Friday, October 24, 2014
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.
