Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

I wonder if the secret history of the conservative movement is its understanding of how well black churches galvanized public and political opinion; did the evangelical movement rise as an Earth-3 version?

“The clergy in Oakland have not really come together,” said Bishop Joseph Simmons, pastor at Greater St. Paul Church in West Oakland. “We’re still trying to figure out where we fit in in all of this. This generation doesn’t have respect for the church, and we don’t have the power we once had.”

Scott Walker says he's ready to call in the Nat'l Guard for any protests against the upcoming decision re: the cop who killed the mentally ill Dontre Hamilton earlier this year. Some background on Hamilton:

http://onmilwaukee.com/buzz/articles/dontrehamillton.html

NY cop killing thing sad and stupid and counterproductive but cant say I'm really surprised

Isn't it crazy how we're not allowed to say he was a mentally ill lone wolf

Isn't it crazy how we're not supposed to talk about how he targeted his girlfriend first before finding a squad car with a lady cop in it

Corey Robin has been on point on Twitter tonight in finding frightening cop rhetoric in response to this awful tragedy and awful justice minded mistake

He called it a Dolchstosslegende and during in NY tonight watching blue and reds reflect in the clouds that's hard to unhear.

I'm not saying that I don't appreciate the skills needed to be a (good) police officer, but they get paid to have those skills. Some of those lectures about what attitude we ought to have clearly come from people of privilege who live in low crime areas.

Every time there is a shooting in my community, I think, "we don't get compensated or applauded for living here." Keep that in mind as you see "those people" chided for their disrespect.

i don't know if it makes sense to have an attitude about police officers one way or the other. some of them commit horrific abuses; others aspire to be noble public servants, whatever you think of the actual value of their activities. it's like with teachers: as a class they are not good or bad. there are some lazy, awful teachers and there are also some that are wonderful, who make a positive impact on scores of students per year. depending on people's attitude toward unions, they tend to emphasize one type of teacher over the other but either way it's a distortion.

this isn't to say there aren't cultural problems within the police force that cause violence to be normalized. this isn't to say that these problems aren't, in the end, really just manifestations of racism. but this can be addressed without making assumptions about random cops. police officers are part of the working class -- their interests, in the end, are ultimately connected to those of the people in the communities they clash with, just as their interests were bound to those of the occupy protesters several years ago. the cops who were murdered yesterday were not white. the police, as an institution, defend white supremacy and the property rights of the 1% but they do so, often, against the interests of police officers. if you want to think about inequality in a structural sense, it is clear that cops are the victims of these structures even as they are their most visible enforcers.

that said, this is interesting:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/when-will-they-shoot/

statistically, police work is not as dangerous as many other jobs, such as roofing or driving a cab. also cops kill vastly more people than kill them -- 51 police killed last year versus over 400 people killed by police. this is clearly a nightmare and needs to change immediately

xp

sure, but it's your closing line that makes such equanimity hard to maintain. they are the part of the structure holding the gun.

yeah but if the goal is reform i don't think inciting individuals against the police via campaigns like ACAB -- which i didn't know about until yesterday -- is going to be much help.

because the issue, ultimately, isn't with the police, but with the society that provides them with fucked up laws to enforce and protects them when they, out of paranoia, kill people

What's the ACAB campaign?

it means "all cops are bastards." there were some posters that were put up in england, but it's also a popular hashtag.

i don't really know how extensive the demonization of the police is, and i haven't actually seen it in progressive circles so much, but i think the killer yesterday picked up his rhetoric from somewhere.

in a larger sense, though, while i am disgusted with the calls on the right for people to "respect" officers in order to distract from the abuses that have been uncovered, i think the other side of the coin, demonizing officers, is bad too. i feel like i used to say stuff like "i hate cops," but i don't really think it's productive now to feel that way

very interested in the possibility of disarming cops though

ACAB has been used as a tag since the 1970s all over the world. It's not a campaign, as such. It's used by everyone from anarchists to football hooligans. The UK posters were not, as far as I know, inciting individuals against the police.

It makes sense for the left to do what the right has consistently failed to do, and examine whether its rhetoric could have contributed to the actions of someone who was already prone to violence, but I'm not sure that a black man in NY really needs HuffPo to foster hostility towards police.

isn't "All Cops are Bastards" itself an irresponsible phrase? in the first place, it alienates people (from the working class especially) who should be allies in the fight against police brutality

yeah but if the goal is reform i don't think inciting individuals against the police via campaigns like ACAB -- which i didn't know about until yesterday -- is going to be much help.

― Treeship, Sunday, December 21, 2014 8:07 AM (1 minute ago)
agree completely! hadn't heard of ACAB until about a minute ago.

because the issue, ultimately, isn't with the police, but with the society that provides them with fucked up laws to enforce and protects them when they, out of paranoia, kill people

― Treeship, Sunday, December 21, 2014 8:09 AM (3 minutes ago)

w "ultimately" off the table, i think that a big part of the issue (a tangle of interrelated sub-issues) is with the police - or that it at least makes sense to frame it that way. individual police officers and forces, police unions and culture, systemic and individual racism, valorization of the "hero cop" so desperate that it must react to any criticism or investigation basically as treason. it's common thinking among police officers these days that if you ever use your weapon, you must use it to kill. never wound or warn with fire. never restrain your fire until your target is unequivocally "nonthreatening" (i.e., dead). this is military thinking, and it hasn't always been a part of american police culture/training. same goes for the idea that any perceived threat automatically justifies lethal force. this is an idea that has risen and quickly taken hold in recent years, both within and without police forces.

i say that because "society" as a whole is vague, intangible, too big to address pragmatically. but bad officers, bad forces, lack of civilian oversight, police self-investigation, reliance on military equipment and tactics, the local mechanisms of the surveillance state, police racism: these are issues we can directly address.

It's not a particularly accurate or constructive phrase but I'm not sure it's taken very seriously by the mainstream left. If I see ACAB graffiti, which I do frequently all over Europe, I assume it was left by football fans.

The bigger problem the police has is hostility / distrust from minority communities and that hasn't required any organised campaigns to develop.

Xp

contenderizer otm. Vox had an article on the cases of 'resisting arrest', and something like 5% of officers put forth 40% of cases. There's def bad apples, and #notallcops are equally bad. But then the system protects the bad apples, uses intricate systems to pick out bad neighborhoods which will have tougher policing while using no resources on picking out bad cops, etc. The policeforce, as a system, as a whole, is screwed up. Also, on a smaller scale, in DK. Probably everywhere.

And while it's def unproductive to feel hate on all cops, I think it's equally unproductive to tell minorities feeling discrimination every day how they should feel. Which, also, is not to say that all minorites say that they hate cops and can't realize how unproductive that is.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/166023_10152838982200567_63766925_n.jpg?oh=e76d99c81ab28f2d7a2209baedf08e1d&oe=5503F103&__gda__=1430744944_edcad2dce0dd9f4763853dc563e0a6c0

actual profile photo of a HS buddy of mine i have only just learned is a cop

OMG PLEASE

Are we turning 2014 into 9/11 or what

Again, I don't mean to sound bitter and disrespectful toward police, but I have had police in my family, and part of the attraction of the job are the benefits.

I've been to protests where the socialists get up and say that the police are "working class" but this isn't the 1959's. "working class" can mean working two retail jobs, no vacation, no benefits, certainly NO retirement.

My neighborhood is one, for some reason, that NO police officers live in. Is it beneath their standard of living - because the houses are old? I mean, in many communities there is a huge class difference between police and the community. Sun Belt retirements and vacation homes are NOT the norm where I come from.

around here (rural NH) LEOs actually make pretty good money -- mid-highish five figures and excellent benefits. definitely in better shape than the rural poor they are policing

75% of the sf police force does not live in sf

xp yes, but this isn't because standards of living for cops has improved, it's because the labor conditions in the private sector have been degraded. everyone should have that kind of financial security.

there was a similar discussion with the public bargaining rights fiasco in wisconsin. many workers felt like, hey, they weren't getting these benefits so why should they care if other people are losing them. but the fates of various sectors of the working class are connected. the reason the koch brothers et al see public unions as a threat is because they want to totally degrade the culture of labor rights -- what they call "entitlements" -- to make it easier for them to exploit their own private sector employees. so i still think there is a possibility for solidarity among cops and the truly poor on the basis of class. for instance, the cops who clashed with occupy protesters were acting against their class interests -- if they had a different political consciousness maybe that could have unfolded differently

To me the mission station cops are more like a predatory protection/extortion racket

Xp

working class ppl who become cops have betrayed the working classes tbh

Well, I'm sorry to say the police are just not visible in the labor rights or other economic justice movements. Their union people have every opportunity to make statements when the opportunity arises but I don't see them.

OTOH, you see and hear teachers working for general working people's rights all of the time!

Coming across the bridge to shake down residents, steal drugs, etc

xxp

the reason that #acab is that they all become complicit, they may be ostensible decent individuals who interpersonally could be quite lovely i'm sure, but on duty they at best submit to practices of oppression and at worst gleefully participate in those practices. the cop who isn't a bastard would be the one driving for change from within in a way that would probably get them fired

you could say that cops have "betrayed the working classes" and it's true that most of them seem to be right wingers. however, many cops are not just working class, but are men and women of color. i think it's still worthwhile to point out that the systems they use violence to protect do not start or end with them, and in fact aren't even in their interests. i feel like cops could even come to understand this.

if complicitness is the sin not sure how many of our hands are really clean.

It's interesting that the Koch brothers have been active in funding anti-police groups in the past, including some that have had, on the surface, a content / tone overlap with left-wing groups. The objective isn't social justice, it's private policing. It's being seen as the libertarian right aligning with the liberal left but, in the longer term, the right of the state to maintain law and order is going to be on the agenda and that could potentially unite progressive people behind the police. That seems a long way off, but it's something the police should probably bear in mind. There have already been a couple of flare-ups, including the Bundy ranch thing, where you've had the left broadly supportive of police action and the right broadly opposed to it.

To paraphrase Chesterton, the poor sometimes object to being policed badly, the rich object to being policed at all.

I imagine some people object to seeing police cars in their neighborhood - I have heard people in affluent neighborhoods complain that it makes their neighborhood "look" bad and is probably bad for property values!

I can't imagine what it must be like to live in that sort of community. I'm relieved to see a police car, we never see them and we are near a busy thoroughfare where drug dealers are known to hang out. But the only time I have seen them is to stop ME to ask me why I was in the alley making a cell phone call. Totally pointless and intimidating!

i have mounted cops in my neighborhood sometimes

tmi

rock hard tree trunk

Lol

My uncle was an exceptional cop in many ways: he wasn't racist or sexist, and came down like a ton of bricks on younger family members who repeated anything from the playground along those lines. He spent most of his spare time participating in nature conservation of one type or other. He absolutely drilled it into us that police were expected to behave in exemplary fashion on and off duty, because that was how the police should win the respect and trust of the general public (bottom line being that a co-operative community made his job easier, while a tyrannised community did not). His profile was very high, and he was always in the paper because he'd publicly clash with people just a few rungs up from him over best practice or issues of corruption. As a lieutenant detective, he didn't have to be in uniform or drive a squad car - and from what I can gather, the detective side of things was where the city of Minneapolis liked to place its mavericks.

He died 20 years ago this October, and would be appalled by all the Kevlar zombies in law enforcement today. And that stars-and-bars angel-wing thing? I can just imagine his voice, deriding it as macho bullshit van art.

I think the Kevlar zombies are setting the tone these days.

those wings look more like tarantula legs imo

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/166023_10152838982200567_63766925_n.jpg?oh=e76d99c81ab28f2d7a2209baedf08e1d&oe=5503F103&__gda__=1430744944_edcad2dce0dd9f4763853dc563e0a6c0

Friend just posted in FB:
"So who's in the spotlight to address these issues after co-opting groundswell responses? Al Sharpton and (police union leader) Pat Lynch.
We're fucked."

That image just makes me think of those terrible crying eagle pick-up truck decals from 2002-2003