Police Brutality

The Corporate Capitalists and their 'hired' politicians, it seems, have had their fill of democracy. Across the country, police, acting under orders from local officials, are breaking up protest encampments set up by supporters of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement - sometimes with shocking and utterly gratuitous violence.

In the worst incident so far, hundreds of police, dressed in riot gear, surrounded Occupy Oakland's encampment and fired rubber bullets (which can be fatal), hand grenades and tear-gas canisters - with some officers taking aim directly at demonstrators. The Occupy Oakland Twitter feed read like a report from Cairo's Tahrir Square: "they are surrounding us"; "hundreds and hundreds of police"; "there are armoured vehicles and Hummers". The demonstrators were brutalized by the police.

What Is Police Abuse?

By police abuse, we mean the inappropriate and illegal use of police powers to coerce, harass, intimidate, arrest, assault and kill American citizens. Police abuse also occurs in the form of racial profiling, illegal roadblocks and illegal searches. The victims of police abuse are often the usual targets of institutional discrimination: racial minorities, homeless people, gays, youth and anyone who protests against the system. It can happen, however, to anybody. The abuse occurs often enough that almost everyone knows someone who has been harassed, jacked up, beaten or arrested. All of us have heard about the men, women and children who have been killed by the police.

Because of this abuse and the lack of accountability to the community, many people don’t see the police as “public servants”. Police are seen as part of the power structure in this country that oppresses them. And the problem is worsened by the fact that our political leaders rarely speak out against this violence and sometimes give a wink and a nod when it happens blaming the victims. Police abuse and other forms of criminal injustice pose a threat to the foundations of our democracy. It adds to the frustration and hopelessness of people who already feel abandoned and serves to further undermine the trust that American citizens have in their government.

Why the Police Have Gone 'Bad'?

The hiring policies of the Police Departments are flawed. They do not do enough checking of the backgrounds and complete psychological tests on officer candidates. The departments have a habit of hiring officers who have a “power-hungry and gung-ho mentality” and often hold racist, sexist or homophobic views. We do not need anyone like that in a position of power carrying guns.

Police officers are not trained properly. This has led to shooting suspects (most of whom have been unarmed) and abusing people in the community regularly. They tend to “shoot first and ask questions later”. It appears that instead of being trained to deal with people in a respectful manner they operate under the assumption that everybody is a potential criminal.

Departments have vague “use of force” policies that allow officers to interpret them the way they want.

There is no accountability when an officer violates the department’s own policies. Officers are rarely found guilty of wrongdoing by the police department’s own internal investigations. In fact, in many cities nationwide, officers who shoot people dead end up getting promoted. This gives them the go-ahead to abuse more victims. Clearly, the police cannot police themselves. 90% of citizen complaints of excessive use of force end up in “no action”.

There is no “quality control”. Bad officers with many complaints are not adequately tracked and therefore never get brought to justice.

There is an unwritten “Blue Code” of silence which means that police officers cover up for each other. The Police Departments tolerate this conduct.

Most abused citizens are discouraged from filing complaints and are sometimes intimidated into not doing so. This results in much abuse not ever being reported. When they do file, victim’s complaints are often distorted and sometimes falsified by internal affairs officers. Accused officers lie to cover themselves.

Officers get a commission every time they arrest someone. They get about 40 every time they show up in court in addition to their salaries. This system encourages them to arrest anybody and slap them with a bogus charge, or pull people over for no reason, in hopes that they will be able to find something to charge them with.

Sliding Into the Abyss

Suddenly, the United States looks like the rest of the furious, protesting, not-completely-free world. Indeed, most commentators have not fully grasped that a world war is occurring. But it is unlike any previous war in human history: for the first time, people around the world are not identifying and organising themselves along national or religious lines, but rather in terms of a global consciousness and demands for a peaceful life, a sustainable future, economic justice and basic democracy. Their enemy is a global "corporatocracy" that has purchased governments and legislatures, created its own armed enforcers, engaged in systemic economic fraud, and plundered treasuries and ecosystems.

Around the world, peaceful protesters are being demonized for being disruptive. But democracy is disruptive. Martin Luther King, Jr. argued that peaceful disruption of "business as usual" is healthy, because it exposes buried injustice, which can then be addressed. Protesters ideally should dedicate themselves to disciplined, nonviolent disruption in this spirit - especially disruption of traffic. This serves to keep provocateurs at bay, while highlighting the unjust militarization of the police response.

Fighting Police Abuse

The bad news is police abuse is a serious problem. It has a long history, and it seems to defy all attempts at eradication.

The problem is national: no police department in the country is known to be completely free of misconduct. Yet it must be fought locally: the nation's 19,000 law enforcement agencies are essentially independent. While some federal statutes specify criminal penalties for willful violations of civil rights and conspiracies to violate civil rights, the United States Department of Justice has been insufficiently aggressive in prosecuting cases of police abuse. There are shortcomings, too, in federal law itself, which does not permit "pattern and practice" lawsuits. The battle against police abuse must, therefore, be fought primarily on the local level.

Click HERE to access: Fighting Police Abuse: A Community Action Manual

We can no longer tolerate Police Brutality and abuse of power in our society!