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As a certified
professional, author, teacher, sufferer of addiction, and veteran of
the criminal justice system, you might say I’ve had a front row
seat and a backstage pass to a big show where police, prosecutors,
criminal courts, and prison guards hold the starring roles.
The tragic
murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and all the others sparked a
civil rights rebellion and movement more powerful and meaningful than
any single event in my lifetime. These events are now the face of
American policing and criminal justice policy and the entire world is
watching. The fact is these kinds of abuses have been going on for
years, right in public view.
One of the
most pivotal events of this kind, which we’ve all but
forgotten, is the 1992 beating and torture of Rodney King. We all
watched in almost unbelieving horror as a defenseless King was
viciously, brutally assaulted by an enraged, unmerciful, out of
control gang of criminal attackers - the Los Angeles Police
Department (L.A.P.D.).
We watched in
horror as the mask of moral, heroic, patriotic defenders of public
safety and guardians of civilization slipped to reveal the monsters
underneath.
Subsequent
investigations revealed that this wasn’t just an isolated
incident. This was just the tip of the iceberg and had been going on
for years. But we hit the snooze button and went back to sleep,
especially white America. We changed the channel to our favorite
sitcom, big game, or movie of the week, or went back to the mall to
buy that new gadget we just had to have.
Rodney King
was black, a marginal wage earner, commonly known to engage in
recreational drug use with a handful of minor arrests on his record.
In short, as far as many people were concerned, Rodney King just
didn’t matter. “Yeh, those cops sure did beat that guy
bad, but hey, he didn’t stop when they told him to and, well,
they are the cops!”
Then we
allowed the criminal in-justice system to change the venue of the
trial for those cop defendants from Los Angeles out to Simi Valley
which is widely known to be overwhelmingly white and
disproportionately populated by members of law enforcement from both
Ventura and Los Angeles counties! If you lived in Simi Valley and
weren’t a cop yourself then one of your friends or neighbors
was!
It was then no
surprise to anyone when this entire band of badge-carrying thugs was
quickly acquitted. And we hit the snooze button again. We shrugged it
off and let it slide. We watched those L.A.P.D. cops brutalize an
unarmed, defenseless, unresisting American citizen and we did
nothing!
The years
rolled by as emboldened police forces grew and became armed in
militarized fashion, and unrestrained cops, prison guards and jailers
injured, maimed, brutalized, and shot to death unarmed citizens with
utter impunity, totally unchecked and unchallenged.
It’s
just a fact: Absolute power breeds absolute corruption. We’ve
given our police and jailers absolute power through our votes, budget
allocations, and our silence.
We’ve
approved massive budget increases to pay for everything from
constitutionally illegal surveillance devices like the Stingray,
which costs half a million bucks apiece, and allows cops to instantly
access our phones, totally undetected and unregulated, to armed
personnel carriers that look like they belong on the battlefields of
Iraq, not the suburban streets of America.
We created the
Derek Chauvins of the world. The Derek Chauvin who smugly, defiantly,
self-righteously kneeled on the neck of a handcuffed, subdued,
defenseless George Floyd until he was dead, murdering him.
Chauvin stared
into the camera unconcerned because time and time again you and I and
the rest of America just hit the snooze button every time a
sociopathic cop brutalized or murdered an unarmed and/or defenseless
citizen. Own it.
The Watts
Riots of 1965 were ignited by police misconduct arising out of a
minor traffic stop.
The Rodney
King beating arose out of the same circumstances and sparked the L.A.
Riots.
Eric Garner
was murdered by New York City Police Department (N.Y.P.D.) cops with
a chokehold when they accosted him on a public street because he was
selling untaxed, single cigarettes to passersby just to put a few
measly dollars in his pocket.
Sweet, gentle
Elijah McClain was peacefully walking home after a snack run to his
neighborhood store when Colorado cops accosted him totally without
cause. Police violently wrestled Elijah to the ground, then ordered
EMS workers to inject him with a huge dose of ketamine as he pled for
mercy, then fell into unconsciousness. He died in the hospital days
later from the effects of that injection.
Michael Brown,
Ahmaud Aubery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rodney King, Casey
Goodson Jr., and the list goes on and on and on!
In 2004, I
watched helplessly as prison guards murdered a handcuffed mentally
ill inmate by emptying three cans of pressurized pepper spray down
his throat simply because he had defied them, called them all a bunch
of bitches, and just generally pissed them off.
I had just
been transferred from a level one, minimum security compound for
low-level offenders in Tehachapi, California where I was housed at
the height of the Covid-19 outbreak.
During
that time, a number of inmates filed grievances against the prison
for failure to provide adequate sanitation measures to protect us. I
was one of them. One such inmate was singled out by our housing
officers who told a group of gang members that that inmate was a
“snitch,” a false claim, and told them to beat him up,
which they viciously did. Criminal and civil charges are now pending
against those two officers, but the truth is, they’ve been
doing that kind of stuff on that prison yard for the past twenty
years.
In 1999 I was
arrested for “petty theft with a prior,” at that time a
felony in California. L.A.P.D. from the West Valley Division arrived
and demanded that I give them a urine sample to determine whether or
not I was under the influence of drugs. Defiant, a little indignant
maybe, I refused. Those cops drove me to a local hospital and
convinced a nurse to insert a catheter – painfully – into
my penis while I lay handcuffed on a gurney in an open hallway which
caused me to urinate into a container. Why? Because I had defied
their total authority and pissed them off and they were gonna’
teach me a lesson. Now I know what it feels like to be raped.
The Posse
Comitatus Act of 1878 reads in part: “It shall not be lawful to
employ any part of the Army of the United States as a Posse
Comitatus, or otherwise for the purpose of executing the laws.”
Unfortunately, this foundational concept, designed to protect the
people from government oppression, has been under assault for over
half a century. No longer do we teach our soldiers to be cops as part
of our communities. Today we teach our cops to serve as soldiers at
war with our communities.
Many police
officers across the country are recruited straight from the
battlefields of the latest war jacked up on self-righteous zeal just
itchin’ to “kick ass” and “take ‘em
down.” They bring military combat training to meld with
paramilitary police department training and military-style weaponry
to bear against a predominantly law-abiding citizenry. All of this
military-style power and energy is launched upon our communities from
an underlying philosophy that emphasizes total control, overwhelming
force, and absolute power over all other considerations.
Across the
country, many elite response teams are trained by military special
forces or Seal Teams in the use of war-time tactics on our city
streets. High School police department recruitment videos portray
scenes of jackbooted cops repelling from helicopters, kicking in
doors while deploying flashbang grenades, and violently attacking
“suspected” criminals with physical force while armed
with military-grade weapons. This kind of imagery and sales pitch
appeals to a particular type of person who is drawn to this type of
activity, the type of person who will soon be patrolling your
neighborhood and armed to the teeth.
We see these
kinds of militarized tactics played out in the Breonna Taylor case.
In his classic
book, “The Art of War,” author Sun Tzu writes about
specific principles of “war” that are most effective.
These are, “Take the enemy unprepared,” or simply, the
element of surprise, as in “no-knock
warrant,”
and “attack an inferior force with a superior one,” or
overwhelming force. This is what cops do when they crash your door
twenty deep and then dump thirty-two rounds into your home just like
they did to Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend.
This is the
undeniable use of militarily trained cops using military-style force
against American citizens - and innocent ones at that
.
This commentary was originally published
by LA Progressive
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