When I was a teenager, me and my friends once caught a guy who was stealing mail in the neighborhood. He had been up to it for a long time so when we saw him we confronted him, and ended up grabbing him up while one of us called the police. While trying to restrain him things got a little rough, and by the time the cops rolled up they came out swinging... on us. I caught a walk-in talkie to the head and a few of us got bruised up pretty badly. The police behaved as if it was a fight; an excuse to fuck people up and seemed to truly thrill in bashing a bunch of kids doing the right thing, even if we were a bit misguided and overzealous.
A few years later myself and some other friends got into a street fight in Manhattan. The cops arrived as the drama wound down; they asked no questions and just charged straight at the one black guy there, my friend who wasn’t even involved. They clocked him in the face, slammed him to the ground, and began choking him out while the rest of us (all white) stood by in horror. While it shocked us, to our friend who was brutalized by the cops, it came as no surprise.
Fast forward to when I got bagged for writing graffiti in the train yards. I was caught with two other friends, one Puerto Rican and the other Italian-American. While I was being processed in Central Booking, the cops made cracks about me being a scumbag and how I should be ashamed for getting involved with my friends. They proceeded to rough me up, separate me from my friends, and toss me into a cell with adults (despite me being a minor). They in essence were punishing me for "race-mixing."
One last tale, which relates to the last one: I was ridiculously accused of blocking an ambulance when hanging out in a small town many years back by the local police who have nothing but time on their hands (there is no crime in this town beyond public urination and the occasional bar fight.) The cops grabbed me up in front of many witnesses, pulled me around the corner and slammed me into a wall; roughly frisking me while cursing me for being a "little shit" for insisting I did nothing wrong. A friend came over to make sure I was okay, and they arrested us both (him for interfering with an arrest). As they walked us to the precinct, the cops kicked our ankles, pulled our arms back unnecessarily tight, and asked my (white) friend why he was acting like a "Yo! MTV Raps n****r." Ultimately we were both released with no charges, but my friend was picked up again later that same night and assaulted by one of the cops while in a cell.
I tell these stories to illustrate the lens of race that police see through, not to mention the lawlessness of how they treat their position of power. (I have no illusions that in one or all of those aforementioned instances I could've very well ended up badly injured, or dead, had I been a person of color.) Cops truly seem to believe that by just donning their uniform they can act with impunity, making up the rules as they go. (If people are roughed up in the process, that's just part of the job.) And the system backs them up; time and time again. Even in the rare instances when charges are brought against the police, the centrists and 'law and order' types (and often times the DA's offices behind the scenes) side with the cops, and they walk free with no lessons learned. A few politicians may bleat on about the need for "reform" and altering "training" procedures, but nothing ever changes, as history has shown.
Police brutality and race-based law enforcement is systematic, and the only solution is a complete overhaul of the structure of policing, from the top on down. As long as the police see poor and minority people not as citizens, but as criminals until proven otherwise, even the cops who joined the force with good intentions will at the worst get caught up in the brutality, or in the least turn a blind eye to their fellow officers' actions. The end result of this broken and anti-democratic system as it stands is George Floyd... And Michael Stewart. And Amadou Diallo. And Eric Garner. And Tony McDade. And Rodney King. And Tamir Rice. And Anthony Baez. And Freddie Gray. And Oscar Grant. And Sean Bell. And Kathryn Johnston. And Philando Castile. And Alton Sterling. And on and on and on and on.
* This piece was written before the mass protests broke out across the United States in response to Floyd's murder. The heavy-handed, militarized response to this collective expression of outrage perfectly illustrates the broken system of policing in the country.
No comments:
Post a Comment