OMNI
POLICE USA, VIOLENCE,
MILITARIZATION NEWSLETTER #3, November 25, 2014.
COMPILED BY DICK
BENNETT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE AND JUSTICE
(#1 August 17, 2014; #2 September 3, 2014)
What’s
at stake: Those who pay the cost of these policies [racism, poverty,
militarization], are disproportionally young people of color – and with
alarming frequency that cost is death at the hands of police. Ominously, local
police increasingly rely on militarized tactics and weapons not only to arrest
but to contain people exercising their right to assemble and peacefully protest
such tragedies as the Mike Brown killing. . . . We need to challenge policies –
at every level, from the school house to the State House, from Missouri to
Washington DC – that disproportionately incarcerate
people of color and boost profits for corporations running
jails, prisons and immigration detention centers. We also must challenge media
when they stigmatize youth of color instead of acknowledging their humanity. AFSC (below).
Newsletters
Index:
See:
Militarism, Nonviolence, Violence,
Contents US Police
Newsletter #3
Responses to Ferguson, MO, Police Violence
Ferguson, MO: OMNI Demonstrates for Justice and Nonviolence
November 25,
2014 at Courthouse, Dickson and College, 12 to 1
OMNI, October
25, 2014, March from UA to Courthouse
ACLU, Ban
Racial Profiling
Amnesty
International Observers to Ferguson
Dan Cantor,
Working Families, Rally and Petition Pres. Obama and AG Holder
Devereux, The Intercept: Analysis of the Ferguson Shooting
Georgia
Rothkopf,
Georgia Police Shoot Handcuffed Man
Militarization
AFSC, From
Militarization to Ferguson to Peace
Michael Niman, From
Reagan to Ferguson
Steinmetz,
Veterans for Peace v. Police Militarization
Koebler,
Military-Local Police Fusion
Of Schools, 4
plus 64 Reports
Previous Police
Newsletters (together they offer an anthology of reports and analyses)
EXCESSIVE
VIOLENCE OF FERGUSON POLICE DEPARTMENT
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Omni Center Invitation to Solidarity March on
October 25, 2014
Partnering
to Protect Human Rights for All
Saturday,
October 25, 2014 from 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
October
22 is the national day of protest against police brutality. The community of
Fayetteville will stand in solidarity with Ferguson and other areas who have
suffered from these issues, but we also want to highlight the city of
Fayetteville Police Department's and the University of Arkansas Police
Department's efforts towards becoming more accountable to the communities they
serve.
The
program will begin at the University of Arkansas Union at 9:00 AM for a
presentation including Tina Gaston of #HandsUpNWA. The Solidarity march will
follow, beginning at the University of Arkansas courtyard and following the
sidewalks of Dickson Street. The march is set to end at the Washington County
Court House.
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GEORGIA
Arrested,
Handcuffed Man Shot to Death by Georgia Police
Joanna
Rothkopf, Salon, Reader Supported News, Sept. 20, 2014.
Rothkopf
writes: "Why was he kicking out a cop car's window? Because he had already
been arrested. And handcuffed. Then how could he still have a gun? The story
remains suspiciously cloudy."
MILITARIZATION
“We live
in “a country that seems at once happy
to whine about “Big Government” and slam civilian public servants as
“government bureaucrats” – all while telling pollsters it holds the biggest
appendage of “Big Government” – aka the military – in great
esteem. Thanks to such a martial culture, few ever stop to wonder why our
politics so often distinguishes between civilian and military public service,
and then insinuates that one is to be denigrated and the other venerated.” David Sirota
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James,
Now that the grand jury has refused to indict police officer
Darren Wilson who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, people across the
country are justifiably seeking answers. The American Friends Service Committee
also is seeking clarity in this case. We remain committed to addressing the
issues of militarization of police, police accountability and systemic racism
revealed by the killing and its aftermath. If we are to prevent future
tragedies, people everywhere should join us in these efforts.
Those who pay the cost of these policies are disproportionally young people of color – and with alarming frequency that cost is death at the hands of police. Ominously, local police increasingly rely on militarized tactics and weapons not only to arrest but to contain people exercising their right to assemble and peacefully protest such tragedies as the Mike Brown killing.
Weeks before today’s announcement, Missouri police and elected officials began stockpiling riot gear and “less lethal” weapons to respond to public protest. We urge protesters to resist provocations such as armored trucks, dogs, and blockades staffed by officers in military garb. We urge police officials to seek dialogue with those they swore to protect and serve, to find common ground and peaceful paths forward. Throughout our decades of work on social justice and human rights in the U.S. and around the world, we have witnessed the effectiveness of such dialogue and exchange programs.
We are proud of the young people with whom we work in Missouri, who are using peaceful means to work for fundamental change in systems that perpetuate racism and inequality. They deserve both applause and help for their leadership in healing and organizing their communities. We urge all people of good will to join us in supporting peace-building programs for these young people.
Starting just days after the shooting, AFSC has been helping youth process the killing of one of their peers through our two-year-old Peace Education Programworking in Ferguson and St. Louis. We are standing with teachers and families, with the community organizations protesting, and with the family of Mike Brown.
Most of all we heed and support their vision of what democracy looks like: It looks like police accountability. It looks like equal access. It looks like an end to mass incarceration. It looks like the dismantling of the school-to-prison pipeline. It looks like the demilitarization of police.
As a Quaker organization that believes in the worth of every person, we call on people everywhere to join us in addressing the systemic and structural racism at the roots of Mike Brown’s death – and that of so many others nationwide.
We need to challenge policies – at every level, from the school house to the State House, from Missouri to Washington DC – that disproportionately incarcerate people of color and boost profits for corporations running jails, prisons and immigration detention centers. We also must challenge media when they stigmatize youth of color instead of acknowledging their humanity.
Our nation will only prosper when we invest in all our children. Join us as we work to end militarized policing and the systemic racism that endangers youth of color and thus threatens our common future.
Those who pay the cost of these policies are disproportionally young people of color – and with alarming frequency that cost is death at the hands of police. Ominously, local police increasingly rely on militarized tactics and weapons not only to arrest but to contain people exercising their right to assemble and peacefully protest such tragedies as the Mike Brown killing.
Weeks before today’s announcement, Missouri police and elected officials began stockpiling riot gear and “less lethal” weapons to respond to public protest. We urge protesters to resist provocations such as armored trucks, dogs, and blockades staffed by officers in military garb. We urge police officials to seek dialogue with those they swore to protect and serve, to find common ground and peaceful paths forward. Throughout our decades of work on social justice and human rights in the U.S. and around the world, we have witnessed the effectiveness of such dialogue and exchange programs.
We are proud of the young people with whom we work in Missouri, who are using peaceful means to work for fundamental change in systems that perpetuate racism and inequality. They deserve both applause and help for their leadership in healing and organizing their communities. We urge all people of good will to join us in supporting peace-building programs for these young people.
Starting just days after the shooting, AFSC has been helping youth process the killing of one of their peers through our two-year-old Peace Education Programworking in Ferguson and St. Louis. We are standing with teachers and families, with the community organizations protesting, and with the family of Mike Brown.
Most of all we heed and support their vision of what democracy looks like: It looks like police accountability. It looks like equal access. It looks like an end to mass incarceration. It looks like the dismantling of the school-to-prison pipeline. It looks like the demilitarization of police.
As a Quaker organization that believes in the worth of every person, we call on people everywhere to join us in addressing the systemic and structural racism at the roots of Mike Brown’s death – and that of so many others nationwide.
We need to challenge policies – at every level, from the school house to the State House, from Missouri to Washington DC – that disproportionately incarcerate people of color and boost profits for corporations running jails, prisons and immigration detention centers. We also must challenge media when they stigmatize youth of color instead of acknowledging their humanity.
Our nation will only prosper when we invest in all our children. Join us as we work to end militarized policing and the systemic racism that endangers youth of color and thus threatens our common future.
FROM
REAGAN ADMINISTRATION TO FERGUSON: RISE
OF MILITARY CULTURE
Waging
War vs. Keeping the Peace: Rethinking
How We Hire Cops
BY MICHAEL I. NIMAN • 21
OCTOBER 2014
2
Photo © Photographerlondon |
Dreamstime.com
One hot, muggy
summer day a few years back I was walking with a friend across a public
university campus in Buffalo, New York, when we saw a pair of police officers
sporting bulletproof vests and “high and tight” military-style hairdos while
patrolling the nearly empty campus. “What’s up with the combat costume?” my friend
wanted to know. “That’s just how they dress,” I responded. There were no
precipitating incidents. No tactical threats. My friend’s concern, however,
made me realize that this really was inappropriate dress for a community police
force patrolling what has historically been a peaceful, tranquil community. So
I asked a veteran of the force to explain. “It’s the young guys,” he responded.
“They’ve got a whole different style.”
He went on to
describe the aggressive culture among young police recruits, many of whom had
returned from overseas combat. This police agency, like most, allowed a bit of
leeway in their uniform regulations. Officers had the choice to gear up with
Kevlar vests, even in the absence of any threat to them and despite the implied
threat that such dress visually communicates to the public. I learned that
these officers would regularly wear such attire to meetings with dormitory
residents and student leaders, as if they were expecting incoming random fire.
The military haircuts were just an extension of the look. Incidentally, beards
were banned as somehow projecting the wrong message, as was male officers’ hair
that strayed over the ear.
Many of us,
especially in the alternative press, have been talking about the creeping
militarization of our police forces since at least the Reagan administration. I
remember back in the late 1980s when the Broadway Area Business Association in
Buffalo asked the local police to stop parking their full-track armored
personnel carrier in front of one of their precincts because, like the
aforementioned vests and hairdos, it projected the wrong message to the
community. The tank-like vehicle in question, which tore apart the street the
one and only time the police deployed it in a drug bust, was a gift from the Reagan
administration. It was the beginning of the same program that eventually gave
us the obscene military display in Ferguson, Missouri, this past year (the
response to protests after officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown)
and at about a dozen Occupy camps before that.
What made Ferguson a historical punctuation mark
was the fact that the Ferguson Police Department’s remarkably stupid deployment
of military force and aggression was so similar to visuals we were seeing from
war zones in Ukraine, Gaza, Iraq, and Syria, and because the mainstream press
actually began to cover domestic police militarization. Some thirty years later
than it should have, the nation is finally discussing the brutal police tactics
that communities of color and nonviolent political activists have been falling
victim to for decades.
However, the
focus has largely been on the military equipment rather than the military culture. This is to be
expected from a techno-fetishistic media that has for decades covered U.S. wars
in much the same way, marveling at the so-called smart weapons while mostly
ignoring the casualties and hatred they create. But what we saw in Ferguson wasn’t just the deployment of
inappropriate technology—it was also the deployment of an inappropriate
attitude and strategy, one more becoming of an occupation army than a community
police force.
And that’s the
problem with this myopic focus on military equipment. At the risk of sounding
like the National Rifle Association, it’s the military mentality that’s the bigger problem. The toys could have
stayed in the garage and rotted.
Looking at the
human factor, however, is politically much more dangerous—because it means we
have to question the way police officers
are recruited and hired. A police officer is essentially a social worker
with a gun. Beyond accident and medical response calls, most calls are of a
social nature, often defusing a social crisis, be it a robbery, a gang turf
war, or a marital dispute. Some police departments require college training in
areas such as psychology, criminal justice, or public administration, with
criminal justice courses usually administrated by sociology departments since
policing is a social function of society. A degree in sociology and social work
experience would be ideal, with the arms and martial arts training occurring
once a candidate is recruited. To hit the streets, the successful officer needs
all of this. Even so, seasoned police officers often point out that a good
mediator could avoid using force in all but the most extreme cases. Put simply,
you can’t successfully address social problems with brute military force.
Historically such strategies, while maintaining despots in power for the short
term, ultimately have seeded revolutions, for better or worse. Syria is the latest
horrific example.
Much of our current police recruiting, however, is
now geared to recruiting warriors over social workers. Let’s look at the Philadelphia Police Department. I start
with them since they executed the most grotesque use of military power in
modern history—and they did it without the state-of-the-art equipment we saw in
Ferguson. In an attempt to end a 1985 SWAT standoff with armed suspects, the
Philadelphia PD dropped a crude incendiary bomb from a helicopter onto a row
house in a black middle-class neighborhood, killing six adult suspects and five
children and destroying approximately sixty neighboring homes. So, almost
thirty years later, how have they changed?
Unfortunately,
a military culture still dominates the department. In their recruiting material
they state, “The Police Department is structured as a paramilitary
organization. …This means that we employ a culture
and protocols that closely approximate those of the armed forces.” This
language is certainly not unique to the Philadelphia PD. In various forms it’s
echoed across the country. On the West Coast, the San Jose Police Department
describes itself as “having a paramilitary structure,” and police departments
across the country post variants on the same language. In truth, the
organization of any police department is correctly described as paramilitary as
it has rank and officers, a rigid chain of command, and uniforms reflecting
rank. This is not where the problem lies.
The problem
arises when the Philadelphia and San Jose police departments, and, to various
degrees, hundreds of others, go on to explain that because they are
paramilitaries, they have found that veterans can transition easily from active
military duty into their departments, with some, like the Los Angeles Police
Department, actively sending recruiters to military bases around the world.
Many, if not most, police departments offer some sort of military preference in
hiring, either by adding points to civil service scores, waiving educational
requirements, or some combination of the two.
I need to be
clear that veterans have a lot to offer. Understanding a military command
structure does help with understanding a police bureaucracy, and, more
importantly, the discipline and restraint that a successful professional soldier
learns and practices are essential to success as a police officer. But it is
also important to understand that the skillset and experience needed for
successful community policing is extremely different than that which combat
veterans acquire deployed as an occupation force in a military theater of
operation surrounded by well-trained and well-equipped enemies sworn to their
destruction. Waging war and keeping the peace are different jobs and require
different skills.
On the
blogosphere numerous veterans have articulated their disgust at the
paramilitary tactics recently seen in Ferguson. Writing for Business
Insider, former U.S. Marine and Afghanistan combat veteran Paul Szoldra
points out that his unit wore less military equipment when it rolled in
Afghanistan than what he was seeing in Ferguson. He quotes various combat
veterans voicing their disapproval of the militarization of a community police
force while pointing out how militarization is “counter-productive to domestic
policing and has to stop.” Szoldra ends his piece by writing, “If there’s one
thing I learned in Afghanistan, it’s this: You can’t win a person’s heart and
mind when you are pointing a rifle at his or her chest.”
Veterans tend
to be excellent students, and veterans’ benefits often afford them the
opportunity to go to school and acquire community policing skills. But fast
tracking warriors from the battlefield to police service, as many departments
are doing, can be a deadly mistake.
Published
in the November
/ December 2014 Humanist
Michael I. Niman is a professor
of journalism and media studies at Buffalo State College. His previous columns
are atwww.artvoice.com,
archived at www.mediastudy.com,
and available globally through syndication
CASEY
STEINMETZ, “MILITARIZATION OF POLICE IS A VFP ISSUE”
VFP Newsletter (Fall 2014).
Traces the
beginnings of police militarization to Nixon’s War on Drugs, which Reagan
escalated and subsequent presidents continued [with failure: the US spent $7
billion vs. opium in Afghanistan, and in 2013 that country produced its largest
crop yet]. The military weaponizing of
the police accelerated particularly in 1990 when the NDAA, Section 1208,
allowed the Pentagon to distribute small weapons, and later legislation
expanded the program until now some local police departments look and act like
military combat detachments. –Dick
MILITARY/LOCAL
POLICE FUSION
Navy
Routinely Spies on Citizens, Helps Cops Prosecute Them
Jason
Koebler, VICE, Reader Supported News, Sept. 20, 2014
Koebler writes:
"It's not just the NSA: A Federal Appeals Court has just noted a
disturbing and 'extraordinary' trend of the Navy conducting mass surveillance
on American civilians, and then using what they find to help local law
enforcement prosecute criminals."
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MILITARIZATION OF SCHOOLS AS EXTENSION OF
MILITARIZED POLICE
Perhaps
John’s Hopkins Institute would have something to say about the militarization
of schools?
NPR (blog)-Sep
11, 2014
Missouri Lawmakers Override Vetoes On
Abortion, Guns ... to allow teachers to carry guns in
school and residents to obtain open-carry permits.
NPR (blog)-14
hours ago
News that San
Diego Unified School District has acquired an MRAP, or
mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle, is adding a new facet to ...
A San Diego School District's Armored Car Is
What's Wrong With ...
Mic-12 hours ago
Mic-12 hours ago
Explore in depth (64 more articles)
Town Hall-2
hours ago
According to
data obtained by NPR from the Pentagon, the federal government
has sent weapons of war including guns and tanks to 26 school ...
Contents Newsletter #1 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2014/08/police-newsletter-1.html
Contents US Police Newsletter #2
Service
David
Sirota: Police, Firemen, Teachers, et al. All Services
Misconduct
Lying
Under Oath
Excessive Force
US
and UK 2013: US 409 Killed by Police, UK Zero
Derek
Flood, Sojourner’s, God’s Politics
Blog, History of US Violence
Militarization
Timm,
Why Homeland Security Arming Police Departments
Zeese
and Flowers: Ferguson, Militarized, Racist Police
Neff,
More Armor than in Afghanistan
Hayes
Brown, Congress Must Review Weapons Transfers
Reed,
One City Returns Its Armored Truck
Filming and Archiving
Abuses on Smart Phones
Goodman
and Gonzalez, Democracy Now, Yvonne
Ng
Compare Police
Practices: Unarmed Police
Unarmed
Police Around the World
UK
Unarmed Police, Information About Police
Contact
Representatives
END POLICE NEWSLETTER #3
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