Tag: Ferguson

The evil that police do – Darren Wilson and the family of Michael Brown

PB Goodfriend1 Comment

Ferguson Protest, NYC 25th Nov 2014
Ferguson protests in New York City, Novemeber, 2014.
By The All-Nite Images from NY, NY, USA (Ferguson Protest, NYC 25th Nov 2014) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

“He’s evil.”
– Lesley McSpadden, mother of Michael Brown, speaking to Al Jazeera America about former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer, Darren Wilson

When I went to Germany, eight years ago, my friend in Hanover was less than enthused when she found out we had been to visit the museum at the Dachau concentration camp, near Munich. She wasn’t angry. She just expressed herself in what might be described as a very resigned, German way.

“It’s a shame,” she said with a shrug, “that whenever people think of Germany, they think of Nazis.” Maybe, but murder leaves a mark. Racist hate leaves resentment and anger. Evil leaves a stain.

Evil is blind, too. It draws conclusions in shallowness because it lacks the vision, or the compulsion, to look deeper.

It’s quite callous, the way former police officer Darren Wilson recently described his feelings about Michael Brown, one year out from their fatal encounter on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. In an article in the New Yorker, Wilson tells writer Jake Halpern that he dismisses claims of historical, cultural abuse at the hands of whites as an excuse that Brown and other young people of color use to justify resenting authority and behaving badly.

“People who experienced that, and were mistreated, have a legitimate claim,” he told Halpern, referring to those he calls the “elders,” who lived through Jim Crow. “Other people [meaning young people, who grew up post-civil rights era] don’t.”

Don’t justify and call it justice; confront truth and discover justice

Wilson goes on to claim that, despite what the article describes as a difficult childhood, he has been able to persevere and build a life, but it comes across as an “I did it, why can’t they” attitude. “What happened to my great-grandfather is not happening to me,” he said, “I can’t base my actions off what happened to him.”

His obvious lack of understanding doesn’t bother him in the least. He thinks he doesn’t have to understand more than what’s going on in the moment. “We can’t fix in thirty minutes what happened thirty years ago,” he told Halpern. “We have to fix what’s happening now. That’s my job as a police officer. I’m not going to delve into people’s life-long history and figure out why they’re feeling a certain way, in a certain moment.”

But doesn’t community policing require more of an effort at understanding the community you’re policing, rather than making assumptions about who they are and what they are capable of? Not according to Wilson. To him, they are as free to make the same, sound choices he has.

“They’re so wrapped up in a different culture than — what I’m trying to say is, the right culture, the better one to pick from.”

Halpern didn’t let that statement go unchallenged:

“This sounded like racial code language. I pressed him: what did he mean by ‘a different culture’? Wilson struggled to respond. He said that he meant ‘pre-gang culture, where you are just running in the streets—not worried about working in the morning, just worried about your immediate gratification.’ He added, ‘It is the same younger culture that is everywhere in the inner cities.’”

Wilson says he is certain that families in the community are to blame, and definitely in the case of Michael Brown’s family. “Do I think he had the best upbringing,” he asked Halpern rhetorically, in a tone the writer describes as “striking.”

“No,” Wilson concluded, answering his own question, “Not at all.”

Given that his own mother was a “compulsive” thief, who Wilson warned his own friends against, who left his father, then put his stepfather $20,000 in debt the first year they were together, it makes one question his frame of reference for what is and is not “the best upbringing.”

“His acts were devilish,” Michael Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden told Al Jazeera, Wednesday morning, “and we definitely know he didn’t have the right upbringing, because those are words that you just don’t use, especially after you took somebody’s life and you know you had no reason to.”

Wilson has looked at Michael Brown’s life and just doesn’t care anymore, if he ever did, except that he is being sued by Brown’s family. “Do I think about who he was as a person? Not really, because it doesn’t matter at this point,” he explained to Halpern.

“He can’t hurt me with his words,” responded McSpadden. “What he did hurt me really bad, so his words mean nothing to me.”

Racism and Ferguson: a systemic problem requires a systemic solution

It’s a shame. It’s a shame that in communities of color – in Ferguson, in Staten Island, in North Charleston, in Baltimore, in Cincinnati – that when people think of white police officers working in those communities, they think of careless, frightened, hair-trigger murderers.

This need not be the case.

Many law officers have been caught escalating too quickly to violence, asserting superiority over unarmed men and women, too quick to draw their weapon, shoot a fleeing suspect in the back or physically abuse a prisoner already in custody.

Dying in custody – a necessary conversation

There is a problem with training that says, “You have a gun. You’re in charge.” If that’s your philosophy, go join the army, if they’ll have you. They need people who will shoot to kill.

But police should be working with communities, not against them. Cops need to be evaluated not by how many tickets they write and how many arrests they make, but on how they get along with the communities they are sworn to protect and serve.

Ferguson fallout – justice dancing on the head of a pin

Asked whether she could ever forgive Darren Wilson, Michael Brown’s mother answered simply, “Never. Never.”

It’s a matter of respect – the kind that police expect and the citizens deserve. Killing officers only reinforces this us vs. them attitude. As long as one lives in fearful resentment of the other, people will be as uncomfortable in their own neighborhoods as the cops who patrol them.

Unless full, mutual respect is achieved, citizens will die, families will be torn apart and police who kill will remain the face of evil for entire communities.

– PBG

Advertisements

The galling and the brave – police unaccountable to justice

PB Goodfriend3 Comments

Demonstrators in Atlanta. Photo by Steve Eberhardt. All rights reserved.
Demonstrators in Atlanta, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2014, protest recent decisions that leave police involved in the killing of unarmed African American men unindicted and uncharged. (Photo by Steve Eberhardt. All rights reserved. Used here with permission.)

“…the way we do policing needs to change.”

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio reacting to a grand jury’s decision not to indict in the death of Eric Garner.

After September 11, 2001, there was no pedestal too high on which to place the brave members of the NYPD, and by association, those who served all other police departments. But that deification of the duty-bound washed out to sea with the ashes and dust clouds of the fallen. Respect for their bravery has turned into resentment of the gall with which too many carry out their daily chores. The veil has been lifted, and now justice is in pursuit of those for whom it has often been a shield.

Following the Staten Island, New York, grand jury decision not to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner, President Obama said he is “somebody who believes that law enforcement has an incredibly difficult job; that every man or woman in uniform are putting their lives at risk to protect us… but that they’re only going to be able to do their job effectively if everybody has confidence in the system.”

The lawman carries a gun, and a Taser and a nightstick. If those fail, he can always use pepper spray or even his fists. These are his crime-fighting tools. Too often, as Attorney General Eric Holder announced in Cleveland, Ohio, last week, the use of those tools can result in the loss of our Constitutional rights, because of bad training and an “us vs. them” mentality.

“We have determined,” he said, “that there is reasonable cause to believe that the Cleveland Division of Police engages in a pattern or practice of using excessive force – in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and as a result of systemic deficiencies, including insufficient accountability, inadequate training and equipment, ineffective policies, and inadequate engagement with the community.”

It’s important to note that the Department of Justice investigation into the Cleveland police began in March, 2013, well before the recent, tragic shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was killed by a young officer who CNN discovered had previously been cited for:

“…’a pattern of lack of maturity, indiscretion and not following instructions,’ a ‘dangerous loss of composure during live range training’ and an ‘inability to manage personal stress.'”

Although the Tamir Rice incident is not part of the events detailed in Justice’s report, it is consistent with its accusations of bad “pattern or practice,” including:

”

  • The unnecessary and excessive use of deadly force, including shootings and head strikes with impact weapons;
  • The unnecessary, excessive or retaliatory use of less lethal force including Tasers, chemical spray and fists;
  • Excessive force against persons who are mentally ill or in crisis, including in cases where the officers were called exclusively for a welfare check; and
  • The employment of poor and dangerous tactics that place officers in situations where avoidable force becomes inevitable.”

    • What the DoJ is pointing out is the one tool that the Cleveland police consistently fail to use – good judgement and discretion. It concludes that “this pattern of excessive force has eroded public confidence in the police. The trust between the Cleveland Division of Police and many of the communities it serves is broken.” The result? It isn’t crime the Cleveland Division of Police is fighting with their often deadly implements – it’s people. Fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers. People.

    And when the people he is taught to target are always targeted, always harassed, always arrested or charged, based on the melatonin in their DNA and their zip code, he has lost their respect.

    “Every time you see me, you want to mess with me… every time you see me, you want to harass me,” exclaimed the late Eric Garner, before an overzealous, poorly supervised police officer choked him to death.

    We are no longer talking about police committed to public safety, but to a methodology that supports a community corroding agenda. Whether it be filling privately run prisons or the county coffers or their own incentivized arrest performance, it seems that cops are expected to be, and are rewarded for being, more Dirty Harry and less Andy Taylor. Maybe part of it is a holdover of swollen post-9/11 pride, where no wrong can be done in pursuit of justice. Maybe it is the recent wars, where we give no quarter to disruption, giving undue attention to the benign in pursuit of the horrid.

    The head of the NYPD Police Benevolent Association issued a statement, last week, blaming the victim in the Garner case, in the same way many blamed Michael Brown for the tragedy in Ferguson. “Mr. Garner made a choice that day to resist arrest,” PBA president Patrick Lynch said, adding, “You cannot resist arrest. Because resisting arrest leads to confrontation. Confrontation leads to tragedy.”

    But unless the suspect draws a weapon, resisting arrest shouldn’t result in tragedy. Never, ever. A cop yelling, “Stop, or I’ll shoot,” at a fleeing suspect, and following through on that threat, was ruled a civil rights violation by the United States Supreme Court in 1985 (Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1):

    “The Tennessee statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes the use of deadly force against, as in this case, an apparently unarmed, nondangerous (emph. mine) fleeing suspect…”

    In the case of Eric Garner (no relation to the Tennessee victim), not only was he “unarmed” and “nondangerous,” he wasn’t even fleeing. The officers had many alternatives, but the choice was theirs to gang tackle and choke Eric Garner to death – not the victim’s. Resisting arrest, if that is what he was doing, is not a capital offense.

    The police in all these cases have lost their perspective. Like a soldier who has been deployed too many times for too long, the method has replaced the mission. That is what Mayor de Blasio meant when he said, “…policing needs to change.”

    Stop-and-frisk was bad policing because, like an antibiotic, it affects good cells as well as bad. The good cell doesn’t care that you think this is all for the betterment of the community. It only knows it’s under attack. Likewise, busting drug users on a possession charge doesn’t get rid of drug dealers. It treats a symptom of the crime and not the reason for it.

    “Stop because I told you to,” is the language parents use with unruly children because they have the authority. It cannot be the language we use with self-determined, adult human beings. The authority of police is delusional when it is based on power – having carte blanche to hassle and bully, and the means to beat, maim and kill – instead of on the law they are supposed to represent, and their respect for the community they are sworn to serve.

    -PBG

    Recommended reading:

  • The Police in America Are Becoming Illegitimate, by Matt Taibbi (rollingstone.com)

    • Ferguson fallout: justice dancing on the head of a pin

    PB GoodfriendLeave a comment

    The skin remains thin where old wounds receive no healing salve and are not allowed to mend. The scar is prodded by forces seeking control and picked at when it tingles in a sadly familiar way.

    There is little sympathy for those robbed of justice when their justification for anger crosses over into mob hysteria. Moreover, it harms the community in which they live and, more importantly, the cause for which they were marching in the first place. On the other hand, it’s important to remember that police aren’t always the “good guys” and their claims are never unassailable.

    By (Kane Farabuagh/VOA) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
    Riot police prepare for unrest on the streets of Ferguson after a grand jury decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown, Ferguson, Missouri, Nov. 24, 2014. (Kane Farabuagh/VOA) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
    People in Ferguson, Missouri, and around the country marched this week for a cause deeply rooted in the story of America – the fight for equal treatment under the law, and a fair shot at justice. Through the smoke of burning businesses and lost jobs and racial epithets and Klan threats it may be hard to discern the silhouettes of purposeful people looking to wrest reconciliation from the restless mobs. Attacking the status quo with bricks, bats and bottle glass only maintains it, while power’s grip hides behind riot shields and rolling clouds of teargas.

    Yet we cannot walk away from this fight, and while changing it from the outside is tantamount to attacking a retracting tortoise, the old reptile understands that in order to breathe free, he must acknowledge the threat that looms outside his shell. When the rabble rouses to anger, only real change appeases. It then falls to the earnest and purposeful to calm both sides and find a way to mediate peace through mutual respect.

    Our racial dysfunction “has led – for whites, blacks and Hispanics as well – to a widening sense of disrespect,” conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks opined on the PBS Newshour, Friday, “that not only is there no opportunity, but they’re being disrespected by the people with authority, and that’s especially true with African-Americans because of the historical legacy of racism in this country.”

    Respect is not born from threats of violence, neither from a hysterical mob nor a policeman’s gun. Some suggests body cameras to protect officers’ reputations and the rights of civilians, and though recent studies have proven the devices to be an effective bulwark against use-of-force excesses by police in some communities, it is like attaching training wheels to a bicycle even though the rider should be expert without them. The problem is with the bicycle, not the rider.

    We don’t have to teach the police they have to be watched to be effective. We have to teach them that proper policing is being civil, especially in the face of communities that have an existential fear of their relationship with the cops. The onus is, and has always been, on the police, here.

    Regardless of whether Michael Brown is responsible for the interaction with Officer Darren Wilson that precipitated the tragic events of August 9, as the grand jury seemed to believe, a policeman chose to use deadly force because he could, not because he had to. In that context, “good guys” with guns shooting “bad guys” without guns means, to me, that the so-called “good guys” should not have a gun, at least not until they receive more complete training.

    When a police officer, who is sworn to protect a community, pulls a weapon and fires, he must have an understanding of the impact of his actions. He is shooting not only at an individual who may or may not be armed; he is aiming to kill a member of his community, even if they have nothing in common other than a similar zip code. The shooting will have an impact. The policeman must comprehend that, just as he must have an understanding of why he takes any punitive action.

    Even if a police officer is just pulling someone over for a traffic violation, is he doing it because they were being careless and dangerous on the road, or because he has a mandate to raise revenue for his municipality? Is his performance evaluation based on how many tickets he writes and arrests he has made, or is he judged on how well he gets along with not just his fellow officers, but with the community he serves?

    The system is broken, if a police officer’s job is to help keep the court dockets and jails full and the pockets of the county’s general fund overflowing. His job is, and should always be, policing first, arresting second, shooting last. That is his link in the chain of justice. There is no room in a civil society for anything else.

    -PBG

    Racism and Ferguson: a systemic problem requires a systemic solution

    PB Goodfriend4 Comments

    Ferguson, Day 4, Photo 26
    Ferguson, Missouri, protest, August 15, 2014.
    Photo by Loavesofbread, via Wikimedia Commons

    “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Merriam-Webster defines the adjective systemic as “of, relating to, or affecting the entire body.” That medical definition refers to the system of a specific body or organism, including, of course, the human body. The Ebola epidemic sweeping West Africa is a systemic assault on the organs until the victim bleeds to death from the inside. But some systems are larger than those contained within the vulnerable body of a single individual. We have railway systems and highway systems, judicial systems and weapons systems, accounting systems and computer systems, and the most important system of all, our social system.

    A social system outlines how a group relates to and supports the members of a society, in order to create a community that gives its people the best chance of survival, with the ideal goal being to create a successful paradigm for sustainability. As our bodies have had to adapt to a changing environment, so too our social systems have evolved into what we hope are better and better ways of dealing with friends and neighbors, and even with those whom we have chosen to label enemies.

    Yet despite good intention, a social system planned by human beings will always have disastrous moments, even fatal flaws, because of the fallibility of the premises on which they are built. The systemic assault on the body of American society is evident these days in the continuing epidemic of cop-on-black intimidation, threat and murder brought to light most recently with the choke-hold killing of Eric Garner, in New York, and the shooting of young Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. (The subsequent violence is not part of that illness. It is a predictable side effect, though.)

    Our laws, and those who represent them, are supposed to be the anti-bodies to this type of viral infection. “We all need to hold ourselves to a high standard, particularly those of us in positions of authority,” President Obama said in a statement last Thursday, after police in military vehicles and camouflage appeared to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of journalists and protesters in Ferguson.

    Human decency isn’t regulated by law, but by a sense that we actually are all part of the same body. The anti-bodies are obviously corrupted when police officers refer to the protesters as “fucking animals,” and a faulty judicial system puts its own money-driven survival ahead of the welfare of the citizens it is meant to protect.

    Even the United States Supreme Court, which is supposed to be the most inoculated from the distractions of a dysfunctional society, finds itself refusing to acknowledge the pervasiveness of racism in favor of some mythical, Euro-centric sense that the pendulum of discrimination has swung too far the other direction. Laws protecting the rights of disadvantaged minorities to receive the same educational opportunities of their wealthier, White counterparts don’t work, Chief Justice John Roberts said, because, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, 2007)

    As Slate.com’s Dahlia Lithwick pointed out after the anti-affirmative action decision in Schuette, earlier this year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent “poke[s] at Roberts [Seattle decision] with a sharp stick.”

    “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race,” wrote the justice, “is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.”

    Justice Sotomayor was describing racism as the systemic disease that has been a blight on American society, since even before the days our slave-holding Founding Fathers declared that “all men are created equal.”

    It was only fifteen months ago that a St. Louis County, Missouri, police lieutenant was fired for allegedly telling his squad, one morning, “Let’s have a black day,” and “Let’s make the jail cells more colorful.”

    “Now is the time for healing,” intoned President Obama, last week. That won’t be easy, but there is a way.

    “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Let’s look at another definition for systemic one can find at Merriam-Webster, that is precisely about healing a corrupted system:

    “of, relating to, or being a pesticide that as used is harmless to the plant or higher animal but when absorbed into its sap or bloodstream makes the entire organism toxic to pests (as an insect or fungus).”

    With Ebola, though no cure exists, scientists say the best chance at a cure is to strengthen the body’s own defense system, so it can fight off the infection and the patient can heal. That treatment, in its own way, is a systemic.

    What systemic, then, must be applied to American society to rid itself of the racist scourge?

    One idea to solve the issues in Ferguson is to diversify the police force. “There’s a deep undercurrent of racial frustration,” Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery told MSNBC‘s Jose Diaz Balart last Thursday, after he was arrested and released by local law enforcement. “In places where residents do not believe the police understand them or look like them, you are always going to start at a disadvantage in terms of these relationships.”

    Experts agree that diversity of government officials and a community’s police force is laudable, “But at the same time, you can’t expect that to be a panacea,” University of Pittsburgh political science professor, Jon Hurwitz, told the CBC.

    The CBC’s Mark Gollom writes:

    “The problem, says Hurwitz, is that stereotypes against blacks that associate them with violence continue to persist. Hurwitz said these stereotypes are ingrained across the political spectrum, and that many blacks in the U.S. are just as susceptible​ to stereotypes of blacks as whites.”

    So as a systemic solution, there’s just as much a chance that a more diverse police force would not solve the problem. It’s possible the problem is not in the racial make-up of the enforcers, but rather the way they relate to the community they serve. As Gollom put it:

    “Generally, whites also perceive their experiences with police officers different than blacks, Hurwitz said, with most whites reporting they have been treated fairly and politely during their encounters.

    “But blacks talk about being treated rudely and disrespectfully, Hurwitz said, even if their encounters with police were for similar reasons as whites.”

    In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Tuesday, one former Los Angeles cop says it’s not just the officer’s responsibility to keep tensions minimized. The “bottom line,” writes Sunil Dutta, who is now a homeland security professor at Colorado State University:

    “…if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?”

    So we have a huge group of citizens who feel the cops treat them “rudely and disrespectfully,” and cops who say, “Don’t threaten me,” and if we follow those rules everything will be okay. The problem is, those aren’t rules for a community to get along. They’re rules for a community cold war. It’s only a matter of time before the effort it takes to keep up the facade of a peaceful town shatters into chaos.

    During the protests, there’s been looting and tear gas and arrests, Molotov cocktails and noise cannons and more arrests. Smoke, screams, blood and broken glass spread across the streets of Ferguson, as they have in so many poor and neglected neighborhoods before. Asked for calm, they shout, “No justice! No peace!”

    “Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

    In his CBC article, Gollom refers to a program in Boston as a “success story,” where the Boston PD reached out to community stakeholders, including Black clergy, “to forge better relationships with blacks.” But according to at least one recent study by three Harvard professors, that program, called Operation Ceasefire or the “Boston Miracle,” while successful during its nascent period in the 1990s, slipped away from the community in the 2000s. The reason for the inability of the city to maintain its “success story” was not the model, but the commitment of the city to the program.

    “Our basic conclusion,” the study’s authors write, “is not that the Boston model of the 1990s has failed, but rather that the City of Boston and the Boston Police failed to pursue the policies and practices that had been so successful during the late 1990s.”

    In January, after a string of homicides in Boston, the police once again reached out to the Black clergy for help, and to present “a united front against the violence that’s occurring in our streets,” according to the police superintendent in chief.

    The lessons from Boston may apply in Ferguson, and other towns where there is not a concerted effort by the police to reach out to leaders in the community, and “forge better relationships.” These relationships cannot be seen as some kind of quick fix to the problem. Concentrating on ending the violence, on both sides, without addressing the underlying causes of the problems will only result in the virus of racist intolerance reestablishing itself, and destroying the community from the inside.

    Like a treatment that gets the body’s own defenses to destroy a virus, the problems in our social system need to be addressed by getting an entire society to fight against a common, corrosive enemy.

    Here’s the tricky part. You are our society. Your own conscience is the anti-body. Your commitment cannot flag, for our entire republic depends on you. Vote. March. Act. Love.

    “Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

    -PBG

    MLK quotes pulled from BrainyQuote.