The View From Afar
Because almost all of the US national news outlets are tools of the corporations that own them, and bend reality to fit with the official ‘vision’ of their masters, I get my information from foreign sources. A side benefit is that you get reporting that does not automatically accept the ‘conventional wisdom’ in the US.
The CBC opinion piece on what has been happening in Baltimore goes right to core of the problem: Police killings are the real state of emergency. As a Canadian Mr. MacDonald doesn’t believe that police officers shooting people is normal.
In his piece for the BBC Jon Sopel looks at efficacy of riots in making a point. He points out that most people only remember Ferguson and Baltimore, as if all of the other unarmed people killed by police officers didn’t exist.
If you go back to the run up the Iraq invasion there were huge anti-war demonstrations that most people in the US knew nothing about, because the US media didn’t cover them. What is the point of having thousands of people march in protest if they are the only people who know the protest took place. History is distorted by claims that ‘everyone’ supported the invasion, when that is patently untrue.
If we want to prevent riots, why don’t we do something about the police using unarmed people for target practice.
8 comments
Let’s start by looking at the skill sets these people have, who use unarmed people as targets. There are certainly enough cases to be able to build a statistical universe. I’d bet a few bucks on the datum that they have no other saleable skill sets
Shirt
The real problem is that they are being trained to be a paramilitary force, not as police officers. When your job is constantly being referred to as a ‘war’ and not keeping the peace, you start acting like you are fighting a real war, and start killing using military rules of engagement. The problem is made even worse when politicians refuse to raise taxes to cover the cost of providing services, and task their police with generating revenue through fines. In a lot of places the police are part of a protection racket, extorting money from people.
It was apparently even worse in Baltimore because the pressure was to reduce crime — which was done by a) refusing to take reports on crimes, and b) rounding up anybody on the streets in “rough” neighborhoods, regardless of whether they were criminals or not, on “humbles” (bullshit charges like “loitering”) even if the people were ministers or 9 year old girls or cast members of “The Wire” on the way home from a late night of shooting (film, not guns!). The police truly became an occupation force then, because they ceased doing anything resembling police work and instead became more a threat to the general population than to criminals.
And Maryland basically makes it impossible to prosecute or fire police officers, thanks to a “Police Officers Bill of Rights” law that gives police officers more rights than us civilians, so even the new city council and mayor who took office four months ago have a long road ahead of them if they want to rein in the Baltimore PD — not that there’s any evidence of any real desire to do so on the part of even the black Baltimore power structure.
All in all, it’s a fscked situation. When the Bloods and the Crips are the people keeping public order on the streets, you *know* the PD in Baltimore have completely lost it. At this point, I’m not seeing that there’s any need for them. The Bloods and Crips apparently are less brutal, and probably kill fewer people too (killing customers is bad for business after all). What kind of bizarro world have we ended up in?!
They should follow the example of Ankh-Morpork and organize crime – let the criminals enforce the rules. Things would be calmer and safer.
The ‘next big thing’ was supposed to be the ‘broken window theory’ which was also called a zero-tolerance approach when it was implemented in NYC by Guiliani. Crime went down in NYC, but it also went down all over the country as the Boomers aged out of the criminal population of males 15 to 45. NYC also had a major reduction in the unemployment rate.
The US built prisons and ‘got tough on crime’ about a decade late, but they are stilling working to fill up those private prisons.
Thing is, I’m baffled as to what the Baltimore PD thinks their job is supposed to be. Other than drawing their paychecks, I mean. They’re not maintaining public order — the Bloods and Crips are doing that. They’re not serving and protecting the citizens, they’re beating and killing them instead. They won’t even come when you call them about a burglary, because that would make their stats look bad. About the only thing they’ll investigate is a homicide, but they only clear 40% of the homicides, and most of those are the obvious ones where there’s no doubt from the start who dunnit because she killed the no-good SOB or he got in a bar fight with the no-good SOB or whatever. So maybe there’s a use for a few Baltimore PD to investigate homicides. The rest… I haven’t figured out what they do for a living, other than beat people up.
Yeah, they don’t seem to want to do their job, they just want to put in their time until retirement. They come across as sociopaths, they don’t like the citizens they are supposed to be protecting. Their only allegiance is to other members of their ‘gang’.
“… there were huge anti-war demonstrations that most people in the US knew nothing about, because the US media didn’t cover them.” – Bryan
[Steve raises his hand…] Yep. I was there. In 2003, HPD was at least not a protester’s enemy, unless s/he did something that outright demanded arrest, or committed another sort of crime, e.g., existing while Black. One evening, a cop thought I needed protection walking back to my car parked in the Museum District (IMHO a very civilized area); amazingly, he did exactly that… walked me to my car and then went on his way.
In months of protesting, I was interviewed by exactly two TV reporters; one for the ABC local, the other for a station that soon went out of existence… both reporters were respectful and recorded what I said, but neither segment made it on air.
Every local TV news department owns a helicopter (or two), but the only observers hovering over us on one occasion were, quite literally, “black helicopters.” Military? Hell if I know… they certainly hovered in formation very menacingly. We pointed out cameras at them “menacingly” (yeah, right); after a while, they leisurely flew away. News choppers pointedly ignored us; I think they may have aired one of the very few violent confrontations on one occasion, but peaceful protest, even in large numbers, is definitely not considered news.
“The police truly became an occupation force then, because they ceased doing anything resembling police work and instead became more a threat to the general population than to criminals.” – Badtux
Putting aside my deteriorated physical condition, less than 15 years later, I would hesitate to take my protests public. With these new cops, equipped as military forces, the possibilities for a nonviolent protester include serious injury and death, even if s/he does not have dark skin. Freedom of speech in the streets is severely if not hostilely discouraged by TPTB in many cities. I don’t want to think about what it would take to restore that freedom.
The entire ‘Homeland Security System” view protests as a ‘terrorist threat’, rather than a Constitutional right. The response to the Occupy movement was totally over the top, and the various protests against police actions have been met with unreasonable force. The pattern is clearly established that right-wing protests , including those that involve people with guns, are handled with kid gloves, but anything slightly to the left is suppressed. The right-wing events get media coverage, but left-wing events are ignored at best.
This is the corporate media at work.