What's to worry? One more piece of human trash to dispose of, no?

Gliniewicz on the other hand was stealing from a program that was funded by some of those High and Mighty, and he was using the money for surprisingly selfish and apparently absurd ends. And in his god-like sense of self, he was commanding and threatening to protect himself. Ultimately, it came to an end when he killed himself, but even then, he produced a scenario to blame others -- the so called "anti-police warriors" -- a blame which was picked up and widely spread by FOX "news" and other media, and by police departments and even the FBI and DEA chiefs, as part of their ongoing wagon-circling and protective hunkering down in the face of mounting public criticism of police violence.

For criticizing violent policing is "War on Police."  That's how it's been characterized by many of those who should know better. There is no "War on Police." There is a police war on the public, however, and they're pulling out all the stops -- to ensure their invulnerability. Their tactics utilize the same sort of falsehoods and rationalizations that went into Mearkle's and Gliniewicz's self-justifications for outrageous conduct.

One of the tactics long used by our military in the seemingly endless overseas imperial adventures is to draw out the opposition, making them visible and thus making them vulnerable to extermination. At one time, this was done by troops jeopardizing their own safety, by showing apparent vulnerability, but no longer. Now it is generally a case of "Death from Above" based on "intelligence."

Drones or AC-130s or what have you are sent on extermination missions based on "intelligence" that says suspected militants are or will be visible at thus and so location and must be terminated with extreme prejudice.

That's how the MSF hospital in Kunduz was targeted. Of course the military knew what the target was. Let's not fool ourselves, please. The US military has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, ambulances, etc, just like the Israeli military does, and it's no accident, no "mistake." It is deliberate. According to reports, medical personnel running from the bombed out hospital were also targeted individually, and some were killed as they ran.

If you've ever seen a video of an attack by an AC-130 you know it can be horrifying and immensely destructive. You also know that the attackers know what they are attacking -- whether it be a school, a community center, a mosque or a residential compound, they know.

So the idea that they somehow didn't know the MSF hospital was what it was is false on its face. Of course they knew. They knew that attacking it could be considered a war crime, too, and they didn't care.

Not a bit. Why should they? Nobody can hold them to account. Nobody.

MSF tries but they don't seem to be getting anywhere. The powers that unleashed the attack refuse to allow an independent investigation, and so that's where things will lie for the foreseeable future, in limbo, with everyone knowing what happened, but no one held culpable for it.

This attitude has been transferred to policing wholesale. It is almost impossible to hold officers legally liable for anything they do while on duty -- so long as what they do does not impinge on the prerogatives of the Important People.

Police have been granted almost complete legal impunity to kill at will, and to do just about any other kind of violence against the public so long as it doesn't interfere with the comfort and convenience of Their Betters, and the officer(s) can rationalize their actions as reaction to "fearing for their lives and the safety of others."

Gliniewicz apparently interfered with his Betters interests whereas Mearkle did not.

Such a long row to hoe...

Conditioning

There's nothing wrong with the police reform proposals from Campaign Zero. The problem I have with it is that it is a reform agenda, not a deconstruction/reconstruction one. It doesn't emphasize the key demand: "Stop killing us!"

Instead, it does a round about side step, like all of the politicians who have addressed the problem of violent policing do. Rather than deal with the immediate emergency of violent policing and killing, they look to the longer term to reach the goal of reduced killing by police through reform, and do it over time, however long it takes. Even if that means centuries.

On their feedback page, Campaign Zero lists a number of comments from the media and from the public regarding their ten point reform program. Public comment suggests some dissatisfaction with the 10 points, particularly in light of the fact that there is an emergency situation which doesn't seem to be the focus of these proposals for reform.

Reform is necessary if you want to maintain essentially the same police forces in place for the indefinite future. Reform modifies some of their policies, practices and protocols over time, but it does not fundamentally change the purpose of policing -- which is principally to suppress the lower orders and to protect the high and mighty.

This has been true from the outset of policing as we know it.

The only way I know of to deal with  the systemic problems of this kind of policing is to abolish it and start over.

That's a radical solution that Campaign Zero is not even close to accepting.

Another aspect of reform proposals is that they almost always focus on the beat cops rather than their supervisors an commanders.

It's an odd situation. True enough, the beat cops are the ones doing the majority of the killing and brutalizing, but they do it under authority granted to them by their departments and overseen by their chiefs, commanders and supervisors, all of whom must collude to permit -- indeed, allow and require -- police on the street to commit the atrocities they do.

It's not simply a matter of the "Blue Wall," though that, too, is a factor in what goes on. It's a matter of the high ranks of police forces allowing and sometimes requiring the lower ranks to commit certain acts of violence -- or be disciplined for failure to perform according to standards set by those same high ranking officers.

Police officers are conditioned through training to see existential threats -- to themselves and to those they serve -- and to respond to those threats with violence up to and including lethal force. Very often the existential threats police are conditioned to respond to are black men who are perceived to be armed and/or dangerous -- just because.

It's the same sort of conditioning that German Polizei went through during the Nazi period when they perceived Jews and other untermenschen to be existential threats to the Aryan Master Race and the German Volk. It is the same sort of conditioning military troops go through in order for them to kill without conscience or remorse in our nation's global battlespaces wherever and whenever they detect a "threat."

In each of these cases, however, despite conditioning and even laws favoring the use of force and protecting the use of lethal force, the killing stops when the command goes out to stop it.

In other words, it is up to those in charge of police forces to override the conditioning their officers have been subjected to and order them to stop the killing. Stop the brutality.

That order has gone out in a number of cities, but the killing continues. Violent policing continues.

In order for it to stop, there must be a general stand down order (even if it is masked) which allows police to do their jobs without responding to the civilian public as if they were an enemy.

But I doubt that general order will ever come.

Too many people are dependent on the status quo.

Too many police forces are commanded by men and women who disbelieve in nonviolent policing.

I see some progress but not enough and not fast enough.

Thus, I remain an abolitionist.

Hopeful Signs -- Maybe -- On the Violent Policing Front

Never let it be said I'm a total pessimist. I'm not. I'd rather think of myself as an optimist, but as the year plus since James Boyd's killing in Albuquerque and the rate of police killings nationwide has increased not decreased, and politicians keep running away from the basic demand: "Stop Killing Us!" I've got to wonder whether this violent policing emergency is even being addressed by the High and the Mighty -- let alone being anywhere near a solution.

The problem with violent  policing is the violence, mayhem and death that results.

It's not racism or classism. Though both are factors. The immediate problem -- and the emergency -- is the violence.

So far as there is any statistical evidence at all, the police are becoming more violent and deadly not less since nationwide highlighting and protesting of police violence and murder got underway last year.

More violent and deadly, not less.

OK, what can be done about it?

The protests and all the activism obviously haven't done the job; just the opposite. When something you're doing has the opposite result of your intentions, it's usually a good idea to consider alternatives or consider not doing what you're doing and try something else.

While I've never had a problem with the protests nor with the activist cadres who have taken the risk to intervene and interrupt business as usual in all manner of ways, that alone has never struck me as sufficient to change things. Protests and demonstrations are necessary to highlight the problem and move the media and public sufficiently to demand action on the part of politicians and their appointees.

All right, we've had LOTS of demonstrations since James Boyd was killed a year ago in March (as I've said many times, the protests in Albuquerque over his killing were what triggered the nationwide protests over police killings that began in the summer of 2014 after the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO.)  So many in fact that one can almost expect to run into one almost anywhere, almost any time.

Supposedly, the political class has heard the people's outrage and outcry and are on it, the evidence being the tidal wave of indictments for murder and manslaughter which have come forth from DAs in the aftermath of so many police killings, starting with the charges against Keith Sandy and Dominque Perez who killed... James Boyd. They've had their extended preliminary hearing (finally) and they are facing trial for murder 2. Whether they will be convicted is another question altogether (I think not), but at least they and a surprising number of others are going to trial for the homicides they have committed, so at least there's that.

But that hasn't seemed to stop the killing or even reduce it -- except in a handful of places, one of which happens to be Albuquerque where the rate of police killing has plummeted since the aftermath of the James Boyd killing, after spiking outrageously following the "scathing" DoJ report which found that most of the killings by APD were unjustified and that the department routinely engaged in unconstitutional policing.

Many other police departments have faced similar "scathing" reports from the DoJ and many did nothing about it at all, except perhaps to defy and resist any and all attempts at "reform."

"Scathing" reports and resulting consent decrees do not necessarily lead to police department "reform." Far from it. 

What does -- and this goes back to my initial foray into the issue of violent policing and brutality in Sacramento in 1996-97 -- are orders coming from the top. And the "top" means the police chief and/or sheriff and the city manager and/or county executive.

In most cities elected officials do not have direct authority over the police. Consequently, elections and voting rarely affect police behavior. That is an intentional part of the political structure set up during the Progressive Era to insulate police and city administration from the supposed passions of the electorate. In that structure, police officers are accountable to their chief, the chief is accountable to the city manager, and the city manager is (theoretically) accountable to the Mayor and City Council -- but he or she will often make an ostentatious display of ignoring or defying elected officials. In most cases, it is so difficult (and expensive) to fire or discipline city managers that they can usually get away with pretty much anything they want.

City managers as a rule are obedient to the demands of the financial elites of their cities. Them that have, gets, in other words. Everyone else, for the most part, doesn't exist.

Consequently, a city manager will ignore the protests of the people -- people who often don't even know who the city manager is or that he or she is the actual supervisor of the police -- unless the money-people in the civic jurisdiction say "change things."

That's how police and other reform happens. It doesn't happen because people march in the streets and hold vigils at the police department. It happens because somebody "who matters" -- and has the power to make things happen -- says so. No other way. (Well barring that Revolution that never seems to come...)

So far, it doesn't appear that city managers have collectively decided that doing something about violent policing is necessary. If that's so, it's because the people they listen to (which in most cases are not the elected officials) haven't said they want something done about it.  Doing something about it can have lots of unintended consequences after all, one of which is destabilizing structures of power. That's one thing city managers and the people they listen to seek to avoid. Stable structures of power are what keep the system functioning through thick and thin, after all.

However, a bright sign, a hopeful sign, is that police chiefs have begun to recognize that the current structure and practice of violent policing is unsustainable. That's a huge step, it seems to me. A few months ago, I wouldn't have thought it possible, but last May, the Police Executive Research Forum, a think tank that considers issues important to policing in this country (and abroad) held a meeting attended by what seems to have been hundreds of police chiefs, deputies, federal law enforcers and DoJ execs, and even police representatives from England and Scotland. Recently, they issued a report from that meeting (84 pg pdf).

I read it and was really stunned at what the chiefs and their deputies were saying.

In a nutshell: they agree with the protesters. Police in America are way too violent, too many of them are stone racists, and the system as it is is unsustainable.

While they primarily blame politicians for this state of affairs, they are also aware that there's a whole lot of culpability within police departments as well.

It's got to change.

They seem to realize there is a problem with American police culture and practice, and it's not just one of "optics." It's a problem of attitude and behavior, and it has discredited policing all over the country.

It's a problem of killing. It's a problem of brutality. It's a problem of disrespect of the public. It's a problem of ignoring the whole idea of public service.

Police chiefs recognize this -- or so it seems -- and they know the situation cannot continue the way it is. Things have got to change, and behold, they come up with ways to change things, in order to reestablish mutual respect with the communities they are supposed to be serving but clearly aren't.

Re-engineering how police are trained is a big part of the program, but it goes much deeper. Values are also a factor, perhaps the major factor, in the reform the police chiefs were talking about in May, starting with the extraordinary concept of valuing all human life, including that of the suspects/perpetrators police so often kill or maim.

The killing stops when the orders go out to stop it. Not before. But the killing stays stopped when police are convinced to value all human life, no matter what. In other words, when the police on the street don't even think of using lethal force against someone they suspect of a crime -- or who is disrespectful or otherwise obstreperous or obnoxious -- then the real reform has taken place.

That's one hopeful sign. Another is the report of the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, (116 pg pdf). The central point of this report is a fundamental value and behavior change by police: from "warrior" cop to "guardian." I have issues with that terminology and ideal but I will leave them aside for now. The key point is that there is a deeper understanding within the policing community that things have gone wrong and have got to change at the root, not simply the optics of policing. The president's task force was heavily skewed toward police and federal law enforcement representatives and interests and yet they still came up with a pretty solid set of reforms that could -- if implemented -- begin to overcome some of the worst aspects of the current fashion for violent policing and routine use of lethal force. If, for example, SWAT teams were used appropriately instead of routinely, there could be some very positive effects. If police departments demilitarized, there could be some other positive effects. If police officers stopped acting like an occupying army, who knows what sort of benefits would accrue? This report goes on like that, getting into many of the aspects and behaviors of police which have caused so much distrust and destruction of lives and families and whole communities over the years. It doesn't, however, call for an end to the killing. That's perhaps a bridge too far for the task force members.

Another hopeful sign -- which also, unfortunately doesn't directly call for an end to the killing by police -- is the recently released 10 point plan by CampaignZero, an offshoot of the #BLM movement. While it doesn't directly call for an end to the killing, nor does the president's task force (the chiefs were discussing how to end the killing or at least reduce it to very low levels) it does set out a roadmap for police reform that can over time ratchet down the level of force -- particularly lethal force -- used by police in the USA. The focus is on racial disparities in policing, however.

Once the problem of police killing civilians in such ridiculously high numbers and inappropriate circumstances is addressed and the numbers fall, the other problems of policing in America and the grossly unjust aspects of the so-called justice system and its many parts can begin to be tackled realistically.

But in my view, the killing has to stop first. That hasn't happened -- except in certain locations under very specific circumstances where the order went out to stop it. Overall, the rate of police killing has increased, not decreased in the past year, and somehow those in power have got to get a handle on it.

I'm not sure what it will take. But at least there are signs that the current bloody and intolerable situation is not sustainable. Change will come.
-------------------------------
"Hell You Talmbout" live in New York

 

The Warrior vs the Guardian Cop Mentality

The summer has just begun, but I have little doubt that there will be more incidents like the Mess in McKinney, Texas, that led to the surprisingly swift resignation of officer Eric Casebolt -- who I took to calling "Officer Pissant" -- after release of a video of his absurd and violent behavior toward African American residents and visitors to a community swimming pool at the Craig Ranch North subdivision.

His violence, though shocking to witness, wasn't unusual. Cops tend to be frightened and violent around certain categories of people, particularly if those people are black or brown and/or young. They are considered "offenders" by definition.

Then there is the problem of drug abuse, particularly anabolic steroids, cocaine, and meth, that is said to be rampant among police forces and not unknown in the military. 

In this context, Casebolt was acting like a "warrior" where none was called for. Apparently he believed that all the African American youth on the scene were definitionally "offenders" simply because they were there and someone had complained about it.

He manhandled and abused some of them on video, most shockingly a 14-15 year old girl clad only in a bikini who he violently threw to the ground and then tossed around by her hair and her arm as if she were a piece of meat or a sexual object or toy. In fact, many observers commented on the psycho-sexual nature of what he was doing to her, especially once he had her prone and subdued and he was putting his full weight on her back. It was a scene of virtual rape. Unfortunately, that too is part of a "warrior" mentality.

Radley Balko wrote a book called The Rise of the Warrior Cop in which he dramatically details how the militarization of the police in this country has taken place and graphically describes the unconscionable destruction of lives, families and communities that has ensued. I may be ideologically opposed to his prescription (in effect, privatizing police forces -- and letting them do pretty much what they do now, but under corporate rather than government authority) but he has been the one who has made a career out of opposition to the infection of warriorism that has spread throughout American policing, and he has been among the ones who has most frequently pointed out what a problem it is.

I have long pointed to one individual, (Lt Col) Dave Grossman, who has been primarily responsible for promoting and sustaining the warrior-cop mentality based on his crackpot "Killology" theories promoted in his books, seminars and consultancies. And yet, as responsible as he is for so much of the mentality of today's police forces, he's not the only one, not by a long shot. And he only got into the fray with regard to domestic policing (he was a West Point psychologist and military instructor) in response to the spate of school shootings in the late 1990s.

This infection of Warriorism in domestic policing has been raging many a long year, well before the advent of the "active shooter scenario" which has been at the core of police violence in recent years. In some ways, police warriorism goes back to the urban riots of the 1960s and the reaction of police and status quo defenders to the youth rebellion that gave rise to hippies and communitarian solutions to social problems.

Fighting these social change agents in the field, particularly the Negroes who demanded rights and respect and the youth who demanded freedom and liberty, became the primary mission of police forces throughout the land. Whenever they couldn't manage to impose their authority completely, a police riot (such as that outside the Chicago Democratic National Convention in 1968) would occur, or if that failed, the National Guard would be called in -- sometimes with tragic results.

The War on Drugs was the key element that led directly to the kind of violent and destructive warrior-policing we see reported practically every day, often with graphic and bloody video accompaniment.

That failed drug war still serves as the basis for violent policing and police warriorism throughout the land. Ending it would be the first step to true reform, but the whole system policing, courts and incarceration has been so corrupted by the various elements of the drug war that there is little likelihood that reform can be accomplished within the same system. The system itself has to be abolished.

In opposition to the warrior mentality of police in the field, more and more thinkers and consultants on the problem of violent policing in this country are adopting the theories of Guardian Policing.

These ideas have begun to take the place of Community Policing theories that were once hailed as a positive solution to the problem of police violence, but which were so quickly corrupted that some observers saw Community Policing (basically flooding designated areas with police who were supposed to "get to know" the community) as causing more problems than it solved.

I would suggest that Guardian Policing has the same -- or even a greater -- risk of corruption, for the ideological basis of it, that a community needs and wants guardians because the community and the people in it are essentially children who cannot take care of themselves, is bogus.

What is needed -- rather than police as warriors or guardians -- is a corps of public servants  (which the police were once touted as being) there to assist and aid and enable the public to take care of themselves.

Warrior cops see their proper role as that of an army of occupation set over a resistant population to enforce whatever control they are ordered to with whatever level of force they deem necessary. It leads to mayhem, murder, death and destruction on a daily basis all over this land. The control and enforcement of the warrior-occupation police forces is very often a matter of imposing chaos, not order at all. The violence of the warrior-occupation police forces induces chaos by its nature, and that social chaos becomes the primary feature of warrior-occupied communities. Victims are always blamed, but the recurrence of the basic problem of chaos brought on by the warriors themselves is manifested over and over, very much like the graphic demonstration of the chaotic behavior of (former) Officer Casebolt in McKinney, Texas. He was the chaotic element, he an no one else. His actions induced chaos in what was an otherwise relatively simple situation.

Thankfully no one died. The one young man who was arrested -- seen at the end of the principal video of the incident -- said that the officers who arrested him behaved professionally and that he bit his tongue accidentally as he was submitting to them. He was not, he said, injured by the police who arrested him. I found his praise for the officers who arrested him to be remarkable, but remarkable things have to happen if there is to be fundamental change in the way the US is policed. Charges were dropped against the young man who was arrested, by the way.

The Guardian Cop mentality in contrast to the Warrior Cop would not necessarily apply to this situation, however. What we saw in McKinney was two distinctly different approaches to policing and problem solving, one involving officers in communication with the public -- not as guardians over them but as interested community members interacting with them. The other was simply chaos, violent, and clearly out of control, with which no communication was possible. It may have been an attempt at warriorism but it went very awry.

Seth Stroughtan has written a number of pieces on the problem of Warrior Policing. While his position is that reform is possible and desirable, he is reticent about getting there. On the other hand, a number of alternatives to the seemingly unreformable police departments so prevalent today have been proposed, among them "Peacekeeper" a simple app that links community based mutual aid providers and citizens.

Decoupling from the dangerous and destructive policing that has led to so much outcry is necessary. How to do it is still being worked out, but alternatives are being tested, and more and more communities are taking steps to protect themselves from police.

The time will come when there will be no alternative...

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...

Additionally, the Ferguson PD Report and the DoJ Failure to Find Fault With Brave Officer Wilson's Bravely Killing Michael Brown

The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one-two punch.

The DoJ's scathing report [105 pg pdf] on the pattern and practices of unconstitutional policing in Ferguson, MO was released pretty much simultaneously with the failure of the DoJ to find fault [86 pg document file] with the killing of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, the singularity which has led to months and months of protest actions all across the country, and what's called a "national conversation" about the problems of racist policing and violent cops.

Yes, indeed.

One scathing report after another; one policeman-killer after another allowed to walk free.

It's quite a pattern, and there are reasons for it.

The dissonance is deliberate.

Yes, the police in Ferguson and many other places around the country are racists and practice racist policing. There are so many places where this is true, we might say it is all but universal. Police best practices presume the guile and the guilt of an array of minority and poverty stricken sectors of the population as a matter of course.

Statistically, the crime and criminality of minority and poor sectors of the population appears to be a fact. Thus the presumption is said to be justified. But when the statistics are broken down, it becomes clear that the presumption of guile and guilt is self fulfilling in that police interest and action is concentrated in minority communities, poor communities, marginal communities, and in many cases, police create the crime they then suppress and profit from. It's all quite circular.

When the DoJ investigates and declares a police department to have a pattern and practice of "unconstitutional policing" -- including racist policing -- it is merely pointing to the obvious. In the case of Ferguson, nearly every complaint we've been hearing in the media about the FPD is validated by the DoJ report. The local police operate as a racket, extorting money from the people, primarily the black residents of Ferguson, to fund police and city operations. It's deliberate intent every step of the way. It involves violence as well as more subtle coercion. It's been going on a long time. It is racist at its core.

Anyone who's been following the story is not surprised by these findings. We've been hearing and reading about it for months. Anybody who is familiar with the way St. Louis and the County work is familiar with the patterns and practices detailed in the Ferguson report. It's the same throughout the County. It's monstrous. And according to the DoJ, it's unconstitutional.

On the other hand, the white folks are quite satisfied, it would seem, and want nothing to change.

Similar patterns and practices are found all over the country, but perhaps the most egregious examples are found in the South -- where cities and towns in many cases have always worked this way -- and in the Border regions, such as St. Louis and Baltimore and so forth.

I've been calling it "Negro Farming" for some time, the idea being that black residents of these towns and cities are regarded as a cash crop, to be farmed and harvested of whatever money can be squeezed out of them. That's their chief -- in many cases their only -- value to the Powers That Be, and they, like any other crop, have no say in the matter.

I was thinking about this the other day in the context of what I know about city managers and their thinking. I've only had experience in this field in Sacramento where working on reform of a violent (though not particularly murderous) police force required dealing with the city manager and his office. Like most other cities, the city manager of Sacramento is in charge of the police department.

What I learned very quickly is that the city manager's office categorizes the population according to their worth to the city -- ie: how much revenue they produce, or contrariwise, how much of a cost burden they are to the city.

The city manager's constant goal is to maximize the revenue value and minimize the cost burden of the population. They segment the population by district, by age, race and gender, by income, and by occupation -- among other categories. As a rule well off white people are considered "contributors" to the civic enterprise (oh, yes, the city is itself an "enterprise" with many subsidiary enterprises all of which are treated as revenue sources or cost burdens). Well off white people are considered contributors because they own property and/or businesses which are taxed, generally quite modestly, but taxed just the same. They produce a reliable revenue stream.

On the other hand, poor people, people of color, the marginal, the mentally ill, the addicted, and so forth are almost universally considered revenue drains, costs in other words, and in every civic enterprise I'm familiar with, costs must be contained -- unless there is an off-setting revenue stream. That stream can come from an outside source -- say state or federal funding for programs or prisons -- or it can be extracted through fines and so forth from the people themselves.

Because the revenues extracted in this manner are not generally reliable, however, the place of the people from whom it is extracted is never equivalent to that of well off white people whose revenue stream is much more reliable.

This is a very simple model of what goes on in most towns and cities where populations are routinely categorized according to their civic value.

But it is the basic model that underpins how Ferguson and surrounding cities treats their populations.

In this model, someone like Mike Brown has no value.

Someone like Darren Wilson does have value.

Thus the dissonance between condemnation of an unconstitutional pattern and practice of policing -- and the failure to find fault with Darren Wilson's actions that hot day in August 2014 when he shot and killed Mike Brown in the streets of Ferguson.

The pattern and practice of policing -- not just in Ferguson but generally -- is justifiably condemned as unconstitutional, but it is based on the civic value of individuals and population segments, and the lower the value, the greater the excuse for use of force, violence and death in dealing with them.

The problems come when the costs of use of force, violence and death outrun the revenues that can be derived from the force and violence. And that's happening in city after city.

Whether it will happen in Ferguson, I don't know. Immense efforts (and expenses) have been made to protect Darren Wilson throughout this episode, efforts and expenses which are continuing. I don't know why he is being protected this way, but he is. The various "exonerations" of his actions that have taken place appear to be intended to limit or eliminate any civil award Mike Brown's family might receive, but even that is not clear. Something is going on behind the scenes in which Darren Wilson is seen as a victim somehow, whereas Mike Brown is being cast as the perpetrator. This has been going on since the killing itself. What actually happened and why is not as important as the narrative competition that's been produced. It's as if Wilson and Brown are proxies for a police/civilian culture clash that can only be resolved in favor of the police.

This is something to keep in mind: DoJ is always going to favor the police, even when they issue their scathing reports. In fact, police departments routinely defy these reports and recommendations. It's cultural. And DoJ has no independent enforcement power over police conduct. Any enforcement must come through the courts, and the courts have almost no enforcement powers independent of the police they are attempting to reform.

Consequently, if the police want to -- or they are directed to by their city managers and police chiefs -- they can and do ignore and defy these scathing reports and recommendations.

DoJ will let them get away with it, may even encourage it clandestinely.

We see it right up front with the Ferguson report and the Wilson matter: clean up your act (if you want) but no one will fault you for killing black people.

Reform itself is not enough.

What I Learned This Year: Part The Second

Needless to say, the main social issue this year has been that of police violence and murder.

The issue has been an important one to me since I worked on the problem of police brutality in Sacramento from 1996-1998. The project there was spearheaded by the NAACP local organization -- the National wouldn't support it, as the problem of police brutality was not one they thought was all that important in those days. We documented hundreds of cases of police brutality and disrespect, however, and we used that information to press for changes in police culture that would reduce violence against civilians by the Sacramento Police Department. It was a long struggle, and it was only partially successful. For example, we didn't get a civilian review board, but we did get an "independent monitor" whose job it was to investigate claims of police brutality and recommend action.

The issue in Sacramento was never police killings as they were and are relatively rare. Instead, we were dealing with a tradition of violent policing, a tradition that probably went back to the vigilance committees of the Gold Rush era, and a tradition that primarily -- but not exclusively -- impacted communities of color. Certainly during the Black Panther era, Sacramento's police department went on a rampage against the black community. By the late 1990's some of that violence had dissipated, but black men were still prime targets for police brutality.

Community policing was becoming the standard and we sought means to make it happen in Sacramento. And behold, the new police chief, Arturo Venegas, was on the same wavelength. Introduction of community policing reduced the incidence of police violence by some 60% or more, and the presence of a monitor has helped reduce it further. The point is that when police know the people they're dealing with and know the communities, and they know they are being watched and will be held to account for their actions, their use of violent means and methods against civilians declines. Sure enough, it works.

When I moved to New Mexico in 2012, I wasn't really aware of the culture of violence among the local police forces, particularly Albuquerque's, but soon enough I became aware, as reports of police violence and killing were constant. There were the reports of  'anal probing,' in custody assaults and killings, mayhem on the highways. It was just amazing. Wild West didn't begin to describe it.

In Albuquerque, it seemed there were police shootings and killings practically every week.

When Oriana Farrell was stopped on Highway 518 out of Taos in December of 2013, and she then fled violence by State Police, the issue became focused on specific acts of violence by police -- such as firing at a fleeing van full of children -- that were simply incredible.

At some point, you have to say, "Stop! This is wrong!" And that point came. First with the Farrell incident on Highway 518, and then will the egregious shooting/execution of James Boyd in Albuquerque in March of 2014.

That incident, the killing of James Boyd, catalyzed a nationwide movement that's still going on.

I learned a great deal about the national problem of police killings this year. I learned that changes can take place, that police cultures of violence are not immutable, and that public outrage must be sustained and disruptive in order to make headway against corrupt and resistant police cultures.

In Sacramento, police killing was relatively rare. In New Mexico, it seemed to be frequent. So frequent, and so ridiculously inappropriate, that a people's movement against it seemed to spontaneously arise after James Boyd's killing and the efforts of the APD's chief to call it justified.

But I learned it was not a spontaneous movement at all; the movement was the product of years and years of protest against dozens and dozens of police killings in Albuquerque. Many of the people involved were the loved ones of people  who'd been killed by police over the years, and they'd had enough. They'd protested for years, but the killings kept happening. They'd manged to get the DoJ brought in to investigate the pattern and practice of policing in Albuquerque, but the investigation had been going on for a year and a half with no result. The DoJ appeared to be dragging its feet, and the city administration, from the mayor and the city manager on down, seemed oblivious to the existence of a problem with police killing. They were more inclined to review the parallel issue of police corruption, the Good Ol' Boys backscratching, and the culture of going along to get along.

The people who were killed by police so regularly were mostly people that "needed killing" -- the poor, homeless, mentally ill, drunk, drug addict, gang-banger, tattooed, pierced, troublemaker, etc. Few people cared if a certain number of the riff-raff were eliminated from the gene pool every year.

The administration of the city saw no problem.

The Boyd killing changed all that, and it opened up the question of police violence and killing nationwide.

There were demonstrations and protests in Albuquerque throughout the spring and into the summer. They closed down the freeway through town briefly, and they caused the police department to bring out its military equipment and horse patrols to put down what they saw as an insurrection. This led to some real and honest questioning of police behavior toward protest and protesters, and to a debate about police militarization that would spread nationally, too.

Who, exactly, were they meeting in battle this way? Civilians who simply wanted the killing to stop and for the killers to be held to account? Who's idea was this?

And so it went, day after day, on and on. The demonstrations and protests seemed to spur the DoJ out of its slumber and force it to release a scathing report on the unconstitutional policing and inappropriate uses of force by the APD. There was a spate of killings after the report was issued in April, then the numbers started declining, until in August, they stopped.

The killing stopped. THE KILLING STOPPED.

There has only been one officer involved killing in Albuquerque since August, and that one involved a county sheriff's deputy, not APD. It may have been an unfortunate act of panic.

The city entered into a consent decree with the DoJ at the end of October -- it hasn't been formalized by the court yet -- which overhauls and monitors the department. Simultaneously, they began an extensive PR campaign that was intended to show that police were not the monsters and killers they'd been made out to be.

I don't live in Albuquerque, so I don't see what goes on day to day, but my impression is that there has been a marked behavior change on the part of APD officers. They don't agress against the community the way they once did, and they engage in crisis intervention, de-escalation, and alternative arrest and intervention tactics far more than they once did. Police are being disciplined for not utilizing body cameras. They are required to report and justify any used of lethal or non-lethal force, and they are expected to behave professionally.

All this has made a difference, and it seems to be having a positive effect on communities that were once policed so aggressively. When police behave respectfully toward communities and in fact become part of those communities as opposed to outside invaders and armies of occupation, surprising things happen. Hostility is reduced and violence diminishes.

I learned that one man in particular has been selling a version of killer-policing for years, he makes his living at it, and is in essence a cult leader, fostering a police culture of violence and killing. His name is Dave Grossman, a former Army psychologist, whose philosophy is known as "Killology" and who says that the highest accomplishment a police officer or military troop can achieve is to kill in "righteous battle." For that, he says, is what the police and military are for.

They are, in his mind, "sheepdogs," protecting the "sheep" from "wolves."

Killing is what they must do. It is their mission in life. To kill.

And he goes around giving talks and counseling police departments in the crackpot theories of killing he's come up with.

In my estimation, the man is insane, and his theories are destructive and dangerous. But they have been adopted almost universally by police departments in this country, and they go a long way toward explaining why there is so much police killing while crime rates are at historic lows despite the fact that in the last fifty years, more and more everyday activities have been criminalized, and despite the fact that the high and the mighty are not subject to criminal sanctions at all.

Grossman behaves like a cult-leader, and his devotees are police officers all over the country who act violently because they believe his teachings -- that they are doing God's work, no matter who they kill. It's all just and righteous, because...

I learned that there are approximately 100 police killings every month, a constant rat-a-tat of killing, or rather there were. The rate appears to have declined slightly since the summer of discontent and nationwide protest following the killings of Mike Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York.

When I looked at the reports in detail, I was shocked at the patterns and statistics:

A third of those killed by police were unarmed.

A third were suicidal or mentally ill for which crisis intervention was never or was inappropriately employed

A third were involved in domestic disputes for which nonviolent or alternative resolutions are appropriate.

I've long maintained that 90% or more of police killings are unnecessary. I learned that statistically, it's true. Police kill out of a basis of irrational fear and from a position of "righteous authority."

Their commands MUST BE OBEYED -- or the subject must die.

Failure to obey leads to death over and over and over, and when the subject cannot obey for whatever reason, too bad for them; the officer commits no crime when the subject does not follow commands.

It's crazy.

As more and more people wake up to the fact that policing is crazy, the protests and demands for change spread.

The police have been caught off guard. They have been so brainwashed, most can't imagine why or how the people have risen in revolt against them. It seems to their eyes to be a criminal conspiracy of some sort. They cannot imagine that the people do not see their actions and their killings as righteous.

They're fighting back, at least rhetorically, but it seems to me that the message is getting through to the high and the mighty that the killing must and can stop.

We await further developments in the new year, but there has been surprising progress this year.