USA: Dysfunctional Police and Pitchfork Politics

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jun 012020
 

You could think that it all started with the killing of George Floyd; you would be wrong. There has long been a problem with extra-judicial killings by the police in a number of US cities for a long time.

Not all police forces, and not all of the police. But enough to qualify this killing as one of many.

Racism in the police? In many cases I tend to argue that “something” may not be racism but more to do with letting “sociopaths” be in control of the hierarchical capitalist economic system. Not that I am necessarily right, but it can be a point worth considering.

But in this case? It’s hard to argue against it in this case.

But it isn’t just racism; some of the police initiated incidents during the protests have targeted white people as well. Leading to the suspicion that some police regard themselves in some situations as above the law and willing to go too far in controlling certain segments of the community.

The community they are supposed to serve.

Just to highlight just a few incidents :-

  1. Arresting a news team where the journalist was black.
  2. Indiscriminate use of rubber bullets which has led to a photojournalist being blinded in one eye, and another journalist receiving minor injuries.
  3. Firing a tear gas round directly at a news camera.
  4. Drive-by attack on peaceful protestors with pepper spray.

Of course it hasn’t all been bad from the police.

Pitchfork Politics

A part of the community has been targeted by the police for a long time and that part of the community (the black community) has been protesting about that for a long time. And apparently ignored all the time.

If part of a community has a grievance that cannot be settled through conventional politics, they will resort to protest politics and eventually pitchfork politics.

We have seen something along those lines with the widespread disturbances in the US over the last week. There are numerous aspects to these :-

Not all protests have resulted in arson and looting, but some have. And despite the impression that some of the media portrayed, protestors don’t all set buildings on fire (it’ll be a tiny minority) and protestors won’t be looting (again a tiny minority – very often people who didn’t take part in the protest at all). Protestors have been known to complain about looting and violence.

Violence is never good, but if you think that property damage is more important than violence against the person then you are part of the problem.

Peaceful protests get ignored. If you ignore a complaint by part of the community repeatedly and for years if not decades, then you can expect violent protests. The more you ignore and abuse a part of the community, the more you can expect some to turn to the “cleansing purity of violence”.

This is after all the recipe for a violent revolution.

There are also indications that the violence and the looting is carried out by people other than the protesters. There is a) an arrested arsonist with white-supremacist tattoos, and b) rumours that white-supremacists are speaking about “getting their loot on”.

America: You have a problem, and it has nothing to do with burning buildings and looted shops. Restoring order won’t do a damn thing. Are you going to leave this problem to your children or your grandchildren?

Police Actions At The G20 Protests

 Politics  No Responses »
Apr 152009
 

Now that there has been time for things to surface and time to reflect, we can see that whilst the majority of the police were well behaved and went about their business responsibly, but as might be expected a lunatic fringe tried to spoil things by going too far …

  1. Battering a passer by to the ground because a man walking away from you with his hands in his pockets is just so threatening. Ian Tomlinson was merely on his way home from work when this happened and died from a heart attack a few minutes later around the corner. See the video:
  2. Giving a woman a back-hander and then using a truncheon against the back of her legs, just because she’s a little in your face. Normally someone who behaves like this towards a woman is condemned for their actions, but it’s perfectly ok if you are the Police and she’s a protestor :
  3. If you look closely at the video above you will notice that the policeman battering that protester has no identifying numbers on his shoulder. British police are supposed to have identification to stop the anonymous brutality that occurs in police states, but perhaps we are living in one ?

If you look around YouTube, you may well find other examples that make it appear that the police were heavy handed against the protesters. For example :

I’ve seen quite a few video clips of violent protesters over the years – frequently at G20 (or similar) events, and the protesters in this clip don’t look particularly violent to me. I am not saying there wasn’t stuff going on that isn’t coming across too well in the video, but the police response to me looks excessive.

The death of Ian Tomlinson shows why everybody should be concerned with the possibility of police brutality at such protests – it is easy for people to be caught up in these events who have nothing whatsoever to do with the protest. And the police need to be constantly reminded that the protesters have the right to be there, and the right to protest.

And as to how that policeman was allowed to go out without identification, well that should be regarded as the equivalent of a burgular going out “tooled up” for a job … he was prepared to go out and indulge in levels of violence extreme enough that he felt he needed to protect his identity. Who allowed him to go out on the streets in the first place ?

Today it was announced that there will be a review of the police tactics used for dealing with demonstrations. That may well be a good idea, but what would be more helpful is a review of every policeman’s attitude to demonstrators.