This picture should be crashing the Internet right now. Incredible.
Journalists encountered a threatening response from police as they tried to cover the protests in Ferguson, the Missouri town that has been upended by the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager.
While there was a spate of looting on Sunday night, Monday’s demonstrations were peaceful. Protestors faced tear gas and rubber bullets from officers trying to break their ranks up. At the same time, police told local media to get out of the area.
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The wrong story is taking over the news.
Ferguson should be a national outrage.
Police in New York murder an unarmed man. Police in Ferguson, MO murder an unarmed man. Police in LA beat an unarmed, prone, and submissive woman. An FBI agent from Boston, recruited while “permanently disabled” on the Oakland CA police force (after being implicated in an organized ring of police brutality in that city), kills an unarmed witness in his home with 12 shots, several fired after the victim was already down.
The common thread among all of these? No follow up. No outrage (except among minority communities). “Investigations” that conclude that no harm was done. In some cases (such as Oakland, CA), quiet out-of-court settlements. No media followup (after a headline-grabbing splash with video).
We live in a culture where those of us who are appalled by these actions and demand change are called “cop haters”.
And the good ones I’ve talked to feel that every incident like this one reinforces the mistrust, the fear, and the apprehension in the communities which they are trying to serve. It’s the bad ones who either haven’t been trained or who are looking to pull the trigger that we have to find a better way to weed out. It doesn’t help that Bratton and the NYC FOP immediately bashed the victim and defended the terrible chokehold tactics that killed a (relatively) innocent person. That death was right out of Do the Right Thing.
This death, and the incident where a black male was murdered in a Wal-Mart playing with a toy gun in the toy aisle by cops, and a bystander died of a heart attack, are also examples of this terrible scourge. In the 90s my firm handled a case where a suburban police officer killed a deaf black man in front of his mom, and the deaf man had no way to respond to the officers instructions. These tragedies are preventable, but they can only be prevented if we acknowledge them as tragedies and punish those responsible.
Are there good cops? Of course. Probably the majority.
But I invite you to take another look at the photo I linked to above. That is an army, and armies fight wars. It doesn’t really matter how many good cops there are, the scale of their firepower is overtaking their ability to control it.
There is a strong tension that these responses cause, and and part of that is the secular priesthood soldiers, cops, firefighters, and others have seem to have taken on in the post-9/11 environment. As Conan joked after the Marathon bombing, everyone who grew up Irish in the Boston area has at least one relative or friend in the service, on the force, or in a firehouse. My best friend growing up and his brother were both in the guard and are in the CPD and CFD respectively, as are a ton of my brothers friends. Co-workers had spouses on the force in Chicago, and I was definitely pro-cop during the NATO riots, since a lot of those protestors showed up to engage the police.
That said, they are human beings like the rest of us. Believe me, I want them to have access to the best equipment, the best healthcare especially mental health care, pensions, the right to organize, etc. But, they also have to follow the law and follow the rules.
And like the clerical priesthood, it’s a cloistered brotherhood that protects it’s own no matter what. And that is a problem. It’s obviously been a problem for the Catholic Church, and it’s been a problem with police forces, firefighters, and soldiers. To this day the FOP in Chicago backs Jon Burge, a known torturer who put scores of innocent men on death row, defending his right to a pension even as he is serving time for his crimes. The NYC FOP rallied to the cops that strangled the cigarette seller, and we see the BFD refusing to have an outside investigator take out the disability cheats and drug addicts from within it’s own ranks, and they basically sabotaged their last chief for that very reason. A lot of those cops manning in the barricades in Ferguson are probably good people, but they are doing their community and their profession long term harm and a disservice by responding in this fashion.
They have too much firepower (literally). Any weapon that’s issued will be used.
While I’m sure most cops in and of themselves are good people, there are huge cultural issues in police forces across America centered around authority issues and group-think, in which it’s more important for them to protecting their own officers than other civilians when mistakes happen.
It is incredibly rare that serious repercussions arise when law enforcement kills or inappropriately targets civilians — and, shocker, they’re always the ones investigating themselves.
The mechanisms to hold law enforcement accountable for their actions and to rein them in when they go astray is almost nonexistent. No one’s willing to do it, not politicians who don’t want to earn the ire of the police and not the courts who have a particularly close relationship with law enforcement.
At the very least, with the advent of things like Google Glass, I think it’s high time that police wear technology that films any encounters they have while on duty, so it’s never a matter of he-said-she-said. If that technology is turned off or “glitches” in anyway, it should be viewed as highly suspect.
These incidents are far too numerous and the reaction by law enforcement far too predictable for there to be any other conclusion than we have a serious cultural issue going on here in our law enforcement branches. We as a nation need serious reform and some cleaning house to fix it.
I couldn’t get that to work.
Marlene Pinnock was beaten to a pulp by LA police on July 5, more than month ago. Her family is threatening litigation — authorities have said only that the episode is “under investigation”.
Meanwhile, the media joins the police in being silent. I asked the question here last month:
The answer seems clear enough.
The Globe and our candidates for governor would rather talk about safe topics like abortion buffers (where there is virtually no difference among Democratic candidates) than edgy topics like police violence, the tolerance by authorities (and voters) for the same, or — the REAL hot button — de facto racism on the part of police and society.
There has been NO follow up to the beating of Ms. Pinnock. The police in Ferguson MO are refusing to name the perpetrator (they, of course, had no reservations about naming the victims whose reputations the police smeared). Massachusetts authorities (including the AG) have apparently made NO further inquiries into the behavior of Aaron MacFarlane.
The media and our candidates join the police in the infamous “code of silence” about flagrant police brutality. The question is why we let them get away with it.
The police lobby is strong and also tends to swing between parties, the black vote always goes to the Democrats. It’s the same reason prison and criminal justice reform is going to be such an uphill battle, even as conservatives get on board, since prisoners don’t vote and there is a far less vocal constituency backing them compared to the victims rights constituency. Social media seems to be making a big impact on keeping this case alive in the newsfeed and responses of my friends, as cliche as it may sound, I feel like my generation is a lot more attuned to the racialized aspects of policing and more committed to stopping it. That’s the most optimistic note in this whole thing, is seeing friends black or white,liberal or conservative, call this the outrage that it is.
There are people of all generations who find what’s happened despicable. There are people of all generations, yours included, who have rallied to defend the police and said hateful things about the victim and the protestors. We have a deep cultural divide that spans all ages.
Granted, my social circles include a lot of fellow Cambridge raised progressives, but the guys I grew up with in North Cambridge ended up going to Matignon and the force, and a lot of my brothers friends are like that as well, we can say Reagan Democratic light. And a lot of the jocks from Rindge ended up as Paultards for whatever reason, and they tend to be highly critical of militarized police forces, as are the libertarians from U Chicago. I haven’t seen anyone defend the actions or the response. But, perhaps my cross section isn’t as robust. Even dad’s dittohead friend who thinks Obama is a Muslim who deliberately killed our boys in Benghazi is silent on this subject, and another pro-open carry guy linked to an article on why blacks can’t open carry and seemed to lament that ‘government police’ target black gun owners disproportionately. What have you seen that convinces you my generation is just as bad? (I ask that out of curiosity not as an accusation)
But I just don’t think there’s that much of a generational difference. I’ve seen plenty of people under 30 on Twitter, etc., saying racist things and telling people it’s the victim’s fault. Same with other killings, the Doug Glanville incident, the Skip Gates incident.
That the RW is so far gone to anti-government hysteria that they prefer anarchy to the “law and order” of Nixon or Giuliani is a different issue, and I’m not sure that change is for the better. These killings are wrong because they’re wrong, not because cops are evil public employees in – egad! – unions, with – eek!- pensions.
…that these incidents NOT be “under investigation” or if they are that there be constant leakage to the press about its progress? That would not seem to serve anyone. You seem to want to jump to conclusions when you are not the one there to witness or participate. Even the things that seem to be pretty cut and dry on whatever video happened to capture it do need to be thoroughly investigated and address, and those involved have the right to expect due process.
These “investigations” are nearly always whitewashes conducted by the same agency being investigated. The FBI investigations, in particular, have (the last time I checked) a perfect record — many “investigations”, all exonerating the FBI.
I’d like the media to pay attention to the investigations. There is already constant “leakage” to the press — all of it working to the advantage of the police. The agencies involved are quick to identify the victims, and quick to publish “information” (nearly always disputed) that casts the victims in the worst possible light and justifies whatever police action was taken.
In Ferguson, for example, the police are quick to identify the victim, claim that he was assaulting the officer, and so on — in stark contrast to other eyewitnesses. In the beating of Marlene Pinnock, the police were quick to say she was “resisting arrest”.
The Boston Globe identified Aaron MacFarland after its own investigation — an investigation that was NOT aided by “leaks” from within any government agency that I’m aware of.
When “due process” and “investigation” are shown to be anything other than euphemisms for whitewash and coverup, then they will have more credibility.
police than it does with policing in general, by which I mean policy, not bad apples or individual decisions. I watch a lot of instances of alleged police brutality on Think Progress. Many of the instances are completely legal. The real problem seems to occur when behavior escalates. I don’t know the specific answer, but it seems like there should be a policy answer to the problem.
In one case, a college professor in Arizona jaywalked and ended up getting arrested for assaulting an officer. First, she jaywalked. That’s an offense. Then she refused to provide ID. That’s an offense. Then she resisted arrest. Eventually she kicked him. I know enough about policing to know that the officer didn’t break the law. She was wrong at several turns. BUT all this started over jaywalking! From jaywalking to assaulting a police officer. The police officer did everything by the book. Unlike the officer in Ferguson, he didn’t use deadly force for a minor infraction.
… but think the Arizona incident is a bad example.
Having watched that video more than once, I have to lay blame entirely with the professor. When I was an undergrad at the Univ of Southern California, I too was stopped for jaywalking as I crossed a street just off campus. Like in the professor’s case, the street was one that people routinely jaywalked across. Like the professor, I tried to reason with the office. Unlike the professor, however, I did so while also providing the officer with my ID, like he had requested. I was polite. The officer was polite. Unlike in the the professor’s case, things didn’t escalate because, and I think this is key, I DIDN’T ESCALATE THEM. I got a ticket and walked away. The professor could have walked away as well if she hadn’t decided to take the ill advised stand that she did
a great example. I’ve been watching COPS since it first went on the air and often check questionable things out with my cop friends. The cop that arrested Henry Louis Gates and led to the President’s beer summit was not legally wrong. But I wonder how much race played in both events. Here are two African Americans who are of the race, but not the class that is overly hassled by police. They aren’t above the law, and don’t think they are, but they don’t expect to be hassled for the kind of thing they might associate with lower class blacks. I’m just wondering. I obviously don’t know what either was thinking at the time.
From a law enforcement standpoint, I know that one of the things about making stops for jaywalking and tail lights being out is that they sometimes lead to arrests for more serious crimes. I’ve seen it on television and in my town’s own police department. Policing small infractions often lead to arrests for larger offenses.
The escalation thing is still troubling. I know how to act around police, but I don’t think most people do. I’m reminded of yet another drunken event at UMass-Amherst–the Blarney Blowout. The police subdued and cuffed some “event goers.” Student government tried to blame the police, saying they had no right doing what they did. As I listened to the protesters, I realized how little they know about the authority of law enforcement. Should we start teaching how to comply with the police? I used the UMass protest as a teachable moment with my college bound juniors.
In Ferguson, and the other incident in Ohio, the young black males cooperated according to most bystanders and were still gunned down. It is unclear, what, if anything, the young man in Ferguson did in the first place. The cigarette seller also complied with the law, and got put into a chokehold, and died. So did the young man at Fruitvale station. The young man in the Wal-mart put his hands in the air, and said the gun was a toy, and still got gunned down (causing another customer to have a heart attack and die). A lot of that is due to heavily arming our police and training them in counter insurgency tactics, and while those tactics may work at pacifying Fallujah-they have no place in Ferguson-or any American city.
And the said thing most black co-workers of mine, at a relatively posh and minority owned corporate law firm in Chicago, have had ‘the talk’ with their kids, especially the boys, basically telling them to act docile and passive with the police so incidents like this don’t happen. Many of them live in majority white suburbs. One of them sold his Audi for a Chevy Impala so he wouldn’t get pulled over anymore. This stuff still happens in modern America.
Granted, I agree that the police are much more heavily armed these days than they really need to be. But, and I may be mistaken, it is my impression that the vast, vast majority of police involved shootings are committed with their standard issue side arms, not the special weapons that we see them pull out in circumstances like the protests in Ferguson, etc.
To me, the issue is that the calculus of how one balances the safety of the officer versus the safety of the suspect has gotten sorely out of whack. In our legal system, it is relatively hard for the state to convict with the onus being on the state to make its case beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, the benefit of the doubt goes to the defendant, not the state. The system was designed in such a way because, on balance, its designers preferred to see the guilty walk than to see an innocent incarcerated (or, worse, executed).
When it comes to policing, however, it seems that our society has gotten increasingly comfortable giving the benefit of the doubt to the police when they feel that their safety is at risk. This, it seems, leads in turn to more wrongful shootings by police. And this state of affairs simply shouldn’t be acceptable. While reducing the use of force by police might very well result in more police being injured (and even killed) by the truly dangerous elements that they have to deal with on a regular basis, this is preferable, imho, than the current situation where innocent minorities are gunned down on what seems like a shockingly regular basis.
…why it is that law and order seems to sell better among Americans, when we almost didn’t get a Constitution over a lack of Bill of Rights, much of which protects the accused. It seems to me that it would be the defense of our rights that more intrinsically a part of our national DNA. There’s especially it seems cognitive dissonance on the right where they hate the government, but then seem more willing to use it, at least as an agent of force if not an agent of help.
among industrialized nations? That might account for some of the fear and blind deference to armed individuals ostensibly protecting the innocent.
….are also a key reason we have so much crime. Other industrialized nations also don’t have a gun fetish and so there are extremely few of them. Even law enforcement elsewhere often goes unarmed.
I guess they get upset enough about military-style law enforcement when it is used, say, to enforce federal law at the Bundy Ranch, or against “sovereign citizen” tax protesters (even though these folks arm and organize themselves into paramilitary organizations), but are cool with government storm troopers deployed against urban neighborhoods because someone threw a rock.
if you’re Republican or a poster child for the them. Feds against the right-wing are jack-booted thugs. Heavily armed police against black folks are keeping the peace.
The book that piqued my interest in this topic was written by a libertarian. And many ideological libertarians have been on the issue for some time, and are as appalled by Ferguson as anyone else, so I would be careful to limit both of our observations above to “Republicans” or “right wingers.”
Unfortunately, it seems like libertarians only get on the news or in the paper for Bundy Ranch. I do not want to reinforce the notion that ideological libertarians are somehow silent about Ferguson.
It is something like the “Why hasn’t there been more denunciation of _____ by the ____?” phenomenon.
I don’t, but I think we are using an awful lot of privilege when we criticize minorities who have a negative reaction to being targeted by cops for infractions routinely violated by white people without penalty.
I’ve never been stopped for jaywalking. Not once. I don’t get pulled over, even if I’m going moderately over the speed limit. My interactions with cops the few times I’ve ever been pulled over have been fine. I was utterly shocked I avoided a ticket once when I went down an unfamiliar street that suddenly turned into a one way after a certain point (the sign was partially obstructed).
I’m also pasty white. If I was black instead of white, the statistics are very clear that my experiences would be very different — that I would have been pulled over far more often and with far different results.
So did that professor react the best way? No. Definitely not. Did you spend any time considering the context of that reaction, though? If your lifetime was filled with experiences that taught you that you’d be targeted because of the color of your skin, you may not be all that polite to a random cop who dickishly stopped you for something everyone violates (but is never stopped for) either.
What you’ve done here is criticize a person for breaking down and having a bad reaction one time, while ignoring a lifetime of evidence that cops routinely harass minorities to the point of clear oppression.
The cop easily could have de-escalated the situation and that’s what they should be trained to do. Normal people aren’t trained on how to deal with cops, but cops should be trained on how to deal with people — and that training shouldn’t teach cops that people are the enemy. They work for us, not the other way around.
Harassing professors crossing the street shouldn’t be part of their job description; if there is a jaywalking problem, they should have had a few days a month where they simply ticketed everyone who did it. People would have taken the hint.
Frustration and anger in these cases is inevitable. We need a police force that is far more representative of the population and far more empathetic. There are serious failures going on in our system. We shouldn’t misguidedly be trying to place the blame on minorities who represent a boiling over of legitimate frustration in their communities. We should be actually trying to fix the problem.
“What you’ve done here is criticize a person for breaking down and having a bad reaction one time, while ignoring a lifetime of evidence that cops routinely harass minorities to the point of clear oppression.”
Of course I’m criticizing her for having “one bad reaction.” That reaction is the only one on which I have evidence to judge her. It’s not like there’s a library of YouTube videos documenting all her other encounters with law enforcement personnel that I am choosing to ignore. And what evidence (other than the fact that I’ve come to a different conclusion than you) do you have supporting your claim that I’m ignoring the fact that minorities are often harassed by law enforcement?
And the officer “dickishly” stopped her? What evidence do we have of that? I think you’re injecting things into this discussion and the actual event that we are discussing that simply aren’t supported by the facts.
Do I think that we need a more representative police force? Absolutely. Do I think there are serious failing in our system? You bet. Am I in favor of fixing the problem? Damn straight. But that in no way means that I can’t criticize someone for a poorly handled interaction with authority simply because I don’t share her skin color. Not every negative interaction between a police officer and a minority citizen is automatically the police officer’s fault.
missing from the video, but I didn’t think the cop was “dickish.” He seemed to keep his cool for a long time. I don’t know how often the cops stop jaywalkers there. It might be often in a big college town.
On police brutality, racial profiling, militarization, police homicides and the ineffective investigation mechanisms, the culture of impunity, etc? This voter is interested. Imagine if Baker issued a statement positioning him to the Left of Coakley on one or another of these issues? Unlikely, but it would be interesting.
I am so proud to have voted for and helped elect Senator Elizabeth Warren. A generation ago, even a liberal Democrat would be terrified of going after bad cops, but our Senator pulls no punches and says what I’ve been thinking:
Bad memories of Selma, Kent State, etc. coming back. Are we never to be too far from a machine gun on a battlewagon? Is all this reaction or practice? The press is being intimidated, a sign of things to come? How long before the agents provocateurs start work to justify the police violence?
“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.” –Leo Tolstoy
I’ve said here, but I think we’re seeing a wake up. The mainstream media is finally noticing a trend starting with Trayvon. I think it helps that the blogosphere and on-scene video coverage are documenting police brutality.
A racist Springfield cop went to jail for beating a suspect (a guy who was more or less a life-long criminal) while other police looked on. Someone recorded it. “One officer said he felt Jones going for his service weapon and he yelled at Asher to hit Jones, which he did.” Maybe he did, but that explanation sounds familiar in the Ferguson. That and police telling people to “Stop resisting!” when they aren’t resisting. Of course, people do resist arrest and go for cops guns, but I’m guessing both claims provide police with a lot of cover when it comes to defending their actions.
might be a problem, but I don’t think this is an example of anything recent. The police don’t look much different than they did in the 1960s when they wore riot gear.
vs.
Take care to discern police from national guard.
Look at the lower photo. The patch on the arm reads POLICE.
These are men in military uniform. Ferguson ain’t the jungle. If you saw any of those men without gas masks on in an airport, you’d simply give him a smile and a nod, believing him to be a soldier on his way home.
Kevlar is new, but no one is going to argue about that. Helmets not new. No gas masks in the 1960s? What about Chicago 1968? (That’s not a rhetorical question).
I don’t know what kind of guns those are and I wonder if they’re loaded with wooden bullets. No reason to assume they are, I suppose. I don’t know if they had SWAT in those days. I don’t what the Chicago Police used when they were killing Black Panthers.
The other thing is, are these Ferguson police or St. Louis PD guys?
of the 1968 riots. The policemen were wearing dark pants,light short sleeved shirts, and white “motorcycle helmets”. They carried batons.
They look nothing like the three police officers on the image above.
Those are military assault rifles. And why are riot police wearing camouflage? Are they planning to sneak up on the rioters through the woods? Do they frequently encounter rioting in forests? This is all about intimidation – projecting an image of the most dangerous humans, to cause fear of death. It seems inevitable that some of the cops would act out that image.
Setting aside the issue of race that is so very evident in Ferguson right now, the militarization of police post-9/11 is in my view an enormous problem– one of the worst lingering self-inflicted wounds of 9/11.
Those police in the Ferguson photo don’t look like an American urban police force, they look like the 101st Airborne clearing insurgents in Anbar.
You are right that this isn’t a recent phenomenon–it has been going on for a decade or so. But there is no way that police departments in the 1960s were organized and armed as a paramilitary organization. To the photo of the police responding to the Chicago riots of 1968 posted below, I would add this image of the LAPD responders during the 1992 Rodney King riots:
And to the photo from Ferguson, I would add these:
Here is an M113 armored personell carrier, with a top-mounted .50 cal machine gun, acquired by the Richland County, South Carolina Sherriff’s Department in 2008.
For reference, a .50 cal round, which is the ammunition that would be fired by the gun atop that armored personnel carrier, is the one on the left below:
I guess we don’t know whether the sheriff will use the incendiary or armor-piercing versions of the ammunition.
Here is a Lenco Bearcat APC, owned by the police of Galax, Virginia, (pop. 7,000).
Here is a “rescue” vehicle– a 12-ton tracked armored personnel carrier, complete with corporate sponsorships, thanks, community!– owned by the City of Tampa PD (and which reportedly was used during the “Occupy” movement a few summers back):
This is not same-old, same-old, police equipment. This is a relatively new, fear-induced phenomenon, that as we are seeing right now, takes other societal problems that are tough enough on their own, and significantly inflames them.
I think I may be a little parochial.
Sorry to roll out the heavy artillery, as it were. This happens to be something that has interested me for awhile.
I am not sure that we are locally immune. I was a little surprised to see the large number of army (National Guard, I guess?) choppers heading toward Boston on the day that the remaining Marathon bomber was on the loose. Given the atmosphere at the time, I am not sure that I did not then welcome what was probably a sever over-reaction. To give credit where credit is due, somervilletom unequivocally did not welcome it, even on that day. My own ambivalence is just anecdotal evidence of why no one really opposes the acquisition of this type of equipment in the abstract; Ferguson shows why this might be a big long-term problem.
Wants to buy its police department a tank. Here in MA we have suburban SWAT teams trying to hide behind nonprofit status so they don’t have to disclose their activities under public access laws.
In my community, Watertown, a recent Tab headline was “Watertown Chief defends secret SWAT record keeping.”
to this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/13/new-hampshire-police-officer-shot_n_5313630.html .
It’s no excuse.
There was a hearing on the tank months ago. The need to suppress things like Occupy was cited.
in California forever. I think they compete with news helicopters during high-speed chases.
I’ve been too focused on police in my area. They aren’t heavily armed as far as I can tell. The one egregious case of racist, police brutality was punished with jail time. I just finished contract negotiations with my town’s police department. The union rep happens to be a cop in Holyoke, which has its share of shootings and drugs. We talked about policing. I was impressed with the guy’s humanity. He’s no bleeding heart liberal, but he clearly cared about the people he polices. I may be spoiled by the good apples.
What seems to be missing from Ferguson and elsewhere is government. If my town’s police department wanted a tank (they wouldn’t), I’d fight against it. Police departments work for the communities they serve, and those communities have governments that should be overseeing them. I would have major issues with our small town force carrying tasers. I wouldn’t be necessarily opposed to it, but they are overused and can be deadly. Any police officer can find him or herself in a life-threatening position, but tasers are used very sloppily.
But LAPD are the folks that invented SWAT.
And they policed a City larger than New York with far fewer officers (around 10,000 vs. something like 40,000 officers in NYC). That meant helicopters directing teams, who would charge in to “restore order” and then retreat.
It didn’t work very well. It is a shame that the style– which seems to have been abandoned by the LAPD– is now adopted elsewhere.
My understanding of such laws is that they prohibit the use of military for domestic law enforcement. As such it seems not that great a leap of logic to suggest that equipping law enforcement agencies with military gear violates at least the spirit of such laws.
but only covers the US Armed Forces– i.e., the US Army, the US Air Force, and the US Navy. Coast Guard and National Guard are exempted. It doesn’t say anything about how “civilian” law enforcement might equip itself.
These are self-inflicted wounds, created from fear.
The Bush administration went to great lengths to terrify Americans after 9/11, because it suited their short-term personal and political agenda. We are now only starting to see the fruit of that hysteria.
We can only hope that it is not too late to turn back the tide.
…but I still think it’s quite the loophole to arm other agencies as if they were the military.
..