The Militarization of our Police – and the Occupy Movement

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Sat Nov-19-11 10:25 PM
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The Militarization of our Police – and the Occupy Movement

I look at individual policemen as no better and no worse than most other people. Like all professions, people go into this line of worked for a variety of mixed motives. Some are altruistic and brave, and take very seriously their obligation to protect people from all walks of life – not just the upper 1%. At the other extreme, some enjoy the power to hurt people, and do so if and when they get a chance to do so with impunity. In between are those who would like to do the right thing, but who nevertheless obey orders that they know are wrong, because of concern that failing to do so could cost them their jobs – or worse.

The problem is that, at this time in our history, the system is heavily rigged in favor of the elite 1% – those who have the money to buy the support of the politicians who control much of the actions of the police. The end result is that police actions often act to protect the interests of those 1%, against the interests of the rest of us. That fact is captured by Laurie Penny in an article titled “At Zuccotti Park, Police Protect the One Percent”:

The notion that law enforcement is there to protect a wealthy elite from the rest of the population is not news to those protesters from deprived and ethnic minority backgrounds, many of whom have been subject to intimidation in their communities for years, but for those from more privileged backgrounds, the first spurt of pepper spray to the face is an important education in the nature of the relationship between state and citizen in the west. "Who do you guys work for?" Shouts one Manhattan protester, as police load arrestees into a van. "You work for JP Morgan Bank!"

Penny notes the reality of how unpopular governments abuse their power in times of crisis in order to serve their own ends:

In times of economic and democratic crisis, it makes sense for faltering governments to use police violence and the threat of arrest to bully citizens into compliance.

However, such actions entail cost and risk:

In the context of protest… police harassment has… other important effects. The first and most important of these is consciousness-raising. The spectacle of police beating and brutalizing unarmed civilians for the crime of sitting on the pavement and demanding a fairer world brings home the point of the struggle to public and protesters alike…Attacks on peaceful protesters rarely make the police or government look anything but weak and cowardly, and have tended only to increase public support for civil disobedience.

Abuses of power

New York – Zuccotti Park
An article in theguardian provides a good summary of how protesters were cleared out of Zuccotti Park:

Officers with helmets and shields arrived around 1 a.m., set up floodlights and ordered the 200 or so activists to leave or face arrest… Some reports said a few locked themselves to items. Police surrounded this small group and removed them around 3.30 a.m. After the camp was emptied, teams cleared away tents and other possessions.

In the process, several abuses of government power appear to have taken place. First and foremost was the decision of Mayor Bloomberg to forcibly evict peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech. Bloomberg rationalized his actions by claiming that his decision was made in the name of public safety. But there is little evidence that public safety was at risk, or that eviction of the protesters was needed to achieve the goal of public safety. New York public advocate Bill de Blasio issued a statement bearing on this issue:

Protecting public safety and quality of life for downtown residents, and guaranteeing free expression are not exclusive of one another. Mayor Bloomberg made a needlessly provocative and legally questionable decision to clear Zuccotti Park in the dead of night… Provocations under cover of darkness only escalate tensions in a situation that calls for mediation and dialogue… I call on the Mayor to find a sustainable resolution – as other cities have done – that allows for the exercise of free speech and assembly, with respect for the rights of all New Yorkers to peaceful enjoyment of our great city.

There was evidence of unnecessary violence:

Some protesters and press who managed to leave the area reported that they saw officers beating and stepping on demonstrators… Police have used tear gas to remove the last protesters from the park, according to various reports. Josh Harkinson appears closest to the action. He tweeted:

The riot police moved in with zip cuffs and tear-gassed the occupiers in the food tent.
Then they wrestled them to the ground and cuffed them.

Confiscating personal items is another form of intimidation often used by government to silence protest:

Many have complained about not being allowed to remove their tents and personal items from the park, saying many of these, including valuable and personal items, have been taken away for disposal.

Mayor Bloomberg’s claim to be concerned about the First Amendment rights of the protesters is contradicted by his strong desire to prevent information on his eviction from reaching the public:

There have been numerous reports today that accredited journalists were prevented from witnessing the eviction of Zuccotti Park. Bloomberg is asked about this: he says the action was taken to "protect the members of the press. We have to provide protection and we have done exactly that.”

One reporter reported the following:

He then says he was ordered to leave by police, despite saying he was a member of the media. All press had to go to a press pen, officers told him. There doesn't appear to be any media access to the final removals of protesters.

Bloomberg’s professed concern for the rule of law is seriously called into question by his refusal to obey a court order:

that prevents the city authorities and the owners of Zuccotti Park from evicting protesters from Zuccotti Park. According to the New York Times the order also prevents the authorities from preventing protesters from returning to Zuccotti Park. The city is also barred from "enforcing 'rules' published after occupation began".

But despite the court order, when protesters began marching back to Zuccotti Park after hearing about the court order:

Despite the court order apparently allowing protesters back into Zuccotti Park, police are resolutely preventing protesters from retaking the plaza.

Police violence in Oakland, Seattle, and elsewhere
A marine veteran was seriously injured by a police projectile during a protest in Oakland. From theguardian, on the police response to demonstrations aimed at occupying Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland:

Police have used teargas after scuffles broke out between officers and protesters demonstrating against dozens of arrests at an Occupy Wall Street camp in Oakland, California… At least 85 people were arrested when police used teargas and baton rounds to break up the camp… Reuters reported that police dispersed the crowd with teargas and what appeared to be a stun grenade.

During a protest in Seattle, an 84 year old woman, Dori Rainey, was pepper sprayed by police. Jonathan Jones describes the scene:

She is supported by two men, one on either side, who both lower their faces – one has his eyes closed in self-protection, the other wears defensive goggles – in what may be a sensible precaution to avoid getting sprayed themselves, but which also looks like a gesture of compassion…

It’s difficult to see why police would need to pepper spray an 84 year old woman in the interests of public safety.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian Online describes how similar crackdowns are being coordinated with the help of our federal government, across the United States:

As cities across America evict encampments of the Occupy Wall Street movement, similarities of timing, talking points and tactics among major metropolitan mayors and police chiefs have led critics to wonder: Is some sort of national coordination going on? The White House says there’s no federal oversight…

But a little-known but influential private membership based organization has placed itself at the center of advising and coordinating the crackdown on the encampments. The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), an international non-governmental organization with ties to law enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has been coordinating conference calls with major metropolitan mayors and police chiefs to advise them on policing matters and discuss response to the Occupy movement. The group has distributed a recently published guide on policing political events… The coordination of political crackdowns on the Occupy movement has been conducted behind closed doors, with city officials and PERF refusing to say how many cities participated in the conference calls and the exact nature of the discussions…

A former chief of police (Seattle) speaks out about the militarization of our police

Norm Stamper, former Seattle Chief of Police, recently wrote one of the best articles I’ve read on the problem with police in our country today. He begins the article, “Paramilitary Policing from Seattle to Occupy Wall Street”, by noting that the primary mission of our police should be to protect people, and acknowledging that, as Seattle’s Chief of Police during the globalization protests in Seattle in 1999, he over-reacted to the protests with excessive force, which led to disastrous consequences. He then turns to the police response to the Occupy movement in our country today:

More than a decade later, the police response to the Occupy movement, most disturbingly visible in Oakland – where scenes resembled a war zone and where a marine remains in serious condition from a police projectile – brings into sharp relief the acute and chronic problems of American law enforcement. Seattle might have served as a cautionary tale, but instead, US police forces have become increasingly militarized, and it’s showing in cities everywhere: the NYPD “white shirt” coating innocent people with pepper spray, the arrests of two student journalists at Occupy Atlanta, the declaration of public property as off-limits and the arrests of protesters for “trespassing.”

Stamper notes that this problem is rooted in a military model used for our police forces today. And he describes the consequences of this:

The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force – not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country…

It helps to explain why persistent, patterned misconduct, including racism, sexism, homophobia, brutality, perjury and corruption, do not go away, no matter how many blue-ribbon panels are commissioned or how much training is provided.

He notes two political factors as being at least partially responsible for this: the drug war and the military mentality engendered by the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001:

External political factors are also to blame, such as the continuing madness of the drug war. Last year police arrested 1.6 million nonviolent drug offenders. In New York City alone almost 50,000 people (overwhelmingly black, Latino or poor) were busted for possession of small amounts of marijuana – some of it, we have recently learned, planted by narcotics officers. The counterproductive response to 9/11, in which the federal government began providing military equipment and training even to some of the smallest rural departments, has fueled the militarization of police forces. Everyday policing is characterized by a SWAT mentality, every other 911 call a military mission. What emerges is a picture of a vital public-safety institution perpetually at war with its own people. The tragic results – raids gone bad, wrong houses hit, innocent people and family pets shot and killed by police – are chronicled in Radley Balko’s excellent 2006 report “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America”.

He points out the sad fact that the police have as much to gain from the Occupy movement as do the protesters:

It is ironic that those police officers who are busting up the Occupy protesters are themselves victims of the same social ills the demonstrators are combating: corporate greed; the slackening of essential regulatory systems; and the abject failure of all three branches of government to safeguard civil liberties and to protect, if not provide, basic human needs like health, housing, education and more…. Many cops are finding themselves out of work. And, as many Occupy protesters have pointed out, even as police officers help to safeguard the power and profits of the 1 percent, police officers are part of the 99 percent…

The root of the problem

As I noted at the beginning of this post, most individual police are probably no worse or no better than most other people. But the system that currently controls them is corrupt to its core. We now live in a plutocracy rather than a democracy, and that tragic fact is evident in almost all facets of American life today.

We theoretically live in a democracy, in which the people govern themselves. But our votes mean little if we don’t have the information necessary to cast them intelligently. An elite oligarchy, through their money, controls so much of the information that we receive, that they thereby control, to a very large extent, who we elect to represent us. Because our system allows them, more than ever, to “influence” our elected officials through their money, they essentially have the power to buy the legislation that they need to further increase their wealth and power, in a seemingly endless vicious cycle. Since our system is so thoroughly corrupt, it appears that there is little or no hope of changing it by means of working within that system. What that means is that our only hope is for we, the people, to take matters into our own hands, by trying to inform our fellow Americans about the roots of our problems, so that we can work together towards solutions.

Our police, as part of a thoroughly corrupt system, are a large part of the problem. But they are not the root of our problem. Stamper recognizes our rotten system when he says:

I’m convinced it is possible to create a smart organizational alternative to the paramilitary bureaucracy that is American policing. But that will not happen unless, even as we cull “bad apples” from our police forces, we recognize that the barrel itself is rotten.

Stamper goes on to talk about the need to build “a progressive police organization” that would “forge an authentic partnership”…. And “move beyond the endless justifications for maintaining the status quo”. He ends by asking us to:

imagine the community and its cops united in the effort to responsibly “police” the Occupy movement. Picture thousands of people gathered to press grievances against their government and the corporations, under the watchful, sympathetic protection of their partners in blue.

That’s all very well and good, but is it plausible to believe that the police have the potential to separate themselves from the system that currently controls them, thus freeing themselves to serve the American people instead of the American oligarchy? That would be great. Perhaps it will happen. It’s happened before – large sections of the police and/or military joining peoples’ rebellions against repressive governments. Things have to get pretty bad before that happens. We may be reaching that point.