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Because they took a volunteer position? They took this position? I don't. I don't believe so. I believe the reason why they demand respect is because they have a gun, at the end of the day. And in order to find some balance there, we need to put officers on an even level. The way that we do that is through today's technology. Film an audio, film a recording. Put it out there so everyone can see.
There's so many videos of officers violating policy, reform shouldn't be a problem. We have to look at the reason why we have a police force. From what I understand, they were put into existence to help break up unions, they would bust up unions, hunt down runaway slaves and Native Americans.
Taya Graham: Now, sometimes I like to make a literary reference to provide some context for the topic at hand. It's a tradition on the show that I think sheds light on the fact that the challenges we face now are not unique, and a way to use a different perspective to show where we might be heading.
Today, I'm going to refer to a book by noted Russian author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago. It's an expansive work of fiction that explores a variety of facets of how a functioning dictatorship evolves. And it's notable that the first chapter focuses on what appears to be the primary tool of enforcing authoritarian law: the arrest.
Solzhenitsyn recounts how the random secret arrest turns into a tool of terror and social control, how the unfettered ability to detain without accountability turns state power into a pathology that spreads throughout the community like a disease.
In fact, the argument seems to be that nothing is more essential to an authoritarian regime than the unimpeded control over our bodies. So as we watch the federal response to protests unfold, perhaps we need to consider an aspect of this development that is often ignored but worth another look.
In a sense, the federal push to arrest protestors in unmarked vans is not that far removed from the continued arrest of activists by local police. And that connection is predicated upon the fact that we are ready predisposed to being arrested.
What do I mean? Well, let's remember there is no specific power to arrest outlined in the constitution, only protections against unlawful detainment. And let's also remember that the institution of policing itself didn't emerge until the mid-19th century. The point is that the whole so-called arrest infrastructure has evolved as our neoliberal capitalist institutions have grown in influence and scope.
And along with that growth and power, the number of arrests in general have continued to rise in tandem. In fact, according to data compiled by the Vera Institute in 2019, American police made 10.5 million arrests. That is one every three seconds. And as the data points out, these are not detentions of murderers and child molesters. The majority are for insignificant crimes like drug possession according to that same dataset.
The point is we are conditioned to the arrest. We've been taught to accept this ubiquity as necessary and a familiar part of the American landscape. And along with the endless assortment of cop shows, or copaganda, we have been led to believe that millions of arrests and incarceration is somehow productive and beneficial to society, which can't provide healthcare, solve poverty, or even supply affordable housing.
But as the arrest you are watching now reveals, the entire aforementioned narrative is subject to question. The video was given to us by a viewer, Tina [Spizike 00:16:00]. Her arrest occurred last week as she was commuting to work over the Brooklyn Bridge. As you can see by the video, police began corralling protesters and bystanders alike, forming a veritable dragnet that scooped up citizens like fish in a trawler.
As Tina told us in an interview, throughout her ordeal, she continued to ask a fundamental question that police could not answer. Why was she being arrested? We will speak with Tina next week about what happened and her treatment behind bars.
The point is the intervention by relatively anonymous federal police is an extension of the psychology of controlling space that already existed in the plethora of arrests made by our expansive law enforcement industrial complex. What we're seeing in Portland is a reality that has been part of the psyche of this nation as we've continued to prosecute the war on drugs and fill prisons with low-level offenders and acceptance that policing space is a necessary component of a community. That the only way to maintain peace is to imbue a class of arresters with almost unfettered powers to detain, incarcerate and otherwise corral us into a system that seems to manufacture disfunction and disempowerment.
As we noted earlier in the show, it's a method of conditioning consent that is predicated by violence and its continued patrolling of our psyches that's predicated upon the idea we accept the unjust conditions of income inequality and racial divisions as reality solely constructed by us, not the institutions, which benefit from it. The question is, how far will we the people allow this to go? How much longer will we tolerate this system of coercion? How long can the massive deployment of power to detain that we are witnessing across the country continue?
That's the question at the heart of this issue. The query that defines all the conflict and concern. Who are we really and what kind of country do we really want to be?
I would like to thank my guest cop watcher, Eli Richey, for his time and for his work in the community. Thank you, Eli.
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