Tag Archives: Police

Political Rants

Shades of Gray.

When will we stop being surprised when another young black man is dispatched by the police? By “we” I mean, we white people? Freddie Gray is just the latest victim of the New Jim Crow (basically the same as the old one, except a little less rhetorically overt). My initial impression at news of this fresh outrage was, if this had been a lynching in 1951, would any of us doubt who was responsible? This is freaking ridiculous. Sure, I know – investigation of any crime and prosecution of perpetrators is complex and time-consuming, for Christ on a bike – it isn’t like they found the guy on the street with a broken neck. He died in police custody. How many interviews does that take?

Freddie GrayMonday night Baltimore was burning, in places. Tuesday morning, we heard all the usual stuff. Why are they burning their own neighborhoods down? What’s the matter with these people? Hey … they looted a liquor store? Same crap every time this happens. These, incidentally, are not the questions asked after every sports-related victory (or defeat) riot that happens in major American cities. Of course, those “thugs” tend to be mostly white people. They tend to belong to a more privileged class. Nothing to see here.

How are the police behaving in the wake of this popular anger? Here again, same story. Show of massive force, check. Leaking selected details from the investigation, check. Police union head saying astoundingly idiotic and tone-deaf shit, check. The story began circulating on Thursday, corroborated by multiple sources from within the public safety establishment in Baltimore, no doubt, that Freddie Gray was, in some measure, responsible for his own death. Just like Michael Brown, who “charged” officer Wilson, “bulking up” in a Hulk-like effort to withstand the hail of bullets, so we were told. Just like Trayvon Martin, who tried to grab Zimmerman’s gun before the wannabe cop used it on him, so we were told. They try to rule the narrative, just as they try to rule the streets.

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has spared a few words for the injustice of it all. This seems to be a new development in her character. Indeed, the two most frequently mentioned Democratic presidential candidates – Clinton and Martin O’Malley – both bear the stain of extremist policing.

A day later, charges have been brought against the officers. Unusual, but of course, superficial in that it’s the street cops – not the policymakers – who get the ax. Plenty of blame to go around here, folks.

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jp

Political Rants

Fighting for air.

Another grand jury delivers yet another unsatisfactory conclusion. Seems like prosecutors now have a workable model for not indicting the proverbial ham sandwich. Convene a grand jury for a specific case. Drop a metric ton of data on them with no clear guidance as to how to make sense of it. Invite the individual against whom charges are being considered to present his case to the jury without pointed cross-examination by prosecutors. Drag it on for an impossibly long time, so that the grand jury is exhausted and only too eager to get back to their lives. Next thing you know, the ham sandwich walks.

#ICantBreatheWhat does this prove other than the well-established fact that powerful institutions will always find innovative ways to protect themselves? Police are the strong arm of the government, which is itself a rough representation of the sentiments of the general population, this being a democracy. For decades, our politicians have built their careers on stoking fears over crime, particularly urban crime perpetrated by “scary black people”. They employ coded versions of racial stereotypes deeply rooted in American society, going back to the arrival of the first African slaves on these shores. Police are the “thin blue line” between scary black people and your white person’s home, your white person’s family, your white person’s privilege.

What did Eric Garner do to warrant being tackled and choked to death by a gang of cops? Was it selling loose cigarettes? I sincerely doubt it. Aside from blackness, what is it that he shared with Michael Brown and so many others? I contend that it is defiance – in Garner’s case in particular, defiance of police authority in the presence of other African Americans. You could say the same for Michael Brown – he wasn’t going to go quietly. If you stand up to injustice, challenge the officer’s right to bend you to his will, you open yourself up to very harsh treatment, to the point of death. Defiance of authority, in my opinion, plays a key role in that decision by Darren Wilson to pull the trigger five more times once Michael Brown had already been shot.

This goes a lot deeper than anything that might be fixed by mounting cameras on police uniforms. A better start might be to put cameras on every black person in America.

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Political Rants

Justice be not swift.

Well, the verdict is in. I say “verdict” only because the prosecutor in the Michael Brown shooting investigation presented a trial-like case to the grand jury that included extensive exculpatory evidence, such as hours of testimony from the suspect himself – an approach that even Justice Scalia has considered irregular (though he has not, to my knowledge, commented on this specific case). I say “verdict” because Michael Brown himself was on trial in these grand jury proceedings, much as Trayvon Martin was while his killer, wannabe-cop George Zimmerman, was sitting in the dock without a care in the world.

Mr. Myth Maker.St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch ultimately provided the grand jury with a distorted picture of Michael Brown that made him out to be a superhuman, hyper aggressive, predatory cop-hater. Darren Wilson’s description of Brown was surreal and, in my opinion, carefully concocted to create the impression that there was no other way to deal with this young man than with a hail of bullets. Brown’s face was like that of a “demon”; he had the strength of “Hulk Hogan”; while being shot, Brown was “bulking up” so he could somehow charge through the officer’s hysterical gunfire. This is myth making, pure and simple.

But the prosecutor’s office didn’t rely only on distorted racial myths in its quest to avoid an indictment. They also relied on distortions of the law, such as this item (as reported by Bill Moyers):

“[MSNBC host] Lawrence O’Donnell found that just before Darren Wilson testified, “prosecutors gave grand jurors an outdated statute that said police officers can shoot a suspect that’s simply fleeing.” SCOTUS ruled the statute unconstitutional in 1985.

To my mind, the issue that never truly gets examined is the question of whether a police officer is justified in firing that 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th shot, as opposed to shots 1 and 2. What kind of training did Darren Wilson have, that he would feel like a “5 year old” in a tussle with a young man like Brown? What prompted him to unload his handgun into someone who may not have been complying with orders, but who had evidently done nothing to warrant a summary death penalty? One could ask the same question of many other police shooters of young black men over the past … I don’t know … century.

There does appear to be a serious “I am Darren Wilson” movement out there amongst law enforcement. We heard this recently from Utica’s police chief:

“Our justice system is not perfect, but it’s one of the best in the world,” Utica police Chief Mark Williams said. “Whether it’s a police officer or civilian, everybody should be given their due process and justice isn’t always swift. There has to be an investigation, and you just can’t indict somebody just to appease people who have a dislike for police.”

So … are Brown’s mother and father just a couple of people “who have a dislike for police”? True, justice isn’t always swift, but with attitudes like this prevalent in the management of our police departments, it is at a positive standstill.

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jp