The War On Drugs And The Deterioration Of Police-Community Relations

My old friend and sometime neighbor, film-maker (Super High Me) and marijuana legalization activist Alex Campbell, was very much there for me when I was undergoing the ravages of chemotherapy. He talked me into trying marijuana to help alleviate the devastating and life-threatening side-effects of chemo. It worked. Today I asked Alex to explain the connection between the War of Drugs and the accelerated friction between police and the communities they're supposed to be serving.

An American Police State
-by Alex Campbell

If you live in the United States of America, you live in a police state. You may say, no this is not possible, not in my town. Not my neighborhood.

Unfortunately, it is now an undeniable truth of our society in the U.S. We have all the hallmarks of a police state-- our electronic communications are the subject of surveillance and our movements on the roadways are monitored by license plate readers. Asset seizure without legal due process has become the norm. Political speech is met with force-- see Ferguson and Occupy Oakland.

The police state began with the rise of the military industrial complex, it became institutionalized with the Nixon administration and was sent well on its way with the Reagan era "war on drugs." And then 9/11 happened. Which brought the Patriot Act and accelerated the militarization of the police and the erosion of the rights of the citizens of America in the name of protecting us.

The truth is, we need to be protected from the police now. The police forces in this country have adopted an "us against them" mentality. If you are a person of color in America, you are more likely to be killed by the police then you are by a terrorist. If you are traveling on the interstate roadways and you are carrying more than a thousand dollars in cash and you are pulled over and the police find the money, they are going to seize it and claim that it is proceeds from drug crimes. Because no one carries cash anymore except drug dealers. There is no due process, no trial. The money is taken and in most cases, people don't fight the charges because it costs more money in legal fees than the sums that are taken. This process is called "for-profit policing" and in many localities the police use the proceeds to buy more "toys" aka specialized weapons and tank-like vehicles.

The police in this country used to be viewed as friendly fixtures in the neighborhood. The local beat cop lived in his beat, knew the people who lived there, and cared about his neighborhood. Now the local beat cop commutes to his job and views his position as an occupying force to maintain law and order over the underclass. The LAPD's motto is "To Protect and Serve." The real slogan should be "To Oppress and Control."

Recent technological advances have exposed the lies of the modern police state, namely dashboard and body cameras that police are required to wear, as well as citizens who record police interactions with their smart phones. FBI Director James Comey spoke out against what he called the "Ferguson effect" of viral videos and said that the recent uptick in violent crimes could be due to police being afraid to do their jobs because they are concerned they will end up in a video. Public comments such as this are no doubt a precursor to legislative attempts to make filming the police an illegal act. And in North Carolina, legislation was recently passed that requires a court order to release dashboard and body camera footage, further hiding what the police are doing. The governor of North Carolina said that the new law would bring "transparency"-- a truly Orwellian turn of phrase.

With the recent spate of violence against police officers, you can be sure there will be renewed calls for new laws protecting the police. And hidden within these new laws will be more ways for the police state to dodge accountability and hide their activities-- all in the name of protecting the citizenry but in truth protecting the illegal and unconstitutional activities of the police state.

Our judicial system has become corrupted by the lies police tell in order to make "righteous busts." The prosecutors and the judges are complicit in these lies. I saw this corruption firsthand as a medical marijuana activist over the past ten years in California. In case after case that I have attended, I have seen narcotics officers outright lie on the stand to support warrantless entries or to support weak cases. And watched as the judge and the prosecutor all played along with the kabuki theater, all in the name of stopping the war on drugs.

All police lie to support their illegal actions. There is even a word they use privately to describe this behavior-- "testilying." Our policing systems in America are broken and we will not survive as a republic if the police state is allowed to expand unchecked. It has turned into "us against them"-- the very institution that is supposed to protect and serve the American people now views the American people as the enemy. And many Americans, especially those of color, view the police as an enemy.

I believe that if we can end the war on drugs, we can help change the way policing is done in America. The war on drugs has given the police cover to commit egregious acts and allowed the police to become a quasi-military force where they make the rules. Ending the drug war will give less reasons for the police to oppress the citizens--there will be no more stop and frisk policies such as existed in New York City. Nor more unlawful asset seizure without due process No more no knock warrants. And the police can turn their attention back to their original purpose--protecting and serving the community. A huge level of fear of the police will disappear overnight if the drug war ends. And that alone should help shift police and civilian relations.

This post was inspired by a recent letter to the editor in the Arizona Republic:

Ending The Drug War Would Help Bridge Police-Citizens Divide

After all the police shootings, only the Libertarian Party provided a viable solution:

"If we truly want to reduce situations in which police are pitted against the people they are sworn to protect, we would end the war on drugs. The constant escalation of prohibitionist policies have increasingly pitted police and citizens against each other for decades and are largely responsible for the militarization of police forces across America.

"Ending the violence means ending the policies that lead to black and gray markets, the highest incarceration rate in the world, and reduced economic opportunities in the formal labor market for huge swaths of Americans. Ending the violence means ending the war on drugs.

"Ending the drug war will do more to heal the divide between police and citizens than any other measure. It is the best way to save lives: both those of innocent police officers and innocent citizens."

- Dr. Richard W. Morris, Phoenix

While making Super High Me, Campbell become radicalized after being repeatedly threatened by DEA and California law enforcement officers over his filming of their raids of medical marijuana dispensaries and cultivators. He moved to Oakland and started working with Richard Lee in Oaksterdam. Campbell delivered the cannabis plants to the first set of classes held at Oaksterdam University, which at the time were in a small storefront in downtown Oakland. In 2008, Campbell opened Oaksterdam Nursery, Los Angeles and was the first medical marijuana cultivator to provide a trusted source of genetics to multiple dispensaries around the state of California, everywhere from Sacramento south to Orange County. Oaksterdan Nursery is widely recognized for releasing the first legitimate cutting of the fabled OG Kush strain, the availability of which reduced wholesale prices of cannabis by 25%.

Campbell was the second largest donor to the Prop 19 campaign in 2010 throughout much of the campaign and was involved in the day to day operations of the campaign. His financial political activities were curtailed when DEA and LAPD agents raided his legal cultivation facility in Los Angeles during the middle of the Prop 19 campaign, a precursor to the larger raid of Oaksterdam in 2012 that was widely viewed as payback for putting Prop 19 on the ballot.

Campell is currently in post-production on two documentaries. The first, titled Super High Me Redux, is a comedic sequel to Super High detailing the difficulties the filmmakers had in making the original film. The second film is titled Oaksterdam Now and is the story of the Prop 19 campaign and the subsequent large scale police raids that resulted in no indictments.

The Girl With No Voice Became The Spokesperson For The People of Missouri

-by Tracy B Ann

For Missouri state Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who is running for Congress in Missouri’s 1st congressional district, education is a top priority. In this district, the high poverty areas have the worst school systems, the worst outcomes for students, and the largest number of unaccredited schools. This is an issue near and dear to the senator; it’s personal. As eloquent and articulate as she is now, she was born with a speech impediment. It was 8 years of speech therapy and public school that helped her overcome this disability.

Boy, did she overcome it. Maria Chappelle-Nadal is the filibuster rock star we’ve all been hearing  about in the news lately. She led a historic 39 hour filibuster in the Missouri Senate to keep the Republicans from voting on a ballot initiative that would allow businesses to discriminate against the LGBT community.

I listened to some of it live at 3 AM one morning and am so honored to have been present for that piece of history. The Republicans stopped the filibuster by breaking the rules. Senator Chappelle-Nadal was distressed by this move.

"We follow the US Senate rules and by taking the floor away they broke the rules. The only place where I am equal is in that chamber-- because of the rules. Outside that room I am black, I am a woman, I am invisible. These rules mean a lot to me."

The Senate Democrats (all 8 of them) are doing their part to punish the Republicans for breaking the rules, and they’re doing it by following the rules. Recently a Republican Senator rose in the chamber with the standard “Mr. President, asking for unanimous consent, I'd like to introduce a group of 4th graders." Maria Chappelle-Nadal quickly responded "I object."

Now that might sound a little mean, who could object to 4th graders being introduced? The Senator turned to talk to them, saying:

"You know how when someone takes something away from you that they’re not supposed to?  Well, the Senator who wants to introduce you did that, and now his Party’s in trouble. They are being punished by being in time out."

The kids cheered and clapped and Senator Chappelle-Nadal noted that rather than just standing and being introduced, these 4th graders were learning about Democracy. I’m betting they remember that for the rest of their lives.

For many, the Senator was the face of Ferguson, responding to press calls for interviews. She said Michael Brown’s shooting was so shocking, partly because it was the first widely publicized shooting in 10 years. She was out in the streets being tear gassed for hours along with the other members of a stunned community.

Maria said she was changed by that. She was compassionate before but something shifted. She says service to others is different, listening to all became even more important and meaningful to her. You can see her top 4 issues on her webpage here at 90for90, her top issues are my top issues and she is a supporter of the voter advocacy movement 90for90.

The Senator wondered how her outspokenness on Ferguson would affect the white voters in her district. She was surprised when she started getting letters and calls from this constituency, telling her that the same silence that allowed Michael Brown’s death to happen is the same silence that is allowing the radioactive waste problems to happen.

Maria does a lot of work in her community, one thing you can be sure about her is when she goes to Congress to represent the 1st, she’ll be coming home. She has meet-ups and town halls 4 to 5 times a week.

It was the Missouri Attorney General's report on radioactive waste that made her want to run for Congress. She asked herself “Knowing what you know now, how could you live with yourself if you didn't run?"

She is passionate about getting Federal help to clean up the crisis of radioactive waste which is in a way a form of "environmental poverty," she says. Guess where the landfill sites are? Did you guess black neighborhoods? Ding, ding, ding! Correct. Though they are all over the place. Recently there was a proposal to build the new football stadium on top of one of these sites. The team already practices on top of one of these waste sites.

At her town hall meet-ups people bring the Senator pictures of their kids born with no eyes and born with two sets of teeth. At a meet-up last week, a woman drew the Senator a map of her neighborhood; 3 or 4 blocks and put stars on all the houses where someone had cancer. This is called a "cancer cluster." I call it a cancer clusterfuck.

This crisis in Missouri isn’t new, it's been going on for about 70 years, for 40 years it's been known widely how dangerous it is. I'm not sure the Senator Maris Chappelle-Nadal is even 40 years old, but she knows about it now and it seems as if she’s not even going to sleep until something is done about it.

She works actively supporting community groups trying to clean of the area and make it safe. She even resigned her seat on the University City School Board in order to focus on the situation at the Bridgeton landfills.

She throws statistics out rapid fire on people sick from drinking tap water; brain tumours, breast cancer and testicular cancer. The demolition of public housing build on top of the dumps being torn down and the toxic waste moved to the Bridgeton Landfill. She tells me that the landfill is the hotspot but it’s the end of the line. Coldwater Creek is the beginning.

She’s way over my head with her scientific knowledge of the situation so I go to a source who is an expert, having decades of experience in nuclear accident clean up. My expert said this:

"The list of isotopes present in the landfill soil is comprised of all actinides, which are notably nasty alpha-emitters. Most also emit beta and/or high energy gamma when they decay, but if one of these atoms gets into your lungs or throat/stomach before decaying it's that slow and heavy alpha that will blast entire cells to smithereens. The uranium isotope profile confirms that this is enrichment waste that by rights ought to be in carefully packed 55 gallon drums in the deepest underground salt chamber at Carlsbad instead of in a municipal garbage dump."

I bolded the parts that I clearly understood. Luckily for those in Missouri, Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal understands it and is doing her best to find a solution to the problem.

The filibuster last week wasn’t her first; she once filibustered for over 10 hours all by herself. This spirit, commitment to Justice and this tenaciousness is just what we need in the U.S. House. I’m looking forward to listening to her voice there as she rouses some of the sleepy heads in our "do nothing" Congress and leads them into action. Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal is on a crusade. She needs all of us to support her, which we can do at either on of the thermometers below:

Meet the Ferguson court clerk who says she feels like she's been raped by being fired for sending those insanely vile racist e-mails

See and hear Mary Ann Twitty talk about the clean-cut fun she had swapping those hilarious e-mails with other Ferguson law-enforcement folks, and how she felt like she'd been raped by being fired for it, visit this KMOV Web page.

by Ken

You remember Mary Ann Twitty, right? The court clerk in Ferguson, MO, who got caught swapping racist e-mails with, among others, "Captain Richard Henke, who was the second in charge of the Ferguson Police Department, Sergeant William Mudd, who was the fourth in charge of the Ferguson Police Department and the supervising officer of Darren Wilson," as DailyKos's Shaun King put it in his recent post "Newly revealed records show just how disturbingly racist many Ferguson officials truly were," after a public-records request from the Washington Post pried the actual e-mails loose.
"What they show," Shaun wrote, "is a deeply disturbing strain of racism that was socially acceptable among essential government employees who not only interacted with African Americans consistently in the majority black town of Ferguson, but were in positions of power in which they could make life miserable for the people they clearly disdained."

One cannot reasonably believe that men and women could send such hateful and disgusting emails for years and years, find them enjoyable and share them, but somehow miraculously compartmentalize that same racism when it came time to perform their daily duties. I'm not trying to insult janitors or repairmen, God bless them, but these were three essential employees in the Ferguson justice system. . . .

These several emails that were discovered are obviously not the extent of their racism, but just a symptom of it. What does it say about Captain Henke, who ran the day-to-day affairs of the police department, that he sent and regularly received racist emails? When Sgt. Mudd and Mary Ann Twitty sent messages just to Captain Henke, what did they know about him that gave them the knowledge that he would be comfortable with such nastiness? . . .

After President Obama was first elected in 2008, on November 14, 2008, Captain Rick Henke sent an email stating, "We shouldn’t worry about him being president for very long because what black man holds a steady job for four years.” . . .

On April 9, 2011, Twitty forwarded the email with the picture of Ronald Reagan feeding a chimp with the caption, "Rare photo of Ronald Reagan babysitting Barack Obama in early 1962."

Shaun provided some other examples, and directed readers to Mark Berman's earlie WaPo report for more.

Now Shaun is reporting: "Ferguson court clerk who sent racist emails says they were funny and she feels like she's been raped."

Yeah, this is real life.

After sending emails out comparing President Obama to a chimp and more, Mary Ann Twitty still refuses to accept that she has a racist bone in her body. When challenged on whether or not she thought the emails were funny, here was her reply:

“Funny as in humor wise? Yes. Not because it was racist or biased, just funny because it was just funny jokewise,” Twitty said. “I feel bad because that's not, I don't want people to look at me and say ‘she sent those racist jokes out because she's racist or biased.' I am not.”

Twitty said she was simply doing what others in Ferguson's government were doing.

“It took me a while to get over the feeling of being raped and being thrown under the bus,” Twitty said. “I'm human, I meant nothing bad by it.”

Yeah, okay. "Meant nothing bad by it."

We all recall the hit Starbucks took when it tried recently to promote a national conversation about race. There were people, though, who thought the company should have been cut some slack, for at least trying to do something about this toxic subject. It seems pretty clear to me that Mary Ann and her hilarious e-mail pals are far from alone, and the story they tell echoes way beyond Ferguson -- that in fact on the subject of race they are something like the face of America. Totally ignorant and totally savage.

And by the way, Mary Ann, humor-wise, there was nothing in the slightest funny about those e-mails. At least not to anyone with a non-diseased brain.

#

See Through Black Eyes-- Guest Post By Leonce Gaiter

We know that when Darren Wilson and many of his defenders see a black man, they see someone who “looks like a demon,” and someone who has the extra/sub-human ability to “bulk up to run through” bullets.

We know this image of black men from an entire history of racist stereotypes. The image that Darren Wilson successfully invoked before the Missouri grand jury was the same image of monstrous black bucks lusting for white blood that propelled D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist masterwork, Birth of a Nation.

Throughout American history, most images of blacks have been created and presented by whites-- and throughout the overwhelming majority of this nation’s history, the nation and its people have been institutionally racist. Only for the past 50 years have blacks enjoyed laws aimed at granting us equal treatment under the law. For the previous 188, we lived as slaves and a sub-species of citizen.

However, throughout that history, blacks have developed our own images of whites, images buttressed not by the toxic stew of fear, hatred, and guilt that boils in white America’s kitchen, but by history and lived experience.

Imagine that my southern-born parents taught me that each white man or woman I encountered was a potential enemy, that each should be seen as someone who might deny me a job for which I was qualified, might deny me schooling, housing, freedom-- even deny me my life.

Imagine they told me that whites often saw me through the twisted lens of a self-serving lie-- the lie of my otherness, my laziness, my ignorance, of my propensity to violence-- lies they told themselves to justify their vicious brutality, and their tolerance of it. Imagine I was told that to forget that in the face of the evidence would make me the basest kind of fool, deserving of whatever harm befell me at vicious white men’s hands.

Imagine that my striving, southern-born parents taught me that seeking equality with whites would be a demotion. A people who tolerated for centuries the enslavement of others, who enshrined chattel butchery in their founding documents, and then, most importantly, denied the existence of blood when their hands dripped with the stuff-- these were not people with whom you sought parity. These were negative object lessons to whose depths you swore never to fall.

Imagine that my righteously angry southern-born parents taught me that the American Dream was for whites, that American justice was for white people, that Disney-esque happy endings were for white people.

Now, imagine that we’re not imagining. This is what my parents taught me-- that every white man or woman was a creature that I should approach as I would a strange, stray dog, just as likely to bite your hand off as wag its tail. They taught me and my siblings to be wary at every encounter, and constantly steel ourselves against what ill will might erupt from white skin.

It worked. Like any good parents, ours prepared us for the world as it is, and by any standards, we are a highly accomplished set of children. I credit much of that to the hard lessons our parents taught us.

Now, imagine once more-- this time that I, and those like me represent the majority, the state and its power, and that we have guns on our hips, badges on our chests, and the power to shoot you without consequence.



Leonce Gaiter is a prolific African American writer and proud Harvard Alum. His writing has appeared in the NYTimes, NYT Magazine, LA Times, Washington Times, and Washington Post, and he has written two novels. His newly released novel, In the Company of Educated Men, is a literary thriller with socio-economic, class, and racial themes.

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

#

Symbolic Gestures Are Nice-- Voting Records Are More Important-- Meet Hakeem Jeffries

Tuesday evening Chris Hayes had Hakeem Jeffries on his show. Jeffries is one of three Members of Congress who represents the Brooklyn neighborhood I grew up in, along with Yvette Clarke and Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm. Jeffries, a well-spoken former corporate lawyer for Viacom. He drove corrupt conservative incumbent, Ed Towns into retirement by announcing a primary largely backed by progressives who couldn't wait to see the last of Towns. But instead the primary was Jeffries versus a candidate considerably to the left of him, Charles Barron, who the Democratic Establishment abhors. Jeffries, who has been heavily backed by Wall Street banksters and by the charter school interests he supports, decisively beat Barron in 2012 and then the random Republican in the general. This cycle, the GOP didn't bother running anyone against him. He's as good as they're likely to get in a bizarrely gerrymandered district that includes Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay, Manhattan Beach, Mill Basin, Canarsie, Fort Greene, Flatlands, Ozone Park, Lindenwood, and Downtown Brooklyn.

Chis had him on because he was one of four African-American congressmen who raised their hands-- "Hands Up, Don't Sheet"-- in solidarity with Ferguson protesters. The other three were Yvette Clarke, also from Brooklyn, plus two Texans Sheila Jackson Lee (downtown Houston) and Al Green (south Houston). Hayes caught Jeffries unawares when he asked him if he regretted voting against Alan Grayson's amendment last summer that would have demilitarized the local police. Watch the video above. Jeffries was stunned to be caught out-- and lied about it: "I believe that the amendment actually was designed to repeal the program and I believe that I supported that amendment." He didn't. And I blasted out this tweet immediately:

Hayes was one of the may people who retweeted it. I might add that the three other "Hands Up" sympathizers also voted against Grayson's amendment. Four for four. Here's the list of the only Members of Congress who actually did vote for it:

• John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)

• Earl Blumenauer (OR)

• Bruce Braley (IA)

• Tony Cárdenas (CA)

• Matt Cartwright (PA)

• Kathy Castor (FL)

• Judy Chu (CA)

• John Conyers (MI)

• Donna Edwards (MD)

• Keith Ellison (MN)

• Alan Grayson (FL)

• Raul Grijalva (AZ)

• Rush Holt (NJ)

• Mike Honda (CA)

• Hank Johnson (GA)

• Barbara Lee (CA)

• John Lewis (GA)

• Dan Maffei (NY)

• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)

• Doris Matsui (CA)

• Jim McDermott (WA)

• Jim McGovern (CA)

• Jerry McNerney (CA)

• George Miller (CA)

• Jerry Nadler (NY)

• Gloria Negrete McLeod (CA)

• Beto O'Rourke (TX)
• Frank Pallone (NJ)

• Ed Perlmutter(CO)

• Mark Pocan (WI)

• Loretta Sanchez (Blue Dog-CA)

• John Sarbanes (MD)

• Jan Schakowsky (IL)

• Bobby Scott (VA)

• Jose Serrano (NY)

• Louise Slaughter (NY)

• Adam Smith (WA)

• Jackie Speier (CA)

• Mark Takano (CA)

• John Tierney (MA)

• Paul Tonko (NY)

• Nydia Velázquez (NY)

• Maxine Waters (CA)

When someone like Hakeem Jeffries sees a vote building with Members like Barbara Lee, Donna Edwards, Jose Serrano, Alan Grayson, Jan Schakowsky, Mark Pocan, Matt Cartwright, Judy Chu, Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Jerry Nadler, Jon Conyers, John Lewis and Mike Honda all lining up on one side, maybe voting with Republicans and Democratic corporate whores is a position worth reexamining.

Andrew Slack Asks The 13 Crucial Questions About Ferguson

Andrew is someone I know from progressive activists circles and who also happens to lead the Harry Potter Alliance, which uses popular culture to make social justice popular. Today he gave me permission to crosspost the 13 questions from his Facebook page.


Guest Post
by Andrew Slack

Here are 13 questions I have around Ferguson, numbered but in no particular order of importance. While I realize it's long, I think these questions are important and worth asking about, acting around, and wrestling with:

1) #‎WHYTWELVESHOTS: Not even in Officer Wilson's telling of the story, did it seem that it was necessary for a trained police officer to shoot his gun twelve times. I doubt that there was ever a reason to shoot his gun one time. But twelve? And hit Michael Brown six times. How can this ever be justified? I think the simple truth is that it can't.

2) #‎WHYNOTRIAL: Michael Brown had 12 shots to die. Shouldn't Officer Wilson have one shot at a trial of his peers? A larger systemic issue is that 99.99% of grand juries move to indict but they barely ever do when it comes to matters of the police. This needs to change.

And how do we now unite with Color of Change to work with the federal government to ensure that Officer Wilson is given the trial that he deserves?

3) #‎WHYAFTERSUNDOWN: Though none of us are eye witnesses to what happened between Officer Wilson and Michael Brown, all of us are eye witnesses to what happened between the Ferguson police and peaceful protests this last summer.

As protestors remained disciplined and peaceful as police beat them and threatened them with extremely dangerous military weapons. The Ferguson police and Missouri state government were caught off guard when it came to media attention. Now they needed to save face. They had a lot of face to save! So what better way to do this than to paint the protestors as "violent animals" by inciting a riot. Why else did they wait until after sundown to read the grand jury's decision and for the prosecuting attorney to make everything worse by blaming the protestors, social media, etc? I have a hard time believing that any one could be THAT inept. If they didn't fear riots, then why would they have already called in the National Guard....creating expectations and a more tense situation, only to let it out by announcing AFTER SUNDOWN?!

I think there needs to be Congressional hearings on whether or not the Ferguson police intentionally incited riots.

4) WHY ARE THE FERGUSON POLICE AS WELL ARMED AS ISIS? There's something frightening about the militarization of the police that has occurred steadily over the course of 25 years. At this point, it seems like a corrupt way for weapon companies to make money.

5) WHAT'S RACE GOT TO DO WITH IT? The fact that young black teens are killed at over 20 times the rate as young white teens or simply John Green's Tumblr post on the raw data in Ferguson, all point to the fact that structural racism exists.

Even hearing Officer Wilson describe Mike Brown as "a demon"-- just looking at the choices of words have historical racial undertones that may have suggested the officer's mindset in this particular case and underline the strange relationship that white cops have with communities of color.

The rug has been lifted over structural racism and how it intersects with police brutality and we find that we've been pushing stuff under it for decades. As the NY Times writes:

"For the black community of Ferguson, the killing of Michael Brown was the last straw in a long train of abuses that they have suffered daily at the hands of the local police. News accounts have strongly suggested, for example, that the police in St. Louis County’s many municipalities systematically targetpoor and minority citizens for street and traffic stops-- partly to generate fines-- which has the effect of both bankrupting and criminalizing whole communities.

In this context, the police are justifiably seen as an alien, occupying force that is synonymous with state-sponsored abuse"

As Kaiser Soze said, "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." Well what is coming from Ferguson (a year and some months since the trial around the killing of Trayvon Martin) and the fact that Ferguson is typical of an American town-- all of this points to the notion that the devil of structural racism is real. The first step in recovery is acknowledging that we have a problem. And we have a problem.

6) WHAT'S CLASS GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Look no further than Martin Luther King Jr to understand the intersection between economic inequality and structural racism. King believed very deeply that racism could not be fixed without addressing classism. His writing and speaking on this are as extensive as they are unrecognized. Perhaps because people rather not be challenged by quotes such as this one from Dr. King:

"Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice."

7) HOW DO WE STAND FOR NONVIOLENCE?

Dr. King, himself, believed that only nonviolent resistance could demonstrate the kind of change necessary to change a system that was built in violence. To this day, we watch as that same system that Dr. King fought nonviolently. In Dr. King's words:

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, 'This is not just.'"

The need to say "this is unjust" is just as great today as when King said these words. And yet what about nonviolent resistance? Michael Brown's family has bravely asked for it!

The reality is that almost all protestors have remained nonviolent. But it's impossible to avoid the violence. Again, I believe that it was intentionally incited by the police. But this does not remove the agency of those who are committing violence and we must stand in solidarity, nonviolently.

But there is something truly upsetting about the first instinct being to push against violence by protestors. As my friend Jess Morales puts it:

"If your first instinct is to talk about the need for nonviolence, please check your privilege. Your brain is in the right place, but it lost connection with your heart somewhere. Folks are angry, and they have a right to be angry and express that anger. That is NOT the same as violence. And again, check yourself if you see a group of people of color who are angry and automatically think violence. Turn around and look at police officers dressed up for war. Turn your directive for nonviolence over to the ones actually perpetuating it. In the meantime, my friends are going to be angry that they can be murdered in cold blood and the "justice system" could give two fucks about it."

8) WHAT'S PRISON GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Most people have been hearing about the eery and perverse system of American private prisons (why would we allow for prisons that actively release people, knowing they'll make money if they come back, increasing the rate of recidivism?). Further, why are prisons the only place for some people to find work and what does that have to do with Walmart and the Walmartization of America? Why is our entire justice system not striving towards the data around what prevents crime including restorative justice? How are there laws like Stand Your Ground, what does it have to do with the lobbying group ALEC, and how are some our favorite brand names associated with funding ALEC?

9) WHAT'S AGE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

The treatment of teens who are people of color is the most extreme and it seems obvious that police in Ferguson and across the US constantly intimate young people of color. In general, this entire incident has hit on the topic of age as well. Young people are speaking up about how they get spoken down to. #‎SOCIALMEDIADIDIT: The DA's belief that somehow social media was the real culprit shows a generational and cultural misunderstanding that is disturbing. How can the world of social media reach out and cross the divide around this understanding?

Still, people in other generations have not truly heard about #‎IFTHEYGUNNEDMEDOWN-- the ultimate media critique. For those who need the 411 here: when the mainstream media covers the killing a black student, they don't ever pick out photos from their Facebook of their graduation or them with their family. They always pick out selfies and photos with friends to portray that teen as a "gangsta" but if it's a white student that's killed it's entirely opposite: provocative pictures on Facebook, partying with friends, being destructive, etc are all ignored and instead, the media love to go straight for the most dignified looking pictures. In other words, white victims are victims but black victims must have had it coming. This summer, young people of color imagined what pictures the mainstream media would use of them, if they were gunned down.

Which ties into questions around the media and the way it's out of touch with all of these issues. And how we can use social media to change that and work for media reform.

And how we do to honor the past stories of injustice-- and what do we do to prevent and prepare for future ones, even now as new stories keep coming in of young black people, mainly males, getting killed by police-- it just happened last week around the corner from me. The lights were dimmed or very dark, the officer couldn't see, and he shot a young man who was walking through his home. The young man was black and is now dead. There doesn't seem to have been any prior altercation and the officer is almost definitely not going to be indicted.

10) WHAT'S GENDER GOT TO DO WITH IT?

I feel like there's something bizarre about how this officer and the police are being defended and it goes deep into heterosexist ideas around defending bizarre and often racist comments of normative masculinity. I know this one may seem a stretch to some, but I think the lens of gender shouldn't be forgotten when it comes to just about any thing this major and systemic in our culture.

11) WHAT'S FAMILY GOT TO DO WITH IT?

I've been hearing stories of parents who are black or people of color trying to explain to their teenage children tricks and tips on how to be safe....from getting harassed or killed by the police. Families all over America now are in panic over the immunity that police seem to have for potentially killing their children. How do we as a nation try to take real steps toward listening deeply to changing the environment that makes these fears real?

12) WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

How do we protest in a way that fully honors the rage and anger and fury in a way that is compassionate, loving, and ultimately most effective. I'm not suggesting that love, in any way, is a force that should negate anger. Love is part of a totality and about wholeness. Part of being whole is being broken and being angry. How do we find spaces to hold each other? To mourn? To express? To include police who want to protect and serve. To include prison guards and any one else who wants to elevate the human condition even if that means acknowledging that their profession belongs to a system that is hurting the human condition. In short, to love...

13) WHAT STEPS CAN WE TAKE NEXT? to mourn, to mobilize, to be voices, allies, and more? Just some more general, sketched out thoughts and questions about next steps:

-can police be part of this conversation: the nation is full of amazing cops who want to do good and don't like working for a system that structurally intimidates the poor but not the rich, etc. How can the good cops be included in this conversation - without them we can't make the necessary transformations that need to take place nearly as well.

What will happen to protestors who were treated abusively this year? Or business owners who had their businesses destroyed due to riots that it seems the police may have intentionally incited? And WILL AND SHOULD THERE BE A TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION AROUND THE ENTIRE ISSUE OF FERGUSON as an emblematic canary in the coal mine regarding the entire system of class, race, gun violence, and justice in this country?

Who Does The Law Prosectute-- And Who Gets A Free Ride For Even The Most Heinous Criminal Behavior?

Just a fantasy

At the end of 2011 there were 2,266,800 adults in prison and another 4,814,200 on parole or probation. Add to that 70,792 juveniles in detention. Almost 40% of those in prison are black. By age 18 almost a third of all black males and just over a quarter of all Hispanic males have already been arrested, compared to just 22% of white males. 5 years on and almost half of all black males have been arrested, as have 44% of Hipsanic males (38% of white males). Bias? Absolutely-- and it goes beyond race to class. Angela Davis and other critics of the U.S. gulags have been pointing this out for years. She's written that the country's prisons have "become venues of profit as well as punishment." 

In his new book The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, Matt Taibbi argues that the expanding disparity of wealth and the increasing criminalization of those in poverty have culminated in the U.S. having the largest prison population in the history of human civilization. Wall Street banksters and Beltway politicians may be enriching themselves and ripping off the system to the tune of billions of dollars, but Wall Street banksters don't get prosecuted and grotesquely crooked politicians from Rick Scott (R-FL), Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) and Gina Raimondo (D-RI) to Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Bruce Rauner (R-IL) were not indicted but were all just elected governors a couple of weeks ago, despite very public and very overwhelming evidence that all of them are personally very criminally corrupt.

But it isn't just the rich who escape criminal prosecution. Police get away with murder-- literally (in fact 400 per year). Alex Vitale, an author and associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, explained for Al Jazeera America why police are rarely indicted for misconduct. Vitale writes that "successful criminal prosecution of a police officer for killing someone in the line of duty, if no corruption is alleged, is extremely rare. Even when officers are convicted, the charges are often minimal. For example, Coleman Brackney, a Bella Vista, Oklahoma, police officer who was convicted of misdemeanor negligent homicide in 2010 after shooting an unarmed teen to death while in custody in his cruiser, went on to rejoin the police and was recently appointed chief of police in Sulphur Springs, Oklahoma."

There are significant structural barriers to successful police indictment or prosecution. For one, investigations are usually conducted by a combination of police detectives and investigators from the prosecutors’ office. Prosecutors tend to take a greater role when there is a reason to believe that the shooting might not be justified. However, they must rely on the cooperation of the police to gather necessary evidence, including witness statements from the officer involved and other officers at the scene. In some cases they are the only living witnesses to the event.

The close collaboration between police and prosecutors, which is an asset in homicide investigations, becomes a hindrance in police shooting cases. In most cases, the prosecutors’ reliance on the cooperation of police creates a fundamental conflict of interest. As a result, prosecutors are often reluctant to aggressively pursue these cases.

Moreover, the local elected district attorneys often want to avoid being seen as inhibiting police power. Even in communities where distrust of police is common, no prosecutor ever got thrown out of office for defending the police. At its core, the public sees the DA’s office as a defender of law and order and expects these officials to uphold them.

...There are also huge legal hurdles to overcome. State laws that authorize police use of force, which are backed up by Supreme Court precedent, give police significant latitude in using deadly force. In the 1989 case Graham v. Connor, the Supreme Court ruled that officers may use force to effect a lawful arrest or if they reasonably believe that the person represents a serious physical threat to the officer or others. This means that police may use force over any resistance to arrest and that if the resistance escalates, officers may escalate their force. The court also said that the totality of circumstances must be judged with an understanding of the split-second nature of police decision-making.

...Juror mindset creates yet another challenge to successful indictments and prosecutions. Grand juries and criminal court juries consist of local residents. Even in periods of heightened concern about police misconduct, most citizens retain a strong bias in favor of police. Popular culture and political discourse are suffused with commentaries about both the central importance of police in maintaining the basic structural integrity of society and the dangerous nature of their work. In addition, the legal standard for judging police misconduct calls on jurors to put themselves in the officers’ shoes, further strengthening the tendency to identify with the police.

Another important dynamic in police prosecutions is the state of race relations in the United States. Despite the rhetoric about being a postracial society, racial divisions and bias remain omnipresent in American society and nowhere more than in the realm of criminal justice. There is abundant evidence of jury bias in a variety of racially disparate criminal justice outcomes, including false convictions, application of the death penalty and drug convictions. Research shows that whites have a generally more positive view of the police than blacks do. The sad reality is that white jurors are much more likely to side with police, regardless of the race of the officer and the person killed. This was seen in the Rodney King prosecutions in California, in which a mostly white suburban state court jury did not convict four Los Angeles Police Department officers in the severe beating of King after a high-speed car chase, despite the incident’s being videotaped. (The jury acquitted three of the four officers and deadlocked on a charge of excessive force against one officer.) A more diverse federal jury later found two of the officers guilty of violating King’s civil rights.

...[S]tates should create a police prosecutor’s office, or blue desk, that is more removed from local politics. While relying on state attorneys general has its own challenges, the outcomes are likely to be viewed as more legitimate. These blue desks could become repositories of expertise on police prosecutions. Even if tied to state politics, they might be better able to insulate themselves from accusations of overly aggressive prosecutions as well as charges of not supporting the police.

Laws on the use of force need reform. Police shootings were much more common in the 1970s when regulations about the use of force were even looser. In response to public outcries and rioting in the 1960s and ’70s, local police began to tighten up regulations and offer training to officers, resulting in significant reductions in shootings. The 1984 Supreme Court case Tennessee v. Garner institutionalized some of these changes nationally, including making it unlawful for police to shoot a fleeing suspect. Since then, however, the courts have mostly expanded police authorization to use force.

Finally, the U.S. needs to dial back the dramatic expansion of police power over the last 40 years. For example, the growing prevalence of paramilitary SWAT teams and the ongoing war on drugs have significantly contributed to excessive use of force. In part this happened through the combined direct enforcement practices of these two types of policing. But they also contributed indirectly to a larger ethos of militarized patrolling that equates policing with the use of force and a war footing. The public and its representatives need to realize that there are better ways to prevent crime and serve the community than licensing excessive police force.

Michael Krieger posted a tangentially related article at his Boulder-based blog Liberty Blitzkrieg over the weekend. It's part of his concern about "how the percentage of sociopaths within a group of humans becomes increasingly concentrated the higher you climb within the positions of power in a society, with it being most chronic amongst those who crave political power." Makes sense? Continue reading-- and don't be disturbed that it's "about" England; it's about all of us.

Those with the sickest minds, and who wish to act upon their destructive fantasies, understand that they can most easily get away with their deeds if they are protected by an aura of power and ostensible respectability. They believe that as a result of their status, no one would dare accuse them of horrific activities, and if it ever came to that, they could quash any investigation. Unfortunately for us all, this is typically the case. I previously covered the issue of powerful pedophiles in the UK in the piece: Former BBC Host “Sir” Jimmy Savile Exposed as Major Player in Massive Pedophile Ring.

Now we have evidence of yet another case.

The Guardian reports that:

The security services are facing questions over the cover-up of a Westminster paedophile ring as it emerged that files relating to official requests for media blackouts in the early 1980s were destroyed.

Two newspaper executives have told the Observer that their publications were issued with D-notices-- warnings not to publish intelligence that might damage national security – when they sought to report on allegations of a powerful group of men engaging in child sex abuse in 1984. One executive said he had been accosted in his office by 15 uniformed and two non-uniformed police over a dossier on Westminster paedophiles passed to him by the former Labour cabinet minister Barbara Castle.

Ah, national security. Remember that the next time you are lectured that we need to give up our civil liberties in the name of “national security.” Think about what that really means. It really means the security of the status quo to continue to behave like insane criminals with zero accountability.

Following the announcement that the grand gury declined to indict the police officer who murdered Michael Brown in Ferguson, Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Raúl Grijalva and Keith Ellison both released statements urging calm. “As emotions continue to run understandably high," said Grijalva, "it is crucial to bear in mind a lesson history has taught us time and again: justice is not won through destruction or violence, but through unity and perseverance. Just as violence can tarnish peaceful protestors standing for justice, excessive force by law enforcement can only further divide our nation. We must honor Michael through peace, and by fixing the failures in our system, from racial profiling to the militarization of local police." Ellison was even more pointed: "Our country has an indefensible history of racial violence. The same violence that killed Emmett Till and beat Rodney King is alive today as Michael Brown’s family grieves. I understand the anger and fear that many in Ferguson and around the country feel, but all must remain peaceful. Protest injustice, but do not meet violence with violence. I urge the federal government to continue its investigation of Michael Brown’s shooting. The fight for equality is not over. We have tremendous work to do, including protecting the right to vote. But right now, my thoughts are with Michael’s parents, whose son will not be coming home." 

But let's leave off with a powerful and wrenching performance from rapper Killer Mike in St. Louis about an hour and a half after the grand jury decision was announced: