[NYTr] A Pandemic of Police Brutality

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Sep 26, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09252007.html


A Pandemic of Police Brutality

...And They Usually Get Away With It

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Bush's "war on terror" quickly became Bush's war on Iraqi civilians. So
far over one million Iraqi civilians have lost their lives because of
Bush's invasion, and four million have been displaced. Iraq's
infrastructure is in ruins. Disease is rampart. Normal life has
disappeared.

Self-righteous Americans justify these monstrous crimes as necessary to
ensure their own safety from terrorist attack. Yet, Americans are in
far greater danger from their own police forces than they are from
foreign terrorists. Ironically, Bush's "war on terror" has made
Americans less safe at home by diminishing US civil liberty and turning
an epidemic of US police brutality into a pandemic.

The only terrorist most Americans will ever encounter is a policeman
with a badge, nightstick, mace and Taser. A Google search for "police
brutality videos" turns up 2,210,000 entries. Some entries are foreign
and some are probably duplications, but the number is so large that a
person could do nothing but watch police brutality videos for the rest
of his life. A search on "You Tube" alone turned up 2,280 police
brutality videos. PrisonPlanet has a selection of the most outrageous
recent cases.

Police brutality has crossed the line from using excessive force
against a resisting Rodney King to unprovoked gratuitous violence
against persons offering no resistance, such as the elderly, women,
students, and elected officials. Americans are not safe anywhere from
police. Police attack Americans in university libraries, in public
meetings, and in their own homes.

Last week we had the case of the University of Florida student who was
repeatedly Tasered without cause for asking Senator Kerry some good
questions in the question and answer period following Kerry's speech.
Two days after the Florida student was gratuitously brutalized, Senate
Republicans defeated Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy's bill to restore
habeas corpus protection.

A UCLA student was Tasered by police without cause for studying in the
university library without having having his student ID on his person.
Following police orders to leave, the student was walking toward the
door when police grabbed him and repeatedly Tasered him.

On September 19, 2007 a young woman was repeatedly Tasered without
cause by a large brutal cop in a parking lot outside a night club in
Warren Ohio.

On September 14, 2007, Roseland, Indiana, city council member David
Snyder was ejected from a council meeting by dictatorial council
chairman Charlie Shields. Snyder had protested being limited to one
minute to speak. Police goon Jack Tiller escorted Snyder out, and as
Synder exited the building, Tiller, following behind, pushed Snyder to
the ground and without cause began beating Snyder in the head with a
nightstick. Snyder was hospitalized.

Local TV news stations throughout the US offer an endless stream of
police brutality videos, which are then posted on the stations' web
sites, often with an opportunity for citizens to express their opinion
of the incidents.

There are many disturbing aspects to police brutality cases.

One disturbing aspect is that the police always arrest the people that
they have gratuitously brutalized. There was no justification
whatsoever to arrest councilman Snyder, or the UCLA student, or the
University of Florida student. The cops committed assault against
innocent citizens. The cops should have been arrested for their
criminal acts. Instead, the cops cover up their own crimes by arresting
their victims on false charges that are invented to justify the
unprovoked police violence against citizens.

Another disturbing aspect is that no one tells the police to stop the
brutality. "Free" Americans are so intimidated by police that on
February 19 of this year male customers in a Chicago bar stood aside
while a drunk cop weighing 251 pounds beat a 115 pound barmaid,
knocking her to the floor with his fists and repeatedly kicking her,
for enforcing the bar rules and not serving him more drinks.

Yet another disturbing aspect is that a minority of citizens will
justify each act of police brutality no matter how brutal and how
unprovoked. For example, WNDU.com's poll of its viewers found that
64.2% agreed that Snyder was a victim of police brutality, but 27.8%
thought that Snyder got what was coming to him. "Law and order
conservatives" and other authoritarian personalities invariably defend
acts of police brutality. Perhaps the police brutality pandemic will
bring the day when we will be able to say that a civil libertarian is a
law and order conservative who has been brutalized by police.

The most disturbing aspect is that the police usually get away with it.

I remember decades ago when civil libertarians in New York City tried
to stop police brutality by establishing civilian review boards to
introduce some accountability into the police's interaction with
civilians. Law and order conservatives at William F. Buckley's National
Review went berserk. Accountability was "second-guessing" the police.
The result would be a crime wave. And so on.

Police forces have always attracted bullies with authoritative
personalities who desire to beat senseless anyone who does not quake in
their presence. In the past police could get away with brutalizing
blacks but not whites. Today white citizens are as likely as racial
minorities to be victims of police brutality.

The police are supreme. The militarization of the police, armed now
with military weapons and trained to view the general public as the
enemy, against whom "pain compliance" must be used, has placed every
American at risk of personal injury and false arrest from our "public
protectors."

In "free and democratic America," citizens are in such great danger
from police that there are websites devoted to police brutality with
online forms to report the brutality.

Nine years ago Human Rights Watch published a report entitled,
"Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the
United States." The report stated:

    "Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human
rights violations in the United States. The excessive use of force by
police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe beatings,
fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because overwhelming
barriers to accountability make it possible for officers who commit
human rights violations to escape due punishment and often to repeat
their offenses. Police or public officials greet each new report of
brutality with denials or explain that the act was an aberration, while
the administrative and criminal systems that should deter these abuses
by holding officers accountable instead virtually guarantee them
impunity.

    "This report examines common obstacles to accountability for police
abuse in fourteen large cities representing most regions of the nation.
The cities examined are: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit,
Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York,
Philadelphia, Portland, Providence, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
Research for this report was conducted over two and a half years, from
late 1995 through early 1998.

    "The brutality cases examined, which are set out in detail in
chapters on each city, are similar to cases that continue to emerge in
headlines and in survivors' complaints. It is important to note,
however, that because it is difficult to obtain case information except
where there is public scandal and/or prosecution, this report relies
heavily on cases that have reached public attention; disciplinary
action and criminal prosecution are even less common than the cases set
out below would suggest."

There is no way to hold police accountable when the president and vice
president of the United States, the attorney general, and the
Republican Party maintain that the civil liberties and the separation
of powers mandated by the US Constitution must be abandoned in order
that the executive branch can keep Americans safe from terrorists.

Even before the "war on terror," federal police murdered 100 people in
the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, and no one was held accountable.

Who is a terrorist? If the police and the US government have the
mentality of airport security, they cannot tell a terrorist from an
86-year old Marine general on his way to give a speech at West Point.
Retired Marine Corps General Joseph J. Foss was delayed and nearly had
his Medal of Honor confiscated. Airport security regarded the pin on
the metal as a weapon that the 86-year old Marine general and former
governor of South Dakota could use to hijack an airliner and commit a
terrorist deed.

In America today, every citizen is a potential terrorist in the eyes of
the authorities. Airport security makes this clear every minute of
every day, as do the FBI and NSA with warrantless spying on our emails,
postal mail, telephone calls, and every possible invasion of our
privacy. We are all recipients of abuse of our constitutional rights
whether or not we suffer beatings, Taserings, and false arrests.

The law makes it impossible for Americans to defend themselves from
police brutality. Law and order conservatives have made it a felony
with a long prison sentence to "assault a police officer." Assaulting a
police officer means that if a police thug intends to beat your brains
out with his nightstick and you disarm your assailant, you have
"assaulted a police officer." If you are not shot on the spot by his
backup, you will be convicted by a "law and order" jury and sent to
prison.

No matter how gratuitous and violent the police brutality, a "free"
American citizen can defend himself only at the expense, if not of his
life, of a long stay in prison. Osama bin Laden must wish that he had
such power over Americans.

[Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the
Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He
is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:
PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com ]