Policing The Hovel

I'm going to tell you a little story about my encounters with the police over the years. For most of my life I've had little interaction with police. And the few that I've had were pretty innocuous - traffic tickets mostly. But for a few years in the early 2000's I lived in an apartment that I have dubbed "The Hovel", and saw a different side of the police. 

One of the things that things that has been talked about in light of the revelations that the five Memphis police officers charged with murder were Black, is that it's not simply a matter of White cops killing Black people. It is, but that simplistic narrative ignores the related narrative that it's all police preying on anyone who is looked down upon, who has no influence, no power, who is at the bottom of society. Usually that means White cops brutalizing young Black men, because (1) the majority of cops are White and (2) Young Black Men are perceived to fall into the "bottom" category, whether they deserve to be or not. Black cops often absorb the mindset and are certainly not going to go pulling over rich White people to harass. 

The Hovel was an old railroad apartment on the 100 block of South 17th Street. It was falling down and had myriad code violations. I moved in after my first wife threw me out of the house because I needed a cheap place to live, fast. The twelve apartments housed a motley collection of souls, most on some sort of government assistance, but to my knowledge only one instance of actual law-breaking. But for some reason the Lincoln Police were regular visitors to our building, knocking (actually, "pounding") on doors in the middle of the night, harassing tenants as they came and went and stomping through the halls at all hours. Having had fairly cordial relations with the police for my whole life, I at first assumed that they must have a legitimate reason to be in the building, I couldn't imagine that they were treating the residents poorly because they were poor and powerless, and automatic suspects because of the horrible living conditions. On a few occasions when I encountered the police during daylight hours I would attempt to be friendly and saw that there was no "they", there was just "us". I could tell from how I was being treated that not only was living in this rundown building evidence to the police of some criminal activity, but that I was suspect as well...just because of where I lived. 

Neither I, nor any of my fellow Hovel residences (okay, there was one) were criminals, or caused any problems for the police, yet it was assumed, because we lived in slum-like conditions in a "bad" neighborhood, that we must be up to something nefarious. To my knowledge, the police presence never escalated into violence during my time there, but their assumption that we were somehow beneath them stuck with me. 

I have no problem believing that the attitude is widespread and not at all unique to that time and that place.

Stop Resisting!

This post is an expansion on a Facebook post made earlier this week. It's not about any alleged crimes the recipients of police brutality may have committed, or whether running away justifies said brutality, but whether what has become the common mode of restraint by many police invites resistance by its very nature.  

My perceptions may be skewed by what I see when arrests turn into executions, but it seems like no one gets arrested by simply putting them in the back of a police car, or even my handcuffing them while they are standing up. No, it looks like the prefered method of detention upon arrest is to put the detainee face down on the ground with his arms behind him. And not just violent suspects, I've seen this with what appeared to be compliant and cooperative arrestees, even children. 

The first time I became aware of this was during the Occupy protests in the early 2010's. Once a decision was made to clear out an Occupy encampment, occupiers were not just evicted, or simply rounded up and arrested, but the whole face down on the ground & handcuffed arrest seemed to be the norm. It's become the norm since then. 

Police know that they are given the benefit of the doubt when they can claim that someone who they are attempting to restrain is resisting arrest. Of course some extra roughness and aggression is called for if a suspect is violently resisting an arrest - or so we are led to believe. But where is the line? What is the definition of "resisting" that can be used to determine if an arrest needs to escalate physically? 

In most situations people try to avoid discomfort. In ordinary life we try to find the most comfortable position in a chair, make sure our shoes and clothes fit comfortably, and don't walk barefoot on hot sand or sharp gravel. Much of our comfort-seeking is unconscious. As I have typed the last few sentences I have changed position in my desk chair several times. What about when someone is lying face down on the asphalt, with their arms wrenched behind and a knee digging into their spine while a cop tries to handcuff them? Not to mention their face pushed into ground and their neck twisted into an unnatural angle? I imagine that would be, not merely uncomfortable, but painful. Wouldn't that cause one to unconsciously try to shift position into one that is less painful? Squirm one's body so that it's not so contorted? Meanwhile, the 200 pound man on your back is screaming at you to stop resisting while causing you more pain and discomfort. 

It sure seems like the police in these situations are looking for an excuse to escalate, looking to set up a pretense for them to get a beating in. The most recent killing by cop in Memphis even included the victim being told to show his hands, then being maced in the face, which of course caused him to protect his face with his hands, which the cops characterized as "failing to comply". These are no-win scenarios for someone who is stopped by police who are looking for trouble. 

What's Happening in Atlanta?

If you follow the news via social media, and haven't blocked out the right-wing, you're probably hearing about how "Antifa" and "BLM" should be designated as domestic terrorist organizations because of their violent actions in Atlanta on Saturday. What's going on in Atlanta?

In the Autumn of 2021 the Atlanta City Council proposed building a police training facility in 300 acres of forest north of the city. There was much public opposition to the idea, for a variety of reasons. One man who attended the council meeting where public comments were solicited estimated that 70% of the comments were opposed to the project. Once the final vote of 10-4 in favor of the facility was in, grass roots protests began to form. The core of opposition coalesced into a loosely organized group known as the "Forest Defenders" who camped out in the forest, some of them in treehouses. Other than a few vehicles that were set afire, these protest were peaceful and mainly consisted of people simply living on the land to prevent the development from beginning. (Some sources claim that one of the vehicle fires was set with the owner inside - this is disputed by the Forest Defenders and since the owner is still alive...)

The violence began with a raid on the encampment on December 13, 2022. In an attempt to break up the occupation police attacked the protesters with pepper balls and tear gas.  No one died in this attack, but amazingly five of the protesters were charged with domestic terrorism. The occupation continued after the raid. 

Last week one of the Forest Defenders was killed after police claimed that he fired at them. No body-cam footage has been released, and with the police record on firing on people when "fearing for one's life", I would be skeptical of their claim that the Forest Defender fired first. (The police officer in question was shot). The march on Saturday in Atlanta was to protest that police shooting. It started peacefully but turned violent when some protesters began breaking windows and setting a police car on fire. Several arrests turned up explosives in the protesters' possession.

I'm not going to argue that the violence was justified unless I hear that the police did something that provoked a retaliation, which I have not heard. But people who have just had one of their number killed are on edge, and it wouldn't take much. Arrest the people that you can catch and charge them with whatever property damage felonies that are applicable. Unfortunately, in many peaceful protests, the risk that a small number (and by all accounts it was a small number, for a brief time during the otherwise peaceful march) will disrupt things with vandalism or violence is ever present. That small number can be outside agitators wanting to make a group look bad, it could be opportunistic troublemakers who are piggybacking on the protest for the sole reason of destruction, or sadly, it could be a sub-group within the larger group who want to take things further.

What it isn't, as the chicken littles of the right wing claim, "Antifa", or more ridiculously, Black Lives Matter. Antifa has become the all-encompassing bogeyman of the right wing, supposedly responsible for every act of violence, for every disruptive protest, and even for being behind right wing protests in disguise. Republican leaders want to designate "Antifa" as a terrorist organization. The problem is that there is no "Antifa". Not as a centralized organization. It's a mindset, it's a movement of loosely connected people, connected only by a hatred of fascism. I don't you could find any two anti-fascists who would agree with each other on what today's manifestation of fascism looks like or what to do about it. Charge individuals who commit crimes that meet the definition of terrorism with terrorism, but making "Antifa" illegal is like shooting at a cloud. It may be there, but you sure can't put your hands (or handcuffs) on it. 

On the other hand, there is an organization called "Black Lives Matter", but I doubt that many people who participated in Black Lives Matter protests, or make the slogan "Black Lives Matter" their own are members of that specific organization. 

The Tin-Foil Hat caucus in Congress wants nothing more in these situations than to distract from the Trump-inspired violent insurrection that occurred on January 6, 2021.