by Robert Rockwell
National Secretary Refuse & Resist!
August 14, 1997
In 1996, Amnesty International charged the New York City police department of violating international human rights standards because of recent episodes of police brutality. Their report did not act as a catalyst to bring change to the department. In fact, the situation now is even worse. The latest outrage occurred on August 9 at the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. At least two uniformed police officers tortured a Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima by driving the wooden handle of a toilet plunger into his rectum and puncturing his small intestine. They then placed the filthy plunger in his mouth. During the attack the cops called Mr. Louima "a nigger" and threatened to kill him if he reported the incident.
Most people are aware of the recent increase in police brutality and murder either from personal experience or from those cases that make the news. These cases are reported by the media as individual incidents and are explained as the actions of "a few bad cops." But this analysis fails to notice the nation-wide increase in police brutality and the fact that very few cops are actually prosecuted for their crimes. This increase in police violence is a part of a toughened criminal justice system which includes the war on drugs, the building of new prisons, the gutting of federal habeus corpus rights, the move toward quicker executions and the criminalization of a generation of people of color.
We live in a society that is being torn apart. With the end of the Cold War, the world economic situation became more international. The United States has been forced to compete with Germany and Japan. In order to retain its economic primacy in the world, the leaders of this country have called for austerity here at home. So they dismantle welfare and create a propaganda campaign that blames poverty on the poor. They declare a war on immigrants claiming that immigrants steal "our" jobs. They remove the safety net that many people have used simply to survive. As the poor get poorer and the rich richer, they create a plan to squelch any resistance to their cruel agenda. They build new jails and create the illusion that our country is being devoured by crime despite statistics that belie this assertion. People of color become automatic suspects to be feared by all "good" Americans. The police are the enforcers of this agenda. In popular mythology law enforcement becomes "the most dangerous job" and police heroes who risk their lives to prevent crime from destroying the country.
Police brutality has always been a problem but in the past few years there has been a dramatic rise in police murders and brutalization of citizens. Police brutality is not limited to large cities and is a national phenomenon. But police brutality is not the result of the actions of a few rogue cops as is commonly portrayed. If police brutality were the result of a few bad cops who were seen as disloyal to their police ethic, the offenders would be prosecuted or at least removed from the police force. So far, of the dozens of documented police murders in New York City since 1977, only one officer has been convicted of homicide. In fact, the government practically encourages police brutality. On April 28 of this year the Supreme Court ruled that a police department that knowingly hires an officer with a record of assault need not be liable if that officer injures civilians. District Attorneys seem to look the other way and seldom prosecute police even if the police department finds them guilty of assault. In 1995, Congress ordered Janet Reno to compile national statistics on police brutality but she has failed to do so.
Most victims of police brutality are poor and people of color. These are the same people who are most affected by the downsizing of the welfare state. The hype created over "the war on drugs" was never about concern for the heath and welfare of the people targeted but only an excuse to set up a virtual police state in those neighborhoods considered to be at risk of rebelling against the politics of cruelty. The War on Drugs is A War on the People. The police use brutality and other tactics to instill fear and terror in people. This is reflected in the fact that most cases of police brutality begin as a casual defiance of authority - an insult or a flight from a traffic stop - rather than a serious crime.
The cruel and scapegoating political agenda designed help retain Americaís economic primacy is tearing our county apart. On one side are the promoters of this politics of cruelty and its supporters. On the other side are those millions of mainly poor people of color, who are being denied a safety net and being blamed for all that is wrong in this country. By taking the role of enforcers of this politics of cruelty, the police have shown which side they support.
It is the climate created by the politics of cruelty that is responsible for the rise in police brutality. No one orders the police to brutalize citizens because no one has to. The politics of cruelty divides this county into a division of us versus them. The hysteria over violent crime has created a war zone mentality where any crime against the enemy is acceptable. The police are also encouraged to brutalize citizens by the battlefield mentality conjured by such terms as the War on Drugs. Blaming the poor and people of color for the problems of this country exacerbates the racism which in instilled in police during their training. The idea of inherent criminality, the belief that people who commit crimes are animals and incapable of rehabilitation, leads police to treat people brutally. By refusing to prosecute police, the justice system promotes police brutality.
From news reports to the dramatic portrayals on shows like "Cops," most people think that policing is the most dangerous job in America: that police literally risk their lives every day to hold back the tide of criminals ready to engulf the citizenry. But according to a former New York City commissioner of police "the average police officer in America is never going to draw his gun during his entire career." A police officer is at half the risk of death and injury on the job than is a farmer, truck driver or logger and considerably less than a heavy-construction worker, roofer or coal miner (the most dangerous job). Despite an occasional fatality, a police officer is no more at risk for fatal injury on the job than an electrician or construction supervisor. Despite the wide-spread concern over "violent crime" in the 1980s and 1990s, policing got relatively less risky over that time period. There was a 40% decrease in the number of on the job deaths. According to criminologists Mark Blumberg, Victor Kappler and Gary Potter the cultivation of the myth of policing as the most dangerous occupation leads to public support for police actions: "Citizens who have an exaggerated sense of the danger of law enforcement personnel routinely confront are more likely to give the police the benefit of the doubt when it comes to various controversies involving the propriety of certain actions - this belief that being a law enforcement officer is akin to being a soldier on the front lines - this pervasive sense that their mission is a dangerous one cannot help but affect the way police officers deal with the public." This war mentality is reflected in the very terms "War on Crime" or "War on Drugs."
The Prison-Industrial Complex
Despite the fact that the crime rate has remained steady for the past twenty years, in that same period the number of people in jail has tripled to 1.6 million according to the US Justice Department. The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration of any country in the western world. The drug war and mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession are responsible for most of this increase. While state budgets for welfare and social programs have decreased, spending on correctional systems has increased to the point where states spend an average of 6% of their annual budgets on corrections. It is the fastest growing proportion of most states' budgets. In addition, there has been a steady move toward the privatization of prisons. Corporations are now running prisons in several states while their stock soars on Wall Street. These corporations which rely on a steady stream of prisoners to maintain revenues, have become a major force in lobbying for tougher laws and longer sentences. By the mid-1990s the United States is spending annually $200 billion to combat crime.
Crime: Fact or Fiction
From the news and other media, it would seem that it was never more dangerous to be an American, that we are all at risk of a serious violent crime. A closer analysis of the statistics reveals that things are not as bad as they seem. Over 50% of all arrests are for lesser offenses----those that do no harm to another person or to property. Many of these arrests are for possession of illicit drugs. These "consensual" crimes result in the arrest of 4 million people annually with Blacks disproportionately represented. In 1991 only 20% of over 15 million arrests was for an index (serious) crime. Of these 20% only 5% were for violent offenses. A substantial proportion of this five percent were dismissed immediately. In many states, the total arrest rate is higher while the total number of index arrests has decreased. While the total number of people arrested for the sale and possession of drugs has remained steady, there has been a 112% rise in those convicted of drug sales and a 500% increase in those convicted of drug possession. So while crime rates remain unchanged, there have been more convictions.
People who are arrested are being charged with more serious offenses than previously. Many are being charged with the "violent" crime of aggravated assault instead of misdemeanor simple assault. Those without financial resources often plead guilty to such charges to avoid having to wait months in jail for a trial. Because of "end of sentence" laws, the defended pleads guilty and is released for time served. In addition 43% of all felony arrests are not prosecuted because of lack of evidence. FBI reports of arrests are therefore suspect since they do not report the final judicial outcome.
Despite all of the hysteria, the crime rate has been stable or decreasing for more than a decade. An analysis of data provided by the FBI demonstrates a 2% drop in index crimes, a 27% drop in "crimes against persons" and a 31% drop in "property" offenses in the last decade. The homicide rate although high has remained at a steady rate of 10 per 100000 people and as in the past most murderers were acquainted with or related to their victim.
Of those cases considered violent by the FBI 68% involved no physical injury of any kind to the victim. In most cases the "violence" is a threat or a perceived threat. Nationally 38% of all felony cases are dismissed. Despite hysteria about a new breed of violent young criminals, only 8% of cases in juvenile courts are for violent crime. Fully 84% of these cases are handled informally, nonadjudicated or dismissed.
These statistics are not meant to demonstrate that crime in America is a fiction but they do make it clear that there is a wide gap between the hysteric rantings of law and order politicians and the truth. For who benefits from such distortions of the truth? This focus on criminality and the need for law enforcement is a major part of maintaining control of people. As more and more people sink into poverty, there need to be more police to keep the order. The facade of a criminal nation is needed to justify increased spending on law enforcement and as an excuse for police brutality. The much touted decrease in crime in New York City resulted in a parallel rise in the reports of police brutality. According to the New York Times, there was a 40% rise in reports of brutality from the time Mayor Giuliani introduced the "zero tolerance" policies.
Criminalalization of Race
The most evident feature of this criminal justice system is that it disproportionately arrests, charges, convicts and executes people of color. The most common explanation for this racial bias is that it is people of color who are committing crimes. By 1993, African-Americans who make up 14% of the population were a majority of those entering prison(63%). The proportion of Black men in prison is twenty times that of white men. At any given moment, 25% of all black male from age 20-29 will be in prison or on probation or parole. At least 90% of Black men can expect to be imprisoned at some time in their life.
But these alarming statistics are again deceptive. Blacks are arrested and jailed at far greater rates than whites. Despite statistics demonstrating that whites are more likely to use drugs than Blacks, almost 90 percent of those sentenced for drug possession are Black or Latino. The War on Drugs with its racial bias concentrates on areas populated by Blacks and Latinos. Now either there is a widespread racism inherent in the criminal justice system or people of color are criminal by nature. This latter view has actually been espoused. John DiIulio of the Brookings Institute claimed in a Wall Street Journal article: the nation "faces a growing threat of juvenile super-predators who have grown up fatherless, godless, and surrounded by deviant delinquent and criminal adults." A 1985 book Crime and Human Nature by Wilson and Hernstein reintroduced the theory of genetic criminality. At the conclusion of his book Search and Destroy, Jerome Miller warns about the introduction of a "gulag society." "It will be played out as a variation of the theme of advanced by E.A. Hooton an American physical anthropologist of the 1930s resurrected by Wilson and Hernstein. As Hooton put it: "The elimination of crime can be effected only by the extirpation of the physically, mentally and morally unfit, or by their complete segregation in a socially aseptic environment."
In order to stop police brutality we have to resist its source: the scapegoating and divisive politics of cruelty. Those who support this politcal agenda are as responsible for police brutality as the police. Refuse and Resist! is the only organization that takes on this repressive political agenda as a whole. Those who support this political agenda have their view of the future. It is a future where people starve and "undesirables" locked in jail, a future without immigrants, affirmative action and reproductive freedom, a future based in the tenets of male supremacy, white supremacy and the imposition of a fundamentalist Christian morality. Refuse & Resist! is the organization for people who see a different future and who are willing to change history.
Sources:
Jerome Miller. Search and Destroy: African-American Males in the Criminal Justice System, 1997.
Randall Kennedy. Race, Crime and the Law, 1997.
Mike Males. The Scapegoat Generation, 1996.
Kristin Bloomer. "Prisons: Americas newest growth industry" In These Times March 17,1997.
Bruce Shapiro. "When Justice Kills" The Nation, June 9,1997.
Jane Lii. "When the Saviors are Seen as Sinners" NY Times Feb 8, 1997.
Stop Police Brutality index | R&R Main Page
Join Refuse
& Resist!
305 Madison Ave., Suite 1166, New York, NY 10165
Phone: 212-713-5657
email: info@refuseandresist.org