Police rights vs. citizens right—guess which will the rulers favor?

Michael Brown and Officer Darren Wilson receiving an award from Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson.

The Justice Option

John Grant

[T]here was a moment during MSNBC’s live coverage of Ferguson, Missouri, Monday night through 2AM Tuesday morning when Chris Hayes and one of his guests conceded the police (now augmented by National Guard troops said to be guarding a police command center) begrudgingly deserved a good grade because — unlike riots in Newark and Los Angeles — no one had been killed. This was after cops had “barked” at Hayes and threatened him with macing if he and his camera crew dared again venture “in front of” the police.

It was about this time rumors surfaced that the police were planning to announce Tuesday morning new rules for media on the street. Frustrated police were beginning to take the usual position and blame the media for the persistent protests in Ferguson. Hayes wondered on-air what that might mean; he was concerned what the police would do without cameras covering their actions. Was the media creating disrespect for the police? Or was it the unaddressed murder of an 18-year-old African American manchild?

I’ve watched an awful lot of cable news over the past week, and Ferguson, Missouri, for me, is an amazing public collision of citizens rights and police power. One of the ironies of Monday night was how critical Shepard Smith of Fox News and a couple of his on-the-street reporters were of the police.

“There’s not a bit of professionalism across the street from me,” said one of the on-the-street Fox reporters live at around 10:30PM Ferguson time, referring to the gathered cops in military garb and gas masks. “I can’t see what’s provoking the police.” Until that moment, protesters had been ordered only to keep moving — not to stop and cluster up — a command one might hear from guards in a volatile prison public area.

Both MSNBC and Fox felt the police had not been provoked at 10PM Ferguson time when they suddenly collected en-mass in warrior mode and started demanding on loudspeakers for protesters to leave the area. Soon, the flash bang grenades came out, the tear gas, the use of spooky L-RAD sound blasters — all intended to force protesters to flee. As Hayes pointed out with a chuckle, having gotten a snootful of tear gas and fled himself, as far as clearing a street “this stuff really works.”

It seemed clear to me sitting at home as it did to the reporters on the street and to the angry protesters themselves, that the police authorities had decided at 10PM Ferguson time that aggressive police action would begin. A midnight-to-5AM curfew had been lifted, but in effect what they did amounted to the same thing, a midnight curfew as a fact-on-the-ground. Dissipated stragglers could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

This is what has become of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. All of us opposed to the Iraq, Afghanistan and terror wars since 9/11 have seen it grow on our streets for over a decade. It can only be described as a police state of control as to when and how citizens will be permitted to express their First Amendment rights. By now, many of us are very familiar with one of the most absurd elements of this regime: The First Amendment Zone.

It’s a place usually at some remove from the entity to be protested; at least, it’s far enough away that the people being protested will not be disturbed my the voices of protest. (That is, unless it’s protests against abortion clinics; in that case, the courts and police seem fine allowing the angry voices as close as possible.) The First Amendment Zones are usually fenced off with portable iron railings and cattle chute assemblies supervised by police squads.

The goal is self-evident: To contain and control the protesting. Police PR likes to call all this “protecting first amendment rights.” They have no doubt convinced themselves and pat themselves on the back that what they’re doing is “protecting”. And they have the guns, the courts and the jail cells to back themselves up. But who and what are they really protecting?

In Ferguson, you see police leading all formal protests. This has been the case with all demonstrations in Philadelphia. A police captain leads the march. This supports the idea that the police are allowing the march, as they put it, protecting the citizens’ rights. I helped negotiate with a Civil Affairs police captain the large march in Philadelphia on February 15, 2003. The captain, who I actually like, walked ahead of the entire march. This has always been a little hard for me to stomach. It removes any sense of “edge” for the march. It becomes safe. Let’s be honest, this idea that the police are “protecting” our First Amendment Rights is nonsense. It’s like the burly, insulting cop who demands you move “for your own protection.” Both you and he know very well he’s the only one threatening you. It’s like the old protection racket logic: Pay me “protection” or I’ll burn your bar down.

This kind of relationship is now well established across the land, and the rise of the warrior cop only raises the ante. Who grants a citizen his or her constitutional rights? Is it the police? Or are those rights extended to citizens by a venerable social contract established by actual revolutionaries in the 18th century. As Missouri governor Jay Nixon put it when he sent in the National Guard, his concern was “to respond appropriately to incidents of lawlessness and violence, and protect the civil rights of all peaceful citizens to make their voices heard.”

There’s a lot of ambiguity and wiggle room in that statement, certainly enough for pumped-up warrior cops, MRAPS, tear gas and L-RAD sound guns to establish zones and allocated times for First Amendment expression. And enough room to abuse the Constitution. Who decides what “appropriately” means? What constitutes “incidents of lawlessness and violence?” How does a police force define “peaceful citizens” when the anger level is so high?

The governor appointed a fine, sensitive African American man to run the security in Ferguson, State Trooper Captain Ron Johnson. But is Johnson really in charge? As Hayes put it in his witty fashion, “it’s like there’s a Game Of Thrones power struggle going on here.” There’s local police forces that seem to be protecting Officer Darren Wilson; there’s the state forces under Governor Nixon, who is said not to be a great friend of the African American community; and there’s the federal forces under President Obama and Attorney General Holder. In a climate of conflicting power lines, police power naturally trumps the confusion. And outside agitators become a very convenient source of the problem.

OK, Ferguson is not Tiananmen Square by a long mile. Our warrior cops have figured out how to use technology to control crowds without gunning people down with automatic weapons. Still, our police forces in Ferguson appear to have the identical goal as the anti-democratic forces in Tiananmem Square, which is to break up and disperse an embarrassing outburst of citizen rage and the hope for change it implies.

As many voices have expressed over the past week on MSNBC and other venues, there is a pretty easy way to dissipate the fury on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. It’s chrystal clear to me. One 37-year-old Ferguson resident named Antione Watson put it this way to the New York Times:

“I don’t see an end to all this until there are charges against the cop.”

Stop hiding the man and covering up his actions while undermining the character of his victim. Arrest Officer Darren Wilson for murder and put him into the clutches of the same criminal justice system you would have put young black Michael Brown if the roles had been reversed. It’s called Justice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Source URL: http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/2416

Militarism Is a Public Safety Crisis

In Ferguson and Beyond

police-state

by DAVID SWANSON

[P]eace and justice organizations in St. Louis, Mo. and across the country are calling for collective action this Saturday, August 16, 2014 at 1 p.m. They are proposing “nationwide solidarity actions in support of justice for Mike Brown and the end of police and extrajudicial killings everywhere.” We have been asked to gather at locations where our community members lost their lives at the hands of police and demand justice. And we should all join in.

But “nationwide” and “everywhere” are odd terms to equate when discussing U.S. police militarization. Are we against extrajudicial killings (otherwise known as murder) by U.S. government employees in Pakistan? Yemen? Iraq? The militarization of local police in the U.S. is linked to the militarization of U.S. foreign policy: Bomb (or do nothing.) Just like the U.S. military, and using many of the same weapons, gear and equipment, local police have a similar policy: Shoot. Never mind questions. This is a public safety crisis.

Local police are being militarized as a result of many factors, including:

But policing is not the only thing militarized by what President Eisenhower called the “total influence — economic, political, even spiritual” of the military industrial complex. For example, our news is militarized with constant analyses by military and pro-war talking heads. Our entertainment is militarized with shows like The Unit and Band of Brothers. Our education is increasingly militarized as even our grade-school children are sent by underfunded schools to Army bases to learn science, math engineering and technology through the STARBASE Program.

“Unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex” is not easily opposed while simultaneously maintaining the military industrial complex. When Congress Members lend their support to a new war in Iraq while proposing that the U.S. Post Office and a dozen other decent things not be defunded, they are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. The United States cannot live like other wealthy nations while dumping $1 trillion a year into a killing machine.

The way out of this cycle of militarized madness is to confront, unified and coherent, what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the three “evils”: Racism, extreme materialism and militarism. The issue is not racism, extreme materialism, and what the military does to the local police. Not racism, extreme materialism, and what the military does to weapons testing sites. Not racism, extreme materialism, and what the military does to the people of Honduras, Iraq or Syria. Not any of these partial steps alone, but the whole package of interlocking evils of attitude and mindset must be confronted. Militarism is a tremendous public safety issue.

There is a no-fly-zone over Ferguson, Mo., because people in the U.S. government, from which local police forces take their cues, view the people of the United States increasingly as they view the people of other countries: as best controlled from the air. The War Resisters Leaguenoted this view is perpetuated by police militarization programs, such as DoD 1033 and 1122 and the Urban Areas Security Initiative, in which the St. Louis Police participate, that train, equip and arm police departments from Pentagon supplies and directives. In an August 13, 2014 statement of condemnation of the militarized lockdown of Ferguson, Mo., the WRL stated, “…the violence of policing and militarism are inextricably bound. To realize justice and freedom as a condition for peace, we must work together to end police militarization and violence.”

Peace and justice organizations in St. Louis, Mo. are asking communities nationwide to memorialize lives lost to extrajudicial police killings this Saturday at 1 p.m. The WRL is organizing against Urban Shield, an expo of military weapons for police and training event planned for Oakland, Calif., this September 4-8. Find your local organizations or events and join us in demanding, and building, comprehensive public safety policies to end militarism and nurture justice.

David Swanson’s new book is War No More: The Case for Abolition.

The Militarization of the Police Has Produced a Murder Machine

— Paul Craig Roberts

POLICE-STATE-USA-The-Paranoid-Style-of-American-Governance

[U]pdate: Here is a report on the autopsy. http://rt.com/usa/181116-brown-presser-baden-preliminary-autopsy/ The facts directly contradict the false information police apologists are sending around the Internet. Note that the Missouri governor blamed the violence on the black community, not on the police who enraged the black community by gratuitously murdering a black teenager. One reader suggested that the macho goon thug cops with their military gear should be sent to Iraq where ISIS would cut them to ribbons.

I wasn’t surprised at some of the crude comments and hatred expressed toward blacks that came from a few white male anti-immigration Republicans in response to my article Cops Gone Wild. A few were so choked with rage over a “f****** pinko-liberal-commie” who would take the side of a “black bully thief” over the police that they never read beyond the introductory comment about Ferguson. Criticizing police can ignite the same kind of hysterical hatred as criticizing the Israeli governments murders of Palestinians.

As readers know, I often emphasize that a significant percentage of the population is incapable of thought and rational response. They want to hear what they want to hear and go into a rage when they don’t. They read not to learn but to have their ignorant biases substantiated.

Perhaps this is the way Americans have always been. However, it seems to me that it is much worse today than I remember from earlier decades. However mindless Americans might have been in the past, they seem much more so today.

Indeed, the media seems to speak with one voice–the government’s. Even academic freedom has been terminated in universities. There are so many examples.

dePaulUniv-Dennis H. HoltschneiderDePaulPres

DePaul’s Dennis H. Holtschneider. Disgraceful is the only grade he deserves for his cowardice and overwhelming mediocrity.

One of the most notorious examples is the case of Professor Norman Finkelstein, whose parents were holocaust survivors. Finkelstein, who is Jewish, is a distinguished scholar who became a high profile critic of Israel’s misguided and immoral policies toward the Palestinians. The Zionist Lobby was able to reach into DePaul University, a Catholic university, and cause the cowardly president to overrule the decision of the Political Science Department and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee, supported by the student body, to grant Finkelstein tenure.

Some suspect that the Zionist Lobby bought off the university president with promises of financial support for the university. Whether bribes were combined with threats, the university president, in my opinion, is a person devoid of integrity, and he drove a dagger through the heart of academic freedom and allowed Zionists to determine who receives tenure at DePaul University. Why parents would send their sons and daughters to such a university is beyond me.

Zionist attacks on American academic freedom are routine. Professor William Robinson of the University of California, Santa Barbara, tells the story of his experience with the Zionist Lobby on truth-out.org: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25587-as-repression-escalates-on-us-campuses-an-account-of-my-ordeal-with-the-israel-lobby-and-uc

The Zionist Lobby’s unethical and immoral tactics create massive hostility toward Jews in general. From time to time I receive emails upbraiding me for refusing to blame everything wrong in the world on Jews. The extremism of Zionists prevents many critics of Jews from recognizing the fact that the strongest, most moral voices against Zionist extremism come from Jews themselves including some Israeli citizens and the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz.

Jewish critics of Israel’s behavior cannot be called “anti-semites.” The Zionist Lobby invented a new term for Jews afflicted by a moral conscience–”self-hating Jew.”

The Zionist Lobby with its ridiculous “enforcement organizations,” such as the ADL, by misusing the “anti-semite” accusation have made “anti-semite” and “self-hating Jew” badges of moral honor. Once upon a time “anti-semite” referred to a person who disliked Jews in general and perhaps wished harm to be inflicted on every Jew. Today “anti-semite” means a person who objects to illegal and immoral policies of the Zionist state, the government of which does not speak for all Jews or even for all Israelis.

Zionist focus on silencing their critics because Zionist policies cannot stand examination.

We see a similar response on the part of many Americans who rush blindly to the defense of the police whenever psychopaths with badges murder a black, a hispanic or a homeless person.

The gratuitous violence employed by police is no more justified than the gratuitous violence employed by the Israeli military toward Palestinians. “Law and order conservatives” confuse police accountability with the coddling of criminals and terrorists. They are unable to comprehend that unaccountable police are a greater threat to them than are criminals without badges.

This brief video, sent by a reader, shows how the militarization of US police has produced a murder machine.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/The_Mike_Brown_Shooting_What_You%E2%80%99re_Not_Being_Told/37333/0/38/38/Y/M.html

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

When will they shoot?

by Peter Frase

[D]efenders of the warrior cop in situations like the one in Ferguson, Missouri argue that all of these trappings of military occupation are necessary because of the oh-so-dangerous environment the police supposedly face.

Policing is not the country’s safest job, to be sure. But as the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries shows, it’s far from the most dangerous.

The 2012 data reports that for “police and sheriff’s patrol officers,” the Fatal Injury Rate — that is, the “number of fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers” — was 15.0.
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Lots of people are at risk on the job. But when it comes to cops, they’re mostly a danger to others.

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That includes all causes of death — of the 105 dead officers recorded in the 2012 data, only 51 died due to “violence and other injuries by persons or animals.” Nearly as many, 48, died in “transportation incidents,” i.e., crashing their cars.

Here are some occupations with higher fatality rates than being a cop:

Logging workers: 129.9
Fishers and related fishing workers: 120.8
Aircraft pilots and flight engineers: 54.3
Roofers: 42.2
Structural iron and steel workers: 37.0
Refuse and recyclable material collectors: 32.3
Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers: 24.3
Electrical power-line installers and repairers: 23.9
Farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers: 22.8
Construction laborers: 17.8
Taxi drivers and chauffeurs: 16.2
Maintenance and repairs workers, general: 15.7

And for good measure, some more that approach the allegedly terrifying risks of being a police officer:

First-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers: 14.7
Grounds maintenance workers: 14.2
Athletes, coaches, umpires, and related workers: 13.0

While being a cop might not be all that dangerous, being in the presence of law enforcement certainly is. In 2012, there were a minimum of 410 people killed by police, and that includes only those voluntarily reported to the FBI under the creepy category of “justifiable homicide.” Nobody keeps full and accurate statistics, and the real number is probably closer to 1000.

To put this level of violence in perspective, the total number of murders committed in 2012 by anyone in Canada — a country of 35 million people, with a murder rate that isn’t even particularly low by rich country standards — was 543.

The United States is a dangerous place, and the workplace in particular is far too dangerous for far too many. But if you want to thank someone for bravely facing down danger in order to make your way of life possible, thank your garbage collector or your taxi driver. When it comes to the cops, they’re mostly a danger to others.

Instead of issuing them heavier armor than the occupiers of Iraq and Afghanistan, we should be talking about disarming them in the name of public safety.

How Tyranny Arises

How To Dissipate the Protest in Ferguson