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
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Photo © Photographerlondon | Dreamstime.comOne 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 syndicationCASEY 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 POLICEPerhaps 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 ...
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