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Hi, y’all.
Police abuse of power may have existed for as long as there have been police, but the topic has received renewed attention thanks in large part to the brutal crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street movement and other activist groups in the United States in the last year.
The topic is an inevitably controversial one; there’s little that can divide activist groups quicker than a discussion of police-interaction tactics. For every occupier chanting “shame!” during arrests there’s another trying to reach out to the officer’s humanity. I’ve heard about villages in other countries with tiny police forces that the people personally control, and I’ve experienced temporary communities where the people mediate rather than police. I have friends who want everything from reform to total abolition of the police system. When I reported as a citizen journalist from February’s ‘Fuck the Police’ march in Austin, a friend of mine unfollowed me on Twitter; I couldn’t blame her because she’s an EMT and she sees police trying to save lives on a daily basis.
I don’t know what the answers are, I just know that what we have now seems broken. What does policing or personal safety look like in an ideal world? Feel free to share your ideas, but please keep it civil. I’ll check in with this conversation a few times tonight.
This is tonight’s MyFDL open thread. What’s on your mind?
5 Comments
Here’s what I have earned about the police in the US. There is no situation that is improved by their presence. They do not work for me. They do not serve and protect me. They have robbed me of far more money than criminals ever have–and I’m a generally law-abiding, tax-paying, white male with a middle class job. I have found them to be worse than useless. I don’t hate them, but I fee a whole lot better when they are not around. In no other country, including several Latin American ones where the cops are supposed to be so bad and corrupt (I have found the Mexican police to actually be decent and reasonable), have I found the police to be as unhelpful, violent, racist, and above the law as in the US.
I don’t know the answer for how best to deal with them in a protest. Non-violent resistance to police brutality typically gets sympathy from even many members of the hard right. But the days of seeing Civil Rights protestors bitten by cop dogs and knocked down by their water hoses are over, so there is likely no sympathy in that regard coming from the TeeVee. I would recommend avoiding and ignoring them whenever possible. Don’t comply when they ask for something because if they could make you do it they wouldn’t be asking. Reasoning won’t work–they know where their bread is buttered. Have you tried laughing at them? No that will just piss them off–they’ve got twisted egos and no sense of humor anyway. I do find that agreement resistance works quite well.
And remember, they know how to deal with–and welcome–violence and direct confrontation. Any other responses, especially really creative technically legal ones, they have little idea how to react to. And never, ever, ever trust them–part of their job description and training is to lie in court in order to get a conviction. They are an ends-justify-the-means bunch, as I suspect you already know.
How could I have predicted the ridiculous police over-reaction that would happen tonight in Los Angeles over some chalk at the monthly art walk? Police attacking hipsters, occupiers, and children alike.
I think what we’re seeing is an orchestrated escalation of policing abuses to Civil Liberties designed to redefine Civil Liberties. With accompanying stories in local news describing the events as procedure. Dumb Us Down.
It’s not pretty. We’ve read and heard these stories from other people in other countries, we studied cleaned up versions of these stories in school, but we can’t believe these are the policy actions of the Police Of America.
They are.
The MSM keeps telling me Occupy is dead. Too bad the only time they get any coverage is when there are arrests.
What we see of police brutality against OWS is propagandized as the new normal. Always with the violence started by those with the least amount of power in the equation. Well it is the price we are led to believe we must pay for “security.”
From the A Times on the police violence at the Art Wa ( http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/07/lapd-update-17-people-arrested-during-artwalk-melee.html ). Notice the language and framing of the incident.
“At least 17 people were arrested Thursday night when violence broke out at the monthly ArtWalk event in downtown Los Angeles, police said Friday.
Police had said earlier Friday that 19 were arrested but later updated the number.
Of the total arrests, nine were for vandalism, two for failure to disperse, two for assault with a deadly weapon, two for resisting arrest, one for receiving stolen property and one for assaulting a police officer, they said.
PHOTOS: Confrontation at downtown L.A. ArtWalk
About 140 officers were called in to assist the LAPD Central Division with dispersing the crowds. Four officers were hurt and treated for minor injuries. One officer suffered a minor concussion after being hit in the head by an object thrown by the crowd, police said.
The clash appeared to have started shortly before 10 p.m. from a demonstration using sidewalk chalk drawing as its means of expression, witnesses said.”