Thursday, August 27, 2020

An Unfortunate and Unnecessary Schism

 


Anyone who wants to defund and disband the police may be making a statement: “the existing system is too corrupt with embedded authoritarian practices that it cannot be fixed.” We have some serious rogue police officers just as some of our best and most dedicated, selfless individuals are also police officers. It’s hard to work in a police unit, constantly scanning for signs of criminal activity and seeing some of the worst of humanity, and then avoid a cliquish “us vs them” mentality, seeing “civilians” as potential “perps.” Cops are trained to keep their eyes open, looking for what needs to be fixed. And above all, perhaps worst of all, cops adhere to rule one: never rat on a fellow officer… no matter what.

Yet, the story of excessive police use of force just seems to repeat itself. This time, on Sunday, August 23rd, in Kenosha Wisconsin. Another blue on black shooting. Protests morphed into violence as the governor declared a state of emergency and called out the National Guard. A young black man, Jacob Blake, had been shot by an officer seven times — “apparently in the back while three of his children looked on — [which] was captured on cellphone video and ignited new protests over racial injustice in several cities, some of which have devolved into unrest. It came just three months after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police touched off a wider reckoning on race.” Associated Press, August 25th. Why does this still happen? Why aren’t police officers standing by held accountable?

29-year-old Blake is likely paralyzed and will never walk again. And by the third day of protests, a white 17-year-old vigilante, purportedly in support of the police, had shot and killed two protesters. It must be obvious to all but the most callous among us that something is seriously wrong with the entire system. It always seems to start with an overly zealous police finger on the trigger.

Even when legislators try and make a change, they face stiff resistance. Legislation in Sacramento that would make cops who fail to intervene, in excessive or questionable tactics from fellow officers, liable as criminal co-conspirators should there be a resulting crime assessed against an officer. That bill is stalled in committee. Juries tend to believe the cops anyway, so it is very difficult to get convictions no matter how egregious the misconduct. That such misconduct, when discovered, can lead to undoing convictions over many years is a very serious consequence… not to mention the millions and millions of dollars of settlements Los Angeles (County and City) have to dole out every year to civilians wronged by police misconduct.

Rogue cops have no place in law enforcement, and those who enable rogue cops need to accept responsibility for inaction or coverups or be discharged. Here in Los Angeles, the Compton Sheriffs Station is being investigated. “At the Compton sheriff’s station, it’s called a ghost gun: a weapon a deputy says he spots on a suspect but that is never found when colleagues respond to the scene and search for it… That’s because the call-out is based on a lie. The deputy didn’t actually see a gun, but his suspect could turn out to be armed and an arrest or recovered firearm could pad his reputation.

“It’s the kind of behavior that plays out regularly at the station, according to a whistleblower who worked there for five years and recounted other sensational allegations in a recent deposition obtained by The [Los Angeles] Times in a federal civil rights lawsuit… ‘In reality, they’ve never seen the gun,’ L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Austreberto Gonzalez said under oath. ‘And then at the end when their containments are set up, you know, the gun is never recovered. You know, they’ll call it a day and say, ‘Thank you for rolling. We’re going to call it,’ and a gun was never recovered.’

“Gonzalez says the scheme is employed in Compton by tattooed deputies who call themselves the Executioners, the clandestine gang many say runs the station… His allegations add to a growing body of information about the Compton clique, one of several tattooed deputy groups within the Sheriff’s Department with names such as the Grim Reapers, Banditos and Jump Out Boys... The Sheriff’s Department has been aware of the groups for decades but has struggled to crack down, despite repeated internal and independent investigations and instances in which members are accused of misconduct.” Los Angeles Times, August 20th.

Police unions, good at whipping up their membership in a frenzy of purported loyalty often blindly supporting any cop accused of most anything, aren’t doing the public relations job with taxpayers that they should. Except for law and order diehards, this unquestioning “loyalty” is precisely what riles the public most. And most of the public does not want to defund the police or disband their underlying structure. Most of us are acutely aware of how valuable police officers really are. We really do not want to defund police or disband police departments. But we also want fairness and commonsense with less police use of force.

Signs of military repression are seldom subtle. The police deployment of armored personnel carriers, the use of military tactics, fatigues, body armor and weapons, and their seeming acceptance that even as “non-lethal” weapons can still maim and kill, tell us that these “normal” processes and procedures are approved for general usage. To many, all these factors are hallmarks of callous enforcement, particularly when they are called upon to shut down political expression. As long as weapons are labeled as ‘non-lethal,’ they are used all the time. Killing and maiming still. Stirring up crowds to escalate violence. In the 1930s, sensing the impending uber-repressive dictatorship, a German organization called Antifaschistische Aktion rallied to oppose the rise of Nazism. They were brutally repressed, but that anti-fascist mantra was later adopted by groups who believed that fascism anywhere needed to be stopped. Antifa.

Portland, Oregon has always been the city that best expresses this struggle between those seeking equal justice and freedom and those who simply believed in white supremacy. They soon embraced this anti-Nazi call to justice. Melissa Etehad, writing for the August 25th Los Angeles Times, explains: “Militant protest in the name of racial justice has deep roots in Portland… It dates back to the 1970s, when leaders of the hate group Aryan Nation and other organizations dedicated to creating a white ethno-state began encouraging their supporters to move to Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

“Racist skinhead groups became a growing presence in Portland over the next decade, making the city an increasingly dangerous place for Black people… In 1988, after three skinheads beat an Ethiopian student — Mulegata Seraw — outside his apartment, activists began to fight back… Many of them came from the city’s heavy metal and punk scene — skinheads with a different mission… ‘There was a lot of organizing between the Black community and white allies after the murder of Mulegata,’ said Walidah Imarisha, a Black historian and activist who lives in Portland.

“Newly formed groups such as Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice and the Coalition for Human Dignity began tracking neo-Nazis and white supremacists and outing them to co-workers and police… They also believed that sometimes violence must be met with violence and engaged in brawls with far-right extremists… ‘There was some direct confrontation at protests and rallies,’ Imarisha said.

“The activists also found common cause with Black residents in calling for accountability for police who killed unarmed Black men or engaged in other mistreatment… For a time, it seemed like the activists were winning. Far-right groups stopped holding rallies and largely disappeared from public view…

“The election of President Trump in 2016 gave the activists a renewed sense of purpose and brought the conflict back into the open… White supremacists saw the president as an ally — even if he denied it — and began staging rallies again, often targeting liberal cities. The activists pushed back with their own demonstrations. Clashes were common.

“In Portland, police often stepped into the middle, arresting protesters and deploying tear gas and rubber bullets to break up rowdy crowds — and in the process deepened long-standing resentment from the left… Increasingly, the activists came to believe that their fascist and racist enemies included not only white supremacist groups but also police departments and other government institutions.”

Portland is hardly representative of America as a whole. But in a world where the President of the United States is forcing individual Americans to pick a side and dig in, he has provoked the very eruption of protests and riots he claims to be against. Since the essence of Trumpian politics is to divide and conquer, political division is his most basic calling card, we must recognize that he needs those violent protests to have a shot of winning the election… no matter how destructive that behavior might be for the very survivability of the nation. He will continue to provoke, and those fearful of fascism they seem embodied in all things Trump will continue to supply the President with exactly what he wants. Violence and great visuals for his political ads.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and for all those who want harder, harsher repression against protestors, exactly how do they really believe such efforts can work… that the United States as a whole will benefit?

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