A million years ago, I sat in a classroom at Arvada West High School and listened to a veteran of the Colorado State Patrol as he told us - with more than a touch of real pride - that in his whole career, he'd never drawn his weapon.
The guy had been a cop longer than I'd been alive.
He told us straight out that under any but the most dire circumstances, drawing your weapon meant you'd failed at your job as a peace officer.
Charlottesville police officers, Daily Progress reporters and ACLU observers were gassed, as well as bystanders near those blocking High Street, leading some to question the show of force at a demonstration that was breaking up.
John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization, had advised local police before the event to avoid heavy-handed tactics and militarized equipment, and says people react differently when the riot shields come out. “What we had was an army,” he says. “What they were saying to the crowd was, this is a riot.”
Whitehead says he’s gotten calls from all over the country. “What I saw yesterday was not a community policing event. It was an armed police state. It’s not a good image to portray around the nation.”
“The city abdicated its duty to state police,” says civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel, who was present at Justice Park. “You can’t treat cops like human beings when they’re dressed like Ninja turtles.” There were lots of different stripes of people in and around the park. But as usual, only one faction showed up dressed like they were looking to start some shit.
Many police agencies now focus on testing individual officers identified as possible juicers under “reasonable suspicion” or “for cause” guidelines.
I asked James Pasco, director of legislative advocacy for the 325,000-member Fraternal Order of Police, how many of the nation’s 18,000 agencies currently test officers for steroids.
“I have no idea,” he replied.
It seems nobody does. Since there is no systematic national data collection on testing and results, the number of officers disciplined each year for steroids is unknowable—a potentially important criminal justice data point that is lost down an information black hole.
--and--
“I keep seeing all of these cases where the level of anger and violence shown by officers makes no sense," Gilbertson says. "And when things don’t make sense, they don’t make sense for a reason…Maybe steroid rage is a reason so many police officers seem so angry and aggressive.”
"Suddenly" it's a not a matter of perception - it doesn't just seem like the cops are goin' a little nutty. There's a real explanation available, and we need to start looking at these things in this new light. And also too - lotsa cops are coming out of the US Military, where the use of Roids and HGH (et al) is one of the worst-kept secrets ever. Sometimes, they're just random dots, but sometimes they connect up quite elegantly. Need any more reasons we should try a little harder to stay the fuck outa the war bidness?
(And Uh-Oh. My guy Martin O'Malley took a bit of a hit there (starting at about 3:45) when Mr Powers slags him for misunderstanding the Broken Windows approach to the point of total FUBAR. I guess I need to figure out a way to ask him about that.)
So, wouldn't it be nice if we could take a hard look at the whole process? Maybe we could start with: Coin-Operated Politicians getting elected partly on Big-Money donations from the Crime-&-Punishment Industries which eventually makes for a very tidy loop of criminalization and recidivism (Bust. Bargain. Jail. Repeat). The cycle of Poverty, Ignorance and Crime isn't a bug in the system - it's a fucking feature.
And as a nice bonus, it gives our returning war heroes some occupational therapy so they can work out those PTSD issues that they don't have and that nobody ever needs to talk about because they couldn't possibly manifest themselves in the worst possible ways at the worst possible times - but like I said, let's not worry about any of that. Ever.
Anyway, concentrating your Zero-Tolerance approach on the "problem areas" almost ensures those problem areas will forever remain problem areas. Which is, again, actually the point. While it's being sold to us as Public Service, law enforcement is being administered as a Profit Center. And the Revenue piece of any good business plan includes Recurring Revenue Opportunities - Returning Clientele, Customer Retention, Repeat Business, pick a buzz phrase, any buzz phrase.
BTW - the people filling our prisons aren't the "customers" of the Crime-&-Punishment Industries; the same as the patients filling our hospitals aren't the "customers" of our Healthcare Industries. The main point there being that a healthy patient is a detriment to somebody's profitability the same as a law-abiding citizen walkin' around free isn't putting money into the pockets of an ever-widening system of interlocking "security" businesses. But weirdly - healthy patients and law-abiding citizens are very good for taxpayers and premium payers and business owners and families and and and. So how come it seems like somebody doesn't want us to be particularly free or particularly healthy? It's a wonderment, ain't it?
Prisoners (like Patients) are both the raw material and the product. This is a strictly Business-to-Business proposition. The customer base consists of corporations which spend lots of time effort and money getting you and me to line up so we can volunteer to get scammed into believing we're buying ourselves a little law and order; some peace of mind; a feeling that we'll be allowed into the powdered wig salon just as soon as we've kissed all the right asses and stepped on all the right fingers - when actually, we're just identifying ourselves as resources for a system that eats people, extracts power and money, shits people back out; and then starts over again.
What, you weren't still thinking Law Enforcement's about enforcing the law, were ya? You're so cute. We live in USAmerica Inc, silly - America's business is business. And business is fucking great.
You're very important to us, so please stay in line - we'll get to you soon enough.
I hope this one's been on everybody's radar the last coupla days:
A rich donor to Tulsa police mistakenly pulled out his gun instead of his Taser and blasted a fleeing suspect.
The volunteer cop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who killed an unarmed black man was forking over thousands in donations and equipment after becoming an unpaid sheriff’s deputy.
Robert Bates, a 73-year-old insurance executive-turned-deputy, accidentally fired his gun instead of a Taser—costing Eric Harris, 44, his life and adding to the tally of deadly police shootings against minorities nationwide.
The Tulsa deputy charged with manslaughter for fatally shooting an unarmed black man was the sheriff’s sugar daddy—treating him to exotic cruises and fishing trips—former officers with the sheriff’s department told The Daily Beast.
--and--
“Bob Bates came on board because he had all this money,” one former reserve deputy said, adding that the sheriff and other higher-ups would “go on these cruises in the Bahamas and in Mexico all the time.”
"[Bates] foots the bill,” the deputy added. “The sheriff just gave him free rein because he was treating him right. He bought his way into this position.”
Another former full-time deputy said Bates was “getting glad-handed” around the office because of his wealth.
“This is your typical Southern good ol’ boys system,” he said, adding that before the shooting Bates planned to take Glanz on a fishing trip to Florida.
In case anybody may still harbor the soul-crushingly stoopid notion that "Pay-To-Play-Citizen-Goon" is a good idea, here's Charlie Pierce:
Something has gone permanently squirrelly with law-enforcement in this country. There is the change in attitude by which police increasingly feel and behave like an occupying army in American cities. There is the preposterous increase in available armament. On a wider scale, there is the triumph at all levels of government of an attitude that we will not tax ourselves, ever, for anything, even our own safety. So we wind up with traffic cops who look on, ahem, certain citizens as resources to be pillaged, or we wind up with septuagenarian insurance salesmen empowered to shoot people in the street under color of law, because they were willing to buy guns and ammo privately for a public purpose. This is Kafka rewritten by Grover Norquist and Bozo The Clown. You get what you pay for, and we're not willing to pay for anything any more.
Why do we need "outsiders" to make us see these things?
And just how fucked up is the "American Press" when they miss this to the point of it being totally unknown to practically everybody?
How have we managed to forget that allowing government to operate in secret is always the best way to encourage Official Skullduggery? Weren't we supposed to be the exception to all that?
Farther down that long and slippery slope. From Rolling Stone:
"In terms of a clear national picture of what kind of military equipment is going to K-12 schools through the 1033 program, we don't have a 100 percent transparent picture," says Janel George, education policy counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. That lack of transparency is one reason the Legal Defense Fund and Texas Appleseed are asking the DLA to end the 1033 program's relationship with school districts and school police departments. George also emphasizes that excessive force against students by school police is already far too common, with many school officers armed with weapons like tasers and pepper-spray. "The concern is not only the potential harm when you add in military-grade weaponry – we're talking about M16s, AR 15s and grenade launchers. It's also, how does this exacerbate existing school climates that are already tense? And how does that contribute to the criminalization of youth of color in particular?"
The disproportionate punishment of Black and Latino students for the same behavior as their white peers is so well-documented that, earlier this year, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education expressed concern that such disparities may constitute a widespread civil rights violation. The fact that students of color, as well as students with disabilities, are so much more likely to be referred to law enforcement leads advocates to wonder: On whom are such military weapons likely to be used?
"In LA, if you depend on public schools – and given that the vast majority of students are students of color – at the moment you walk into school, your interaction with police automatically grows," says Manuel Criollo, director of organizing at the Strategy Center. "You depend on a public service, and that public service is attached to the criminal legal system. Are the police there for [the students'] safety, or are they there because they perceive them as a threat?"
