Gangsters in Blue

As I wrote in an essay a few months ago, the best way to view the imperial nature of the U.S. government is to view it as an empire controlled by the city-state of Washington instead of as a broadly American phenomenon. Indeed, the territorial U.S. differs from Iraq and Afghanistan only in the sense that our occupation is a less volatile one. This allows the resemblance of “civil society” that supports and approves of the occupation, and rules out the need for the frightening displays of force that other people around the world endure at the hands of U.S. armed forces. Generally speaking, we chalk this relative lack of open violence up to our status as a “free people”.

However, as we plunge deeper into financial crisis, that may change. Soldiers fresh from counterinsurgency operations in Iraq are deploying for missions within the U.S.. With the unrest likely upon full-blown collapse of the currency and the economy, Bush retains the prerogative to declare martial law and institute what is, in effect, military dictatorship. Essentially, the imperial managers of Earth in D.C. are deciding whether or not we need a surge - not in Iraq, but right here in the territorial United States.

Part of the process of taking back our freedom entails a sober analysis of our present political situation. There is no real difference between a free society under a government and a military occupation - each exists merely as different zones on a sliding scale of repression, which government dials up or down based on “conditions on the ground”. Until we understand that we live in occupied territory, we will always be able to say “well, we got it better than Iraq” without realizing that the same dynamics are at play, at home and abroad.

McCain said:

My friends, if you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you’re disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them.

Just don’t join it’s ranks from within the Republican party:

Today at the Republican National Convention, as the Ron Paul Delegates were taking a picture in front of the model White House inside the Convention Center, they were surrounded by Secret Service which proceeded to search the bags of all the delegates. They took any and everything related to Ron Paul including signs, buttons, videos, slim jims, cards, even books.

They were followed, surveilled, and harassed. Indeed, even if you make it into the ranks of government, they may still try to hold you back:

Earlier Tuesday, Paul said he was told he could go to the Republican convention floor, but only under very restricted conditions.

The Republican National Committee told Paul he would have to pick up his pass at the gate and couldn’t have any guests.

“Republican congressmen should have a pass to the floor, but they said, ‘Your pass will be at the gate, and we’ll pick it up when you leave, and you can’t take anybody with you,’ ” he said on CNN’s “American Morning.”

And since they’re treating even peaceful protest and civil disobedience as terrorism, they’re leaving us with very few options. Whether we see our role in fixing problems as within, without, or against government, the response is clear: submit or suffer. Make this a better country, but a better country according to our definition, not yours. And don’t make any sudden moves while you’re working on those flaws!

Over and over again, law enforcement demonstrates that they are not only interested in forcing their alien vision of “law and order” on the people they’re supposed to “protect and serve”, but that they are actively hostile and sadistic towards the protestors. We’ve seen this before, like in Miami’s ‘06 FTAA protests:

The resentment has come out full force, now. On Democracy Now!, the arrested journalists told how the police would tighten restraints when detainees complained about how tight they were. The psychology of the human beings in law enforcement is becoming a serious menace and is being actively promoted in their training:

The police brutality that we’ve seen in Denver and St. Paul this week is the result of ongoing indoctrination of the police against protesters, especially any protesters of the left-wing stripe. Local police departments have been militarized to deal with protesters, with much of this militarization happening during the Clinton administration. After 9/11, local police were further turned into anti-terrorist organizations, with the effect that they see their work as fighting terrorists. Local police are also bringing home the terror tactics that the U.S. has been using in dozens of countries around the world for the past century.

The war on terror has escalated into an increased war on the “rabble” of America, most significantly protesters and anarchists. This doesn’t surprise us, because the U.S. government has always been at war with dissidents of many kinds.

We do not have any hope that the police will change their attitudes or their ways. The purpose of the police is to act as the violent arm of capital and the state. The only way for the people to stop the police is to stand up to them, abolish the police and build a different society which needs no police.

Indeed, this jives with my own research: police are being trained to see civil society as their zoo full of mere animals to keep in line, and many are adopting an abusive relationship with their “wards”. Witness their open sadism in St. Paul:

The sad part about all this is that these attitudes towards the public are going to make the jobs of officers who genuinely want to get along with the public much more difficult. While many officers may look forward to the police state as their chance to beat up hippies (see the end of Daniel Clowes’ Like an Velvet Glove Cast in Iron for a perfect portrayal of this attitude), I’d advise them to take a good look at Iraq. The officers there are targeted by insurgents and are never safe, on or off duty. It’s easy to be a bully when you can still go home to your family in relative safety - a police state turns street protestors from prey into predators. Moreover, it was arguably the attitudes of American soldiers (including cops in reserve units) that turned the people against them and their police. Not only are these attitudes quite similar to those displayed by cops in the twin cities, the attitudes may even be brought back by soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan to new careers in domestic law enforcement.

If cops want to militarize their jobs, they need to consider the down side for themselves, their families, and their communities. There’s a lot more civilians than soldiers and officers, and continuing abuse - including the branding of activists as terrorists - just threatens to push Americans over the edge the same way Iraqis were pushed. If civil society is lost, cops may look back fondly on the days when the public merely committed minor property damage.

Brutalidad policial … Police brutality Paga impuestos… La policia no es para darte seguridad, es para proteger el dinero de la burguesia. Tu mismo pagas con tu sudor o con tu sangre el sadismo de algunos que nunca quisieron trabajar. All cops are bastards.

If there is a real investigation of this, what do you think will be the outcome for these fine uniformed thugs? Prison? Mall security? Or nothing at all? From WABC-TV, New York: Mistaken identity police brutality? [...] Minter’s video captures police in plain clothes milling around and a helicopter above. They’d apparently been chasing a suspect who crashed his car into the [...]

A very well presented summary of the ways in which the U.S. government is taking the steps other totalitarian governments have throughout history.

What is happening right now is a corporate state conspiracy, pure and simple. Whatever that means to you, be prepared to respond to it when it crosses whatever threshold of human dignity you’ve decided upon.

I’ve had an interest in police culture and practices for a long time. I haven’t run into a huge amount of officers in my life, but I have seen some really good ones and some really bad ones. I’m just interested in what motivates them, I guess - it seems like most cops are bored most of the time.

And as I learn more, a trend towards belligerent behavior seems to emerge. It angers me for the obvious reasons, but the truly helpful and respectful cops stick out in my head and lead me to ask, “Why is this happening?” Many people have been collecting the evidence for this trend and asking the same question (Radley Balko’s blog is excellent in this area). I’ve heard a lot of answers: some blame the drug war, others blame the influx of military into law enforcement ranks, and still others blame it all on standard-issue government evilness. But I found another, more direct and provable answer in an article at PoliceLink.com entitled Street Survival Insights: Behavior Traits that get Cops Killed; Long Known, Still Ignored.

The long and short of it is that a study was done fifteen years ago and, while the conclusions were speculative and hard to prove, five traits of behavior likely to get cops killed were dreamed up arrived at. Of these five behavior traits, the very first three have directly to do with friendliness, openness, and generally acting like a human being among equals:

1. Friendly.

   This adjective was frequently used to describe the murdered officers, along with “well-liked,” “laid back,” and “easy going.” While a friendly demeanor “does much to promote a positive image for the officer and the department, overly friendly behavior at an inappropriate time” can backfire, the researchers warn…

2. Service-oriented.

   “Tends to perceive self as more public relations than law enforcement,” the researchers said of the prototypical slain officer. Of course service is part of your job. But on the street, your “customer” is not always right. To protect and serve the community, the researchers remind, “officers must realize that they need to protect themselves first” and not indulge a “misguided sense of service” that results in “placing prisoners’ comfort over their own personal safety.” In policing, your success—and your safety—often depend on your ability to get people to do what they don’t want to do.

3. Hesitant about using force.

   Victim officers tended “to use less force than other officers felt they would use in similar circumstances,” the researchers found. And they customarily “used force only as a last resort;” their peers said they themselves “would use force at an earlier point in similar circumstances.” Courts have clearly confirmed that it’s justifiable in situations you reasonably perceive as threatening to employ even pre-emptive force to stop a threat; you don’t have to wait until you are assaulted or injured. Yet some trainers are noticing that some officers today seem so hesitant about using force that it appears they are more afraid of being sued or thought overzealous than they are of being murdered!

If you’re wondering why the relationship between community and police has been eroding so consistently for so long, you need only read that article. Law enforcement professionals have been told for fifteen years that several of the core behaviors that comprise civil society are likely to get them killed. We should not be surprised that they are not friendly, respectful, genuine, or judicious. The attitudes that embolden officers to embrace militarization, treat the community like occupied territory, and abuse their privileges are the result of some vague conclusions of research conducted by the FBI - not exactly the paragons of community-level law enforcement.

But one of the sad answers to my question.

This one comes from my favorite vulgar libertarian, Radley Balko. Despite some of his corporate apologism he is doing some absolutely awesome work on police militarism. Today he has a penetrating comment on police justifications for SWAT raids:

This sort of case also emphasizes the inherent contradiction in the way police justify these raids. You’ll notice in the article that the police say they conducted the no-knock, middle-of-the-night raid to catch the suspect and his family off-guard. They then turn around and say the girl who fired the gun should have known they were police officers. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say nighttime SWAT raids are necessary to catch people unaware while they’re sleeping, then say they “should have known” that the men invading their homes were police.

Alexander Cockburn at Counterpunch fucking nails it - isn’t he on “teh Left”?

The Virginia Tech terrible massacre should prompt a radical review of the utility of SWAT teams which now infest almost every community in America. Each time there’s a hostage taking or a mass murderer on the rampage, one sees the same familiar sight: overweight SWAT men, doubled up under the weight of their costly artillery, lumbering along in their body armor and then hiding behind trees or cars or walls while the killer goes about his business. SWAT teams perform most efficiently when shooting down unarmed street people menacing them with cellphones.

The answer is to disband SWAT teams and kindred military units, and return to the idea of voluntary posses or militias: a speedy assembly of citizen volunteers with their own weapons. Such a body at Columbine or Virginia Tech might have saved many lifes. In other words: make the Second Amendment live up to its promise.

In 2005 I listened to some earnest ACLU type at a meeting in Garberville, an hour from where I live, deliver a judicious speech about Taser guns–a new toy for the cops, whereby a person can be zapped with 50,000 volts. The ACLU guy was torn. On the one hand, he reasoned that the Taser — being purportedly, though not actually non-lethal — is better than a 12-gauge or high powered rifle. On the other hand, there is the possibility of “improper use”. His answer: more regulation. He didn’t entertain the actual course of events, namely that Tasers have now been added to the means whereby the police can kill or terrorize people and that regulation will be zero.

The left complain about SWAT teams, but doesn’t see that the progressives bear a lot of responsibility for their rise. If you confer the task of social invigilation and protection to professional janissaries–cops — and deny the right of self and social protection to ordinary citizens, you end up with crews of over-armed thugs running amok under official license, terrorizing the disarmed citizens. In the end you have the whole place run by the Army or the federalized National Guard, as is increasingly evident now with the overturning of the Posse Comitatus laws forbidding any role for the military in domestic law enforcement.

I cannot tell you how happy I am seeing somebody on the left identify progressivism as part of the problem. The central task in the evolution of leftism in this country, now, is to rid itself of the vestiges of progressive thought - managerialism, professionalism, large-scale organization as an end in itself - and get back to its decentralized, populist roots.

Now, if we can just get some left wing militias in this country, we’ll be all set.