Center for a Stateless Society » militarized police state

I’m sorry Eric Garner. I don’t know what else to do.

Cathy Reisenwitz — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 23:03:19 +0000

“I am that whore. I do confess. I put you on just like a wedding dress and run down the aisle.” I’m listening to Wedding Dress by Derek Webb. I go to this song when I’m sad.

I’m sad. Beyond angry. Brokenhearted. The Staten Island Grand Jury chose not to indict the officer who choked father of six Eric Garner to death on the street while attempting to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes.

They chose not to make the officer even stand trial. Despite video. Despite the fact that chokeholds are illegal. Despite the coroner ruling the death a homicide. Despite everything. They found no evidence to indicate a crime may have been committed. But they did indict the man who filmed the killing. And they tell us cameras on cops will make a difference.

This is a hard day. It’s been a hard week. A hard month. A hard year.

You get to that point when you’re not angry anymore. When you read the NYPD Tweet, “The #NYPD is committed to rebuilding public trust. #Wehearyou,” and just sit there with your mouth agape, thinking, “How could you?”

The NYPD Commissioner joked about it.

How could you?

This is what the police are saying.

How could you?

#BlackLivesMatter? Like hell they do.

But, then, how could I? I am complicit. I have not yet burned the fucking system to the ground. The system that allows police to kill young black males twenty-one times more often than their white counterparts. The system wherein people respond to that stat with lies about black criminality. The system where white men Tweet at me, “Why is this about race?” The system which buys cops tanks but never offers consequences for breaking the law, starting with the one that requires them to report on how many people they kill every year. This is the racist, corrupt, lawless, and totally unaccountable system I build and support and allow through my complacency and it is a system for which I must be called to account.

I’m going to the White House tonight. It’s not enough. It’s not even close to enough. It’s so far from enough that, to quote a friend, “A part of me wants to crawl into a hole and never emerge again.” But I’m going. I don’t know what else to do.

Police Should Be On, Not Behind, Cameras

Thomas L. Knapp — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 19:00:26 +0000

Police body cameras are all the rage lately. Al Sharpton wants them used to monitor the activities of cops. Ann Coulter wants them used to “shut down” Al Sharpton. The White House wants them because, well, they’re a way to look both “tough on police violence” and “tough on crime” by spending $263 million on new law enforcement technology.

When Al Sharpton, Ann Coulter and the president of the United States agree on anything, my immediate, visceral reaction is extreme skepticism. In this case, the known facts support that skepticism.

It’s exceedingly unlikely that widespread use of police body cameras would reduce the incidence or severity of unjustified police violence. We’ve already seen the results of numerous technology “solutions” to that problem.

The introduction of mace and tasers to police weapons inventories encouraged a hair-trigger attitude toward encounters with “suspects” (“suspect” being law-enforcement-ese for “anyone who isn’t a cop”). Their supposed non-lethality made it safer to substitute violent action for peaceful talk.

The introduction of military weaponry and vehicles to policing hasn’t produced de-escalation either. Quite the opposite, in fact — now we get to watch small-town police departments stage frequent re-enactments of the Nazi occupation of Paris in towns across America.

And police car “dash cams?” That’s obviously the most direct comparison. But the dash cam always seems to malfunction, or the police department mysteriously loses its output, when a credible claim of abusive police behavior arises.

On the other hand, it’s absolutely certain that widespread use of police body cameras would increase the scope and efficacy of an increasingly authoritarian surveillance state.

The White House proposal calls for an initial rollout of 50,000 cameras. Does anyone doubt that the output of those cameras would be kept, copied, cross-referenced and analyzed against law enforcement databases (including but not limited to facial recognition databases) on a continuing basis?

Assuming a camera attaches to a particular officer with an eight hour shift (rather than being passed around at shift changes for 24-hour use), that’s 400,000 hours per day of random warrantless searches to be continuously mined for probable cause to investigate and arrest people. Even George Orwell didn’t go so far as to have 1984‘s Thought Police carry portable cameras everywhere they went!

Video technology is certainly part of the solution to police violence, but that solution should remain in the hands of regular people, not the state. More and more of us every day come into possession of the ability to record video on the spot, while instantly porting it to Internet storage so that it can’t be destroyed at the scene or tampered with after the fact. Cops need to be on cameras they don’t control.

But part of the solution is still just part of the solution. Even when cameras catch violent, abusive, criminal cops in action — as, for example, when business security cameras filmed Fullerton, California police officers Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli beating homeless man Kelly Thomas to death in 2011 — it’s incredibly hard to get prosecutions and even harder to get convictions.

Ubiquitous video monitoring of state actors by regular people is a start. But the only real way to guarantee an end to police violence is to bring an end to state “law enforcement” — in fact, to the state itself.

It’s Not Just About Michael Brown

Jason Lee Byas — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 18:00:37 +0000

It’s been interesting to watch information go back and forth on the shooting of Michael Brown, and to watch people’s reactions to that information.

After initial reports that Brown had been shot in the back, early autopsies showed that the bullets actually entered through the front (one shot which grazed the hand may have come from the rear). After claims that Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Brown, had a fractured eye-socket, it was discovered that he just had a swollen face.

Yet no matter what information comes out, most people have stuck firmly to whatever narrative they accepted from the beginning. Discussions about the facts of the case have also been very loud and emotionally charged.

This is because conversations about what happened between Darren Wilson and Michael Brown are not really about what happened between Darren Wilson and Michael Brown. The case is actually serving as a symbol for two other questions, more fundamental and much broader in scope.

The first of which is: “Are the police out of control?”

The way people are talking about this case seems to imply that if Wilson’s use of force was not in necessary self-defense, the police are out of control — and if it was, everything’s fine. No matter how the facts of this particular case turn out, though, the answer to this question is yes.

Even if Darren Wilson turns out to be a near-perfect moral exemplar, the police are out of control. Some estimates say that police kill roughly 400 Americans a year, but the real number is likely much, much higher due to issues with the way that statistic is calculated.

Furthermore, while there is unfortunately no footage of what actually happened that night between Wilson and Brown, Ferguson has since then given us plenty of evidence of lawlessness from the police. Police have used tear gas, rolled through in military vehicles, raided churches, screamed “I’ll f—ing kill you” at crowds, attacked reporters and just generally wreaked chaos on the Missouri town.

The second question that many people are really asking when they ask what happened to Michael Brown is, “is the criminal justice system of the United States still especially skewed against people of color?”

Here, too, we already know the answer is yes. Maybe Darren Wilson is literally incapable of seeing race. Maybe he is the least racist white person in all of Missouri. Even if that ‘s true, it is also true beyond a reasonable doubt that people of color, especially young black men, live under constant attack from the police.

As has been widely reported, blacks in Ferguson are stopped by police at an alarmingly higher rate than whites and are also subject to a disproportionate number of arrests. Ferguson is not unique here. Institutional racism is unfortunately just another part of the American experience.

Despite whites being more likely to use illegal drugs, blacks are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession. Racial disparities in the prosecution of gun crimes are even larger. It’s not for no reason that black families have somber talks with their sons about how to deal with the police.

Because these figures are just numbers to most people, they often fail to inspire change. This leads those living their reality to rally behind a symbol like the fallen flesh and blood of Michael Brown.

Since so much has happened to so many people that has never gotten the news coverage this case has, Brown serves as a stand-in for what’s happened to them or those that they know. They don’t see Darren Wilson, they see the cop who murdered their brothers, framed their cousins or shoved guns in their faces at an early age. They don’t see the Ferguson Police Department, they see the prisons that overflow with people who look like them for “crimes” that hurt no one.

Given Ferguson PD’s failure to be forthcoming with their side of the story, the actions they’ve taken in response to protests and proven lies from nearby departments, it’s probably safer to be skeptical of their claims. Even in the unlikely event that they’re right, though, there’s still more than enough reason for the public to take a strong stance against the police. Not just in Ferguson, but everywhere.

It’s not just Michael Brown getting killed. It’s not just Ferguson where the police are an occupying army. It’s not just Darren Wilson and it’s not just a few bad apples. These problems are structural and have to be addressed at the root.

Where’s Eric Garner’s Amargosa? on Feed 44

James Tuttle — Sun, 10 Aug 2014 19:00:15 +0000

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “Where’s Eric Garner’s Amargosa?” read and edited by Nick Ford.

One might object to a comparison between these situations. The Amargosa police department has four patrolling officers, the NYPD thousands. The weaponry of the Amargosa police department is meager, that of NYPD military-grade. Surely the best way to remember Garner is the slow burn of policy change, of educating a mass movement which is uncooperative with the police, of anything but immediate and direct response.

I might have to forlornly agree with you, that any thought of a battle with the NYPD is doomed from the start. But make no mistake, to be radical on this matter is to encourage a spirit of rebellion like that of Amargosa. Violence and conflict is inevitable on the scale of the individual, the community, city and country. There will not be a true movement against police until we’re ready to assert the value of our loved ones’ lives over those the claims of cops, whose daily plots always involve harassing you and treating you as hostile until proven otherwise.

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Dov’è la Amargosa di Eric Garner?

Ryan Calhoun — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 11:00:40 +0000

Nella città brasiliana di Amargosa, i cittadini sono scesi in strada dopo che un proiettile vagante sparato da un poliziotto ha colpito e ucciso una bambina di un anno. La folla si è diretta immediatamente verso la stazione di polizia, ha liberato le persone che erano rinchiuse, ha preso le armi di proprietà dello stato e ha ridotto in cenere l’edificio e due mezzi di servizio.

Nessuno è stato ferito. Il messaggio è stato: Non siamo disposti più ad accettare i “danni collaterali” delle vostre istituzioni. Le attacchiamo, le bruciamo, e prendiamo le armi della polizia per il nostro uso. Alla fine, la “rivolta” è stata soffocata da forze di polizia di un comando vicino. Ma nella Battaglia di Amargosa del Sedici Luglio 2014 a vincere sono stati i cittadini. E che ne è stato degli agenti più esposti alla rabbia di questi individui inferociti? Da codardi quali sono, si sono rifugiati in un albergo vicino. Prendete nota.

Il giorno dopo, in tutt’altra città, in tutt’altro paese, Eric Garner stava sputando il suo ultimo respiro mentre un gruppo di membri di una banda cittadina con i colori del Dipartimento di Polizia di New York si era ammassato su di lui. Garner aveva appena dissolto una piccola zuffa a cui la polizia aveva risposto con riluttanza.

Il suo crimine? Garner era un noto venditore di articoli di contrabbando, meglio conosciuti come sigarette sciolte. Senza alcuna prova del fatto che stesse vendendo, o anche che avesse con sé, questi articoli, dopo un breve diverbio Garner è stato immobilizzato a terra e pestato da diversi membri della banda di poliziotti. Le sue ultime parole? Le parole che un innocente padre di famiglia ha rivolto a questi “agenti di pace”? “Non riesco a respirare. Non riesco a respirare. Non riesco a respirare.”

Quel giorno non ci sono state rivolte. I passanti hanno obbedito al loro istinto di conservazione e hanno voltato la faccia altrove. Nessuna protesta, nessun dissenso. Solo un altro nero morto sulle strade di New York… solo che stavolta c’è un video. Con la forza di queste immagini, di Garner che urla pietà per l’ultima volta, gli americani che attribuiscono valore all’indipendenza sono riusciti a raccogliere indignazione su internet. Ho sentito dire che anche Al Sharpton è coinvolto. Al momento, Daniel Pantaleo, l’agente che ha dato il via al soffocamento, è stato privato dell’arma e condannato al duro lavoro della scrivania. A pochi chilometri di distanza, intanto, una madre e sei figli convivono con la tristezza, l’orrore e lo smarrimento per aver perso il loro marito e padre.

Eric Garner è morto e questo non cambierà nulla. Al massimo adotteranno una politica che scoraggia i soffocamenti (e ovviamente non sarà rispettata). Domani, o la settimana prossima, ci sarà un altro Eric Garner. Ci sarà perché esiste ancora un comando di polizia che non è stato raso al suolo.

Qualcuno potrebbe obiettare che le situazioni sono diverse. Il comando di polizia di Amargosa ha quattro agenti di pattuglia, e quello di New York migliaia. Le armi dei poliziotti di Amargosa sono semplici, quelle di New York di tipo militare. Certo il modo migliore per ricordare Eric Garner è un cambiamento delle politiche a fuoco lento, la formazione di un movimento di massa che rifiuti la collaborazione con la polizia, il che significa una reazione tutt’altro che immediata e diretta.

Potrei dire, concordando disperatamente con voi, che qualunque idea di combattere il dipartimento di polizia di New York è condannata dall’inizio. Non lasciatevi imbrogliare dalle apparenze, però: in queste cose, essere radicali significa incoraggiare uno spirito di ribellione come quello di Amargosa. Violenza e conflitto cono inevitabili a livello di individuo, comunità, città e nazione. Non ci sarà un vero movimento contro la polizia finché non saremo pronti a rivendicare il valore della vita dei nostri cari al di sopra delle pretese dei poliziotti, che ogni giorno tramano per opprimervi e trattarvi come nemici predefiniti.

È ora di trattare la polizia con la stessa ostilità con cui loro trattano noi; e anche peggio! È ora di metterli a tacere. È sempre ora di far terminare la loro tirannia; e con tutti i mezzi necessari. La popolazione di Amargosa l’ha capito. Può darsi che abbiano affrontato un dipartimento di assassini in uniforme meno temibile, ma rischiavano comunque la morte e la prigione, e hanno scelto di agire invece di scrivere lettere indignate. C’è voluta la comunità, la rabbia, l’indifferenza per la sicurezza, per la dignità degli agenti di polizia come eguali. Loro non sono eguali. È sempre più chiaro che i moderni dipartimenti di polizia in America e in tutto il mondo sono forze d’occupazione, che violano le comunità con la forza dei proiettili e dei distintivi. È ora di ridurli in cenere, prendere le loro armi e liberare le persone che hanno imprigionato. Non fatelo solo per Eric Gardner. Fatelo per voi stessi.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna

Where’s Eric Garner’s Amargosa?

Ryan Calhoun — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 18:00:16 +0000

In the city of Amargosa in Brazil, citizens took to the streets after a stray bullet fire by a local police officer struck and killed a one-year-old girl. But they didn’t stay in the streets. They quickly took the police station, freeing prisoners, jacking state-owned weaponry and burning the station and police vehicles to the ground.

In the end, no one was seriously harmed and the message was sent: We won’t accept your institution’s “collateral damage” any longer. We are taking it, we are burning it, we are taking the weapons of the police for ourselves. Eventually, this “riot” was quelled by neighboring police forces, but in the Battle of Amargosa 16th of July 2014, the victors were the citizens. And what of the state officials most likely to face the wrath of these fierce, enraged individuals? Like the cowards they are, they held up inside a local hotel. Take note,

The very next day, in a very different city, in a very different country, Eric Garner gasped out his last breaths as gang members repping the New York Police Department colors piled on and choked him after he broke up a scuffle the NYPD were slow in responding to.

His crime? Garner was a known holder of contraband, which you might know as loose cigarettes. Despite no evidence that he was selling or even had said contraband on his person, after a brief verbal quarrel between Garner and the police, he was put into a chokehold, held on the ground and pounced on by several more NYPD gang members. His last words, the words of an innocent family man to these “peace officers?” “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”

No riots occurred that day. Passersby did thought of their self-preservation and looked the other way. No agitators, no dissent . Just another dead black man on the New York City streets … only this time with a video. With the power of these images, of Garner’s last cries for mercy, the proud American people who value independence so highly were capable of summoning an Internet outrage. I even hear that Al Sharpton is involved. As of now Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who initiated the chokehold, has been relieved of his gun and sentenced to the harsh world of desk work. Meanwhile a few miles away, a mother and six children deal with the sadness, the horror and confusion of having their husband and father taken from them.

Eric Garner is dead and nothing will change because of that. At most, we will see a policy shift discouraging chokeholds (will of course not be abided by). Tomorrow or next week, there will be another Eric Garner. There will be another Eric Garner because there is still an NYPD precinct that wasn’t razed.

It’s time we treat the police with the same hostility they treat us with — and more! It is time to end them. It is always time to end your subjugation — by any means necessary. Amargosa’s people understood this. They may have been up against a less imposing department of uniformed killers, but they still faced death and imprisonment and chose to act rather to write angry letters. It took community, it took anger, it took a disregard for the safety or dignity of officers as equals. They are not equals. As is becoming ever more clear, modern police departments in America and around the world are occupiers, violating communities with every bullet, with every badge. It is time to burn them all to the ground, to take their arms and to free those they imprisoned. Don’t just do it for Eric Garner. Do it for yourself.

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