Images from the mass protests in St. Louis last month against the acquittal of a white former police officer in the fatal shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith felt like déjà vu: raised fists, Black Lives Matter signs, swarms of police armed in full riot gear. But this time, as police made arrests on the third night of protests, they began to chant “Whose streets, our streets” — a refrain that, stolen from the voices of protesters, mutated into an unsettling declaration of power, entitlement, and impunity.
So far this year, 773 people have been fatally shot by police, according to the Washington Post, while independent databases that include other causes of death by police report tolls above 900. In the three years since the flashpoint of Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, pushes for reform have reverberated through all levels of government, most notably from former President Barack Obama’s policing task force. And yet, much like gun violence itself, police brutality in the United States remains stuck on repeat. A new book published last week goes beyond the rhetoric of reform to interrogate why we need police at all.
In “The End of Policing,” Alex S. Vitale argues that police reforms implemented in the wake of Brown’s death — from diversity initiatives to community policing to body cameras — fail to acknowledge that policing as an institution reinforces race and class inequalities by design.
“The suppression of workers and the tight surveillance and micromanagement of black and brown lives have always been at the center of policing,” writes Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College.
Author Alex S. Vitale.
Photo: Dave Sanders
Starting with the “original police force,” the London Metropolitan Police, Vitale provides a succinct historical framework to understand how police in the U.S. were created to control poor and nonwhite people and communities. The modern war on drugs can be traced back to “political opportunism and managing ‘suspect populations’” in the 20th century. The increasingly intensified policing of the U.S.-Mexico border today stems from nativist sentiment and economic exploitation of migrant workers starting in the 1800s. Surveillance and suppression of political movements takes root in imperialist Europe, when ruling powers used secret police to infiltrate and eliminate the opposition.
“The End of Policing” maps how law enforcement has become an omnipresent specter in American society over the last four decades. Police are deployed to monitor and manage a sprawling range of issues: drugs, homelessness, mental health, immigration, school safety, sex work, youth violence, and political resistance. Across this spectrum, current liberal reforms are intertwined with upholding the legitimacy of police, courts, and incarceration as conduits to receive access to resources and care. Vitale’s approach goes beyond working within the carceral system to propose non-punitive alternatives that would eventually render policing obsolete. He convincingly argues that a combination of community-based programs, support services, regulation, economic investment, and political representation for poor communities of color can significantly shrink the impact of policing in exchange for justice and community empowerment.
In a time when the president of the United States openly supports and facilitates aggressive policing, and police officers continue to kill black Americans with impunity, “The End of Policing” is an essential primer to unpack the innate brutality of policing and begin to envision an America free from police violence and control.
The Intercept’s interview with Vitale has been condensed and edited for clarity.
There have been a host of reforms proposed in reaction to the shootings of black Americans by police in the last three years. How does your book address the shortcomings of these reforms?
The bad news is that at the national level, any hope of the federal government bringing about some kind of progressive reform has largely evaporated. The reforms that existed under the Obama administration were pretty limited in scope and their effectiveness is open to question. The good news is that the vast majority of decision-making about police reform happens at the local level, and local political pressure can really make a difference. But the bad news about that is that the kinds of reforms most people are advocating for I don’t think are going to make a substantial difference. Some improvements in training, policy, and accountability may lead to a reduction in deaths, but it won’t address the larger question of overpolicing.
What we’ve seen in the last 40 years is an explosive increase in the scope and intensity of policing. Everything from the war on drugs to the war on terror to the war on disorder is driving a set of police practices that are invasive and aggressive, and the deaths we see on the nightly news are the tip of an iceberg of policing experienced in poor communities, especially poor communities of color. There is very little empirical support for a lot of the reforms being proposed, like diversifying the police or community policing or implicit bias training. What really needs to be done is we need to dial back the explosive increase in the scope of policing, and quit using the police to solve every kind of social problem.
Your book was written before Donald Trump’s election. In what ways has your outlook on working toward non-punitive police reforms changed under the Trump administration?
It’s changed the political opportunities. Trump has attempted to close the door on rational, technocratic, liberal reforms to policing for this “Blue Lives Matter” approach that policing shouldn’t be the last resort, it should be the first resort, to address all kinds of problems in a world divided between good and bad people, and it’s the police who keep the two sides separated. This is a horribly inaccurate and counterproductive view of the world, both for him and for those who support this viewpoint in the law enforcement community. My hope is that in the absence of any kind of progress on a liberal reform agenda, people will be open to thinking about more systemic reforms.
You write about the origins of modern policing, in which you debunk the mythology constructed around police as protectors and crime fighters who keep the public safe. Can you talk a bit about the real reasons why policing exists?
We should understand policing as the most coercive form of state power … and the reason is that policing has historically and inherently been at the root of reproducing fundamental inequalities of race, class, and immigration status. Trump, the police, ICE — this is just a continuation of a history of exclusion and repression going back to the exclusion of Chinese immigrants in the 19th century, Texas Rangers driving out Mexican landholders and indigenous populations to make room for white settlers, the transformation of slave patrols and urban slave management systems into what became Jim Crow policing in the South and ghetto policing in the North. Police have historical origins in relation to both the formation and disciplining of the industrial working class; early 19th century forms of policing in Europe and the United States shaped rural agricultural workers into urban industrial workers, and then suppressed their movements to form labor unions and win better living conditions.
The point of all this is to fundamentally question this liberal notion that police exist primarily as a tool for public safety and therefore, we should embrace their efforts uncritically, when in fact, there are lots of different ways to produce safety that don’t come with the baggage of colonialism, slavery, and the suppression of workers’ movements.
There’s a refrain throughout your book that the policing and incarceration of marginalized people is ultimately far more expensive than non-carceral alternatives. So why isn’t the government pursuing cost-saving measures that would also better people’s lives?
A lot of research about police practices is couched in terms of effectiveness — can we show some improvement in an outcome like recidivism or crime rates? But there’s very little attention to any notion of justice and the political context in which these decisions are made, the implications of these processes on the people subjected to them, or the alternative ways to achieve the same ends. So we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to cycle people through jails, courts, emergency rooms, homeless shelters, and their lives never get any better. And ultimately, the community is not significantly improved either. So if we did any kind of cost-benefit calculation that took this into consideration, we would do something different.
The problem is we’re caught up in an ideological battle, in which the politics of austerity and a neoconservative commitment to punitiveness as a response to social discord means that we don’t ever get a chance to assess a series of possible options to address community problems. Most people, if they really felt they had options, would say, well, we need some youth programs, supportive housing, community-based mental health care. If we could use the resources that are being spent on police, jails, prisons, and courts, there would be plenty of money to invest in those kinds of solutions, but at all levels of government, they’re just never on the table.
“The End of Policing” by Alex S. Vitale.
You write about how police are inherently political and have always functioned as an extension of state power around the world. In what instances has it been clear that American police are not neutral actors, but in fact, serve the political agenda of whoever is in office?
We continually discover evidence of police engaging in the surveillance and suppression of social movements, in which there’s no real allegation of criminality. From the suppression of Occupy Wall Street and the anti-Dakota Access Pipeline movement to the surveillance of Black Lives Matter, that’s becoming clearer. These have occurred under both [the Obama and Trump] administrations, but more importantly, they’ve occurred in mostly Democratic cities governed by Democratic mayors with democratically appointed police commissioners. What’s important to them is that politics be channeled into a very narrow conceptualization of liberal electoral politics, and anything that can’t be is fundamentally illegitimate, disruptive, and disorderly, and should be surveilled and, if necessary, suppressed. And the police have always been at the center of that process.
Many places around the world and some parts of the U.S. have decriminalized or legalized certain drugs or sex work. What are the challenges around attempting to legitimize these underground economies that are so heavily moralized against?
It’s very important politically for neoconservatives to define crime and disorder in moralistic terms because the alternative would be to acknowledge the role of markets and the state — that black markets are a product of a lack of economic opportunities. Instead, neoconservatives criminalize on moralistic terms so that drugs can’t be understood as a public health problem with origins that may be linked to the deindustrialization of rural America, the entrenched poverty of urban America, the pharmaceutical industry and flooding the market with cheap opioid pills. [Drug use] is framed in terms of “Just Say No” and punitive sanctions for those who don’t go along with it. So whether it’s prostitution, drug abuse, kids acting out in school, shoplifting — these are all framed in moral terms, which closes off the possibility of any kind of conversation about how to reduce the harms and the demand. I try to undermine those moralistic arguments and think about the people involved in these black markets as full human beings, whose well-being should be part of any calculation on how to address these issues and understand that the historic role of police in managing these problems has been primarily counterproductive.
You write about restorative justice as an example of non-punitive alternatives to policing. Can you talk about what this model looks like in schools, as well as in communities grappling with violence?
Restorative justice is a mechanism that’s designed to resolve social problems in non-punitive ways by trying to identify what the underlying forces are behind problematic behavior and, instead of using punishment and exclusion to respond to that behavior, drawing that person in and trying to figure out what can be done to both repair them and whatever harm their problematic behavior has produced.
The place where this has gotten the most traction has been in schools. These systems typically involve peer adjudication, where students work with students engaged in problematic behavior to try to identify the behaviors and causes of those behaviors, and then come up with some solutions. Often, the problem is coming from outside the school, something going on at home or in the community, but sometimes it’s coming from within the school, like bullying. We had a horrible stabbing here in New York City just recently, the first death of a student on campus in many years, and of course, the young person who did the stabbing said they were subjected to long-term, persistent bullying. And what’s going to be done about that? Possibly nothing. Instead, they’re putting metal detectors in the school. So that’s a kind of punitive approach. A restorative justice approach would have created avenues to address that bullying long before it escalated into a violent, deadly confrontation. The whole school community has to be involved — students, teachers, administrators. It requires rethinking how whole disciplinary systems are organized so that problems are identified early, and the goal is to resolve them, not to punish them.
In communities, one of the more interesting models is linked to a concept called justice reinvestment. We know there are neighborhoods where problematic behavior is highly concentrated, and local and state officials spend millions of dollars to police and incarcerate people. What if those communities kept some percentage of people who get arrested in the community and tried to develop strategies for resolving their problems, and in return, the community got the money that would have been spent incarcerating them? We could afford to begin to produce some supportive housing and community-based mental health systems, we could find summer jobs and after-school employment for young people. We could develop services not just for them, but for their parents. These things are cheaper than jails, prisons, and police, and they don’t come with all the collateral consequences of driving people through those punitive systems.
What is the relationship between police abolition and prison abolition?
I think of abolition as a process rather than an outcome. I don’t explicitly go around saying “abolish the police” or “abolish prisons.” Instead, I say that if we understand police and prisons as inherently coercive and punitive and stained with a history of reproducing inequality, those institutions should always be used as a last resort. Instead, we should identify, whenever possible, constructive, restorative, non-punitive solutions to our social problems. And, to the extent we can do that, we reduce our reliance on those deeply problematic institutions.
We need to quit beginning with the premise, Oh, I’ve got a problem, let’s get the police involved. No, I’ve got a problem, and I want to demand that government solve this problem in a way that is ethically and intellectually defensible and will actually produce benefits for the community and those who’ve been the target of punitive approaches.
Top photo: Demonstrators confront police while protesting the acquittal of former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley on Sept. 16, 2017, in St. Louis.
Q: “Can you talk a bit about the real reasons why policing exists?”
A: “Trump, the police, ICE — this is just a continuation of a history of exclusion and repression going back to the exclusion of Chinese immigrants in the 19th century…”
A pity, really, that such an important subject and interesting theory is wrapped up in this historical grievance garbage. Not much “envisioning” of anything other than his own bellybutton, I’d say.
I agree with a balance of policing, and that over policing sounds bad. Not sure that is what is going on here.
As for root cause and actually fixing the problem, do you agree with me that having a committed mother AND FATHER in the home is the enormous, worthwhile factor to heavily focus on (regardless of skin color by the way)?
Also, don’t people with whiter skin tint get shot by cops?
The author wants government to resolve these issues. There’s your problem.
Who would you suggest, the selfless execs of the Fortune 500?
“Who would you suggest, the selfless execs of the Fortune 500?”
My suggestion is that the segments of the population who routinely engage in violent crime, stop doing it, perhaps? As routinely pointed out, it ain’t like Whitey is taking the brunt of it.
Just a thought.
The main thread of criticism in these comments is that if we abolish the police (which I never call for) that chaos will reign. But in fact what I do call for throughout the book is that we should always search first for non coercive, non punitive solutions to social problems. If they work, then great, less policing, arrests, mass incarceration. If they don’t, then we need more experimentation and possibly a continuation of policing. The whole thing should be evidence informed, with public safety and human dignity as the measure of effectiveness. Turns out much of what police do can’t meet that standard and to blindly defend it in all circumstances is about an ideological commitment to punitiveness, not public safety.
Mr. Vitale, you have readily acknowledged that “police are inherently political” and thus “serve the political agenda of whoever is in office”, yet you fail to address the nature of the political agenda itself and who it serves. If one only uses the examples of political policing cited in this article, then one is forced to ask, “Who stands to benefit from the “suppression of Occupy Wall Street and the anti-Dakota Access Pipeline movement to the surveillance of Black Lives Matter”? To hear you tell the tale, one might conclude that the Obama administration was only using the “power of the state” to suppress these “social movements” because they could not be readily “channeled into a very narrow conceptualization of liberal electoral politics.” Yet, you also acknowledge that an equivalent level of suppression is occurring under the Trump administration. Given the perceived common threat that these groups pose to both parties, wouldn’t it be more accurate to conclude that their respective ideologies pose a fundamental threat to the self-interested, profit-driven aspirations of those who fund the political campaigns of all presidential candidates? Hasn’t this dynamic been in play – in one for or the other – since George Washington was forced to borrow money from private lenders in order to fund a nascent federal bureaucracy?
Over here in Europe we already have some police free zones. All crime from these areas fall under special crime codes which are kept out of the the overal crime statistics of the countries concerned. An example of this would be code 291 in Sweden. Also in France, the Netherlands and Belgium there are zones usually within cities where police and emergency workers are scared to go to.
Yes, I can imagine no police violence and control=complete free for all of all the scum we have in the USA. Oh, wait, this already is happening in Chitcago, Mexifornia, N.Y., Ohio(shit hole), and others. True Americans would be fighting and killing just to stay alive from the scum that is eating us alive.
Read beyond the headline, and you’ll see what the author is actually arguing.
I’d suggest Robert’s issues are unlikely to be resolved by reading an article.
Kumar opens up her article, harkening back to the St. Louis protests, sparked by the acquittal of a white police officer charged with killing an unarmed African American. Protesters filled the streets, chanting “Whose streets, our streets.” Police in riot gear then cleared and secured the area. After which, Kumar writes the police began to chant “Whose streets, our streets.” Kumar cites a New York Times article, which links to another article. I tracked the statement backed to its original source, the St. Louis Dispatch, which described police officers being overheard by reporters, chanting “Whose streets? Our streets.” Unnamed reporters. From an unknown source. Recorded by unknown journalists. The article’s byline merely lists “From staff reports.”
Based on this, Kumar unequivocally states:
“as police made arrests on the third night of protests, they began to chant “Whose streets, our street –a refrain that, stolen from the voices of protesters, mutated into an unsettling declaration of power, entitlement, and impunity.”
Apparently, Kumar was sitting on this line and was going to use it –facts or no facts. There was some evidentiary support, which she curiously did not mention. A photographer, David Carson, reported, via tweet, hearing the officers chant. And this video appears to show the officers chanting –but it is unclear. Kumar describing the protests as anything but violent lashing is also unfair. She conveniently ignores the guns, weapons, and spray bottles of chemicals used to assault police officers.
To sum up, Kumar introduces the following narrative: police murder innocent man, peaceful protests ensure, police in riot gear clear streets while chanting in unison “Whose streets, our streets.” This is the “factual” premise she uses to support the idea that America is a police state. From here, she segues into actual empirical evidence –a Pulitzer-prize winning Washington Post database that records the number of people fatally shot by police. WaPo’s database is a very credible source but its relation to and support of the notion of a police state is tenuous. According to the WaPo figures, 773 individuals have been fatally shot by police in 2017, which represents 0.00025 percent of the population.
Alex S. Vitale’s new work, The End of Policing, argues diversity initiatives, community policing, and body cameras still fail to address institutional race and class inequalities. But what he describes is already an emerging market for politicians, opportunistic charlatans, and even Wall Street –not progressive change. Politicians can create more administrative bodies, siphon off more tax money, and create more opportunities for corruption and gamesmanship –all under the guise of progressivism. Demagogues will rise and gain followers, leveraging the information barriers and heuristic biases commensurate with widely publicized tragedies. Companies will produce body cameras, tasers, and other nonlethal restraint devices, promising handsome returns for investors. And writers, like Vitale will rise and say, despite all the costs, none of its working because institutional inequity has not been addressed. It’s a money pit for most of society with no net benefit; but rest assured politicians, Wall Street, and few clever opportunists will get their cut.
Vitale’s work is filled with assumptions -marginal people are criminalized to maintain the status quo for whites- and nebulous solutions -programs and materials to create a path to justice. He argues policing is used to control poor people, immigration used to exploit migrant labor, and the war on drugs to manage “suspect populations.” His argument does not advance any basic Marxist idea. Ironically, Kumar, in the very next paragraph, describes some of Vitale’s maps that show “how law enforcement has become an omnipresent specter in American society.” Reminiscent of the opening line of Marx’s 1848 Communist Manifesto: “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism.”
Kumar closes, saying, “(Trump) openly supports and facilitates aggressive policing, and police officers continue to kill black Americans with impunity.” She never defines “aggressive” policing nor provides links for Trump’s support for it. Not to mention, the inflammatory premise that “police officers kill black Americans with impunity,” which she deftly slides next to her Trump accusation, implying a cause and effect. Police-involved deaths are investigated, whether by police administration or a prosecutor. When the facts meet the required elements of a crime, police officers are put on trial. At the point, it’s up to a jury and the American justice system. When a jury cannot conclude they are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, they are acquitted.
Well, you went to a lot of trouble there to literally prove nothing. Your argument consists of “well, the sun rises in the east, so shadows from the barrel of a gun can only be seen north of the crime.” What difference does it make that a tiny percentage of the population are killed by police? What difference does it make that police who kill twelve year olds with bb guns are not punished, as long as it “looks” right? The Communist Manifesto? How is that an argument? Your “sermon” looks pretty desperate.
This is the heart… and the rub! Just once I would like to see an intercept author openly preface their neo-Marxist pretensions with a direct reference to Mark himself. Instead we see a postmodern blurring of race class, and gender distinctions trickling down from the radical chic that borders on pure fiction – a fiction that necessarily relies on coded language and veiled allusions. I suppose that, when such fiction is successfully commodified for consumption by the dim-witted proletariat, its authors can be rightfully characterized as the intellectual equivalent of the petite bourgeoisie. What then their fate?
Sorry:
…a direct reference to Marx himself.
Red-baiting aside, how would “such fiction” be “successfully commodified (sic) for consumption by the dim-witted proletariat…” The proletariat are the tools of capitalism, not its “commodifiers.” I’m always confused at how those who comment on Communism as the grip of horror itself, never talk about “laissez faire” as a questionable concept? Or any other 19th century horror such as “nationalism?”
Books, published articles, paid lectures, movies plays etc.. It is tricky business producing a successful product for mass consumption that simultaneously vilifies capitalism in the process.
It’s a ridiculous assumption on your part that either an Intercept article by Massad, a relatively obscure journalist, or Vitale’s book is a “successful product for mass consumption that . . . vilifies capitalism.” You’re either baselessly dismissing (i) a piece of indie journalism that was probably written out of a sense of personal commitment, since the pay can’t be superb, or (ii) a book-long meditation on facts by a sociology professor who cares enough to serve on the NYS Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and is not guaranteed any sort of “success” for himself or his work.
It’s far easier for you to write straw-men-fortified screeds than it is for Vitale or Kumar to produce careful writing on subjects they care about. You can’t even write clearly enough to answer FPI’s comment on the perils of 19th-century nationalism and lassez-faire government vs. the so-called “evils” of communism.
I never said this.
Zero Gray Thirty ululated: “Alex S. Vitale’s new work, The End of Policing, argues [for] diversity initiatives, community policing . . . [b]ut what he describes is already an emerging market for politicians, opportunistic charlatans, and even Wall Street –not progressive change. Politicians can create more administrative bodies [other hypothetical examples omitted for brevity]. . . all under the guise of progressivism.”
Zero is asserting that Vitale’s progressivism is phony because *a hypothetical politician who claimed to be a progressive could help to effect a non-progressive agenda*. What, if anything, would that hypothetical politician have to do with Vitale’s book, which you clearly are characterizing without having read it?
You also say that Vitale “does not advance any Marxist idea” — as if the racist and positions you use to argue against him were pro-Marxist — and then conclude that Kumar’s demonstration of the content of Vitale’s demographic maps shows not a level of over-enforcement by police, but rather an a priori argument for communism. What you fail to acknowledge is that your suppositions about ideas you claim are reducible to communism are based on assertions you haven’t bothered to prove or explain. Over-enforcement demographics are not reducible to communism. They show a problem that ought to be addressed under any political system.
Then there’s this dead language by you:
“[Kumar] never defines ‘aggressive’ policing nor provides links for Trump’s support for it.”
Trump’s aggressive policies are evident in his immigration reform, police violence-baiting at a level that compelled law enforcement to issue a statement distancing itself from him (see “Trump tells police not to worry about injuring suspects during arrests”), and in his many violence-inviting statements against black protests against police violence. The fact that you expect a journalist writing in 2017 to provide “evidence” of what even the most extreme Trump supporters recognize as common knowledge is proof that you’re trolling under the guise of offering a review so verbose and pedestrian that no one will actually read it.
Word salad does not a dissertation make. Try logic next time, Zero.
“Word Salad”? Well, it appears that Mona is active in many guises this morning…
This publication’s editor Glenn Greenwald lives in Rio de Janiro where police averaged 300+ killings a year. Now in St Louis, which has a much higher homicide rate than Rio, police recently hit a high of eight.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/03/police-killed-1500-rio-de-janeiro-past-five-years-amnesty
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/st-louis-police-have-fatally-shot-armed-people-this-year/article_e9492602-e8ee-5833-9816-07f0f6c0f20d.html
In my home country, the UK, with a population of over 70 million, police killed 4 citizens in 2017; 6 in 2016; 3 in 2015; 1 in 2014.
I’m so glad to live in a country where guns are rarely carried or used by people on either side of the law.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_Kingdom
Citizens killed by police in London, UK:
2017 … 2
2016 … 0
2015 … 2
2014 … 1
2013 … 0
2012 … 0
Well bully for you white man, but Japan makes your island look like a Grand Theft Auto game. No acid attacks or terrorism either.
https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21722216-there-was-just-one-fatal-shooting-whole-2015-crime-dries-up-japans-police-hunt
More than that … after the tsunami in 2011 there was no looting or theft. Japan is amazing.
I’m so glad to be part of a conversation that does not automatically assume that the USA is the greatest country in the world in every way … and admits that Anglo-Saxon culture has a lot to learn from other cultures.
But my point was that comparing homicide rates in the US to Brazil is really a way of saying “Bully for the USA!” and seems like taking an easy option.
Why are the stats on citizens killed by police in the USA so much worse than Japan’s?
Average number of killings by law enforcement over the last 9 years in the USA = 358 per year = 1.1 per million of population.
Japan has a population of 127 million, so in comparison to the USA 139 citizens’ lives are saved every year by Japan’s methods of law enforcement. Perhaps we could learn something here.
If an organisation existed in the UK that killed 70 people a year, I would be scared of them.
We might even use the word “terror”.
Chicago is pretty much police free in certain areas and that certainly isn’t safe or civilized.
Idiot author living in a fantasy world
Rashmee, go to Chicago or Minneapolis in the areas where police don’t go and tell us about your experience
Rashmee should visit Glenn in Rio, the cops there kill something like 300+ a year, just in one city. In St Louis, which has a much higher homicide rate than Rio, cops killed 8 people last year.
Interesting..it’s on my to read list
Although, maybe it’s in the book, but wasn’t covered in this piece, is the current ongoing use of tracking/surveillance technology , which actually creates more crime data (nuisance crimes), which attracts more cops, which creates more crime data..
What these technologies actually do is track poverty, and exacerbate class conflicts.
What If the same techniques and technology were turned 180 degrees?
It actually creates more crime. All the over-reach, the lack of warrants, people’s rights being stepped on and the feeling that all the lawyers, ACLU, The Intercept, EFF and a long list of others, *who should be fighting this daily* aren’t. People feel helpless, so they lash out in response. And then the cops arrest them. I call it Blue Bait. And few care. Far fewer than that, actaully do anything about it. The country is dying. Freedom is dead. Get used to it.
There’s not a lot in my book on this. Take a look at ” The Rise of Big Data Policing” just released by Andrew Ferguson.
Thanks
The training given to cops in the US is just a fraction of that given to cops in Europe, where they’re not let out onto the streets bearing deadly arms.
Impossible, written into WethePeople Constitution… right to bear arms..well-regulated militia.
No going back. Ever. Lots of nasty people.
It is pretty simple. Police out patrolling and interacting with the public should not be armed, and should be trained in de-escalating situations rather than dominating them through immediate forced humiliation and submission. Back at the station, when needed a small force specially trained to deal with violent situations can be called in when needed. But you do not default to John Wayne cops with guns and macho attitudes. You hire people that are good at diffusing situations and that win public trust and respect.
There is a reason for such a massive police presence, but it isn’t race or economic standing . It is the presence of statutory law, or “special admiralty.” Simply put, the private law merchant brought onto the land. The present monetary system demands it. It is the law of negotiable instruments and it requires strict adherence between legal entities. Your birth certificate created a legal entity that looks like your name and you, without your knowledge, pledged yourself as surety for that entity. It is the entity that is charged with any number of statutory violations, or infractions of statutory law. Under common law, the law of the land, there is only one requirement for an action against another man, and that is did he or she cause harm of injury to another man or woman? Under common law only peacekeepers are tolerated. Their job is to keep the peace, not to extort money for the corporate franchises presently know as “government.”
Well guess what Pilgrim? You’re gonna get your wish. The more people “hate” the police, the more the police won’t respond when called, the more they don’t respond, the more violence and victimization will rule the streets. Congratulations, you’re gonna get your wish Pilgrim and we hope it makes you happy.
Ok, Jon Wayne. I’m sure they will take that under advisement.
That a threat?
Truth be told . . of the two people in your photo above, I’d choose the guy on the right and so would anyone else with half their faculties still intact. In truth, not wannabe, should be, could be or any other make believe (fake) reality..
Then you’ll be one of the ones who welcomes fascism when or if it comes here in a more obvious form. Bragging about loving the boot that will eventually crush your own throat strikes me a just a little bit insane.
He likes polishing the boots.
Do you have eyes and half a brain?
Look at what those miscreants do to each other. (and everyone else)
The #1 cause of death for the guy on the left is other guys just like him. Duh.
You’ve obviously zero experience with the big city welfare hordes.
Which of the people in this photo would you prefer to have organizing life in your neighborhood?
https://www.rt.com/usa/350626-woman-dress-baton-rouge/
No, only racists and police-state supporters (mainly fascists) would make your choice.
Police Story. Part I.
The problem of policing is enormous without even getting to a racial dimension so here I will address just few points in this quite lengthy comment.
Little history on policing will go long way to explaining what is, what we call “police” and if you think, heroes, self-sacrificing defenders of people or public order, saving stranded kitty stranded on a tall tree, you will be disappointed.
While office of sheriffs were almost from the beginning a nationalized, governmentalized (paid by taxpayers) function of protecting right of large land owners who dictated/designed creation of individual states.
The “Police Story” is different.
What we call police has roots in 2nd amendment and concept of militia revered by brain dead constitutional purists claiming that it is about individual ownership of arms.
Not true. It is all about right of wealthy, land owners, later corporate bosses and their operatives to form a temporary and semi-permanent para-military units to take the law in their own hands in many cases due to perceived lack of Sheriff physical power to enforce what oligarchs wanted enforced, namely their own law and their rule as they dictated.
Such a semi-permanent militia units were use widely for many purposes from suppressing slave revolts, small farmers riots, and intimidating, exterminating native nations of Indians etc.,.
The militias’ mythology and legal status encompassed as well known gangs of thugs on corporate payroll killing striking workers and their families along with US Army.
But facing massive unrest corporate bosses figured out that it cost them to too much and they came out with an idea of a “police force” paid by taxpayers i.e. all those killed, beaten by the police thugs were made to pay for such a “pleasure”.
And here we have, a gang of thugs tuned into revered members of society who want to break you or kill you, for your own good. What a mind job perpetrated over American brains or what’s left of them.
Most of the police officers are all ardent consumers of the propaganda of goodness of their role and consequently, soothing and necessarily, a cockroach-like status of a human being they deal with daily on the streets.
With all the outcry of ongoing police mass murder of citizenry (any race), sadly a proud tradition of the American police, what officers (most of whom remain borderline clinically mentally ill) are concerned with is a doctor Mengele dilemma is “how to quickly, efficiently and of course legally kill a human being” and not if to kill at all.
What is needed is not more laws, a recipes of how to kill legally, rather less but more humanity however, this is one thing police officer must suppress in order to qualify to become an thug of the “political system enforcement” agency what we wrongly call police.
Humanity is an offense that get you dismissed from the job and in some cases get you charged with all the crimes of your fellow officers and their crimes you disclosed or complained about.
And on the top of it all those lame excuses of fake gullibility of a murderer. If officer feels threatened it is a failure of the police tactics used or supervisor and he must back off. He suppose to be peace officer, bringing peace, lowering tensions and resolve conflict and not under the gun or with the gun.
Those who cannot understand that nothing in their job is personal, or challenging their personal egos with words or behavior of a citizen in distress and that they are there to humbly serve public not the law, they must resign immediately.
If it is so horrible, stressful, unappreciated job so what’s the problem to resign. Problem is that they have no alternative to make 100k + retirement as rookie, a new servant of ruling elite and the system, and hence police jobs attract lowlifes and psychos police mafia connected military killers looking to get high on domination over the defenseless.
Lower their salaries to nation average and see them joining criminals en mass they pretend to police now like Rampart scandal showed but do not worry they will be paid and they never will be allowed to fail in their main function intimidation and terror of ordinary citizen, , in order to suppress any political movement or expression of independence that would threaten even minute aspects of absolute corporate power.
But there is more.
Police Story. Part II.
As an addition to important pieces published last year on TD about abhorrent slavery and other scandalous conditions in prisons, I recommend you read a The Intercept four part story about Chicago “Police” and its rampant corruption and blatant crimes, lying in court, false private imprisonment, extortion of money from people for illegal or legal activity, murder, violence also against “fellow” officers and code of silence etc., to understand what this entire school-to-prison conveyor belt called American society is all about.
After reading it you would realize that Police has zero credibility in their work, that we cannot trust even simplest assertion they make, not to mention, suspicion of committing crime or a guilt of a person of breaking this or that law. Zero credibility!
And if it only was another bad Apple, No. It is the same as Rampart division LAPD scandal over a decade ago, it is happening everywhere, in every police department there are rogue cliques who take law in their hands literally in criminal cooperation with judges and prosecutors forming local rogue government.
More and more the US regime practices purposeful lawlessness, prison torture and murder chambers are spilling into the streets and include new generation of poor, jobless, homeless and disadvantages people in crisis subjected to atrocities because there is literally no one who speaks for them for their basic constitutional rights at all.
In fact in the US, constitutional protection is awarded as a privilege proportionally to your wealth, class and social status, meaning whether or not you are a crony of power and affluence.
And this is how it connects back to prisons and inhumane treatment of the people caged there. I am convinced 99%, regardless of factual involvement in specific crimes, are there unlawfully with violation of their constitutional rights, the law itself and are victims of lies and coercion of the judicial and law enforcement system for political, classist, racist, economic or cultural and just for a reason of utter disdain to a fellow human being.
No social justice is under court consideration anymore, anywhere just political expediency, greed, racism, hatred and discrimination against weak and unable to properly defend themselves.
For me this recent CHPD scandal is an example that so-called law enforcement is not about enforcing any laws however beneficial to community one may argue, but to gain economically from extortion while enforcing rule of political regime like it was in Soviet Union.
For that service to the rulers, all the so-called law enforcement agencies are busy running local extortion rackets on a side, threatening marginalized participants of white, gray and black market of collapsed mainstream economy, as well as so-called law-abiding citizen with assassination, jail, beating or big fines for nothing.
It starts at highway patrol and baseless tickets or speed traps; to local police routinely instigating crimes they committed by themselves or their own provocations/coercion that would never occur otherwise, to violation of civil rights and human right with impunity and that includes excessive lethal force and murder inside and outside of the prison system, while officially paying themselves benefits and overtime for investigating their own crimes like KGB thugs and their criminal rackets because both of those outfits served to preserve respective abhorrent regimes founded on violence and lawlessness and hence they criminality could not be touched as vital to the regime.
The Rampart Division scandal in LAPD opened public eyes to cops protecting and illegally imprisoning, torturing, killing, extorting not only drug dealers but by harassing innocent, running over people with police cars, putting in jail after cops staged crime scenes and lied on the stand for years to judges who where also in on the racket. Some of the practices are even shown in a movie “Street Kings” starring Keanu Reeves.
Abhorrent federal coercion tactics are other examples of such a repugnant predatory practice by what we may call, a rogue system-enforcing gangs formerly know as cops.
The egregious example of that is civil forfeiture and outrageous rule of giving forfeited assets to the same police agency that acquired/stole it with no trial or conviction, a practice borrowed from prisons where stealing from inmates is rampant.
This is insane; It is like paying thieve to steal more. Even Canadian government warned of highway robberies in the US by uniformed thugs.
This lawlessness, yes lawlessness perpetrated by law enforcement and courts, and now privatized penitentiary system for profit we are experiencing in nothing but manifestation of disintegration of American society under assault of oligarchic rulers and utter collapse of economy and will only get worse when money pie gets smaller.
In the past very often legal immigrants from totalitarian regimes to US were kindly instructed not to be afraid of cops since unlike in their own country they would not be robbed, beaten or killed by a cop. Those lies have been long exposed.
Similarly to population of prisons even outside of the Walls who are killed with impunity by guards or contract killings by inmates, thousands of people in the US in personal crisis, divorced, jobless, abandoned, mentally ill, over-stressed, hungry, homeless, desperate recidivists unable to make it outside the prison, drug addicts searching for fix mostly unarmed are being hunted and killed by cops “in cold blood” of a professional killer mostly in the poverty ghettos resembling Vietnam “Free Fire Zones” like was village of My Lai.
Yes, it is open undeniable truth that cops are trained killers with somewhat conditional license to kill, they learn in police academy among other things like helping elderly to cross busy street, and to quickly and effectively kill our flesh and blood, living and breathing people like we are. And that’s the fact.
And cops choose this line of work voluntarily and hence as adults are expected to take full responsibility for their actions and stop whining of dangerous work, while they themselves being a mortal danger to American society.
Police Story. Part III.
Where is justice for all victims of cops, we know their names we know them? And still after admitting the act of killing they go free 99% of time, exactly the rate of acquittal of white supremacist police in South Africa killing of blacks few decades ago.
Is this another 99% and 1% divide? Is this another 99% and 1% apartheid?
The problem with policing? Dismantle this police terror machine. Close 90% of prisons and all prisons for profit would be a first step to any form of social justice.
Replace cops as well as prison guards by a peace officers corp. In prison rely of self-governance of inmates within rules described by just rules and laws. Outside prison, no guns, no arrests but negotiation to surrender to a court in rare cases, not even civilian pepper spray, armed with compassion and patience but trained in a conflict resolution, social services, being an advocate of social problems in front of local government, peace officers should be selected by local population and accept full neutrality, no law enforcers but bringers of social justice, giving law a human face recognizing fallibility of a human being before condemning him.
The peace officers goals should be to help community to keep the peace, against bullying, threats and intimidation and exploitation of individuals or corporate or government within the community, and to empower community self-organization.
Those who say that this is a utopian idea, think twice, the brutality within poor communities is 99% a direct results of social injustice, economic collapse and exploitation that produces violent behaviors driven by basic struggle for survival.
One who does not advocate for social justice, social peace in community and in the world cannot be called leftists or progressive, that the redline that cannot be crossed.
It is clear for anyone to see that police force is nothing but a imperial security apparatus of the ruling elite deployed domestically.
They are not here to serve or protect people, they are prohibited from doing so by law, check the fine print, but instead they are to control the population subjugated under imperial power.
Before we condemn so-called criminals, we must realize that Americans live in the social system of power that not only allows but strongly promotes and rewards what’s prohibited in any “normal society” as self-destructive behavior namely brutality, ruthless exploitation of one human being by another even to exhaustion or death for personal monetary profit, domination or social gain as long as ruling elite approves it. If they do not you are called a criminal or terrorist for the same things all “respected” citizens do with impunity.
You spill a gallon of oil on your lawn you go to prison; if you spill millions of gallons of oil you get a presidential medal. If you order killing a man you go to prison if you ordered to kill thousands you get your presidential medal, etc.,
So who is a criminal and who is not? You could be a criminal on a whim of corrupted judge or cop or politicians, who think that people can be divided into three groups: those who are locked up in prison, those who have been locked up in prison and those who will be locked up in prison. That’s the imperial attitude of rulers of a slave nation.
In other words the US oligarchic social system requires from successful Americans to become conman, lowlife, and immoral bastards, as a badge of belonging to the American nation as long as they serve imperial objectives of terror. Everybody else devoid of psychopathic traits wrapped in delusional patriotism is called a looser, a stranger, a traitor, a criminal to be feared, isolated or ignored or killed.
And it is fear that US ruling elites made a quintessential component of American society of lonely atomized “little” people full of loathing and irrational aggression of cornered animal with no way out, trying to please their masters.
The police as a concept, appeared not so long ago as a vital inherent part of the corporate capitalist system of power itself. The police was devised to assure daily safety of the corporate ruling elites and to trim some excesses of otherwise promoted aggressive, violent, exploitative behaviors if directed in the wrong social direction, such as from poor toward the rich.
If brutality of capitalist exploitation is promoted to the extremes like in the prisons and US society at large, policing takes a form of more raw brutal intervention aimed solely to redirect system-promoted high levels of exploitation induced aggression and anger toward the victims themselves.
And hence high levels of violence in poor communities, while police role is limited to those of instigators and undertakers i.e. creating a conflict and collecting bodies, arresting whoever, just to fill in the reports, and they do nothing for social peace, since this is not their legal prerogative, only to protect rich and serve opulent.
The stories of prison strikes, bringing to the fore the system of slavery that exists also in similar form outside prisons, Chicago Police story is also happening everywhere and such a public disclosure on TD and TIC did in this case is need for all American to see reality of this abhorrent irredeemable US regime that cannot be reformed since there are too many vested monetary and power interest protecting it and hence must be completely overthrown and we must start everything including self-policing from scratch.
BLM – criminal organization, all I had to say.
That’s all you had to say because you are literally not capable of backing it up with facts or reason. How convenient, then.
Worse than criminals perhaps?
The FBI’s New U.S. Terrorist Threat: ‘Black Identity Extremists’
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/06/the-fbi-has-identified-a-new-domestic-terrorist-threat-and-its-black-identity-extremists/
Oh my!
Prove it.
Cops can be criminals…who murder children & lie about it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dw0EMLM1XRI
Nailed it.
“[W]hy isn’t the government pursuing cost-saving measures that would also better people’s lives?”
Are you kidding? That question totally ignores the premise of what Vitale is saying. The cops aren’t here mainly to protect people, they’re here to protect property and those who own it.
I demand that government solve everything I think is a problem in a groovy progressive way. Too bad Trump is a meanie and won’t allow progressive solutions to the police state created by progressive politicians. But, don’t worry – government can solve the problem that is government. I mean after all, we are all authoritarians that can agree we need police to punish whoever we think is bad, right? We all enjoy seeing the cops beat the shit out of our political enemies, right? I think with a little diversity training and more violence directed at white people to even out the statistics, the police state can work just as any progressive concerned with efficiency and expert management could ever exepect! If we could just get guns out of the hands of people on the street and into the hands of the police, we would be better off – that’s progressive as hell, right?
Uhhh…Trump & his cronies ARE the state now…or did you sleep through the election last year?
His work is so inspiring. I hope you interview him again. Thanks for the story.
As part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) program to persecute and assassinate Arabs, Muslims, and American political dissidents the New York City Police (NYPD) , without warrants, twice in six months raided my apartment at gun-point after breaking its door.
They left a hand-written confession with the word “intel”, and the name of a high official of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as the person that sent them.
My complaints to NYC Mayor William de Blasio, Police Commissioner William Bratton, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, and the Civilian Complaint Review Board were ignored.
Lawyers and news groups that I contacted ran away at the mention of FISA.
Who are the terrorists ?
I’ve been trying hard the last couple years not to use that old porcine pejorative for police more commonly heard during the Johnson/Nixon era. It’s increasingly difficult though given their brutal behavior everywhere, like when St. Louis cops intentionally trampled that older white-haired lady as if she wasn’t there – just because she couldn’t move faster. If some police can already ignore themselves stomping on grandmothers, it’s only logical they’d also have no problem killing kids “in the line of duty.”
Welcome to The Intercept, Rashmee, I look forward to more of your work!
Agreed. This is really excellent reporting/interviewing. This author is really on top of his subject. What a relief to read intelligent responses to questions, instead of the usual “I think we can, I think we can,” neoliberal, mind-numbing claptrap.
Police cannot take the place of the family to train the next generation in how to live with one another. The parents of the next generation bear responsibility to train the young in respcting the other person and to have values that lead to productive lives. The police are not to cat as a drain plug to stop up aberrant and criminal behavior.
So parenting is the problem plaguing America then?
In part, now that we cannot afford two parents at home anymore. We donot want Bigguvmt— what is done to reverse it?? The corporate tax lowering suggestion will make things worse— it will take time to observe that. More death and pain.
Roll over…you’re snoring.
Presumably, those who designed it are liking the results. So as long as the same people remain in charge, don’t expect anything to change.
> So as long as the same people remain in charge, don’t expect anything to change.
are you suggesting that positive change could occur if different people were in charge? what a strange idea. i’ve been so busy blocking traffic and shutting down speakers and generally RESISTING that the thought never occurred to me
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” — George Washington
“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.”
Benjamin Franklin
We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
Benjamin Franklin
The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.
Benjamin Franklin
Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.” Thomas Jefferson.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson
A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
Thomas Jefferson
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
Thomas Jefferson
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
Thomas Jefferson
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
Thomas Jefferson
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
Thomas Jefferson
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security,” Thomas Jefferson wrote this in the Declaration of Independence .
Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
James Madison
A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.
James Madison
Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
James Madison
In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
James Madison
The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.
James Madison
The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
James Madison
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
James Madison
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
Patrick Henry
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.
Patrick Henry
For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it.
Patrick Henry
We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature has placed in our power… the battle, sir, is not to the strong alone it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.
Patrick Henry
“We the People are the rightful masters of BOTH Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution”
Abraham Lincoln
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln
Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
Abraham Lincoln
The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
Abraham Lincoln
“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.”
President John F. Kennedy
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
April 27, 1961
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Albert Einstein
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. Albert Einstein
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning
. Albert Einstein
WAKE UP AMERICA
Sigh. With that long-winded post, you just put America to sleep.
Long-winded, yes, and probably also ineffective alone at changing anyone’s mind, but still not worthless! This IS a useful compendium of the America’s founder’s quotations on liberty, freedom and governance. Thanks gezzerx!
Criminal justice relies on junk crimes and manufactured felonies of addicts. There is no rationale for criminalizing victimless vices that connote primitive tribalism. Alcohol is legal while other drug offenders are criminals. Adultery is legal while lesser sins such as sex work are illegal. Skinner-box gambling is legal while sports wagering is illegal.
America is a retrograde society that can’t even envision the plausibility of a solution for the drug war and hence eliminating the epidemical availability of
opiates that this fake war produces. The drug war is a manifestation of puritan fundamentalism and attendant sumptuary proscriptions. State-sponsored narcophobia has gaslighted the masses into advocating the Protestant version of Sharia law, a direct infringement on the Establishment Clause.
As the article noted, criminal justice is a philosophically worthless system at best and a crime-breeding enormity at worst. An archaic system based upon retributive deserts and no systemic deterrence. One can choose between a system based upon demagogic emotional rescues or one based upon public safety and deterrence. Criminal justice views punishment as an outcome to enrich the fear-industrial biz, whereas a public-safety system views punishment as a tool to maximize deterrence via elevated risk perception and surety of cage-free deserts. Only magical thinking could believe public safety is a byproduct of willy-nilly convictions.
Well-said. I call it “gold-plated Puritanism.” Also, see Max Weber for Protestantism and Capitalism as the dynamic duo.
Largely agree, but the “drug war” is an end unto itself, not a problem seeking a solution. That’s an important angle from which to view the situation if one wants to know what’s really going on. This author did a good job of providing that angle and outlined the beginnings of the drug war as merely the latest way to control ‘undesirable’ populations.
The drug war has enriched and/or provided income for people who will not let it end: cops and their supporters, the prison industrial complex, and large drug dealers & the politicians who do their bidding. Drugs SHOULD be legal, but the roadblocks to making them so are enormous.
Professor Vitale would have us believe that American capitalism could somehow exist without racist police terror. He’s wrong.
That is one of the “third rail” truths that almost never see the light of day in this country. Almost all civilizations and societies have them; the dysfunctional ones anyway. But the inherent evil of socialism, to say nothing of communism, and the presumed rightness of what we call “capitalism” in the U.S. are not things we’re allowed to question in almost every conceivable venue – and even the places where it can be discussed are being systematically eliminated.
In addition to Intel pricks, police are a extension of the military that operates domestically.
Look at build up top appointed officials. We are the enemy.
“… policing as an institution reinforces race and class inequalities by design.”
Exactly! That’s all you need to know about this issue. Cops are the army of the rich (to quote punk rock band MDC), and no amount or number of Milquetoast reforms is going to fix that problem. Community policing by people who actually live in the communities is the way to go; this would eliminate the “occupying army” factor of policing. And oh yeah, demilitarize the cops too.
> Community policing by people who actually live in the communities
right, there’s never any crime in mafia neighborhoods, so there’s the paradigm. no reason why black neighborhoods can’t be policed by black gangsters. some gated communities have their own security — “Zimmerman was the neighborhood watch coordinator in his gated community; Martin was temporarily staying there and was shot there” — but we don’t need no stinking gates
No he wasn’t. He wasn’t even a member of a Neighborhood Watch organization at all, much less some leader. He had called police some 40 times while prowling around the neighborhood looking for people to accost. That would be a red flag to any organized Neighborhood Watch group.
http://thegrio.com/2012/03/21/zimmerman-not-a-member-of-recognized-neighborhood-watch-organization/
My quote is from the Wikipedia article on Zimmerman, and there are three citations at the end of it, which I haven’t looked at. But, ok, if we assume he was only someone who actually lives in the community, that’s all Jeff D requires. Same result.
No, that’s not “same result.” The communities aren’t going to be allowing insane CopWanaBe stalkers like Zimmerman to do whatever the hell they like, continuing to run around with the same biases, bigotry resulting in actions leading to death and abuse of others in the community. Communities are capable of organizing with people in their communities who aren’t sociopaths. That’s the whole point.
“As Zimmerman acted as part of an unofficial group (or perhaps alone), he was free to make decisions without the benefit to his community of being vetted by police. Ultimately leaders of individual groups — if they are official groups — are responsible for asking police to run routine checks on new members.”
that’s from your link. i think your concept of real world “communities” might be outdated
Zimmerman is a liar and a murderer. You might want to check you sanity.
you might want to learn how to read. or unlearn how to write
How could I do one without having already done the other?
And once again, as usual, droug dismisses facts inconvenient to his (extremely tired) rightwing narratives with the wave of a hand.
I believe that I agree with your premise…that having local yokels as cops isn’t a good idea. Florida, though…might as well be a mafia community.
I don’t know what you mean by “local yokels,” but my premise is that I want cops as they are to be abolished and replaced with people who live in the communities. Cops are unwanted occupying armies in the hoods, and I experienced this firsthand when I lived in one. The details of how this would be done can be worked out: for example, create actual neighborhood watch groups — not the primarily racist and hysterical ones that exist now — who can decide how to secure their own neighborhoods. This would create a much better situation for poor and non-white neighborhoods.
for more of WSWS’ analysis of race, class, and police violence, see:
https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/socialIssuesCategory/us-police/
Rashmee:
Obama administration whitewashes police killings
https://preview.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/03/poli-m03.html
The end of policing MAY be possible, but it’ll be a LONG time coming because the ultra-rich want and demand a police force and they’re the only ones, in this modern era, who get ANY of what they want. We, The People, only get bread crumbs enough to prevent revolt. In fact, the Republican approach seems to have been, for many decades now, to chip away and ween us off FDR’s reforms, and the Dems, all too often, have let them do it. Sure, Dems squawk about progressive reforms but haven’t since FDR put in any real effort into any of them. In modern times, when both Clinton and later Obama had both houses of congress AND the presidency, we saw no full-throated progressive initiatives. We didn’t even get reasonable infrastructure funding.
No, it’s up to us. If we are to see the role of the police state diminish, it’s going to only happen because we’re IN THE STREETS.
The only good news of late is that FINALLY we have a large group who are fed up who are willing to get into the streets; the millennials! YAY! … I may be grey now, but I’ll be out there hobbling along in the streets with you! … We MUST all come together to do this. Set aside for now your arguments with whoever along that right / left wing continuum and instead focus your efforts on convincing everyone possible to join together to end the tyranny of the ultra-rich and take back our democracy.
Unfortunately, the chanting question, “Who’s Democracy?” is answerable today only as “THEIR ‘Democracy’!” – they being the ultra-rich. And we must change that!
“You have Hillary who’s called black teens or black kids super predators.”
– Colin Kaepernick
No police or police State, radical left or right, stark chooses. End of the loaf policies many slices in the center that are better and might even be accomplished. Many good points in this article some ideas, we need new policy but we will also need protection from human nature by both good policing and governance, we are currently lacking in both.
I haven’t read the book, but the premise seems a bit outlandish. Oh, I understand the anarchistic sentiment to get rid of coercive power, I do — but if you look closely, even anarchists usually have a police force by some other name waiting in the wings, whether it is the vicious Pinkertons of the “anarcho-capitalist” deviation, the black-clad “direct action” people from the ALF, or simply an armed and responsible populace acting as individuals per the most unspoiled variants of the doctrine. So long as people are anything short of absolute pacifists who sing religious hymns to their slaughter, they use violence. And that violence they attempt to regulate, coordinate, and make more efficient, i.e. policing.
None of that means that Ferguson is OK or the War on Drugs is sane. They are not. Nor does it mean that using violence simply for power, like the government suffocating a guy for selling some loose cigarettes to keep him from “getting away” makes sense. Nor do this exclude the occasional terrorist-errant acting in opposition to the government where it is deeply unjust. But it does mean that when we see police acting properly, that can be viewed as a step in the right direction rather than as a useless attempt to refine what is impossible to do.
If we could simply pluck the low-hanging fruit – e.g. end drug Prohibition, end violations of free speech like the copyright system, end punitive jailing and focus on genuine rehabilitation treating criminals as sick, and deeply reform the crooked game we call capitalism – then police would be almost universally welcomed throughout all communities, and would rarely be seen as the source of problems or as racist oppressors. With further philosophical development there is no reason why their actions couldn’t be universally, even provably seen as rational and defensible, and things that anyone in the community could and ought to do also. In that sense, if a society of reason is developed, then policing would wither away into the general fabric of a healthy society.
I agree completely- in the absence of police something else- often worse- often springs up
That’s a very ethnocentric and thus very limited point of view. Other (i.e., more traditional) societies have “security” people, but they’re not cops, and there’s a huge difference. You clearly don’t get the major premises of Vitale’s work: 1) cops mainly function to protect property and those who own it; 2) those who run society have allowed cops to operate with impunity; 3) cops are often racist and their impunity has allowed them to act on their racist tendencies without repercussions.
It will be nearly impossible reforming the police with the current economic inequality in the nation. People who benefit from this inequality are depending on the police to enforce their privileges. Recent Supreme Court decisions making money a part of American democracy increases the difficulty in reforming police so that the police primary function is to “protect and serve” rather than enforce the current economic and social order.