Looks Like We Have A Police Problem-- Ask Frank Serpico... Or Jello Biafra

A few days ago we took a look back on the 1992 war between the police and Body Count. They were hardly the only punk rock band to decry police racism and violence-- just the band that the police felt most threatened by. MDC never managed to sell the millions of records that Ice-T sold. Their music, which you can hear in the video above, was less accessible... and those initials stood, at least for a time when they moved from their native Austin to San Francisco, for Millions of Dead Cops. They did a lot of songs the police wouldn't have liked, like "I Remember" and "Dead Cops"-- and albums called Millions of Dead Cops in 1982 and another in 1991 called Hey Cop, If I Had A Face Like Yours. If the lyrics are difficult top decipher, here are the first couple of stanzas from "I Remember":

I remember getting intimidated and busted at age 13 by the police.
I remember my friend Tate Bryan getting shot in the back in Tampa, FL for his first-offense burglary.
I remember the police firing at the crowds and killing children cause they were the wrong color.
I remember the narcs from my high school trying to set me up for a big fall.
I remember the police bringing dogs into our school and sniffing away my rights.
The police is the klan is the mafia and they're out for me, and soon they're going to be out to get you, so you better get going if you know it's good for you and take your stand.

I remember when I first went to school
They said, Don't be a joker, don't be a fool
Pledge your allegiance to the red, white and blue
Don't expect your country to do nothin' for you
They said your forefathers loved you
but I only had one
And I watched him die in the heat of the sun
Suckin' up the bullets of a policeman's gun
There was nothin' I could do but stay away

Black Flag was one of the earliest California hardcore punk bands, starting playing gigs in Hermosa Beach in 1976 (as Panic) and become West Coast DIY icons-- and not big fans of the local police, as you can hear in their song "Police Story."

This fucking city is run by pigs.
They take the rights away from all the kids.
Understand we're fighting a war we can't win.
They hate us, we hate them.

We can't win, no way.
Walking down the street.
I flip them off.
They hit me across the head with a billy club.

Understand we're fighting a war we can't win.
They hate us, we hate them.
We can't win, no way.
Nothing I do, nothing I say.

I tell them to go get fucked.
They put me away.
Understand we're fighting a war we can't win.
They hate us, we hate them.

We can't win, no way.
I got to court for my crime.
Stand in line, pay bail.
I may serve time.

Understand we're fighting a war we can't win.
They hate us, we hate them.
We can't win, no way

I don't recall the Crucifucks' "Cops For Fertilizer" ever becoming a hit but maybe it was big in 1981 in their native Lansing, Michigan. Leftöver Crack, from NYC, sprang out of the band Choking Victim in 1988. I don't recall any songs they ever did that weren't radical but "One Dead Cop" and "SoYou Want To Be A Cop" certainly stood out. The anti-authoritarian bands often wrote anti-police songs, for obvious reasons. The Bad Brains, which formed in DC in 1977, got pretty big for a hardcore punk band and there wasn't any question what "The Regulator" was all about, even if it tried to delve a little deeper into why the police were seen as the mechanism for social control in society.

You tell me what to say and when to say it.
You tell me what to do and how to do it.
And if I ask you why, you'll arrest me.
And if I call you a liar, you'll detest me.

You control what I'll be.
You control who I see.
And if I let you,
You control me.

You're the man who owns all the keys to the stores.
You're the man who always wants so much more.

You're the regulator.
You're the regulator.
You're the regulator.
You're the regulator.

The Clash had a lot more commercial success than almost any other early punk bands. They sold millions of records and their songs penetrated the mass consciousness, despite lyrics that were radically anti-authoritarian. "Guns of Brixton" (1979), from London Calling, their big U.S. breakthrough album, was the first Paul Simonon song the band recorded. Obviously reggae-influenced, the message is chilling-- if you're a cop.



First three stanzas:

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

When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting on death row

You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, the guns of Brixton

The Dead Kennedys also became pretty successful worldwide And they were also about as anti-authoritarian as a band could be. "Police Truck" was a popular song and "Bleed for Me" was more about the CIA than the police per se, but the point was pretty much the same.

Anti-Flag formed in 1988 in Pittsburgh and released their first album, Die For The Government in 1996. It featured "Police State in the U.S.A." and the immortal "Fuck Police Brutality."



A couple of months ago, former New York City police detective Frank Serpico published a piece about the police in Politico. In light of the Pat Lynch threats against civilian control of the NYC police department, The Police Are Still Out Of Control is probably worth reading today. Excerpts:

In the opening scene of the 1973 movie Serpico, I am shot in the face-- or to be more accurate, the character of Frank Serpico, played by Al Pacino, is shot in the face... [T]he Narcotics division was rotten to the core, with many guys taking money from the very drug dealers they were supposed to bust. I had refused to take bribes and had testified against my fellow officers. Police make up a peculiar subculture in society. More often than not they have their own moral code of behavior, an “us against them” attitude, enforced by a Blue Wall of Silence. It’s their version of the Mafia’s omerta. Speak out, and you’re no longer “one of us.” You’re one of “them.” And as James Fyfe,  a nationally recognized expert on the use of force, wrote in his 1993 book about this issue, Above The Law, officers who break the code sometimes won’t be helped in emergency situations, as I wasn’t.

...I still get hate mail from active and retired police officers. A couple of years ago after the death of David Durk-- the police officer who was one of my few allies inside the department in my efforts to expose graft--  the Internet message board “NYPD Rant” featured some choice messages directed at me. “Join your mentor, Rat scum!” said one. An ex-con recently related to me that a precinct captain had once said to him, “If it wasn’t for that fuckin’ Serpico, I coulda been a millionaire today.” My informer went on to say, “Frank, you don’t seem to understand, they had a well-oiled money making machine going and you came along and threw a handful of sand in the gears.”

...So my personal story didn’t end with the movie, or with my retirement from the force in 1972. It continues right up to this day. And the reason I’m speaking out now is that, tragically, too little has really changed since the Knapp Commission, the outside investigative panel formed by then-Mayor John Lindsay after I failed at repeated internal efforts to get the police and district attorney to investigate rampant corruption in the force. Lindsay had acted only because finally, in desperation, I went to the New York Times, which put my story on the front page. Led by Whitman Knapp, a tenacious federal judge, the commission for at least a brief moment in time supplied what has always been needed in policing: outside accountability. As a result many officers were prosecuted and many more lost their jobs. But the commission disbanded in 1972 even though I had hoped (and had so testified) that it would be made permanent.

And today the Blue Wall of Silence endures in towns and cities across America. Whistleblowers in police departments-- or as I like to call them, “lamp lighters,” after Paul Revere-- are still turned into permanent pariahs. The complaint I continue to hear is that when they try to bring injustice to light they are told by government officials: “We can’t afford a scandal; it would undermine public confidence in our police.” That confidence, I dare say, is already seriously undermined.

Things might have improved in some areas. The days when I served and you could get away with anything, when cops were better at accounting than at law enforcement-- keeping meticulous records of the people they were shaking down, stealing drugs and money from dealers on a regular basis-- all that no longer exists as systematically as it once did, though it certainly does in some places. Times have changed. It’s harder to be a venal cop these days.

But an even more serious problem-- police violence-- has probably grown worse, and it’s out of control for the same reason that graft once was: a lack of accountability.

I tried to be an honest cop in a force full of bribe-takers. But as I found out the hard way, police departments are useless at investigating themselves-- and that’s exactly the problem facing ordinary people across the country-- including perhaps, Ferguson, Missouri, which has been a lightning rod for discontent even though the circumstances under which an African-American youth, Michael Brown, was shot remain unclear.

Today the combination of an excess of deadly force and near-total lack of accountability is more dangerous than ever: Most cops today can pull out their weapons and fire without fear that anything will happen to them, even if they shoot someone wrongfully. All a police officer has to say is that he believes his life was in danger, and he’s typically absolved. What do you think that does to their psychology as they patrol the streets-- this sense of invulnerability? The famous old saying still applies: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (And we still don’t know how many of these incidents occur each year; even though Congress enacted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act 20 years ago, requiring the Justice Department to produce an annual report on “the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers,” the reports were never issued.)

It wasn’t any surprise to me that, after Michael Brown was shot dead in Ferguson, officers instinctively lined up behind Darren Wilson, the cop who allegedly killed Brown. Officer Wilson may well have had cause to fire if Brown was attacking him, as some reports suggest, but it is also possible we will never know the full truth-- whether, for example, it was really necessary for Wilson to shoot Brown at least six times, killing rather than just wounding him. As they always do, the police unions closed ranks also behind the officer in question. And the district attorney (who is often totally in bed with the police and needs their votes) and city power structure can almost always be counted on to stand behind the unions.

In some ways, matters have gotten even worse. The gulf between the police and the communities they serve has grown wider. Mind you, I don’t want to say that police shouldn’t protect themselves and have access to the best equipment. Police officers have the right to defend themselves with maximum force, in cases where, say, they are taking on a barricaded felon armed with an assault weapon. But when you are dealing every day with civilians walking the streets, and you bring in armored vehicles and automatic weapons, it’s all out of proportion. It makes you feel like you’re dealing with some kind of subversive enemy. The automatic weapons and bulletproof vest may protect the officer, but they also insulate him from the very society he’s sworn to protect. All that firepower and armor puts an even greater wall between the police and society, and solidifies that “us-versus-them” feeling.

...Many white Americans, indoctrinated by the ridiculous number of buddy-cop films and police-themed TV shows that Hollywood has cranked out over the decades-- almost all of them portraying police as heroes-- may be surprised by the continuing outbursts of anger, the protests in the street against the police that they see in inner-city environments like Ferguson. But they often don’t understand that these minority communities, in many cases, view the police as the enemy. We want to believe that cops are good guys, but let’s face it, any kid in the ghetto knows different. The poor and the disenfranchised in society don’t believe those movies; they see themselves as the victims, and they often are.

Law enforcement agencies need to eliminate those who use and abuse the power of the law as they see fit. As I said to the Knapp Commission 43 years ago, we must create an atmosphere where the crooked cop fears the honest cop, and not the other way around. An honest cop should be able to speak out against unjust or illegal behavior by fellow officers without fear of ridicule or reprisals. Those that speak out should be rewarded and respected by their superiors, not punished.

We’re not there yet.

...Every time I speak out on topics of police corruption and brutality, there are inevitably critics who say that I am out of touch and that I am old enough to be the grandfather of many of the cops who are currently on the force. But I’ve kept up the struggle, working with lamp lighters to provide them with encouragement and guidance; serving as an expert witness to describe the tactics that police bureaucracies use to wear them down psychologically; testifying in support of independent boards; developing educational guidance to young minority citizens on how to respond to police officers; working with the American Civil Liberties Union to expose the abuses of stun-gun technology in prisons; and lecturing in more high schools, colleges and reform schools than I can remember. A little over a decade ago, when I was a presenter at the Top Cops Award event hosted by TV host John Walsh, several police officers came up to me, hugged me and then whispered in my ear, “I gotta talk to you.”

The sum total of all that experience can be encapsulated in a few simple rules for the future:

1. Strengthen the selection process and psychological screening process for police recruits. Police departments are simply a microcosm of the greater society. If your screening standards encourage corrupt and forceful tendencies, you will end up with a larger concentration of these types of individuals;

2. Provide ongoing, examples-based training and simulations. Not only telling but showing police officers how they are expected to behave and react is critical;

3. Require community involvement from police officers so they know the districts and the individuals they are policing. This will encourage empathy and understanding;

4. Enforce the laws against everyone, including police officers. When police officers do wrong, use those individuals as examples of what not to do-- so that others know that this behavior will not be tolerated. And tell the police unions and detective endowment associations they need to keep their noses out of the justice system;

5. Support the good guys. Honest cops who tell the truth and behave in exemplary fashion should be honored, promoted and held up as strong positive examples of what it means to be a cop;

6. Last but not least, police cannot police themselves. Develop permanent, independent boards to review incidents of police corruption and brutality-- and then fund them well and support them publicly. Only this can change a culture that has existed since the beginnings of the modern police department.

There are glimmers of hope that some of this is starting to happen, even in New York under its new mayor, Bill DeBlasio. Earlier this month DeBlasio’s commissioner, Bill Bratton-- who’d previously served a term as commissioner in New York as well as police chief in Los Angeles-- made a crowd of police brass squirm in discomfort when he showed a hideous video montage of police officers mistreating members of the public and said he would “aggressively seek to get those out of the department who should not be here-- the brutal, the corrupt, the racist, the incompetent.” I found that very impressive. Let’s see if he follows through.

I wouldn't count on it. As Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report wrote Saturday, "When Police Benevolent Association chief Patrick Lynch said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has the blood of two dead cops on his hands, he was issuing a physical threat to both the person of the mayor and the civil authority to which the police are subordinate and sworn to protect. In a nation under the rule of law, such a statement by a representative of an armed and enflamed constabulary-- 35,000-strong, the equivalent of three light infantry divisions-- would trigger an immediate defensive response from the State, to guard against mutiny. But, of course, no such thing happened."

The cops’ rage has been building in synch with the growth of a nationwide movement that challenges the legitimacy of the Mass Black Incarceration State, of which they are the frontline troops.

The cops are understandably angry and confused. As primary enforcers of the social order, they have an intimate knowledge of actual class and race relationships in America. Their perspectives are molded by the geographic and social boundaries they patrol; they are shaped and informed by the inequalities of the system they protect on behalf of the powerful people they serve. (Yes, they really do “serve and protect” somebody.) The cop’s worldview is also firmly anchored in the history of the United States. He may not be aware of his profession’s antecedents in the slave patrols, or even that the U.S. Supreme Court once ruled that Black people have no rights that the white man is bound to respect, but cops are the reigning experts on the borders that delineate rights and privileges in their localities. They know that public housing residents have virtually no rights that cops-- as agents of the rulers – are bound to respect. They know that whole sections of their cities, encompassing most of the Black and brown populations, are designated as drug zones where everyone is suspect and probable cause is a given, or as high-crime zones where every shooting is pre-qualified as a good one.

The cops threaten mutiny if the State does not stick up for the men and women who do its dirty work. PBA honcho Patrick Lynch denounced “those that incited violence on the street under the guise of protests that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did everyday. We tried to warn, ‘It must not go on. It cannot be tolerated.’”

To which the protesters answer: the police killings and the criminalization of a whole people must not go on and cannot be tolerated.

The movement has come to a critical juncture, a moment that would have arrived even if Ismaaiyl Brinsley had not made his own fatal decision. It was always inevitable that the cops would at some point demand that the State dispense with civil liberties pretenses and allow them to crush the nascent movement. New York City’s police force-- by far the nation’s largest army of domestic occupation-- is especially prone to mutiny and coup-plotting. Thousands of cops, many of them drunk, stormed City Hall in 1992 to express their utter contempt for Black mayor David Dinkins. But, the current crisis is far different, because it is the movement’s show, not the cops’. The people are exposing the most acute contradictions of American life through direct confrontation with the armed enforcers of the State. The cops are supposed to be upset. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explained, “the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” The crisis is here, and will grow deeper, but freedom is non-negotiable. The movement must win or be crushed.

UPDATE: Ever Hear Of Redditt Hudson?

Hudson is a former St. Louis police officer who works for the NAACP and chairs the board of the Ethics Project. He wrote an essential-reading OpEd for the Washington Post a couple weeks ago that's worth revisiting, Being a cop showed me just how racist and violent the police are. There’s only one fix.

When he was a kid he-- as well as friends and family-- were routinely roughed up by white cops. In 1994 he joined the force. He wrote that he "was floored by the dysfunctional culture I encountered. I won’t say all, but many of my peers were deeply racist... This attitude corrodes the way policing is done."

I liked my job, and I was good at it.

But more and more, I felt like I couldn’t do the work I set out to do. I was participating in a profoundly corrupt criminal justice system. I could not, in good conscience, participate in a system that was so intentionally unfair and racist. So after five years on the job, I quit.

Since I left, I’ve thought a lot about how to change the system. I’ve worked on police abuse, racial justice and criminal justice reform at the Missouri ACLU and other organizations.

Unfortunately, I don’t think better training alone will reduce police brutality. My fellow officers and I took plenty of classes on racial sensitivity and on limiting the use of force.

The problem is that cops aren’t held accountable for their actions, and they know it. These officers violate rights with impunity. They know there’s a different criminal justice system for civilians and police.

Even when officers get caught, they know they’ll be investigated by their friends, and put on paid leave. My colleagues would laughingly refer to this as a free vacation. It isn’t a punishment. And excessive force is almost always deemed acceptable in our courts and among our grand juries. Prosecutors are tight with law enforcement, and share the same values and ideas.

We could start to change that by mandating that a special prosecutor be appointed to try excessive force cases. And we need more independent oversight, with teeth. I have little confidence in internal investigations.

The number of people in uniform who will knowingly and maliciously violate your human rights is huge. At the Ferguson protests, people are chanting, “The whole damn system is guilty as hell.” I agree, and we have a lot of work to do.

NOAH'S 2014 IN REVIEW CONTINUES MONDAY --
at 5pm ET/2pm PT

Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy, Part 7:
• And so it begins: The running of the buffoons
• Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 7, George Will has no idea what rape is
• and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 8, Rick Wiles calls for a coup

#