Gangsters in Blue

Quick quiz. Try to identify where this photograph was taken, and what military force the people pictured in it are members of.

The photograph was taken in Richland County, South Carolina. The people in the photograph are Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott and his Special Response Team. They are posed in front of their recently acquired Army-surplus Armored Personnel Carrier, which has a top speed of 30 miles per hour and a turret-mounted .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun. They call it the Peacemaker, apparently because this is exactly the sort of military hardware Jesus would use to terrorize or kill suspected meth addicts.

Sheriff Leon Lott told the Columbia State newspaper that he hoped the vehicle, named The Peacemaker, would let the bad guys know that his officers are serious.

We don’t look at this as a killing machine, Lott told the paper. It’s going to keep the peace. We hope the fact that we have this is going to save lives. When something like this rolls up, it’s time to give up.

—Police: The Law Enforcement Magazine (2008-03-06): S.C. Sheriff’s Department Armored Vehicle with Belt-Fed Machine Gun

Take another look at that photograph, and let me know whether that’s what peace looks like to you. Please keep in mind, if you happen to be in Richland County, South Carolina, that, in the view of the Sheriff’s Department, keeping the peace means putting so much firepower in the hands of government police that their capacity for violence terrorizes the rest of the populace out of any thought of defying or resisting their orders.

The Richland County Sheriff’s department got their new armored personnel carrier through a federal government program which provides military surplus weapons to local law enforcement agencies.

As Radley Balko said back in May, in response to another story:

I’m afraid this intermingling of domestic police and military is well beyond the point of no return.

Do you feel safer now?

(Via John Markley 2008-09-04, Radley Balko 2008-09-01, and Pete Guthier 2008-09-01.)

See also:

• GT 2008-08-22: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#5)
• GT 2008-07-12: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#4)
• GT 2008-06-05: Neighborhood Safety Ghettoes in D.C.
• GT 2008-05-15: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#3)
• GT 2008-05-12: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#2)
• GT 2008-05-06: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter…
• GT 2008-04-28: Is it just me or is the water in this pot getting a little hotter?

When rioting St. Paul cops arrested Amy Goodman, CREDO Mobile published the video and issued an action alert with the odd declarative title This is America. We don’t arrest journalists here..

The first problem is the false subject. We don’t arrest journalists, or anyone else. Government cops arrest people. I don’t, and neither do you.

So, let’s rephrase: This is America. Police don’t arrest journalists here.

But what’s the don’t supposed to mean here? If it’s supposed to be a simple declarative statement, then it’s obviously false. Police evidently do arrest journalists here; I know because I saw it happen in the video CREDO linked to.

Obviously, even though the statement seems to be declarative, it’s actually intended to do something other than state a fact. The statement is being made in the context of an outraged action alert, so it seems fair to interpret it as a normative claim instead of a descriptive claim. If I say You just don’t treat people that way, what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t treat people like that. So let’s rephrase: This is America. Police shouldn’t arrest journalists here.

That’s certainly true. Police shouldn’t arrest journalists. But then what’s the purpose of the This is America and the here? It’s true that police shouldn’t arrest journalists in America; but that’s no less true in Egypt or China. Police shouldn’t arrest journalists anywhere. So what did CREDO really mean?

There’s another voice in which people sometimes use this kind of talk — a voice different from the statement of fact, and a voice different from the expression of a moral judgment. It is the voice of authority laying down an expectation for others to follow. (We don’t use that kind of language in this household; Catholics do not use birth control; etc.) And I think here we have a clear understanding of what it was CREDO meant to say, and what purpose the This is America is supposed to serve. Not content with simply pointing out the fact that it’s wrong for police to arrest journalists — that this kind of conduct is violent, repressive, tyrannical, and indeed evil — what they wanted to do was to cite an authority on their side. The authority is supposedly wrapped up in the idea of America (meaning the U.S.A.) — U.S. norms, U.S. political culture, and the U.S. Constitution.

But what good does it do to try to assume the voice of authority here? What justifies the claim? What purpose does it serve? In St. Paul, several different police agencies, ramrodded by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s department, staged massive pre-emptive raids against houses where activists were staying and against the RNC Welcoming Committee’s convergence space. Many of the imprisoned protesters were held for days without charges. Many were abused by their jailers, including a woman being knocked to the ground and dragged by her hair, several protesters being denied prescription or over-the-counter medications for serious medical conditions, and a 19-year-old activist named Elliot Hughes, who was beaten and tortured for over an hour because, according to the Ramsey County Sheriff’s department, he was being verbally disruptive.

There is little or no evidence that any legal authority, either executive or judicial, will ever hold any of these cops or jailers accountable for what they did. Nobody in a position of authority disapproves. Nobody in a position of authority cares. Whatever source of authority CREDO hopes to invoke here is a dead letter; the very people that it gave the power to interpret it and enforce it have decided that there’s nothing to forbid police to harass and terrorize journalists like this. If those authorities are right, then CREDO’s attempt to speak in the voice of authority is fraudulent: the authority that they are trying to invoke has nothing to say for them. If those authorities are wrong, then CREDO’s attempt to speak in the voice of authority is idle: the same system that they hope to call to their aid is constructed so that CREDO can do nothing about it.

The first step is admitting that you have a problem. We live in a state where the highest authorities consider this repressive violence perfectly acceptable behavior in the name of Law and Order. And it is long past time to give up on the delusion that the Authorities and the Law will get our back against this kind of abuse of power.

They haven’t.

They aren’t.

They won’t.

It is long past time to give up on the voice of authority and its false promises. To be willing to make our demands in the voice of morality, to speak up for our rights as human rights, not as the easily-revoked privileges of a paper constitution. America, if that means the political entity that rules over this territory, is not our friend, or our ally. It will do nothing for us. When we protest, it will turn those very cops on us. We are in no position to lay down expectations or give orders to our occupiers. We have no authority that they will ever recognize. What we have to do is to speak to the justice of our cause, and the righteousness of our resistance against acts that are unjust and tyrannical, no matter where they may be committed. Peace, freedom, and justice are good enough to stand on their own, just as they are, whether in America, or Egypt, or China, or anywhere else in the world.

Happy International Ignore the Constitution Day, fellow citizens.

See also:

• GT 2008-07-15: I feel safer already… (#2)
• GT 2008-06-24: U.S. out of Las Vegas!
• GT 2007-09-06: Marching orders
• GT 2007-09-17: International Ignore the Constitution Day #220
• GT 2006-09-17: International Ignore the Constitution Day festivities

(This story via Hear Me Roar 2008-02-20 and a private correspondent.)

Here is something that I wrote a couple years ago about the State and its efforts to protect the hell out of us all whether we want it to or not:

The State is, as Catharine MacKinnon says, male in the political sense. But not only because the law views women’s civil status through the lens of male supremacy (although it certainly does). It is also because the male-dominated State relates to all of its subjects like a battering husband relates to the household of which he has proclaimed himself the head: by laying a claim to protect those who did not ask for it, and using whatever violence and intimidation may be necessary to terrorize them into submitting to his protection. The State, as the abusive head of the whole nation, assaults the innocent, and turns a blind eye to assaults of the innocent, when it suits political interest — renamed national interest by the self-proclaimed representatives of the nation. It does so not because of the venality or incompetance of a particular ruler, but rather because that is what State power means, and that is what the job of a ruler is: to maintain a monopoly of coercion over its territorial area, as a good German might tell you, and to beat, chain, burn, or kill anyone within or without who might endanger that, whether by defying State rule, or by simply ignoring it and asking to be left alone.

—GT 2006-05-11: Quidditative essence

I didn’t mean the analogy between government protection and domestic violence quite this literally, but, well, here we are.

This is how government cops protect you: by beating the shit out of a suspect woman after she’s already been handcuffed, turning off the camera so that they won’t be caught on tape doing it, and then claiming that the reason she ended up lying a pool of her own blood in the middle of the room, with two black eyes, a broken nose, and missing teeth, was that she tried to leave the room and fell and hurt herself in the process. He didn’t do it, and besides, even if he did, she was belligerent (which, since there’s no evidence of her trying to use physical force against the cop at any point, is cop-speak for mouthing off).

Please note that the explicit reason for this violent creep handcuffing her, slamming her up against the wall, and then beating the hell out of her was that there are rules you have to follow (where there are is cop-speak for I make, and you have to means or else), which rules absolutely require that you keep her in a tiny room no matter what, by any means necessary, and don’t set aside your paperwork for even a moment so that she can call somebody to let them know where she is. No matter how easy it would be for you to do so, and no matter how quickly that would de-escalate an extremely stressful situation.

Please also note that, because Wiley Willis is a cop and his victim, Angela Garbarino, is not, so far the only consequences that this violent sociopath — who had already been named in at least two unrelated brutality complaints in the past two years — is that he was given a paid vacation for three months, and then finally lost his job after an administrative hearing. But in the view of other Shreveport cops, Willis deserves this proverbial walk around the block because After reviewing the evidence, we decided it was something that needed to be handled internally and that it was not enough to pursue criminal charges. Nowadays, thanks to the concerted struggle of our feminist foremothers to reform the police and courts’ handling of violence against women, if any man who didn’t sport a badge and a uniform had been alone in a closed room with a woman who ended up getting hurt so bad she needed to be hospitalized, with a video clearly showing him shoving her around, handcuffing her, slamming her against the wall, and then deliberately turning the tape off up until she ended up bruised and bleeding, that man would be in jail right now on charge of assault and battery. Even without such comprehensive evidence almost any court would long ago have issued a restraining order against the violent pig. I’ll bet that there are a lot of people in Shreveport who wish they could get one of those against Wiley Willis and the paramilitary force that employed him.

Meanwhile, the mainstream news media, while Very Disturbed, are still willing to call this videotaped brutality a classic case of he-said / she-said, and the Fraternal Order of Pigs and Willis’s lawyer are trying to get him put back on the force.

In the YouTube comments thread, you can find the usual sado-fascist bully brigade of police enablers, one of whom summarizes the situation as follows:

She was very cooperative when the officer was polite to her and did not yell or demand anything…Yah right! Saying the word Miss and Mam didnt do any good. She decided to get drunk and stupid, not follow directions, would jerk away,and thought she was in charge. When she got arrested she needed to shut her cock-holster! The officer cant make her take the test. All he had to do was state she refused to take the test and be done with it. She got the best of him because now she will get paid.

Another adds:

she’s a woman. act like a lady or get treated like a man. she got much better treatment than a man would even after she kept disobeying

His conclusion (and I am quoting): the b(((* was asking for it.

Back in Ohio, here’s how newspaper epistolator William McClelland, of Lake Township, responded to Bonnie Yagiela’s letter on the police’s beating and gang-rape of Hope Steffey, in which Yagiela stated that I was disgusted and appalled but not surprised. The behavior they displayed is typical of humans placed in a position of power and authority over others. McClelland replies:

I wasn’t there, nor have I ever been to Abu Ghraib; therefore, I am not qualified to offer expert analysis as to the events that occurred at either. However, I do know that making generalizations about humans placed in a position of power and authority over others is grossly unfair to the many who serve our nation.

… Maybe the handling of Ms. Steffey was not properly conducted; maybe it was. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I do know that Sheriff Swanson has requested outside assistance from the Ohio attorney general’s office in investigating the incident, and I am willing to await its findings before I make judgment.

Should the investigation prove that the deputies involved did abuse their authority, I will then consider them responsible individually. I will not hold every human being in a position of authority, or every deputy in the sheriff’s office, accountable for the actions of a few.

McClelland’s position on the particular case — which he fraudulently passes off as a critical suspension of judgment, when in fact it is nothing more than overt denialism toward obvious abuse captured on film — is objectionable enough by itself. But what’s even more foolish, and extremely dangerous in the long run, is the notion that a tightly-organized class of people, who exercise such a tremendous advantage over the rest of us in both physical force and legal power, ought to be given every benefit of the doubt when they’re accused of hurting people that they willingly chose to put under their legally-backed and heavily-armed power, and that the basic institutional structures which back up their power cannot be called into question without unfair generalization or stereotyping. When every fucking week brings another story of a Few More Bad Apples causing Yet Another Isolated Incident, and the police department almost invariably doing everything in its power to conceal, excuse, or minimize the violence, even in defiance of the evidence of the senses and no matter how obviously harmless or helpless the victim may be, it defies reason to keep on claiming that there is no systemic problem here. What you have is one of two things: either a professionalized system of control which tacitly permits and encourages cops to exercise this kind of rampant, repeated, intense, and unrepentant abuse against powerless people, or else a system which has clearly demonstrated that it can do nothing effectual to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

Further reading:

• GT 2008-02-18: Cops are here to protect you.
• GT 2008-02-05: Rapists in uniform
• GT 2007-11-09: You got served and protected.

Besides availing itself of my favorite quotation from Edmund Burke, this recent post by Shiva at Biodiverse Resistance is also pretty much right on from beginning to end. Thus:

The headline of this recent BBC story is Stroke victim was misdiagnosed as mad. While reading it was pretty scary (especially as temporary aphasia can also occur in autism, and in fact i experienced it (albeit only for a few very brief periods) in my teens), it follows a certain pattern that annoys me: in describing the horrible treatment that Steve Hall experienced when misdiagnosed, it implicitly suggests that the same treatment would be appropriate and acceptable if he actually was mad.

It reminded me of this case of a woman who was put in a men’s prison because she was percieved to be a transsexual woman (and, therefore, in the eyes of the police who arrested her, really a man) - and of similar cases i’ve heard of where gender-ambiguous-looking women have been refused entry to women’s toilets or other single-sex spaces where they were thought to be MTF transsexuals. As nodesignation says:

The police don’t question the practice of regularly placing trans women in situations where they will be raped. They only lament that they accidentally subjected a non-trans woman to the violence that they regularly subject trans women to. I would assume that as this story gains traction the emphasis will be about how horrible that a woman who was not trans received such mistreatment. That much is clear already from the fact that there are so few stories on trans women receiving this mistreatment despite being its being a regular occurance.

It’s not the inherent wrongness of the treatment that is discussed, it is the supposed horrible mistake of subjecting someone to that treatment when that person actually turned out to be not a member of the category of people that it’s considered acceptable to do this sort of thing to. No thought is given to why it’s supposedly acceptable to do it to people who are in that category, despite the fact that, in both cases, the reporting of the incident blatantly begs the question: if it was horrible and inhuman and inacceptable to do this to one person by mistake, what is it to do it to a whole Othered class of people deliberately?

It was, and in some places still is, common for autistic people (particularly those who don’t fit certain aspects of the commoner autism stereotypes) to be misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, leading to institutionalisation, forced drugging, etc. Similarly, many non-verbal autistic people (who are/were nonetheless capable of communication through other means) are or were misdiagnosed as mentally retarded, again leading to institutionalisation and other abuses justified by the fact of their supposed incapacity for rational thought or communication. On autism message boards and other communities, these cases tend to be talked about primarily in terms of the horribleness of the misdiagnosis, often with comments to the effect that I/you/ze should never have been treated like that, because I’m/you’re/ze’s autistic, not schizophrenic/mentally retarded/whatever, or seeing the case similarly to someone who was acquitted of a crime after new evidence proved them not guilty, as if to be found to be autistic rather than some other diagnostic category after all is what makes all the difference. Even if the people making these sort of comments don’t realise it, they’re implying that it would be OK to do all those things to someone who actually is schizophrenic or mentally retarded.

…

Whether or not we want to adopt an overarching political/philosophical label like anarchist, however, all of us who fight, with actions or words, for any oppressed groups and against oppression need to actively oppose the hypocrisy of outrage at people being mistakenly treated like they are members of a supposedly OK to exclude, abuse or oppress category, when the real outrage should be that such a category even exists. The thing itself is the abuse…

—Shiva @ Biodiverse Resistance (2008-01-03): The Thing Itself Is The Abuse

Read the whole thing.

One of the worst things about so-called public education, i.e. government-controlled schooling, is that students are forced into an institution that they consistently find unpleasant and boring, whether or not the individual student thinks that it’s worth the trouble. That fact, combined with the fact that the victims are all young and many of them are poor or black or otherwise marked as at-risk youth in need of special surveillance and control, naturally and systematically corrupts the way that the school relates to its students. It leads administrators and political decision-makers to focus on restraining the unruly behavior of the coerced students, by making authority, control, security, and discipline top priorities. In practice this means monitoring, intimidation, and coercion. These facts in turn result in attitudes and institutional practices throughout State schools that are often hard to distinguish from those prevailing in a prison camp.

Here are three stories that have come out, just over the course of the past week, about the practices of administrators and uniformed thugs in American public schools. In particular, they are about three separate cases in which one or the other set out to maintain control over their school by physically brutalizing or sexually humiliating young women.

The first case, from Arizona, happened four years ago in Airzona. It’s in the news today because the famously liberal Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of appeals recently ruled that Safford Middle School officials were within the bounds of their legitimate authority when they forced a strip-search on a 13 year old girl — because a couple of student snitches claimed that she had some unauthorized ibuprofen on her, and the Authorities had to know for sure:

Safford Middle School officials did not violate the civil rights of a 13-year-old Safford girl when they forced her to disrobe and expose her breasts and pubic area four years ago while looking for a drug, according to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.

The justices voted 2-1 in favor of the Safford School District on Sept. 21. The decision upheld a federal district court’s summary judgement that Safford Middle School Vice Principal Kerry Wilson, school nurse Peggy Schwallier and administrative assistant Helen Romero did not violate the girl’s Fourth Amendment rights on Oct. 8, 2003, when they subjected her to a strip search in an effort to find Ibuprofen, an anti-inflammatory drug sold over the counter and in prescription strengths.

…

The girl’s mother filed a federal law suit against the district and Middle School officials because they forced her daughter to strip down to her underwear then move her bra and panties in such a way that her breasts and pubic area were exposed. The mother also asserts that she was not notified of the impending search.

In the opinion written by Judge Richard Clifton, Based on the information available to them, defendants (Safford School District, Wilson, Schwallier and Romero) had reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search of (the girl’s) person would turn up evidence that (the girl) had violated or was violating either the law or the rules of the school.

Clifton wrote that Wilson and the others had reasonable grounds for believing the girl had Ibuprofen based on conversations with two other students.

The other students said the girl possessed Ibuprofen and had distributed the drug to others, according to the court report.

—Diane Saunders, Eastern Arizona Courier (2007-09-26): Court rules school officials acted properly in strip search

The second case is from New York, where — in order to enforce a blanket no-bags policy putatively adopted for the students own health and safety — a member of the school goon squad decided that it was O.K. for him, an adult male ex-cop, to pull 14 year old girls carrying purses out of class and interrogate them about their menstrual cycles:

Grahamsville — Several television news crews from New York City are camped outside the Tri-Valley Central School following the story in today’s Times Herald-Record about what question a school security guard asked a 14-year-old female student.

The girl was called out of class by a security guard during a school sweep last week to make sure no kids had backpacks or other banned bags.

Samantha Martin had a small purse with her that day.

That’s why the security guard, ex-Monticello cop Mike Bunce, asked her The Question.

She says he told her she couldn’t have a purse unless she had her period. Then he asked, Do you have your period?

Samantha was mortified.

She says she thought, Oh, my God. Get away from me. But instead of answering, she just walked back into class.

At home, she cried, and told her mother what happened.

It appears that at least a few other girls were also asked the same question.

On Sept. 21, Martin and other girls were called to the office of Principal Robert Worden. Lisa Raymond, the assistant superintendent for business, was also there, Martin said.

They just asked me what he (Bunce) said. I told them, and they said thanks for coming, she said.

The small Sullivan County school has been in an uproar for the last week. Girls have worn tampons on their clothes in protest, and purses made out of tampon boxes. Some boys wore maxi-pads stuck to their shirts in support.

After hearing that someone might have been suspended for the protest, freshman Hannah Lindquist, 14, went to talk to Worden. She wore her protest necklace, an OB tampon box on a piece of yarn. She said Worden confiscated it, talked to her about the code of conduct and the backpack rule — and told her she was now part of the problem.

Tri-Valley Superintendent Nancy George, who has refused to meet with any reporters today, yestedar said that when Worden, Bunce and another staffer did the bag check, they were telling students to put the bags in their lockers. The administration is investigating whether they said anything more to some girls.

I have had some parents talk to me personally, and they gave me the names of some students who were asked, she said. We’re certainly not going to make light of this. It’s a very sensitive issue, but it needs to be handled. Parents with more information should call her directly, she added.

Raymond and Worden failed to return calls yesterday for comment. Bunce was not working yesterday, and his home phone number is unlisted.

Bunce was forced to retire from the Monticello Police Department in 2002 after he and the former chief were caught running their process-serving business on village time.

School board President Lori Mickelson declined comment.

The school banned backpacks in the halls this year for two reasons, George said: Student health, because heavy bags could hurt the kids’ backs or people could trip on them; and for security concerns, felt nationwide, about concealed weapons.

—Heather Yakin, Times Herald-Record (2007-09-28): The Question’ causes furor at local high school

Clearly the Authorities concerns about small purses and their contribution teenagers’ back problems outweigh minor considerations like the dignity and sexual privacy of 14 year old girls.

The third case comes from Palmdale, California, near Los Angeles, where a member of the school goon squad slammed Pleajhai Mervin, a young black woman at Knight High School, down on a table, twisted her arm behind her back, and broke her wrist — after she refused to follow his bellowed orders to make a fourth try at cleaning up the last bits of a slice of cake that she had accidentally spilled on the lunchroom floor. According to Mervin, the uniformed thug yelled hold still nappy head at her during the course of the attack. The fifteen-year-old young woman was then ticketed for littering, expelled from school, and arrested for battery against the beefy uniformed security thug who was breaking her wrist while other security goons hovered around. Two other black students — a 14 year old boy and his 16 year old sister — were tackled, held down, shoved around, handcuffed, and arrested for daring to film what was going on using their cell phone cameras.

School security guards in Palmdale, CA have been caught on camera assaulting a 16-year-old girl and breaking her arm after she spilled some cake during lunch and left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning it up.

… The girl, Pleajhai Mervin, told Fox News LA that she was bumped while queuing for lunch and dropped the cake. After being ordered to clean it up and then re-clean the spot three times, she attempted to leave the area out of embarrassment but was jumped on by security who forced her onto a table, breaking her wrist in the process.

—Steve Watson, InfoWars (2007-09-28): School Guards Break Child’s Arm And Arrest Her For Dropping Cake

Mervin says a security guard slammed her against a table at a lunchroom at the high school and twisted her arms behind her back so violently, he broke her wrist. Her wrist is in a cast.

He put my arm behind my back and he started raising it until it hurt, so I told him, Stop, it hurts. He had slammed me on the table and told me to hold still. He called me a nappy-head, and that’s when I just started crying, said Mervin.

Mervin claims she was roughed up simply because she failed to pick up every crumb of a birthday cake she accidentally dropped on the floor of the lunchroom during a lunch-hour birthday celebration for a friend. She says she thought she cleaned up the mess, but the security guard thought otherwise.

He said, You have to come pick the rest of this cake up. So I said, I picked it up. He gets on his walkie-talkie, he got a call, so I just started walking to class, and that’s when he grabbed me, said Mervin.

Mervin says when the security guard realized he was being videotaped, he tackled the student shooting the video. She says another student captured photographs of that incident. She says the whole incident was unnecessary.

—Leo Stallworth, KABC Los Angeles (2007-09-26): High School Security Guards Accused of Excessive Force One security guard twisted the arm of 16-year-old Pleajhai Mervin behind her back and slammed her against a lunch table, fracturing her wrist, parents said.

I want justice, said Mervin’s mother, Latrisha Majors, who also was arrested. I want justice for my daughter. I want the guards to be held accountable for their actions.

Majors and her daughter were arrested in the Sept. 18 lunchtime incident, along with Joshua Lockett, 14, who videotaped the fight, and his sister, Kenngela Lockett, 16, who also suffered a fractured wrist.

Both Mervin and Kenngela Lockett attended the protest with their arms in slings.

Joshua Lockett, who was on probation for robbery, remained in juvenile custody on suspicion of violating his probation, sheriff’s deputies said.

We come to get an education, not to be hurt by security guards, said Kenngela, who said she tried to pull guards off her brother and was hurt while being handcuffed.

One guard, whose name has not been publicly released, has been placed on leave with pay pending an investigation by the Antelope Valley Union High School District. Attempts to reach the guard were not successful.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said the guard told them he felt threatened by Mervin.

There was resistance by her, Sgt. Darrel Brown said. He went to control her.

—Karen Maeshiro, LA Daily News (2007-09-29): Rally protests security guard acts.

Mainstream media sources such as the Los Angeles Times, KABC in Los Angeles, KSN (a local NBC affiliate), and the LA Daily News have repeatedly described what happened as a tussle … between a security guard and three students, as a scuffle with security guards, a melee with security guards, mayhem, etc. This apparently is what passes for accurate description of a professional uniformed security goon battering two high school girls and a fourteen-year-old boy, while he’s backed up by another security goon hovering around the area and clearly outweighs all of his victims. You can watch part of Joshua Lockett’s video of the scuffle at MyFox Los Angeles (2007-09-26) and MyFox Los Angeles (2007-09-28).

Oh No A WoC PhD (2007-09-30) has a YouTube montage of more photos and videos from this so-called melee, and also the contact information for school and city officials.

(Stories thanks to feministing 2007-10-01, Women of Color Blog 2007-09-30, Oh No a WoC PhD 2007-09-30, The Superfluous Man 2007-09-28, Radley Balko 2007-09-28, feministing 2007-09-28, and Majikthise 2007-09-28.)

State schooling, institutional racism, blanket zero-tolerance policies, and increasing police and security presence in schools have ensured that many if not most American schools are no longer primarily places of learning. They are guarded institutions whose primary focus is on command and control.

Further reading:

• GT 2007-09-27: New York cops attack and pepper-spray trans activists
• GT 2006-11-16: Law and Orders: UCLA campus police “found it necessary” to repeatedly taser an Iranian student already lying helpless on the ground
• GT 2005-05-05: Peace Officers, redux
• GT 2005-04-26: Peace Officers
• GT 2004-11-14: Civil defense
• GT 2001-04-07: Everyone Agrees: Stop Penning Kids Up in High School