‘Don't Call It A Curfew’: BORDC/DDF's Executive Director Comments On Baltimore

This article by Shahid Buttar, executive director of the recently merged Bill of Rights Defense Committee - Defending Dissent Foundation (BORDC/DDF, occasionally DDF/BORDC) considers the serious possibility that the actions of the Baltimore police imposed no mere "curfew" on parts of the city but actual de facto martial law, in response not to a "riot" but to a rejection by demonstrators of an all‑out fully equipped military operation by those police, consciously and brutally imposed on the demonstrators.

The trend toward use of military equipment, gear and tactics by city police departments against protesters of all sorts, most of the latter nonviolent, scares hell out of me, as I am certain it is intended to do. And Godwin's Law becomes less applicable as, incident by incident, protesters are beaten, tased, gassed, pepper‑sprayed etc. in the streets or taken to jail and denied the most fundamental rights of people detained in America. How often is an arrest for protesting peacefully effectively a death sentence, or a jail term without charge, trial, conviction or sentencing?

And when is enough, enough? Buttar depicts a sign at one protest:

These aren't riots. You are watching an unjust system be[ing] dismantled.

One can only hope that interpretation is recognized in the halls of power before protesters are driven to more extreme measures to make their voices heard.

Jailed For Filming The Police While BlackHeld 44 hours without charge in an overstuffed, unsanitary cell

It's pretty clear: Baltimore is a really bad place to be simultaneously Black and an activist. The fact that Geremy Faulkner was doing nothing even remotely illegal did not prevent his detention, not merely "along with" miscreants but "instead of" actual violators of law. What did Faulkner do that drew police attention in the first place?

Geremy Faulkner, who turned 18 in February, was videotaping police interaction with looters and bystanders last Monday afternoon at Baltimore’s Mondawmin Mall when he was arrested along with 250 others in the city that day. He spent the next 44 hours in jail, crammed in a small holding cell with as many as twelve men with no beds, no blankets, no pillows, intermittent water (the pipes spewed brown water that the guards suggested they avoid drinking), inadequate food, and no access to an attorney.

He was never charged with a crime.

...

Please read the rest of Karen Houppert's article at The Nation, linked above. Read it even if you already have "outrage overload" today. View the photo of Baltimore cops. And if you're in Baltimore, pay attention: the life you save may be your own, no matter what you are doing tonight or will be doing tomorrow.

Chicago Police Systematically Deny Counsel To Arrestees

Is this still true?
Even in Chicago?

In my not-so-humble opinion, denying the Sixth Amendment right to counsel to people arrested in the context of exercising their First Amendment right to free speech in protest of government action, especially denying that right systematically, is arguably one of the most egregious sorts of police misconduct possible. I mean, if Chicago PD is doing this, they might as well be firing rubber bullets into crowds, assaulting peaceful protesters with billy clubs, using tasers on nonviolent protesters, etc. (Oh, wait...) Police denying arrestees' access to an attorney is behavior characteristic of a totalitarian government, not a representative democracy.

Kevin Gosztola at FDL has details. This is no April Fool's joke!

War And Peace War And Police

I promise this post is shorter than the first proposed title would indicate. But the subject it addresses - the military-style up-armoring and officer training of America's police departments - is already underway and growing rapidly. Tom Engelhardt has the basics in his article at The Nation, What Does the Future Hold for a Country Forever at War? — The domestic arms race in America is a one-way street—and the question is what awaits us up the road. Two paragraphs out of the middle should crystallize what concerns me... and of course Engelhardt himself... so much:

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Reminder to officers:
Don't be a cartoon!

The occasion for such reflections: machine guns in my hometown. To be specific, several weeks ago, New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton announced the formation of a new 350-officer Special Response Group (SRG). Keep in mind that New York City already has a police force of more than 34,000—bigger, that is, than the active militaries of Austria, Bulgaria, Chad, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kenya, Laos, Switzerland or Zimbabwe—as well as its own “navy,” including six submersible drones. Just another drop in an ocean of blue, the SRG will nonetheless be a squad for our times, trained in what Bratton referred to as “advanced disorder control and counterterror.” It will also, he announced, be equipped with “extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns—unfortunately sometimes necessary in these instances.” And here’s where he created a little controversy in my hometown. The squad would, Bratton added, be “designed for dealing with events like our recent protests or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.”

Now, that was an embarrassment in liberal New York. By mixing the recent demonstrations over the police killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and others into the same sentence with the assault on Mumbai and the Charlie Hebdo affair in France, he seemed to be equating civil protest in the Big Apple with acts of terrorism. Perhaps you won’t be surprised then that the very next day the police department started walking back the idea that the unit would be toting its machine guns not just to possible terror incidents but to local protests. A day later, Bratton himself walked his comments back even further. (“I may have in my remarks or in your interpretation of my remarks confused you or confused the issue.”) Now, it seems there will be two separate units, the SRG for counterterror patrols and a different, assumedly machine-gun-less crew for protests.

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The cop to viewer left
does not give me confidence...

In America, the police should emphatically not be viewed as a branch of the military, or as a separate military entity for domestic use. That way lies the demise of our freedom, probably quickly and certainly not cheaply in money or lives. The situation is not mitigated by the obvious readiness with which grand juries nationwide are willing to no‑bill law enforcement officers who may have committed crimes in performance of their purported duties. (We'll never know, will we, if no trials ever take place.). The people who put these institutions in place in virtually every big city in America (and not a few smaller ones) need to read their goddamned history! And they need to do it before we find ourselves living in pre‑W.W. II Germany. (Yeah, I know; that knocks on the door of Godwin's Law. Better that than a no‑knock raid...)

The other great loss, of course, is that of the wisdom conveyed by active public protest. (If you think there is no such wisdom, you've probably ended up on the wrong blog; maybe you need something more toward the right.) In my younger, healthier days, I felt confident in standing in the Main Street esplanade traffic circle in Houston, holding my own handmade sign or one end of a banner, with people of similar mind, demonstrating (word chosen advisedly) the nonviolent alternative to conventional wisdom to a public that might otherwise never give it a thought... the conventional wisdom always being "go to war, America!". For better or worse (I can see it either way), the groups I participated with were always orderly, never violent and on the rare occasions a permit was required (usually when we anticipated blocking traffic), duly filed for one. That was enough to keep us out of jail, though that was not a primary goal.

Today, literally any protest, however orderly, would be deemed "terrorism," and paddy-wagons full of protesters would promptly be on the way to jail or, worse, to a hospital to be patched up after they were beaten. Yes, by cops, drunk on the power conferred by all their new equipment and (inadequate) military training.

Do we want to have and keep the freedoms talked about by our nation's founders and fleshed out by many of our forebears since the founding? This is sure as Hell not the way to get to them!

The Naming Of Bad Places

Wish fulfillment map of US
with Alabama sunk as deep as Lake Michigan

When I was perhaps three or four years old, some of my mother's elderly relatives, farmers like my grandparents, living in a tiny country town in Texas, hard-shell Baptists who thumped their Bibles as hard as anyone I've known before or since, used to tell me that if I misbehaved, I'd be sent to the Bad Place. Even at that age, I considered that threat unlikely to be realized. But they were sure I was headed straight for the Bad Place.

They never told me its name is Alabama...

(Be sure to watch the video. I know the news and the D-leaning websites have been heavy on police violence lately, but you need to see this one for the full effect.)

In this case, the police have regressed from their usual beatings of African Americans after "questioning" them to decking a 57‑year‑old man visiting from India, a man walking down the street in front of his American family's home, a man whose primary crime was that he spoke no English. The cops decked him, paralyzing him (possibly only temporarily) in the process. They apparently decked him because he did not understand commands they had been shouting at him (we don't have details there; the confrontation, if that's what it was, happened before the apparent cell phone video starts).

I don't have much patience with the police terrorizing people from India. It's hard to generalize about a nation with that many people, but I think it's fair to say that most Indians from families well-off enough to move to or visit the United States are likely to be well-educated, hardworking, very family-oriented, and civilized to a degree not often found in Americans. If I were to be assigned a roommate for the duration of a trip, or a coworker for a technological project, I'd rather he (or she, in the case of the IT coworker) be Indian than Alabaman, 9 times out of 10. (The 10^th one is too addicted to tobacco to be able to put it aside as a courtesy or smoke outside even for the duration of a trip. Been there; choked on that.)

In short... for partaking of a culture dramatically different from white-bread America's, the people of India who come here have on average a lot of Americans' classic virtues, for which we can only admire them. Could we please restrain the worst of our police from beating them to a paralyzed pulp when they come to visit?

Violent Gang Roving Streets Of Berkeley...

... and they look like this:


   (Watch on YouTube.)

That was posted by Todd Zimmer three days ago.

I understand why cops are at protest events. I do NOT understand the justification for their wearing full riot gear, kettling peaceful protesters, taking pokes at people whom they may find annoying but who aren't threatening anybody, occasionally beating the crap out of one or another protester (or, worse, bystander or neighborhood resident), etc. Are antisocial tendencies the new unwritten requirement for anyone wanting to become a police officer?

I mean, these guys are not Chicago PD circa 1968, but why do they have to do this at all? Violence begets violence; irrational confrontation provokes irrational confrontation. You can't tell me this police behavior does one single thing to help keep the peace... and after all, when (as one officer said) they are "just doin' [their] job," that behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with their job. Wielding nightsticks at a mostly orderly crowd represents a failure to do the only legitimate job of a police officer faced with a crowd: keeping the peace.

(H/T jpmassar at Kos.)

‘They Wonder Why They're Hated’: Video Of Tallahassee Police Tasing 62-Year-Old Black Woman In The Back

That's the reaction of an onlooker: All pretense of civilized behavior vanishes as a Tallahassee officer apparently tells a 62-year-old-woman to turn around, then tases her in the back as she walks away slowly, threatening no one:

(Incident is at about 2:38 into the video.)

Sixty or seventy years ago, we wondered what it felt like to be confronted by the Gestapo. Now we can simply look out our windows...

This cannot continue. This. Can. Not. Continue.

(Via Shaun King at Kos.)

‘Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do...’

"... when Missouri cops, they come for you..."

(Or insert the name of your own great state; MO doesn't have a monopoly.)

There are many cities and towns in which the police are honest and dedicated to protecting the citizenry. Considering that fact, how very much worse your risk must be if you live in a place like Ferguson, MO (or, hell, NYC), to raise the national numbers to this obscene level.

Maybe it's no accident that a show called "Cops" has the theme song "Bad Boys" ...

(H/T bobswern at Kos, from a tweet from @OccupyWallStreetNYC.)

Flee The SWAT

It probably won't do you any good... if they come to you, you'll probably end up dead anyway... but it's all you've got in these days of militarized police forces (see previous post for an example).

Matthew Harwood at TomDispatch examines the growing phenomenon of police as militarized invasion force... that's what SWAT has become in the course of the past three or four decades, growing from its origins in the 1960s as an attempted answer to the most extreme situations law enforcement can face into a quasi-military home invasion force, used mainly for serving drug warrants and equipped with the best equipment and vehicles the Pentagon can offer.

MRAP, Queensbury, NY

Bill Moyers features Tom Engelhardt featuring in turn Chase Madar on The Criminalization of Everyday Life, confronting more or less the same subject and featuring a photo of an MRAP vehicle guaranteed to terrorize (word used advisedly) any innocent citizen into staying home... where s/he is, as Harwood indicates, still not safe from the militarized invasions of the police who now own this formerly military vehicle.

A short passage from Harwood's article drives home the point:

...

In 1984, according to Radley Balko's Rise of the Warrior Cop, about 26% of towns with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 had SWAT teams. By 2005, that number had soared to 80% and it’s still rising, though SWAT statistics are notoriously hard to come by.

As the number of SWAT teams has grown nationwide, so have the raids. Every year now, there are approximately 50,000 SWAT raids in the United States, according to Professor Pete Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies. In other words, roughly 137 times a day a SWAT team assaults a home and plunges its inhabitants and the surrounding community into terror.

...

And you thought your primary danger of being shot full of holes came from the criminals. What goes around, comes straight at us; the US has terrorized the people of other nations with these weapons for decades, most recently in preemptive, invasive wars, and now the remaindered weapons from those same wars are driving into our neighborhoods and shooting up our own children. Welcome to America!

Ferguson, MO Cops: Fascist Guns In The (Mid)West

Boomers: remember the days of our youth, when cops were often called "fascist pigs"? Well... they're baaaack! Ferguson, MO police seem to have declared as their enemies not just Blacks... not just Whites... but journalists in general. Two journalists covering the whole sorry business in that ugly little town (Ryan J. Reilly of Huffington Post; Wesley Lowery of Washington Post) were told to leave a McDonald's where they were working and sipping coffee, and when they didn't clear out fast enough (or through the right door), the cops arrested them.  They were not charged... hey, who needs charges if you're arresting "bad" people? Read the reporters' tweets during the incident at the link above.

It's really hard to justify this kind of crap, but from at least the Occupy movement forward, it's been happening more often. Maybe having the Pentagon donate (or sell cheap) its crowd control equipment to a remarkable percentage of the small-town police forces in America is deleterious to free speech, public protest and similar activities we once held to be America's protection against loss of civil liberties. Or maybe these cops in particular are just fascist pigs...

The ACLU has launched an investigation of militarization of America's police forces; goodness knows there's no shortage of material to investigate. Here is the summary, and here is the report (.pdf), titled "War Comes Home." IMNSHO, if military equipment is available to city police forces, inevitably, police operations will more and more come to resemble military operations... and history shows the path after that.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) reminds us in a tweet, "This is America, not a war zone. The people of #Ferguson just want answers. We all want answers." Indeed we do, and we'd better get some good answers soon. Meanwhile, if you love your democracy (what's left of it), don't give your police force MRAVs MRAPs and drones. And don't... ever... encourage police to arrest journalists.

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Clarification: only the second photo above, of a crowd of protesters keeping their hands in plain sight, is from Ferguson. The police photos are representative of the transformation of police operations into military operations.

Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) Used Against Peaceful Protest Of Detroit Water Shut-Off

You knew when you read about the development of the LRAD that its use would extend far beyond mere acoustic communications over long distances.

You knew from its use against protesters at the 2004 Republican National Convention that its use as a police weapon would not be confined to control of violent crowds.

And you learned last Friday that Detroit police used it against peaceful protesters at the entrance to Homrich, "a demolition contractor working on a $5.6 million deal to perform the water shutoffs on residents." There's a video on the linked post; despite the manifestly peaceful nature of the protest, the LRAD fires up near the end of the video. All claims aside, the actual clear purpose of the LRAD is physical intimidation of protesters.

Live in Detroit. Miss a water bill. Have your water shut off along with thousands of other households, as part of a "Detroit Water Collection Project." Join an organized peaceful protest of that over‑the‑top action which surely endangered public health. And in response, have your protest physically assaulted by a sound weapon intended for military use or violent crowd control. Got the picture?

The first arrest the cops made was of a guy in a wheelchair. I've spent time in a wheelchair; I didn't attend any protests while I was wheel-bound... it's just not safe. You've got to admire the man for his courage. I hope he was treated with basic human respect. But I wouldn't bet on it.

The cops used presumably the same weapon or its cousin against Occupy Detroit in May 2012, dispersing another pointedly peaceful protest. Do you see a pattern here?

"Land of the free, home of the brave"... MFA!

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A small hand-portable LRAD. Notice that it is illustrated as held by police, not military personnel. Even the smallest LRADs are capable of generating sound at levels capable of damaging human hearing. As small as they are, devices like this one have a range of about a half mile.

Drones That Fire Pepper Spray Bullets

Using a BBC technology article as a source, Bruce Schneier tells us about these newly available weapons:

Desert Wolf's website states that its Skunk octacopter drone is fitted with four high-capacity paintball barrels, each capable of firing up to 20 bullets per second.

In addition to pepper-spray ammunition, the firm says it can also be armed with dye-marker balls and solid plastic balls.

The machine can carry up to 4,000 bullets at a time as well as "blinding lasers" and on-board speakers that can communicate warnings to a crowd.

If you're planning the next-generation Occupy movement, you may want to consider the casualties to be inflicted on practitioners of a legal and once-respectable civic activity, and prepare by having several hospitals at your disposal. Given the thirst for violence evidenced by some big-city police departments in the original Occupy protests, one may be confident this isn't going to be pretty.