The Police Accountability Movement:
I’m sure just about everyone in America has seen the video of Rodney King getting beaten by the police. Oh, wait, that was like, 15 years ago or something. Never mind…
I’m sure a few people in America have seen the video of Rodney King getting beaten by the police. So guess what arose out of that but a movement of citizens who patrol the streets with video cameras, keeping their eyes out for anyone being confronted by the police.
Cop Watch is basically a citizens’ vigilante group that polices the police. They make their own uniforms and go out patrolling the streets with video cameras to make sure the police don’t forget that they’re being watched. (In the same basic way that the IWW strikes every once in a while just to make sure their employers don’t forget they’re dealing with a labor union.) Some Cop Watch volunteers also carry video cameras around with them whenever they go out, in case they see any cops confronting anyone. They also hand out information about what to do when you’re confronted by police, they maintain websites with information and links, and they hold teach-ins, show documentary movies, hold public protests, and all the usual things activists do.
In the first book I talked about how police brutality is an inevitable result of cops being stuck on the front lines of an inequitable economic system. On one side is group of people who value profits over all else, and then leave it up to the cops to clean up the messes they make and otherwise defend their inequitable economy. On the other side are people who are trying to make it in an economic system run by materially wealthy people who don’t give a f*ck about them, and who resort to breaking the law to try to get ahead. When the cops get desperate to try to enforce laws nobody wants to follow, they resort to the reputation part of the Hobbesian cycle of aggression and try to beat people into submission to make them not dare to break the law.
In the second book I showed you how our inequitable economy colliding with the physical limitations of the world is going to make more and more police brutality inevitable. In a world with an increasing population and diminishing resources, in order for the materially rich to stay rich, the materially poor are going to have to become increasingly poor. But that means the police are going to have to fight harder and harder to get everyone to obey the law. And in the end it won’t do anyone any good; it’s just another symptom of our suicidal economy.
It could be argued that the Capitalists might one day hire so many police that they won’t have any trouble enforcing the law, without resorting to police brutality. That isn’t likely, because sometime before that they’re going to reach a point where the number of police they’ve hired has reduced police brutality to a level that the public finds acceptable. At that point the laws will be enforced adequately in practice, even though the result won’t be brought about perfectly legally. The Capitalists will do this because that will be the balancing point among number of police hired, public acceptance, and practical enforcement of the law that will yield the most profits. Police brutality will then be a component of the Capitalists’ law enforcement system, in the same way that 4,000 Mexicans dying in the desert trying to sneak around the walls is a part of the Capitalists’ anti-immigration policy.
But for the sake of argument, let’s just say that happens anyway, that the Capitalists hire enough police to make police brutality completely unnecessary. Whether it’s legalized or not, the fact remains that an increasingly inequitable economy can only be maintained by an increasing amount of coercive force. On our present course, in 20 years from now, whatever amount of coercive force the police will be using will be greater than what it is now. That might not legally qualify as police brutality then, but compared to what we have now it will be police brutality, regardless of what it’s called.
Now in this book I’ll raise the stakes in the police brutality controversy even further. As I’ve shown you already in this chapter, right now some people who are struggling against our political and economic systems are being labeled terrorists, some are being labeled traitors, and some are being labeled illegal immigrants. Those negative terms are being used intentionally to make the public think those are all bad people and to get the public not to care what happens to them.
Now what effect do you suppose those labels have on police?
And what effect do you suppose those labels have on the public’s perception of how the police treat those people?
If the police hear people referring to other people as terrorists or illegal immigrants, how do you think that’s going to affect the way they’re going to treat those people if they confront them? And how much do you think the public is going to care how the police treat those people? If the police catch terrorists or illegal immigrants, why shouldn’t they beat them up? They are bad people after all. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be called terrorists or illegal immigrants, would they? And if the police realize that the public doesn’t care about people who are called terrorists or illegal immigrants getting beaten up, they won’t have to worry about the public complaining very much, will they?
Now what do you suppose would happen if those labels were attached to people by politically powerful and materially wealthy people the police looked up to?
And what do you suppose would happen if those labels were attached to people by the police’s own leaders?
If the police, through their own life experience, through the labeling of people by political and social leaders, or through the labeling of people by their own leaders, perceive certain people to be bad, they necessarily perceive those people to be less human than themselves. If the people were equal to the police, they would be smart enough to obey the law, wouldn’t they? If the police also perceive that the public perceives that a certain group of people are bad, then the police perceive that the public also perceives the people to be less human than themselves. So as far as the police and the public are concerned, the social consequence for beating up one of these inferior people is less than the social consequence of one of their own getting beaten up.
You already know how Capitalists are using negative terms to refer to people who oppose them. I’ve shown you how police brutality could be used in the future by Capitalists the same way the vast stretches of desert between the walls on the Mexican border are being used, to unofficially help enforce laws in practice, without their having to go to the trouble of enforcing the laws in the conventional way.
So what makes you think they aren’t doing this already?
But don’t take my word for it. Go to any Cop Watch website and find out for yourself.
The simplest defense against police brutality is obvious: Don’t break the law. Don’t speed, don’t drink and drive, don’t shoplift, don’t sell hard drugs, none of that. If you don’t give the police an excuse to beat you up, you’re off to a good start.
The next best defense against police brutality is for police not to intimidate people unnecessarily. If, for instance, they’re dealing with a person who comes from a bad part of town where everyone who pushes people around like a thug is a thug, and the police start pushing that person around like thugs, should it be any surprise if the person suddenly feels like he has to fight for his life? The Cripps and the Bloods wear gang colors, carry guns, push people around, and don’t give a f*ck about your Constitutional rights, your Miranda rights, or your human rights. If another bunch of people who wear colors and carry guns push people around and don’t seem to give a f*ck about peoples’ Constitutional, Miranda, or human rights, as far as the people on the receiving end of the incident are concerned, that isn’t a police action at all, it’s a showdown with a rival gang.
One night I was out walking around when I saw a Black kid handcuffed and sitting on a curb surrounded by four police. He’d been pulled over while stopped at a traffic light by a couple police on bicycles. I didn’t see that part of it, but from everything I heard them talking about, after they flashed their lights, he tried to pull away. He said that he was trying to get out of the street and pull over to the side of the road like people are supposed to do when they get pulled over by the police.
The police said that people in cars who get pulled over by bicycle police drive off all the time, and there’s no way police on bicycles can catch a car that tries to get away from them. After they flashed their lights, one of the officers walked up on each side of the car and demanded the idents from the driver and the passenger. The driver didn’t hand his over (because, as he said, he wanted to pull off to the side of the road first), so the officer demanded it again, threatened to drag him out of the car, and then did drag him out of the car, in very rapid succession, from what I heard.
I think they were both full of sh*t. First of all, when the officer demanded the kid’s ident, the kid tried to roll up his window. If that wasn’t a dead giveaway of somebody not intending to cooperate with the police, I don’t know what is. But on the other hand, the police said they stopped him for playing his stereo too loud in the middle of a commercial district on a Saturday night. Would they have been so quick to pull over a couple of well-groomed White kids in a more expensive car for something so trivial? If the kids looked like their parents had good lawyers, would the police have bothered? Or were they just making a routine stop to try to catch DUIs? The kid looked drunk and he did get stopped, so were the police just doing their jobs fair and square? That would explain why the kid wanted to get away from them.
On the other hand, if the officer wasn’t just a well-dressed thug throwing his weight around, why would the kid driving off have been a problem? After he flashed his lights, he would’ve radioed the license plate number into the dispatcher, and by the time he got to the driver’s door, the dispatcher would’ve known where the owner of the car lived. If the kid drove off, the dispatcher could’ve just radioed all the police cars in the area, and a car could’ve caught him.
One other thing was obvious. The kid did not trust the police in the least. Even if their reasons for pulling him over were completely justified, and even if their reasons for confronting him in the way they did was completely justified, it meant absolutely nothing to the kid. That kid understood only one thing: that his survival was being threatened. He put up a lot of reasonable-sounding arguments in very impassioned tones of voice. Was he trying to reason with the officers because he had no alternative left, and was growing more frustrated because it was getting him nowhere? Or was it all an act and he wanted to accuse them of brutality just so he could get off his drunk driving charge? I have no idea, but it doesn’t really matter. Whatever his reasons for saying the things he said, he was obviously saying them because no matter how slim his chances were of talking his way out of an arrest, he believed that whatever chances he might have after he got arrested would be even worse.
The kid started arguing more and more desperately, and finally got to his feet and started insulting the police and spitting at them. His hands were cuffed behind his back, but he was putting up a fight the best way he could, because by that point that was the only hope he saw. It didn’t work of course; three officers wrestled him down and held him face down on the ground. If he was in trouble before, now he’d added resisting arrest to his charges.
Was it a perfectly legitimate traffic stop in all regards? Was it police brutality? Does it matter? The one constant that existed in any possibility was: the kid felt his survival being threatened in a very profound way, and he had no idea what to do about it. If it didn’t start out as police brutality, it looked an awful lot like police brutality by the end, because the kid tried every way he knew to protect himself, and he got beaten to the ground for it. Even if he was a DUI, why would he think that trying to fight off four police officers all by himself with his hands cuffed behind his back was his most promising course of action?
So here’s my ultimate defense against police brutality. If you’re getting physically assaulted by the police, or feel like you’re in immanent danger of getting assaulted by the police, don’t fight back physically. Do whatever you can to try to keep from getting hurt, but here’s what you do to fight back instead.
Start chanting, “My name is…” and your name, loud enough so witnesses can hear you. So if the police seem like they’re about to beat you up, and your name was, for instance, Robert Paulson, you just start chanting, “My name is Robert Paulson! My name is Robert Paulson! My name is Robert Paulson!”
That will do four things. First of all, it will be an alarm to anyone nearby that someone is getting beaten up by the police. Second, you’ll make sure the people who hear you remember your name. Third, you’ll be warning the police to back down, unless they’ve got a reason for beating you up that will hold up in court. And fourth, it will help make the police recognize you as a human being, and (hopefully) will get them to stop beating you up.
If you’re witnessing a police brutality and you can’t think of anything else to do, you can help spread the alarm by joining in the chant. “His name is Robert Paulson! His name is Robert Paulson! His name is Robert Paulson!” But if there are a lot of people around already, you might be better off to keep your mouth shut so everyone can hear what’s going on. And if you’re chanting and people start showing up, keep your eyes out for anyone with a video camera, so you don’t drown out what the police and suspect are saying. After all, the video camera is a much better defense than the chant.
If you’re the police and a suspect starts chanting his name, you’d better let him do it, because he is trying to defuse the situation. He feels threatened by you, and he’s trying to defend himself in a way that’s personally meaningful to him. It doesn’t matter what rights he has, or even what rights you tell him about. If those rights aren’t personally meaningful to him, he isn’t going to perceive them to be of any use to him. If he starts chanting it means he feels threatened, so now he’s fighting back to try to keep himself safe from you without trying to fight you physically.
It’s inevitable that people are going to abuse this idea and start chanting their name to draw a crowd whenever they’re confronted by police, even if they weren’t in any immediate danger of police brutality. That’s what always happens whenever anyone comes up with a good new idea. But there are a few factors in the surrounding situation that I think will keep abuse of this idea under control.
First, any witnesses will be able to hear how loud the person is yelling and how much emotional communication he’s using in his voice—meaning how desperate he sounds. If witnesses come running and don’t find the police trying to beat him up, a lot of them are going to drift away. Now you’re the little boy who cried wolf. And if the police start beating you up after all the witnesses have left, that’s your own fault. So don’t use this defense unless it’s a real emergency.
Second, if people over-use this collectively, everyone’s chant is going to draw fewer witnesses. That won’t prevent anyone from doing it all by itself, but anyone who’s spreading the idea to other people to try to counter-act police brutality will be sure to tell them.
Third, if the police aren’t threatening the suspect, how likely is it that the suspect is going to start chanting anyway? That would just make the situation more complicated and drag out the time the suspect had to deal with the police. Some people will start chanting for no real reason anyway, but a lot of people won’t. Especially if they realize that when the witnesses show up they’re going to see there’s nothing going on and wander off anyway.
Finally, if people start chanting as soon as the police approach them, you can be sure the police are going to pass some new law against it, or call it obstruction of justice or failure to cooperate with an officer or something. Then they’re just going to add on more charges. If you’re about to get beaten up, then anything you try to do could be considered obstruction of justice, so you’ve got nothing to lose at that point. But if you’re just doing it for the sake of obstructing justice, don’t be surprised if you get charged for it.
It is true that some people will use this in conditions that other people wouldn’t. It’s also true that some people will use this in conditions where the police don’t think it’s necessary. But if the person starts chanting, they’re doing it because they feel threatened and they’re trying to keep themselves safe. Nobody else’s opinion is relevant. So if the police in some neighborhoods find that every time they approach anyone the people start chanting, maybe that ought to tell you something about how much the people in the neighborhood trust the police.
And that would just be a symptom of a much larger problem. So that would be a sign that there’s a problem that needs to be solved in that neighborhood.
But don’t worry. If government officials weren’t willing to solve the problem, I know of a lot of Anarchists would be glad to help solve it.