When Police Become the Enemy
Some ideas for reining them in; Plus the tragic murder of Brendon Glenn
As protests continue around the U.S., the main topic of discussion has become a question of what we want to achieve.
Before the massive protests began, most political observers, indeed most working class people, were pessimistic about the future. Now, we have found one of the levers of change in society. It is more powerful than the usual oppression which we are confronted with on a daily basis. This is something that the ruling class did not expect. It is that millions of people would mobilize themselves in the streets day after day.
What are we to do with this new found power? The first priority, for everyone’ safety, is to stop police murders and brutality. In city after city, many police officers continue to show they have learned nothing from the murder of George Floyd. We are at the cusp of reducing or dissolving the Police State. We are one step away from defeating the Corporate State, where we all wear an ID badge and have boring jobs that sustain us from week to week.
And, we are two steps away from a true fascist state. Yet, poor people already live in a fascist environment. Especially, Black people, homeless people, immigrants, other people of color, poor white people, the mentally ill, and more. Their lives rotate from rousting by cops, to jail, to court, and back to the street.
The stakes are high for all of us. If we do not defeat the Police State while we have a chance, we will surely slip into the Corporate State, and many of us will descend into the ninth circle of hell, the fascist state.
We can win. We can break the back of the Police State, but we can’t let up until we do. Our unity is our strength. Here is some of what we’re up against, and what we can do to overcome it:
Cases of brutality, captured on video, include melees started by officers against peaceful protesters. In New York City, several non-uniformed people joined in the attack on the side of the police. Were they plain-clothes cops or white supremacists joining their friends (?) in the brawl. In city after city, police provoked attacks on peaceful protesters who were then arrested if they didn’t run away.
In Buffalo NY, video captured a march by police, in which a 75-year-old protester was pushed down on the pavement by a cop. The protester sustained a cracked skull. None of the cops rendered him any medical help or stood by while paramedics were summoned.
In a seemingly coordinated tactic, cops in at least three cities, New York, Los Angeles and San Diego, drove their vehicles into groups of protesters. In downtown Los Angeles, the cop driving an SUV slowed to a halt, then apparently took aim at several protesters and “gunned” the vehicle knocking the pedestrians down. Then, the driver wheeled around, nearly hitting more pedestrians and drove away at a high rate of speed.
In Louisville on June 4, seven people were hit by gunfire in a protest of the police killing of Breonna Taylor last March. Taylor, an emergency medical technician (paramedic) was shot to death when three white police officers burst into her apartment. Louisville police claimed they didn’t do the shooting, but that the bullets came from protesters. A plausible, but unlikely scenario. Amazingly, no one was killed, although two of those hit required emergency surgery.
How big is the problem?
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are 12,000 local police departments. And according to Statista, there were 686,665 full time police in the U.S. in 2018. It reports that in 2019 there were 235 Black people shot to death by police. However, the ethnicity of another 202 deceased is “unknown.” The largest police force, by far, is New York City with 35,395 officers. The next largest forces are Chicago with 11,954; Los Angeles, 9,863; Philadelphia, 6,413; Houston, 5,178; and DC, 3,826. Most medium and large cities are listed on governing.com.
What Is To Be Done
The most popular proposal seems to be defunding or reducing funding for police departments. The budgets of many of them are huge compared to many other city services (in L.A., half the city budget goes to the police department). As with cutting the bloated military budget, this could go a long way to reducing unnecessary police activity and arrogance.
Get rid of military equipment. Military uniforms, vehicles and weapons are designed for fighting wars, not for “protecting and servicing,” the public. Armoured Personnel Carriers might be useful to fire departments when they are fighting fires that are not in cities or near roads, but it’s hard to imagine why an urban PD would need them.
3. Weed out racists, white supremacists, misogynists, sexual predators, anti-immigrants, homeless haters and the violence prone. In addition, a history of serious complaints by the public should disqualify the perpetrator for being a cop. Psychological tests should be administered to new applicants and on a regular basis.
Institute quota-based hiring and promotions based on race, gender, sexual orientation and any other criteria where a group is disadvantaged.
Outlaw chock-holds and other life threatening physical restraints against suspects.
Outlaw “no knock” entry or warrants, such as, that which led to the murder of Breonna Taylor.
Stop using chemical weapons. They are illegal by international law.
Replace a large proportin of police with social workers to avoid situations which degenerate into physical confrontations or shootings.
Disarm the police. In the UK, most police officers do not carry firearms. Only trained specialists are allowed to carry or use weapons. In addition, Tazers, rubber bullets and other substitutes for standard pistols and rifles can cause serious injury or death, and should not be used.
Where possible, insist that police “walk a beat,” or use a bicycle. Let them get to know the public.
Police should live in the jurisdiction which they serve. Today, many cops live in all white suburban housing, where their neighbors are also cops.
If you have additional ideas, click on the comments symbol, below.
Police abuse is not the end of the story. There are many other issues that must be addressed if we are to have a free and democratic society. Keep protesting and don’t settle for cosmetic changes.
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Police Murder: The Tragic Death of Brendon Glenn
Los Angeles is a city without a heart. It is a city where a young, Black homeless kid can be gunned down at close range, while the cop who took his life is sent home on paid leave. It is a city where developers run the city, including the police commission, and cover up for cops when they go too far.
Brendon Glenn slept in the streets and drank too much. Only in L.A. are these capital offensives. It is ironic that a developer, Steven Soboroff, is president of the Los Angeles Police Commission. This is the same man who laid waste to the Ballona Creek wetlands in order to make multi-millions by building Playa Vista. Now he is defending the LAPD in front of hundreds of Venetians, many of whom were active in the fight to save those same wetlands.
The standing-room-only community meeting was held May 7, 2015, at a Venice school auditorium in response to the gunning down at close rang of the unarmed Glenn, a few blocks away in front of the Town House Bar, on May 5. Steven Soboroff was joined on the podium by our erstwhile Councilmember Mike Bonin, who was greeted by a multitude of boos when he took the microphone. Always in character, Bonin talked without saying anything of substance. He has built a political career by being all things to all people. He was an aide to progressive councilmember Ruth Galanter, and then an aide to right-wing trilateralist Representative Jane Harman. He was anointed, more than elected, to replace his boss, Bill Rosendahl, as our guy in the L.A. City Council. Now he’s stepped in deep doo-doo by trying to straddle an impossible position between anti and pro-homeless camps in Venice. The boos are just an easier way to express our displeasure than mounting a recall campaign.
A group of presumably articulate cops were seated in front of us. They turn out to be mostly props in this drama of talking away the fact of the murder. The best they could do is quote police procedure, but they had no answers when asked if those procedures were followed in this case. Of course, we all knew they weren’t.
Did any of these esteemed men on the stage care at all that Brendon Glenn had just lost his life? He was a 29-year-old Black man who had a loving, extended family in Troy, New York. He also had a young son, Avery, who was the light of his life. His relatives back home agreed that he had a smile that could light up a room. He was on a great adventure traveling around the country. In Venice, he was trying to earn money to get back home. This meeting was not a memorial. It was a cover your ass, and keep calm, session from the beginning.
No one in the community wanted to rise to defend these suits or uniformed creeps. The most rabid anti-homeless locals, including Alex Thompson and Mark Ryavec, sat silently as if contemplating a day when they can again rail against the transients, the homeless, the “bums,” who are “ruining” Venice. They don’t seem to notice that those who are ruining Venice are sitting right in front of them.
Soboroff had the nerve to call this pacification meeting a dialogue. If it is a dialogue why is no one from Venice sitting at the podium, or chairing the meeting? Even the religious community, who often plays the role of calling for peace and restraint on the part of the community after some LAPD atrocity, sat quietly. When they did rise to do who knows what, they were roundly booed. Organized religion, and shilling for the cops, don’t have the cachet it once had.
It was a vocal meeting, a rowdy meeting, as it should be. Not everyone was speaking to the point of the murder. Many of the speakers have endured past wounds that won’t heal. Wounds inflicted by this crew who prefer to use the stick, not the carrot. In spite of the lack of focus of the evening, it was impossible for me to feel anything but pride in my fellow Venetians. Our eyes are open wide, we’re not buying the city’s bullshit any longer.
It is entirely possible that this esteemed band of developers/politicians will throw us a sacrificial lamb as long as they can stay in power. That’s the way it works when the people become too aroused. That’s the way it worked in Baltimore, where after days of protest, the crowd broke through and scattered the police line. The next day indictments were issued for the rank-and-file cops who were just following informal police procedures in the killing of Freddie Gray.
It is impossible to love the reality of Los Angeles. When people say they love L.A., they’re talking about the media image. After all, this is where dreams are made. L.A. even ships some of the filming of those dreams to Venice, and in doing so creates an imaginary fairyland where even the homeless are lovin’ it. Of course, Venice never sees a penny of the big filming fees L.A. rakes in from the studios.
With eyes wide open we see the true L.A., which turns out to be a developer’s dream in which the rest of us play the suckers. They are so smug that they even let the curtain down in books and movies like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential. The true facts, not the make-believe, are that Los Angeles is run – always has been – by developers who buy the politicians they need. They don’t care if someone like Brendon gets hurt or killed in the process as long as the money wagons keep rolling.
I told the meeting that in my 40 years in Venice, the LAPD had always acted like an army of occupation. Its misdeeds included rounding up our Black and Latino neighbors for non-violent crimes, or no crime at all, and sending them off to prison. Nothing of the sort has happened to white Venetians. Since that attitude has not changed in so many years, then it must be the way the power elite wants it to operate. Same thing with the homeless. They are here year in and year out, just so we don’t forget that it could be us.
Yes, we should make sure the cop who pulled the trigger pays for his crime. The fact that the shooter was a Black cop makes no difference. It seems apparent that LAPD officers of all nationalities are subjected to a racist, and us-versus-them, mind-washing atmosphere in the police department, whether they initially agree with it or not. Does anyone think that they view Venice, with our artists, nonconformists and homeless, with anything but disdain when they are talking among themselves? Alas, good cops don’t make the rules. The militarism of the LAPD is the creation of those at the top of the pyramid in the police force and the L.A. city government who want our police force to act as a criminal conspiracy.
When will these “men in the shadows” as Jackson Browne called them, have to pay for their misdeeds? How many more deaths will it take before we have a million people in these mean streets who will make it impossible for these jokers to continue their misrule? Now that our blinders are off, it may not be that long before they are just a bitter memory.
Postscript: More than three years later in July, 2018, the L.A. District Attorney’s office completed its investigation of the circumstances of Glenn’s death and refused to prosecute the officer who murdered him.
___________________Brendon Glenn, murdered by police___________________
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