Harry Targ
Over the last several years the
criminal justice systems at the federal, state, and local levels have
threatened the basic rights of citizens, particularly people of color and
youth. These violations of equal treatment under the law have included:
-a “national epidemic” of police and
vigilante killings of young African American men, for example Trayvon Martin
and Jordan Davis in Florida, Eric Garner in New York, Oscar Grant in Oakland,
California, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, John Crawford III in Dayton, Ohio,
Vonderrit Myers Jr. in St. Louis, and Ezell Ford in Los Angeles
-the mass incarceration of people of
color such that, as Michelle Alexander has reported in her recent book, The New Jim Crow, more African Americans
are in jail or under the supervision of the criminal justice system today than
were in slavery in 1850;
-the institutionalization of laws
increasing surveillance;
-and the passage of so-called Stand
Your Ground laws, justifying gun violence against people perceived as a threat.
On August 9, 2014 unarmed nineteen-year-old
African-American Michael Brown was shot multiple times by a Ferguson, Missouri
policeman.
In response to the collective expression of community outrage that followed,
the local police initiated a multi-day barrage of tear gas, strong-arm arrests,
and the threatening of street protestors with military vehicles and loaded
rifles. The images on television screens nationwide were of a people under
assault. The fear that young African American males in Ferguson have historically
felt every time they stepped into the streets of their city was heightened by
the killing of Michael Brown.
Significant events since the police
murder have been protests, the visit to the Ferguson community by Attorney
General Eric Holder and national mobilizations in Ferguson and around the
country. Subsequent to that police killing, many more African American men have
been killed by police officers across the nation. However within the last few days “testimony”
leaked from the grand jury investigating the police crime has appeared in the St Louis Post-Dispatch and Washington Post that promotes a
narrative that the police officer who murdered Brown was acting in
self-defense.
Along with police killings other
police abuse occurs regularly. In Hammond, Indiana, on September 24, 2014, an African
American women, who was the driver of a car and mother of two children in the
back seat, and an adult male friend in the front passenger seat, was pulled
over by a police officer for a seat belt violation. Fortunately nobody died,
but the policeman drew his weapon and shattered the automobile’s front side
window. The policeman had ordered the male to roll down the window, tasered and
then arrested him while the seven year old daughter of the driver cried in the
back seat. Subsequently Hammond authorities have defended the conduct of the
police officer.
In a recently released study,
journalists discovered that between 2010 and 2012 young Black males were shot
to death by police 21 times more than young whites. Their data was limited to
those two years because earlier information accumulated by the FBI was
incomplete. Prior to that time police departments had not filed required
reports when police used force.
Even though data is partial,
Professor Colin Loftin, co-director of the Violence Research Group, University
of Alabama, said, “No question, there are all kinds of racial disparities
across our criminal justice system.” (Ryan Gabrielson, Ryann Grochowski Jones
an Eric Sagara, “Deadly Force, in Black and White,” http://www.propublica.org/article/deadly-force-in-black-and-white, October 10, 2014).
A growing body of evidence suggests
that the criminal justice system administers justice in an unfair way--from
general police/community relations, to trials and incarceration, to the use of
violence and deadly force against minority youth.
While police are supposed to serve
the interests of the communities in which they work, compelling evidence
suggests that, to the contrary, force is used to stifle dissent and challenge
assertions of political and cultural autonomy. The data overwhelmingly supports
the conclusion that police systems are institutionalized forms of racism.
In response to racist police
violence the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, a branch
of the National Alliance founded in 1973, has been working to “stop police
crimes,” establish “prison reform,” and to oppose the incarceration of persons
wrongfully incarcerated including political prisoners.
The CAARPR has proposed the
establishment of a Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) for the city. According
to the plan, the city would create an elected CPAC which would oversee the
personnel and policy of the police department. CPAC would appoint the
Superintendent of Police, revise rules for police practices, investigate police
misconduct, investigate all police shootings, and provide for transparency in
investigations. The central premise of the CPAC idea is that the police exist
to serve the community not oppose it.
Real community control of police and
the criminal justice system is basic to any democracy. Along with the
generalized declining perception by Americans about the legitimacy of political
institutions, minorities and youth see the police more as an occupying army
than a force for protecting the safety, security, and independence of members
of their community.
