A Spoiled Batch

It was less than two weeks ago that the world saw the traumatic footage of George Floyd’s murder by four Minneapolis Police Department officers. The footage set off a tinder box of massive protests and unrest throughout the country. People showed out and took the the streets to demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless more, demand respect and justice for black lives, and in many cases demand an end to policing as it exists in this country. In response, the police took to the streets as well.

We’ve had years of cell phone and bodycam footage of officers using unnecessary force or killing black people, with several times more going unfilmed and unreported. There continue to be disproportionately high rates of police assault and killings of black, Latinx, Native American and Disabled people, and barely a handful of officers even arrested, much less convicted. Yet it seems half of America sees these as isolated incidents, attributable to a few bad apple police. After the footage of police response to these protests, there should be no room for doubt that the entire batch has spoiled.

As if footage of everyday police abuse wasn’t enough, we are not being inundated with just how casually and regularly police are willing to use force against peaceful, unarmed citizens. We are seeing more videos every day of police tear-gassing indiscriminately, beating and arresting peaceful protesters, macing press and driving into crowds. This is compounded with reports of police using harassment and violence as retribution against detained protesters, not allowing them medical services, verbally and sexually harassing them and detaining them for hours without charges, legal representation or bathroom breaks.

This is not police responding to unique circumstances of looting and rioting. None of the footage show police arresting or attacking looters, but peaceful protesters. The LAPD does not need to yang down the facemask of a person sitting handcuffed on the street to pepper spray them directly in the face to control crowds. Militarized Minneapolis police do not need to shoot rubber bullets at residents on their balconies to stop rioting. These are tactics meant to intimidate, to escalate, and to maintain control through violence.

What we are witnessing on a nationwide scale horrifying and depicts the kind of tactics police use every day when not being filmed. It is the same violence, harassment and retribution that can be found in police departments across the country. The Invisible Institute in Chicago collected data on reports of police misconduct and found over 200,000 complaints of police misconduct from departments across the country. They range from minor infractions, to planting evidence, perjury, rape and domestic violence.

By imposing curfews, mayors have given blanket permission to police forces to use this same violence they’ve been using in communities of color. The curfew acts as reasonable suspicion or just cause for officers to arrest, harass and beat any protests at a certain time. Often times police contain protesters in certain areas until the curfew strikes, and then have free reign to start the violence and mass arrests. There is even video of police attacking and arresting people who are simply on their way from or to work because they are on the street at the wrong time. In this way the curfew operates the same way possession of drugs, smelling weed, suspicious behavior or matching vague and racially profiled descriptions have for generations in mostly black urban neighborhoods. It is an excuse to harass and arrest citizens with impunity.

Acting with impunity is a key factor here. Few if any of these police will be held accountable for their actions, even when caught on film, even if it violates regulations set out by local police departments. For instance Los Angeles and New York police departments have set guidelines that require de-escalation tactics and set out specific guidelines for use of force, such as resorting to pepper spray or stun guns only when subjects are resisting arrest, or in some cases they must pose a physical threat. Yet we are seeing videos of officers using those tactics against restrained or non-threatening protesters.

Just today there was video circulating of Buffalo police shoving a senior to the ground with no apparent provocation by the victim, much less attempts at de-escalation. This is in clear violation of Buffalo PD use of force restrictions, as is the fact that there was no immediate attempt to provide medical care to the victim.

We are seeing not only that this is how a many within the police force operate on a daily basis, but that they are unrestricted and undisciplined by regulations clearly set out to prevent this kind of abuse. Perhaps that BPD officer will be held accountable, but if so it is only because of how much outrage is sparked by the video. Many more of these videos of clear abuse will be lost in the barrage of filmed police abuse we are seeing, and so few of the officers will face consequences.

The lack of consequences stem in large part from police contracts designed to shield officers from investigation or prosecution. Campaign Zero, which tracks police violence and advocates for policy proven to hold police accountable and decrease violence, has a comprehensive database of police contracts that protect officers from accountability. Nearly every major police department has contracts that either erase past misconduct, allowing abusive officers to continue serving, disqualifies complaints against officers without investigation, pays for their legal defense and gives them privileged information in investigations against them. According to their tracker 72 of 81 cities with police union contracts impose at least one of these barriers to holding bad cops accountable.

Another barrier to even beginning investigations into misconduct is the complete benefit of a doubt being given to officers, with no follow-up or investigation unless it is demanded on a large-scale by the public. We’ve already seen how the official police report of George Floyd’s death does not match up with what can be clearly seen in the video. The same is true for the report about the Baltimore man, which originally said the man tripped. In most cases of potential misconduct the official police account is trusted above all. These false reports are almost always backed up by other officers, protecting their own or afraid to break rank with the Blue Wall of Silence. It seems that the only way to have police misconduct investigated is to have publicly available video evidence to prove it.

Even when there is that video evidence, we have seen time and again that police almost never face consequences for their bad actions, even if they are killing civilians. The Mapping Police Project found that between 2013 and 2019, at approximately 1,000 deaths by police per year, 99% of those killings did not result in charges. Even fewer resulted in conviction. In most of these cases the only recourse families of victims of police killings have are civil suits. In those cases it is almost universally taxpayer money that is paid out to families to compensate for the police killing. The city of Chicago paid over $113 million in 2018 alone on police misconduct suits. And even when civil courts find the officer used unjustified force, they cannot force the department to fire the officer.

This is how police have been weaponized against black neighborhoods and other communities of color for generations. They harass and arrest people on the street for minor or falsified infractions, escalate those encounters through aggressive behavior, and use that escalation as an excuse to physically harm, arrest or kill suspects, all with no consequence because their accounts are taken as gospel. While this is commonplace in police everywhere it is particularly egregious in black communities with high police presence. According to the Mapping Police Violence Project black people are three times as likely to be killed by police, even while they are less likely to be armed during police encounters. This even holds true in cities with lower rates of crime or violent crime, such as Orlando, Florida. They also find that in 2018 the eight largest police departments in the country killed black men at higher rates than the national murder average.

Police killings v. violent crime rates https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

Here it is important to point out that people with disabilities also face much higher rates of police violence. Studies show that half of all people killed by police have some form of disability. This is likely because police do not receive proper training to respond to mental health crises, and when faced with a suspect who does not have the capacity to follow exact police instructions in high stress situations, police escalate and become aggressive. Other minority communities such as trans individuals and Native Americans see disproportionate rates of police violence as well. Much like black Americans, these groups are denied justice or legal recourse when they face police violence, and often live in more highly policed communities.

No we are simply seeing these same aggressive and indiscriminate tactics mobilized against a larger and whiter population than it was before. But this is not new, it has always been the standard procedure of police departments everywhere. There are examples of police kneeling with protesters, going out to speak to activists unarmed and being involved in the community. But these actions should not b the exception to the rule of aggressive behavior, and they should not be celebrated and valorized but considered a necessary part of the job.

Last week I began my article about the invisibility of systemic black death, by stating that I only try to write about what seems overlooked or under-covered in the national discourse. I must admit here that much of what I have said about police is being said by reporters and activists across the country. I also want to recognize that this is a time to listen, specifically to these communities that have been living with this kind of police activity for generations, rather than the ones seeing it for the first time now. But I also feel I cannot be silent, and that nobody watching this should be silent. It also seems that so much of America refuses to listen or accept the reality of police abuse that is a reality in communities of color, so we must continue to make that case as often and clearly as possible.

In spirit of crediting and amplifying those voices that are more directly affected and frankly more knowledgeable and eloquent than myself, I would urge any reader to explore the linked sources, particularly Campaign Zero who is actively working to create police accountability across the country, Unlawful Shield where you can read more about Qualified Immunity and judicial protections of police, this Throughline episode about the slave patrolling, anti-union origins of police, read Angela Davis books such as Are Prisons Obsolete, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, or Abolition Democracy. And of course you can and should donate to the ACLU, NAACP or Movement for Black Lives which will be the first to provide legal aid to those victims of police violence that don’t make the news. Most importantly everybody who is appalled by the police violence on display must remember it, because it does not go away when these protests end. It simply moves to where the camera’s aren’t pointed.