Police State – Page 5 – The Wrongologist

Why Are Police Looking for Apologies?

What’s with the police union presidents in New York City, St. Louis and Cleveland? All are outraged by fairly tepid comments on the recent and controversial actions of their members, and all want apologies now, dammit. Let’s start with Cleveland.

TPM reports that the Cleveland police union has demanded that the Cleveland Browns football team apologize for a player who wore a T-shirt before last Sunday’s game protesting the police shootings of two black people. Here is the T-shirt:

That’s Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins wearing a shirt reading “Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford III” during pre-game warmups.

To refresh your memory, Rice was the 12 year old kid killed last month when a Cleveland police officer shot him when he mistook the boy’s toy gun for a real weapon. John Crawford, 22, was killed by police in August at a Cleveland area Wal-Mart while he was holding an air rifle. Crawford was shot while doing absolutely nothing illegal. He was not threatening anyone. He was on his phone in Walmart carrying an item that’s sold at the store. Cops showed up and shot him.

So, seeing the T-shirt, Cleveland Police Patrolman Union President Jeff Follmer reacted:

It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law…They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology.

So, nice stadium ya got there. Be a shame if something happened to it. The Browns did not apologize.

On to St. Louis, where the police overreacted earlier this month after a few Rams players entered their stadium making the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture popular with protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. The St. Louis Police Association called the gesture “tasteless, offensive and inflammatory”, asked the Rams team for an apology, and called on the NFL to punish the players who ran on to the field using the “hands up” gesture.

And in New York City, the city’s Patrolman’s Benevolent Association (PBA) have been angered by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s reaction to the killing of Eric Garner. And NYC’s cops are now telling the Mayor to stay away from cop funerals. The PBA distributed a flier to members, blaring: “DON’T LET THEM INSULT YOUR SACRIFICE!” Cops were encouraged to sign and submit the “Don’t Insult My Sacrifice” waiver to ban what they see as a cop-bashing mayor from their funerals. The NYC mayor traditionally attends all funerals for fallen officers.

De Blasio basically said that he didn’t think the NYPD should be chokeholding its citizens to death, a matter that may require a seasoned NYC lawyer Mitchel Ashley or others to intervene for the families left behind. PBA President Patrick Lynch reacted by accusing the mayor of throwing cops “under the bus.”

De Blasio then went further, speaking about his 17-year-old mixed race son Dante:

We’ve had to literally train him, as families have all over this city for decades, in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him…

That was too much, and PBA president Lynch replied: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

We have to teach our children, our sons and our daughters, no matter what they look like, to respect New York City police officers, teach them to comply with New York City police officers even if they think it’s unjust.

Three cities where cops use questionable tactics. Three cities where using those tactics caused controversial deaths. Three cities where the police are thin-skinned when their tactics are questioned.

These thin-skinned reactions seem totally natural, and consistent with a culture of “comply or die”.

And the police union presidents, by jumping on the comments of athletes and the NYC mayor, make a clear case against public-sector unions. They are not there to serve or protect the greater community, they are there to serve and protect their members, right or wrong. The presidents also are making the case that the police are not part of the community, but exist in a world above the community, since they deserve the community’s respect and legal immunity, regardless of their actions.

And it’s remarkable to see just how incredibly insular, tone-deaf and hyper-sensitive these police union presidents, and at least some of their rank and file, seem to be.

In Cleveland, the union president should be more concerned about the recently completed two-year Justice Department study that found the Cleveland police have a pattern of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force”. Will different tactics emerge as the Cleveland police adapt to their consent decree?

We need to rein in our police. There is way too much “comply or else” out on the streets. We see weapons meant for warfare pointed at people trying to exercise the small shred of their free speech rights that remain. All of these cops who killed in these controversial cases have said that in the same circumstances, they would shoot/choke again.

Who should receive the apologies? Hint: it’s not the cops.

UPDATE:

The column above needs to be updated with the news that on Monday, the Supreme Court decided that our police don’t have to know the law when they stop or detain a citizen. The message is that ignorance of the law is not a barrier to policing. From Think Progress:

There is one simple concept that law students learn in their very first weeks of criminal law class: Ignorance of the law is no excuse. This principle means that when an individual violates the law, it doesn’t matter whether or not they knew what the law said. If it’s a crime, and they are found to have committed the elements of that crime, they are guilty.

But now, that rule doesn’t apply to the police. On Monday, the US Supreme Court in an 8-1 ruling, found that North Carolina cops who pulled over Nicholas Heien for a broken taillight were justified in a subsequent search of Heien’s car, even though the reason he was pulled over was not a violation of the law.

The case involved the 2009 arrest of Nicholas Heien near Dobson, North Carolina. Sgt. Matt Darisse pulled Heien over for having only one working brake light, then found a bag of cocaine while searching his vehicle and charged him with attempted drug trafficking. However, state law only requires motorists to have one brake light working at any time. Heien’s attorneys argued that this made Darisse’s search unlawful. They lost.

So, our Supremes failed to draw a line limiting the scope of police stops, at a time when they are rampant and racially disproportionate. Now, police have more leeway to stop passengers on the road, even in jurisdictions that had previously said cops are not justified when they make mistakes of law.

During the past weeks, we have heard a lot about Grand Jury procedure and the “latitude” our legal system affords police and prosecutors. That latitude apparently now includes their right to be ignorant, of our laws. That goes along with:

• Their latitude in discerning what may be a threat to their person.
• Their latitude in the use of fire-power.

Now, they have latitude not to know the laws they enforce.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 7, 2014

Still thinking about the string of police cases, their very similar nature and outcomes. It isn’t a secret that America has a broad, diverse population and a terrible past trying to deal with our diversity.

Our past isn’t going away. Our diverse population isn’t going away either. It’s who we are. We occasionally celebrate it, boasting that we are a melting pot. But, we might be more accurately described as a smorgasbord, not a one pot dinner. That means you can avoid the pickled herring if you don’t like it.

But it’s always rude to ridicule people who like pickled herring. And many of us have moved way beyond rude to outright hostile, and the whole buffet table could be pulled down right in front of our eyes.

The food fight is already in progress, except it has real casualties. We are many kinds of American, and this is our home. Can we find a way to keep it?

It is all about your perspective:

More perspective:

Other perspectives:

Media explains how to spin the unspinable:

Some kids’ Xmas lists are out of reach:

Friday Music Break – December 5, 2014

Thinking today about the fact that the New York grand jury did not indict NYPD’s Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the July 17 chokehold death of Eric Garner, who died gasping “I can’t breathe” while in the custody of police outside a Staten Island convenience store. Here, from the indispensable MuckRock, is a screen shot from NYPD’s use of force policy:

You can read the entire policy at MuckRock.

So today’s question is: Are we having the oft-promised national conversation? Is there a fundamental contempt for the law among the people empowered to enforce it? And have we gone beyond just needing a discussion? We already have policies which should have prevented what happened to Amadou Diallo from happening to Michael Brown or to Eric Garner.

Police officers kill too many black people, and then too often, face little or no accountability, particularly when there’s no video to show America what went down.

To help you meditate over the weekend, here is Randy Newman’s “Jolly Coppers on Parade”. His music is a counterpoint to the images. Call it irony, call it disrespect by demonstrators or by the police, call it whatever you need. Obviously not all cops are like the ones we’re seeing in this video, but we all know they are out there:

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke Wednesday onto the media about the matter, talking about his 16 year old biracial son Dante: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

This is profoundly personal to me…I was at the White House the other day, and the president of the United States turned to me, and he met Dante a few months ago, and he [the president] said, ‘I know you see this crisis through a very personal lens.’ And I said to him, I did.

De Blasio went on to note that he and his wife, Chirlane McCray, who is black, “have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face.” More from de Blasio:

Because Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face. A good young man, law-abiding young man who would never think to do anything wrong. And yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we’ve had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.

This has been going on for centuries, folks. Throwing both hands up in the air signals either “Don’t shoot” or simply despair for changing the way things are.
It’s impossible to tell the difference anymore.

See you on Sunday.

Ferguson Points to Our Real Problem

This is not a column about Ferguson, except by extension. In August, after Ferguson, the images of cops climbing out of armored vehicles with military-grade weapons caused some in both Houses of Congress to push for change in the program. Lawmakers vowed changes to the 1033 Pentagon program that provides military-grade equipment to local police. The Obama administration called for a policy review of the 1033 program, but on Monday, they backed away from substantive changes to the program.

There was a White House meeting on Monday to address the issues raised by military-style policing and Ferguson. Yet, the evidence shows that the meeting has changed nothing. This was The Guardian’s Monday headline:

Obama resists demands to curtail police militarization calling instead for improved officer training

Mr. Obama did call for a $263m, three-year spending which, if approved by Congress, could lead to the purchase of 50,000 lapel-mounted cameras to record police officers on the job.

Sounds good, but there are 765,000 state & local law enforcement officers in America, so you better hope that you are stopped by one of the 6.3% of local police officers that will have a federally-funded camera three years from now. Oh, and hope that the digital file of your brush with the law hasn’t been accidentally erased.

The Institute for Public Accuracy made comments from Peter Kraska available. Kraska is considered a leading expert on police militarization. He said yesterday: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

From my meeting at the White House, frankly, they — like most political players — were interested in a quick fix. They want to hear that by somehow tweaking the 1033 program (which transfers equipment from the Pentagon to local law enforcement) that they can have an impact. That program is important symbolically, but there’s an entire for-profit police militarization industry that wouldn’t be affected.

We also have to review the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant program which provides far more to local police than does the DOD. DHS grants are lucrative enough that many defense contractors are now turning their attention to police agencies — and some new companies focus solely on selling military-grade weaponry to police agencies who get those grants.

That means we’re now building a new industry whose sole function is to militarize domestic police departments. Which means it won’t be long before we see pro-militarization lobbying and pressure groups with lots of (mostly taxpayer) money to spend to fight just the reforms the Obama administration and some in Congress say are necessary.

Say hello to the military/police/industrial complex.

And why have we entered a time of “shoot first” in our cities? It must be because our police feel that their lives are more in danger than ever. Sorry, that isn’t supported by the facts: The number of law enforcement officers killed as a result of criminal acts:

2004: 57
2009: 48
2012: 49
2013: 27

So, if there are 765k in local law enforcement that equates to a 2013 death rate from criminals of 3 per hundred thousand per year. Also, 2013 incidents are equal to the lowest level since 1887. Yet, nationwide, America’s police kill roughly one person a day:

The Economist, August 2014

And evidence exists that this number is dramatically understated. The FB page, Killed by Police says the number of deaths at the hands of police as reported to them since their launch in May 2013, is 1450. In 1994, Congress instructed the DOJ to “acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers” and “publish an annual summary”. They have yet to do that. There are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, yet fewer than 900 report their shootings to the FBI.

Radley Balko in The WaPo concludes that militarization of police and their use of military-style force to suppress protests are bad mistakes. He quotes the Salt Lake City chief of police, Chris Burbank:

I just don’t like the riot gear…Some say not using it exposes my officers to a little bit more risk. That could be, but risk is part of the job. I’m just convinced that when we don riot gear, it says ‘throw rocks and bottles at us.’ It invites confrontation. Two-way communication and cooperation are what’s important. If one side overreacts, then it all falls apart.

We have bulked up America’s police. With DOD’s assistance, they developed units trained and equipped in military-style tactics. They demonstrate a consistent picture of organizations evolving from community-based law enforcement to security services whose primarily focus is maintaining public order. They see protests by minority or politically dissident elements as inherently illegitimate and potentially violent. The police can pretty much do whatever they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. And it’s gonna be your fault.

Order, not justice is the new goal of our police, a significant shift in emphasis. As such, displays of overwhelming force are considered a logical way to prevent organized protests from happening. If demonstrations occur in spite of police presence, then massive use of force is a logical way to quell its impact and prevent its re-occurrence.

Many things demonstrate the evolution in America of police from “Protect and Serve” to a quasi-military force. This creates an emotional distance from the communities they patrol. We see this most clearly in their casual use of force, often disproportionate to the situation, and with a near-total lack of accountability.

That is an ugly symptom of our Republic’s weakness. The crushing of the Occupy Movement’s camps and the militarized response to the Ferguson protests are the natural outcome of our new policing.

When the country was founded, there were no organized police departments, and there wouldn’t be for about 50 years. Public order was maintained through private means, in worst cases by calling up the militia. The Founders were quite wary of standing armies and the threat they could pose to liberty, but they concluded (reluctantly) that the country needed an army for national defense.

They feared the idea of troops patrolling city streets — a justified fear colored by the antagonism between British troops and residents of Boston in the years leading up to the American Revolution.

The Founders couldn’t have envisioned police as they exist today. It is probably safe to say they’d be appalled at the idea of police, dressed and armed like soldiers, breaking into private homes in the middle of the night, as happens on drug busts on most nights in America. Using militarized police to roust demonstrators would likely be appalling to them as well.

Let’s close with Radley Balko:

We got here by way of a number of political decisions and policies passed over 40 years. There was never a single law or policy that militarized our police departments — so there was never really a public debate over whether this was a good or bad thing.

It’s time to have that debate.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 23, 2014

What to be thankful for this week? No Benghazi. Rep. Darrell Issa, (R-CA) and Chair of the House Intelligence Committee concluded the Benghazi affair by finding that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees. So, there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

A few things that will come up this week: First, the Grand Jury in Ferguson will finally give us the slow “He didn’t kill Michael Brown” decision. Who knows what will happen then. Tory Russell, co-founder of resistance group Hands Up United, Ferguson, MO said:

How can I prepare kids for the world if I’m not preparing the world for the kids?

Next, we could have a decision on Iran’s nuclear program. If the P5+1 make a deal with Iran, it will transform the Middle East. Don’t hold your Thanksgiving dinner waiting for it to happen. Finally, the mud wrestling in Washington will continue.

Immigration has always involved executive orders:

Why are Republicans so upset about Immigration?

Here’s why: They now have a very safe majority in the House, and an unsafe, but possibly sustainable majority in the Senate. If they actually pass an immigration bill, they will be primaried from the right in many of their less-than-safe House districts. So, the posturing about Obama being a “king” and “shredding the Constitution”.

Calls for meeting in the middle are meaningless:

Keystone and Immigration may be intimately connected:

Manson family values meets Cosby family values:

California Inmate Update – 3 pm EST

Further to today’s earlier post about California attempting to hold on to inmate firefighters who could otherwise be eligible for parole under a court order, BuzzFeed News reported: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

[While] lawyers for California Attorney General Kamala Harris argued releasing non-violent inmates early would harm efforts to fight California wildfires, Harris told BuzzFeed News she first heard about this when she read it in the paper.

So, the inevitable question: What did she know, and when did she know it? BuzzFeed quotes Harris:

I will be very candid with you, because I saw that article this morning, and I was shocked, and I’m looking into it to see if the way it was characterized in the paper is actually how it occurred in court…I was very troubled by what I read. I just need to find out what did we actually say in court.

She’s reduced to arguing that she had no idea that her office went into court and argued that they could not comply with a court order to reduce the prison population because they needed the cheap labor to combat wildfires. Her argument defies believability. A legal department has a case list. It is reviewed with the higher-ups on a periodic basis. Her acknowledging that she knew nothing about it isn’t credible, we are talking about compliance with a Supreme Court decision. You would have to believe that her underlings didn’t let her know about, and weigh in on, what they were doing in a high profile case that had been ongoing since 2011.

What exactly does she pay attention to, if not issues like this? Who decided to appeal the order? It doesn’t speak very well of her management process if she didn’t know what was going on.

But, unless she fires those who she says hid the news, there is no reason to believe that she actually disapproves of the position the state took to hold on to as many as 4,400 inmate firefighters.

Thinking About the Slurry Wall on 9/11

It’s 13 years since that beautiful sky-blue September day when our world changed.

Consider the parallelism. Today, as we remember the terrorist attack 13 years ago, we begin another “war” against yet other group of Sunni terrorists. Mr. Obama, who was elected in 2008 to get us out of wars in the Middle East, has us on track to lead another “coalition of the willing” into the ME. The purpose of this crusade sounds depressingly familiar: To blunt the threat of another attack on the Homeland, despite little evidence that an attack is possible or imminent. And we do this because the people who face a direct ISIS threat can’t (or won’t) handle it for themselves.

The rise of ISIS is in part a consequence of US policy in the ME. Our war in Iraq and the subsequent 8 years of Iraqi internal political squabble have left many Sunnis in Iraq willing to support any challenge to the Shia central government. And now, 13 years after 9/11, we’re again strapping on our weapons and heading into war.

So today, let’s talk about the slurry wall at the World Trade Center. The Wrongologist took this photo in July, 2014 of the portion of the slurry wall that remains exposed in the Foundation Hall of the National September 11 Memorial Museum:

The slurry wall is the outer wall of what WTC engineers called the “Bathtub” in the 1960’s:

The bathtub is the 9-block area of the World Trade Center site that is excavated down to bedrock…and ringed by the slurry wall. The bathtub was created to enable the building of the Twin Towers’ foundations, and was ultimately filled with seven stories of basements housing the parking garage, mall, and building services.

Except that this bathtub kept water out of the 70’ deep basement. The ground water level at the WTC site is just a few feet below the surface, while bedrock is about 70 feet below the surface. Creating the bathtub required first building a 7-story dam below the water level of the adjacent Hudson River – that was the slurry wall.

After the 9/11 attack, the concern was that the slurry wall would fail. A breach in the wall and a flooding of the bathtub might have also flooded other adjacent below-grade structures, such as the PATH tunnels that passed through the bathtub. The NY subway, built below the PATH tubes could also have flooded with a breach of the wall.

On 9/11, most of the central portion of the wall’s south side (bordering Liberty Street) had moved inward by more than 10 inches. But, it held. According to the New York Times, George Tamaro, a former staff engineer at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who was closely involved with the construction of the trade center, believes: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

[The slurry wall construction]…may have helped prevent the Hudson River from flooding parts of Lower Manhattan

According to Tamaro’s report on the aftermath of the attack, the PATH tunnels in Jersey City, New Jersey, at the Exchange Place Station, were 5 feet lower in elevation than at the WTC PATH Station. Exchange Place became a sump for fire water, river water, and broken water mains discharging into the bathtub. But the slurry wall held.

Looking up at the exposed portion of the slurry wall in Foundation Hall, one can’t help but be thankful for the work of engineers and construction workers back in the sixties who built the bathtub, and the engineers and firefighters who stabilized the walls after 9/11. Since the attack, that unseen wall is now a symbol of the resilience of both New Yorkers and America.

But the world has spun off its normal axis since September 11, 2001. Isn’t it interesting that 9/11 was supposed to be about America striking back against a foreign enemy of freedom. Yet in the process of attempting to win the “War on Terror”, American citizens have given up a significant part of their personal freedoms. And just this month, we are starting to have a national discussion about how, since 9/11, the US Department of Homeland Security has transformed our local police into a paramilitary force. For example, the Los Angles School District Police got a MRAP (mine resistant vehicle) and 3 grenade launchers.

Schools need grenade launchers now? James Madison said in 1787:

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home…

Today, Americans own enormous numbers of weapons. Pew Research reports that the number of guns in the US is between 270 and 310 million, or roughly one for each of us. But, estimates are that about 37% of us actually own all the weapons.

So, today on the 13th anniversary of 9/11, we need to ask each other: What are we to make of a country in which:
• Local police are militarizing
• Citizens continue to arm themselves
• The federal government tramples on our Bill of Rights

Let’s think about what has been won and lost so far in the War on Terror. And let’s think about what remains of our social fabric. Is it as strong as that slurry wall? Will it hold when attacked? Do we still have that same problem-solving genius that built a slurry wall that was strong enough to survive attack?

Is America still built to last?

Friday Music Break – August 22, 2014

Continuing our national meditation on Ferguson, MO, Here are three songs about guns and state power:

First, “Guns of Brixton”, written by The Clash bassist Paul Simonon. The song pre-dates the riots that took place in 1981 and again in 1985 in Brixton, but the lyrics depict the feelings of discontent that were building due to the heavy-handedness of the police, and the recession at that time in England.

You can see The Clash perform this song all over the web. Here is the great Jimmy Cliff doing his take on their reggae-inflected song. Few remember that thirty years ago, the Clash were booed off the stage at Reggae Sunsplash in Jamaica.

The line we like:

When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
or on the trigger of your gun?

Next, here is Green Day doing “21 Guns”, an anti-gun, anti-war anthem from their eighth album, 21st Century Breakdown. The line we like is up first:

Do you know what’s worth fighting for?
When it’s not worth dying for?
Does it take your breath away and you feel yourself suffocating?
Does the pain weigh out the pride?
And you look for a place to hide?

Finally, “Ohio” from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. It was released as a single in June of 1970, about a month after the May 4, 1970 shooting by the Ohio National Guard that killed 4 and wounded 9 students. In thirteen seconds, the guardsmen fired 67 rounds. If it hadn’t only been 3 years after the Newark NJ riot where the Guard killed 26, and if the Guard hadn’t killed white students at Kent State, we might not remember it today. Indeed, few remember that eleven days later, 2 more students were killed under similar circumstances at what was then Jackson State College in Jackson, MS, a historically black school.

Eight of the Ohio guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen claimed to have fired in self-defense. In 1974, the Judge dismissed charges against all eight on the basis that the prosecution’s case was too weak to warrant a trial. But we still remember: “4 dead in Ohio”.

Ferguson, Week Two

What we know: Two weeks ago, a police officer shot a man for jaywalking.

But, without any additional official information, we’ve learned a lot from Ferguson:

• The police can pretty much do whatever they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. And it’s gonna be your fault.
• Police shoot African-American men with impunity.
• Most police forces in America have been militarized by the federal government.
• Militarized tactics and behavior by police has become accepted and normalized by local and state politicians, particularly since the Boston Marathon Bomber Manhunt.
• We’re way past “free-speech zones” now. Remember them? The Occupy Movement taught us that if you’re protesting, (peacefully or not) the police now bust you up without consequence.
• Reporters and journalists can and will be arbitrarily detained and/or tossed in jail. This began during the BP oil spill, increased with Occupy New York, and now is blatant in Ferguson. The police will shoot journalists with bean-bags and rubber bullets even if the journalists have complied with police demands.
• The airspace above an area where a dispute takes place can be completely closed to the media, even if there is no risk.

What you smell is the Constitution burning. All of the above should cause us to examine what is going on with police-involved killings in the US. Addicting Info reports:

According to data compiled by the FBI, in a seven year period ending in 2012 an average of nearly two black people were killed by police every week. Even more troublesome: Almost 20% of those killed were under the age of 21, more than double the rate of whites of the same age group. If you are black, being young doesn’t seem to protect you.

Deadspin reports that the US has no comprehensive database of police shootings. And there is no standardized process by which officers log when they’ve discharged their weapons, and why. There is no central infrastructure for compiling that information and making it public. There are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, yet fewer than 900 report their shootings to the FBI. No one is keeping track of how many American citizens are shot by their police.

USA TODAY quotes University of South Carolina criminologist Geoff Alpert:

I’ve looked at records in hundreds of departments…and it is very rare that you find someone saying, ‘Oh, gosh, we used excessive force.’ In 98.9% of the cases, they are stamped as justified and sent along.

The Wrongologist reported that in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household. This means Ferguson is very reliant on revenue sourced from policing: From the Ferguson 2014 budget, here is a breakdown of The City of Ferguson’s revenues: in 2013, revenues from sales taxes were $5.8 million, while revenues from fines and public safety were $2.6 million (18% of total). In 2014, fines are expected to increase by $100k:

The increase in Fines and Public Safety revenues comes from both manned and un-manned traffic enforcement. Due to a more concentrated focus on traffic enforcement, municipal court revenues have risen about 44% or $623,000 from those in FY 2010-2011. Total court revenues are expected to reach $2,029,000 in FY 2013-2014. In the fall of 2011, the City implemented camera enforcement in three high traffic accident incidence intersections. Fines resulting from this implementation represent a portion of the increased revenues over the period, however, it should be noted that additional manned traffic enforcement also contributed to the increase.

We also learned from Ferguson that police officer safety is the number one issue on our streets today, even though officer fatalities are down. The Economist reports that in 2013, 30 cops were shot and killed—just a fraction of the 9,000 or so murders using guns that happen each year. And the primary cause for officer fatalities this year was traffic-related incidents, which claimed 46 lives. Firearms-related incidents are at the lowest level since 1887, when 27 officers were shot to death.

Sadly, the number one priority for the police used to be public safety, not police safety, and we are a coarser society because of the change.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Time on what Ferguson has not yet delivered:

…a bunch of politicians and celebrities expressing sympathy and outrage. If we don’t have a specific agenda—a list of exactly what we want to change and how—we will be gathering over and over again beside the dead bodies of our murdered children, parents, and neighbors.

Could Ferguson MO become Newark NJ, 1967?

A little history:

A riot broke out in Newark in 1967, triggered by the police beating a black cab driver, who was falsely reported to have died. Five nights of rioting and looting followed in what the press in those days called the “ghetto”. Republican Governor Richard J. Hughes called up the New Jersey National Guard. When the National Guard arrived, reports began coming in of scores of black snipers roaming the city, and terrorists with dynamite and arms heading towards Newark with supplies for the uprising.

As a result, when the Police or the Guard saw people, or some shadow on far away windows, they began shooting. The results? 26 deaths and 725 wounded.

Were there truly black snipers? Here is some information from the report of The Kerner Commission: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In the summer of 1967, after the riots in Newark, Detroit, and 125 other cities, President Lyndon Johnson convened an advisory commission to look into what happened and why. The report of the Kerner Commission, which warned of a nation moving toward a “system of apartheid” in its cities, concluded that the so-called snipers in Newark were actually members of the police, Troopers, and Guard, who, lacking any reliable communications and possessed by fear of the specter of armed black men, often ended up shooting at each other.

The most dangerous person in the world is a frightened person. If they are armed to the teeth, and they are frightened, really bad things can happen. It is very interesting to read contemporaneous reporting from the 1967 riot. The rioters are called “terrorists” by the New York Times:

Incensed by the slaying of a white fire captain by Negro snipers, Gov. Richard J. Hughes said he was considering an appeal for Federal help in capturing the terrorists.

What happened next was urban warfare. More from the NYT of July 16, 1967:

After midnight, Springfield Avenue, the main commercial street in the ghetto, was raked by machine gun fire from guardsmen and the police, who ducked behind cars and sprayed the roofs of buildings thought to contain terrorists…The Governor again said that the riots were not caused by a spontaneous uprising against unemployment, squalid housing and a general hopelessness – as negro leaders insist – but were an outbreak by a “vicious criminal element.” Thrusting out his jaw, he promised that the rioters would receive swift and retributive justice.

Ferguson hasn’t gotten to that point yet. But it has similar elements, all waiting for a spark.

The Kerner Commission Report concluded that the trigger for the Newark riots and those in 125 other US cities, were confrontations between the local police and members of local African-American communities. It also concluded that the residents’ held a perception (often justified) of the largely white police as an occupying force which was in the community to serve and protect the interests of the privileged white communities rather than to serve and protect the legitimate interests of the local minority residents, and that the police inherently harbored racist attitudes toward residents of minority communities that they were also charged to serve.

Compare that conclusion of 47 years ago to Ferguson MO today.

Newsweek reports that 22% of Ferguson residents live below the poverty line, and 21.7% receive food stamps. The unemployment rate in the town is 14.3%, or more than double that of St. Louis County and Missouri as a whole: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

…in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.

In the media commentary on Ferguson, there is little mention of the economic and social conditions that underlie both the current growth of police repression and the eruption of popular anger in response to it. We don’t hear that one out of four residents of St. Louis lives in poverty. Or that the wholesale closure of auto plants, breweries and other manufacturing facilities has led to the loss of two-thirds of St. Louis’s population since 1950.

Or, that 47% of the metropolitan area’s African American men between ages 16 and 24 are unemployed.

What we are seeing in Ferguson is a disturbing trend in US policing: Violence against inanimate property equals violence against “the people”. And it is not just in miniority neighborhoods. Think about the excessive force used by police all across America to break up the Occupy movement’s civil disobedience.

This is why police departments across the US are being prepared and equipped to deal with mass unrest. That is what The Powers That Be are expecting.

Along with everybody else who has seen the writing on the wall.

Thoreau, from Civil Disobedience:

…Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest…

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Police State