Very scary.
Turning America Into a War Zone, Where ‘We the People’ Are the Enemy
By John W. Whitehead
August 21, 2014
“If you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.”—Sunil Dutta, an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department for 17 years
By John W. Whitehead
August 21, 2014
“If you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.”—Sunil Dutta, an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department for 17 years
Life in the American police state is an endless series of don’ts delivered at the end of a loaded gun: don’t talk back to police officers, don’t even think about defending yourself against a SWAT team raid (of which there are 80,000 every year), don’t run when a cop is nearby lest you be mistaken for a fleeing criminal, don’t carry a cane lest it be mistaken for a gun, don’t expect privacy in public, don’t let your kids walk to the playground alone, don’t engage in nonviolent protest near where a government official might pass, don’t try to grow vegetables in your front yard, don’t play music for tips in a metro station, don’t feed whales, and on and on.
For those who resist, who dare to act independently, think for themselves, march to the beat of a different drummer, the consequences are invariably a one-way trip to the local jail or death.
What Americans must understand, what we have chosen to ignore, what we have fearfully turned a blind eye to lest the reality prove too jarring is the fact that we no longer live in the “city on the hill,” a beacon of freedom for all the world.
Far from being a shining example of democracy at work, we have become a lesson for the world in how quickly freedom turns to tyranny, how slippery the slope by which a once-freedom-loving people can be branded, shackled and fooled into believing that their prisons walls are, in fact, for their own protection.
Having spent more than half a century exporting war to foreign lands, profiting from war, and creating a national economy seemingly dependent on the spoils of war, we failed to protest when the war hawks turned their profit-driven appetites on us, bringing home the spoils of war—the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.—to be distributed for free to local police agencies and used to secure the homeland against “we the people.”
Is it any wonder that we now find ourselves in the midst of a war zone? We live in a state of undeclared martial law. We have become the enemy. In a war zone, there are no police—only soldiers.
In a war zone, the soldiers shoot to kill, as American police have now been trained to do. Whether the perceived “threat” is armed or unarmed no longer matters when police are authorized to shoot first and ask questions later.
In a war zone, even the youngest members of the community learn at an early age to accept and fear the soldier in their midst. Thanks to funding from the Obama administration, more schools are hiring armed police officers—some equipped with semi-automatic AR-15 rifles—to “secure” their campuses.
In a war zone, you have no rights. When you are staring down the end of a police rifle, there can be no free speech. When you’re being held at bay by a militarized, weaponized mine-resistant tank, there can be no freedom of assembly. When you’re being surveilled with thermal imaging devices, facial recognition software and full-body scanners and the like, there can be no privacy. When you’re charged with disorderly conduct simply for daring to question or photograph or document the injustices you see, with the blessing of the courts no less, there can be no freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
And when you’re a prisoner in your own town, unable to move freely, kept off the streets, issued a curfew at night, there can be no mistaking the prison walls closing in.
This is not just happening in Ferguson, Missouri. As I show in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, it’s happening and will happen anywhere and everywhere else in this country where law enforcement officials are given carte blanche to do what they like, when they like, how they like, with immunity from their superiors, the legislatures, and the courts.
You see, what Americans have failed to comprehend, living as they do in a TV-induced, drug-like haze of fabricated realities, narcissistic denial, and partisan politics, is that we’ve not only brought the military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan home to be used against the American people. We’ve also brought the very spirit of the war home.
This is what it feels like to be a conquered people. This is what it feels like to be an occupied nation. This is what it feels like to live in fear of armed men crashing through your door in the middle of the night, or to be accused of doing something you never even knew was a crime, or to be watched all the time, your movements tracked, your motives questioned.
This is what it’s like to be a citizen of the American police state. This is what it’s like to be an enemy combatant in your own country.
So if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, by all means, stand down. Cower in the face of the police, turn your eyes away from injustice, find any excuse to suggest that the so-called victims of the police state deserved what they got.
But remember, when that rifle finally gets pointed in your direction—and it will—when there’s no one left to stand up for you or speak up for you, remember that you were warned.
Just another day..
ReplyDeleteAnd more good Governance
Amen.
ReplyDeleteOnly it's even worse than that with the surveillance state on top of the police state.
Ain't technology grand?
A little heavy on the dramatic hyperbole. I couldn't feel safer or more protected in this country.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear that some people feel safe where they are, Broll.
ReplyDeleteActually, I live in a liberal place (Iowa City) but even here a man was shot when working in his office late at night. A police officer thought it suspicious that the doors were open and a light on after hours and checked it out. The man was sitting at his desk talking on the phone when the officer burst in to his office, gun drawn. The man swiveled around in his office chair with the phone still to his ear. The office thought the phone was a gun and shot him dead. There was a huge uproar over it, but nothing came of it and the officer was exonerated based on "poor judgment."
So I can't say I feel completely safe even here.
Tom, I appreciate your feelings on it, but your anecdotal account doesn't tell the whole story. It just reminds me of the typical politician who proposes or opposes a specific piece of legislation by citing the example of some little old lady in their district. Never mind that it makes sense for 99% of the population. The hand written anecdotal little old lady letter wins every time.
ReplyDeleteI watch the news and can't imagine what it would be to live in places like the Middle East, eastern Europe, Central America, South East Asia, China, Africa, ect. There's really no comparison to the relative safety and comfort even the least of us enjoys here in this country.
I have lived in unsafe areas of this county as well as safe areas. I was in DC at the time of the riots following the assassination of MLK Jr. It looked like a war zone. I recall being in Alexandria VA, where I was living at time and look across the Potomac at night and there was a red glow over the city from the fires burning. I was just off active duty at the time and it reminded me of a battle scene.
ReplyDeleteThat is the perspective of a white person removed from the actual scene. It must have been a war zone for the people involved.
I was also in LA in '93 at the time of the riots there.
I have been involved in various mass protests and seen police violence close up committed against "regular people" rather than "the lower classes."
Those are extreme cases, but they do happen in the US.
On the other hand, violence and poverty are a day to day affair for the people living in unsafe districts, where shooting is a regular occurrence.
Much of the policing there is repressive and one could argue understandably so.
But from a socio-economic perspective the US is not dealing with this very well and significant areas of the US are disaster zones resembling failed states.
As the US middle class shrinks and more people get crammed down due to neoliberal policy of financialization (aka rent extraction) and globalization (the great leveling), this is going to be affecting people in developed countries that had no idea of it previously.
This is not only a socio-economic challenge but also a political issue in that much of it is institutional and cannot be addressed without reshaping institutions. It's also a cultural issue, which more intractable.
The good news is that most people in the US don't feel affected by it. It's also the bad news, since there is little political will to do much about alleviating the problems of those who are affected by it on a regular basis.
It is insufficient to approach it chiefly or exclusively as a policing issue. The cycle needs to be broken, and political divisiveness over how to proceed due to ideological assumptions is preventing progress. We need to be looking instead at what actually works in making life better for all concerned.
What areas in America are the most unsafe to be in? Naperville, Il or Rockford, Il.? Chicago's South and west sides or Chicago's Wrigleyville area? Compton, Calif. or San Francisco? Detroit or Saugatuck MI?
ReplyDeleteWhere is by a Texas mile the greatest concentration of police (militarized, etc) located? Urban and suburban ghettos. If you want to (this is a non PC exercise) you can connect the dots regarding what constitutes most urban and suburban ghettos and thus behind the criminal behavior therein.
Take away the ghetto and America is safer than Norway.
Take away the ghetto and America is safer than Norway.
ReplyDeleteActually, the policing in the ghettos is rather sporadic since crime within the ghetto doesn't threaten anyone's constituency. Policing there is directed at spill out from the ghetto. This is a regular complaint of ghetto residents trying to live a decent life who feel that they and their children are being thrown to the wolves.
Moreover, the war on drugs changed the whole dynamic significantly. It was the war on drugs that sparked police militarization as police felt they needed more tech to deal with the firepower they were facing. It also affected institutional culture.
Then the war on terror amplified this as even small towns in rural America armed to repeal a terrorist attack although the likelihood of one was minuscule.
Then the rollback of civil liberties and constitutional rights after 9/11 pretty much gave police a free hand.
So calling this a ghetto problem greatly minimizes the reality.
The "militarized" police force is not focusing itself on low crime areas. That doesn't mean it nonexistent though. Sure, you can cite cases of overreach in the lilly-white areas of America, but let's be honest, this is the exception to the rule. I know of no one in Winter Park, Fla bemoaning the militarized police presence there. None in Alexandria or Fredricksburg Va. either. I do know of some recently complaining of police tactics on Ferguson, Mo., however. Their contested presence there was mainly concentrated on the ghetto within Ferguson too.
ReplyDeleteIf we just stick with where most crime is committed in the U.S. and by whom it's easy to see that, save for small geographical enclaves, America is about the safest place to be on earth, so called military police presence notwithstanding.
ps-How do your propose to fix the crime problem, say, among blacks in the ghetto? More cops? Militarized policing?
MG, I am happy that you feel safe where you are. In many places I haven't. California is one of them. When I was moved to LA in the early Sixties a friend of my parents who was from the East warned me that the California police were not like the police in the East. I soon found that out.
ReplyDeleteSince then it's gotten worse in my experience, although this concerned friends and acquaintances rather than me directly. I recall being relieved when I moved from CA to MA, where I felt I didn't need to fear the police.
I grew up close to law enforcement since an uncle of mine was a very senior official. Things have changed drastically since then.
I saw it in terms of the three stages.
First was the ascendancy of the "law and order" conservative wing that believed that culture can be shaped through policing. This eventually lead to the privatization of prisons for profit.
Second was the war on drugs, which I regard as the stupidest domestic folly since Prohibition. It amplified the problems rather than addressing them.
It also created a police culture based on war rather than policing. This led to a different (warrior) view of professional conduct in policing than existed before as keeper of the peace. In a war situation, there is no peace to keep. It's a matter of targeting a potential enemy.
Third, add the war on terror and the imposition of dictatorship in the US and the result was a national security state, a surveillance state, and a police state under the command of a ministry of the interior aka DHS, which combined foreign and domestic intelligence.
How to deal with the ghetto problem. It's several separate problems. First is the Native Americans that don't want to assimilate. Second is the descendants of the former slaves and people of color lumped together with them. Third is the wave of Latin immigration that has spread throughout the US. These are separate but related issues and need to be addressed based on differing context.
No I don't think that policing is the way to address this. Nor do I think the proper strategy is to force these people to assimilate into the dominant white culture if they don't choose to, which was Reagan's policy.
What's the answer then. First, approaching the issues with an open attitude and addressing context. The first general requirement is opportunity and the second education to be able to seize it.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteI feel safe, and largely am safe in most white, Asian, Indian, and Gay communities. I feel lesser so in certain Latino communities, although they are of little concern in general.
In the 60's I lived in several mostly black communities. My sister and I were the only two whites to attend first grade at our school. My mother was a social worker and chose to live in low income areas in Toledo, Oh and Huntington, W.Va. Never once did I feel unsafe, however.
I won't say I feel 100% unsafe in predominantly black communities today, but I am much more cautious compared to when I was young. I know statistics regarding the disproportionate nature of black crime, so I don't sugar coat or PC my way around the hood. It's dangerous if you're white or black. Period.
I don't blame the cops for what happens in Ferguson, Chicago, Detroit, Rockford, etc. This might not be too liberal of me but I lay the vast majority of blame on blacks themselves. I understand that there's a multitude of reasons behind social pathologies in NAM (non Asian minorities) communities. And I realize there is no one size fits all quick fix.
Still, I've always been more interested in the black community and problems peculiar to it. 80% illegitimacy is to my mind the obvious root cause that exacerbates much that plagues black culture. I'm not sure this can be fixed any time soon. Nevertheless I'd simply hope that black leadership would stop the blame game of demonizing white culture or the cops, and preach personal responsibility as the primary ethos that will lift blacks out of their awful predicament. This isn't to imply that white sub culture or any other ethnic group doesn't suffer under similar conditions, but given Ferguson as the issue here I think black dysfunction is a special case above and beyond anything I've ever witnessed.
My view is that the issues involved are complex and weave through society affecting individuals through other individuals and also through institutions. Probably the low hanging fruit is to address the institutional issues first, then the cultural one, and finally the individual ones.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, almost immediately the Ferguson kerfuffle rocketed beyond Michael Brown and Officer Wilson. The reason for this, it seems to be, became obvious, first, because Brown's death was a catalyst for a community expressing their grievances against what they perceived as institutional racism, and secondly, the militarized police response was overtly repressive institutionally also. Addressing institutional issues like these is not as daunting as addressing individual issues, and many of the individual issues would be resolved by addressing the institutional ones. Cultural issues will take longer but as the US advances toward a multicultural society, those issues will be addressed in time, too.
But individual issues have to be addressed, too, in dealing with institutional and cultural issues. While these have socio-economic, psychological, and ideological roots, they have deeper roots in biology that must be confronted. Like other animals, humans are influenced by factors like kinship, difference, dominance-submissiveness, etc.
I think that there are two clear lessons to take away from Ferguson. First, police militarization is the wrong direction for domestic security institutional and it needs to be addressed if not just dismantled as a mistake, which would take admitting that the war on drugs was a mistake and the war on terror is misdirected.
Secondly, it is yet another demonstration that there is a sharp racial divide socially, politically, and economically in some areas that results in a powder keg waiting to be ignited. At some point, America is going to have to confront its old demons to address this.
At the same time, America is also facing pressure to deal with gender discrimination and discrimination by sexual orientation, as well as recreational use of now illegal drugs in a way comparable to alcohol and tobacco.
That's a lot to handle simultaneously, but these issues intersect and are not isolated. They are all symptoms of the difficulty in arriving at a socially liberal society that respects constitutional liberties and civil rights, as well as human rights.
The sad thing is the costs that have been incurred and are still being incurred in terms of lives ruined and potential destroyed. What a waste.