Here's a recipe for disaster: Take a young man (or woman),
raise him on a diet of violence, hype him up on the power of the
gun in his holster and the superiority of his uniform, render him
woefully ignorant of how to handle a situation without resorting to
violence, train him well in military tactics but allow him to be
illiterate about the Constitution, and never stress to him that he
is to be a peacemaker and a peacekeeper, respectful of and
subservient to the taxpayers, who are in fact his masters and
employers.
Once you have fully indoctrinated this young man (or woman) on
the idea that the police belong to a brotherhood of sorts, with its
own honor code and rule of law, then place this person in
situations where he will encounter individuals who knowingly or
unknowingly challenge his authority, where he may, justifiably or
not, feel threatened, and where he will have to decide between
firing a weapon or, the more difficult option, adequately
investigating a situation in order to better assess the danger and
risk posed to himself and others, and then act on it by defusing
the tension or de-escalating the violence.
I'm not talking about a situation so obviously fraught with
risk that there is no other option but to shoot, although I am hard
pressed to consider what that might be outside of the
sensationalized Hollywood hostage crisis scenario. I'm talking
about the run-of-the mill encounters between police and citizens
that occur daily. In an age when police are increasingly
militarized, weaponized and protected by the courts, these
once-routine encounters are now inherently dangerous for any
civilian unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time.
I'm not the only one concerned, either. Indeed, I've been
contacted by many older cops equally alarmed by the attitudes and
behaviors of younger police today, the foot soldiers in the
emerging police state. Yet as I point out in my new book,
A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American
Police State, this is what happens when you go from a
representative democracy in which all members are subject to the
rule of law to a hierarchical one in which there is one set of laws
for the rulers and another, far more stringent set, for the
ruled.
Hence, it is no longer unusual to hear about an incident in
which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions
later. This is becoming all too common. For example, on September
14th alone, there were two separate police shootings of unarmed
individuals, resulting in death and/or injury to innocent
individuals--and those are just the shootings that happened to make
national headlines.
The first shooting incident took place in
Charlotte, N.C., when three police officers responded to a 911
"breaking and entering" call in which a homeowner reported that a
man she didn't know or recognize had been knocking at her door
repeatedly. Upon arriving on scene, the police saw a man matching
the caller's description running towards them. One officer fired a
stun gun, after which the second officer opened fire on the unarmed
24-year-old, who died on the scene. Only afterwards did police
realize the dead man, a former football player, had been in a car
accident and was likely approaching them for help.
Later that same day, in New York's Times Square, police
officers shot into a crowd of tourists,
aiming for a 35-year-old man who had been reportedly weaving among
cars and loosely gesturing with his hands in his pockets. The cops
missed the man, who was unarmed, and shot a 54-year-old woman in
the knee and another woman in the buttock. The man was eventually
subdued with a Taser.
Just a few weeks earlier, in Florida, 60-year-old Roy
Middleton was shot in the leg by police when he wandered out to his
Lincoln Town car, which was parked in his mother's driveway, in
search of cigarettes in the wee hours of the morning. A neighbor,
seeing Middleton, reported him to 911 as a possible robber. Police,
after ordering the unarmed black man out of the car, began firing
on Middleton, who likened the experience to a "firing squad.
Bullets were flying everywhere." The car was reportedly riddled with bullets and 17 shell casings were
on scene. Defending their actions, the two police officers claim
that Middleton, who had a metallic object in his hand, "made a
lunging motion" out of the car causing them to "fear for their
safety." That metallic object was a key chain with a flashlight
attached.
These are not isolated incidents. Law enforcement officials
are increasingly responding to unsubstantiated fears for their
safety and perceived challenges to their "authority" by drawing and
using their weapons.
For example, Miami-Dade police slammed a 14-year-old boy to
the ground, putting him in a chokehold and
handcuffing him after he allegedly gave them "dehumanizing stares"
and walked away from them, which the officers found unacceptable.
According to Miami-Dade Police Detective Alvaro Zabaleta, "His body
language was that he was stiffening up and pulling away" When you
have somebody resistant to them and pulling away and somebody
clenching their fists and flailing their arms, that's a threat. Of
course we have to neutralize the threat."
Unfortunately, this mindset that any challenge to police
authority is a threat that needs to be "neutralized" is a dangerous
one that is part of a greater nationwide trend that sets law
enforcement officers beyond the reach of the Fourth Amendment.
Equally problematic is the trend in the courts that acquits
officers involved in such shootings, letting them off with barely a
slap to the wrists.
This begs the question: what exactly are we teaching these
young officers in the police academy when the slightest thing,
whether it be a hand in a pocket, a man running towards them, a
flashlight on a keychain, or a dehumanizing stare can ignite a
strong enough "fear for their safety" to justify doing whatever is
deemed necessary to neutralize the threat, even if it means firing
on an unarmed person?
The problem, notes Jerome Skolnick and
former New York City police officer/Temple University criminal
justice professor James Fyfe in their book Above the Law:
Police and the Excessive Use of Force, is that
police work is often viewed by those in the force as an us-versus-them war rather than a chance for community-oriented engagement and problem solving. The authors also point to a lack of accountability as one of the reasons why police violence persists. They acknowledge that, yes, police officers are placed in dangerous situations that at times require immediate responses. But they maintain that that doesn't excuse using more force than is needed to subdue someone, the lack of professional training that leads to such fear-based responses, or treating citizens as enemy combatants.
As Titania Kumeh reports in Mother Jones, this has
been coming on for a long time. Remember back in 1999, when four
plainclothes New York police officers shot and killed a 22-year-old
unarmed immigrant who was standing in the doorway of his apartment?
The cops thought the young man was reaching for his gun--it turned
out to be his wallet--and fired 41 shots at him, landing 19 on his
body. The cops were acquitted of all
charges.
In 2003, an unarmed man, kneeling before four Las Vegas police
officers, was shot with an assault rifle because one of the
officers "feared" the unarmed man was feigning surrender and about
to grab a gun. A jury ruled the shooting excusable.
In 2006, plainclothes police officers, again in New York,
fired 50 shots into a car after it reportedly rammed into their
unmarked van, killing the 23-year-old driver who had just left his
bachelor party and wounding his two friends. Police claimed they
had been following the men, suspecting one of them had a gun.
Again, the cops were cleared of all
charges.
In 2010, in California, police shot and killed a young man who
had allegedly committed some sort of traffic
violation while riding his bicycle. After an altercation in
which the young man resisted police and fled to his mother's house,
police officers pursued him, kicked down his mother's door and
opened fire.
That same year, in Long Beach, California, police responded
with heavy firepower to a perceived threat by a man holding a water hose. The 35-year-old man had
reportedly been watering his neighbor's lawn when police,
interpreting his "grip" on the water hose to be consistent with
that of someone discharging a firearm, opened fire. The father of two was pronounced dead at
the scene.
Skip ahead to 2013 and you have the 16-year-old teenager who
skipped school only to be shot by police after they mistook him for
a fleeing burglar. Not to mention the July 26 shooting of an
unarmed black man in Austin "who was pursued and shot in the back
of the neck by Austin Police" after failing to properly identify
himself and leaving the scene of an unrelated incident." And don't
forget the 19-year-old Seattle woman who was accidentally shot in
the leg by police after she refused to show her hands.
Make no mistake, whereas these shootings of unarmed
individuals by what Slate terms "trigger
happy" cops used to take place primarily in big cities, that
militarized, urban warfare mindset among police has spread to
small-town America. No longer is this just a problem for
immigrants, or people of color, or lower income communities, or
young people who look like hooligans, out for trouble. We're all in
this together, black and white, rich and poor, urban and suburban,
guilty and innocent alike. We're all viewed the same by the powers
that be: as potential lawbreakers to be viewed with suspicion and
treated like criminals.
Whether you're talking about police shootings of unarmed
individuals, NSA surveillance, drones taking to the skies
domestically, SWAT team raids, or roadside strip searches, they're
all part of a totalitarian continuum, mile markers on this common
road we're traveling towards the police state. The sign before us
reads "Danger Ahead." What remains to be seen is whether we can put
the brakes on and safely reverse direction before it's too late to
turn back.
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