MAPTalk-Digest Friday, November 11 2011 Volume 11 : Number 036

001 Fw: Working to Shut Down Pot Shops!
    From: Rick Steeb <>
002 US: Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street
    From: 


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Subj:  Fw: Working to Shut Down Pot Shops!
From: Rick Steeb <>
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 09:30:42 -0700

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Subj:  US: Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street
From: 
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:30:19 -0800

from Norm Stamper, in The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/article/164501/paramilitary-policing-seattle-

    Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street

Norm Stamper <http://www.thenation.com/authors/norm-stamper>
November 9, 2011 | This article appeared in the November 28, 2011
edition of The Nation. <http://www.thenation.com/issue/november-28-2011>

/A man sits in front of a police line at City Hall during an anti-Wall
Street protest in Oakland, California, October 25, 2011. (REUTERS/Kim
White)/

They came from all over, tens of thousands of demonstrators from around
the world, protesting the economic and moral pitfalls of globalization.
Our mission as members of the Seattle Police Department? To safeguard
people and property---in that order. Things went well the first day. We
were praised for our friendliness and restraint---though some
politicians were apoplectic at our refusal to make mass arrests for the
actions of a few.

Then came day two. Early in the morning, large contingents of
demonstrators began to converge at a key downtown intersection. They sat
down and refused to budge. Their numbers grew. A labor march would soon
add additional thousands to the mix.

"We have to clear the intersection," said the field commander. "We have
to clear the intersection," the operations commander agreed, from his
bunker in the Public Safety Building. Standing alone on the edge of the
crowd, I, the chief of police, said to myself, "We have to clear the
intersection."

Why?

Because of all the what-ifs. What if a fire breaks out in the Sheraton
across the street? What if a woman goes into labor on the seventeenth
floor of the hotel? What if a heart patient goes into cardiac arrest in
the high-rise on the corner? What if there's a stabbing, a shooting, a
serious-injury traffic accident? How would an aid car, fire engine or
police cruiser get through that sea of people? The cop in me supported
the decision to clear the intersection. But the chief in me should have
vetoed it. And he certainly should have forbidden the indiscriminate use
of tear gas to accomplish it, no matter how many warnings we barked
through the bullhorn.

My support for a militaristic solution caused all hell to break loose.
Rocks, bottles and newspaper racks went flying. Windows were smashed,
stores were looted, fires lighted; and more gas filled the streets, with
some cops clearly overreacting, escalating and prolonging the conflict.
The "Battle in Seattle," as the WTO protests and their aftermath came to
be known, was a huge setback---for the protesters, my cops, the community.

More than a decade later, the police response to the Occupy movement,
most disturbingly visible in Oakland---where scenes resembled a war zone
and where a marine remains in serious condition from a police
projectile---brings into sharp relief the acute and chronic problems of
American law enforcement. Seattle might have served as a cautionary
tale, but instead, US police forces have become increasingly
militarized, and it's showing in cities everywhere: the NYPD "white
shirt" coating innocent people with pepper spray, the arrests of two
student journalists at Occupy Atlanta, the declaration of public
property as off-limits and the arrests of protesters for "trespassing."

The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders---a
black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect
the brotherhood---is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies
inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people
and people of color will forever experience the institution as an
abusive, militaristic force---not just during demonstrations but every
day, in neighborhoods across the country.

Much of the problem is rooted in a rigid command-and-control hierarchy
based on the military model. American police forces are beholden to
archaic internal systems of authority whose rules emphasize bureaucratic
regulations over conduct on the streets. An officer's hair length, the
shine on his shoes and the condition of his car are more important than
whether he treats a burglary victim or a sex worker with dignity and
respect. In the interest of "discipline," too many police bosses treat
their frontline officers as dependent children, which helps explain why
many of them behave more like juvenile delinquents than mature,
competent professionals. It also helps to explain why persistent,
patterned misconduct, including racism, sexism, homophobia, brutality,
perjury and corruption, do not go away, no matter how many blue-ribbon
panels are commissioned or how much training is provided.

External political factors are also to blame, such as the continuing
madness of the drug war. Last year police arrested 1.6 million
nonviolent drug offenders. In New York City alone almost 50,000 people
(overwhelmingly black, Latino or poor) were busted for possession of
small amounts of marijuana---some of it, we have recently learned,
planted by narcotics officers. The counterproductive response to 9/11,
in which the federal government began providing military equipment and
training even to some of the smallest rural departments, has fueled the
militarization of police forces. Everyday policing is characterized by a
SWAT mentality, every other 911 call a military mission. What emerges is
a picture of a vital public-safety institution perpetually at war with
its own people. The tragic results---raids gone bad, wrong houses hit,
innocent people and family pets shot and killed by police---are
chronicled in Radley Balko's excellent 2006 report /Overkill: The Rise
of Paramilitary Police Raids in America/.

It is ironic that those police officers who are busting up the Occupy
protesters are themselves victims of the same social ills the
demonstrators are combating: corporate greed; the slackening of
essential regulatory systems; and the abject failure of all three
branches of government to safeguard civil liberties and to protect, if
not provide, basic human needs like health, housing, education and more.
With cities and states struggling to balance the budget while continuing
to deliver public safety, many cops are finding themselves out of work.
And, as many Occupy protesters have pointed out, even as police officers
help to safeguard the power and profits of the 1 percent, police
officers are part of the 99 percent.

There will always be situations---an armed and barricaded suspect, a man
with a knife to his wife's throat, a school-shooting rampage---that
require disciplined, military-like operations. But most of what police
are called upon to do, day in and day out, requires patience, diplomacy
and interpersonal skills. I'm convinced it is possible to create a smart
organizational alternative to the paramilitary bureaucracy that is
American policing. But that will not happen unless, even as we cull "bad
apples" from our police forces, we recognize that the barrel itself is
rotten.

Assuming the necessity of radical structural reform, how do we proceed?
By building a progressive police organization, created by rank-and-file
officers, "civilian" employees and community representatives. Such an
effort would include plans to flatten hierarchies; create a true citizen
review board with investigative and subpoena powers; and ensure
community participation in all operations, including policy-making,
program development, priority-setting and crisis management. In short,
cops and citizens would forge an authentic partnership in policing the
city. And because partners do not act unilaterally, they would be
compelled to keep each other informed, and to build trust and mutual
respect---qualities sorely missing from the current equation.

It will not be easy. In fact, failure is assured if we lack the
political will to win the support of police chiefs and their elected
bosses, if we are unable to influence or neutralize police unions, if we
don't have the courage to move beyond the endless justifications for
maintaining the status quo. But imagine the community and its cops
united in the effort to responsibly "police" the Occupy movement.
Picture thousands of people gathered to press grievances against their
government and the corporations, under the watchful, sympathetic
protection of their partners in blue.

Norm Stamper <http://www.thenation.com/authors/norm-stamper>

November 9, 2011 | This article appeared in the November 28, 2011
edition of The Nation. <http://www.thenation.com/issue/november-28-2011>

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End of MAPTalk-Digest V11 #36
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