POLICE VIOLENCE:
RISING EPIDEMIC--RAISING RESISTANCE
BY CARL DIX
OCTOBER 1996 was marked by national attention to the epidemic
of police bru-tality. On one side, there was a wave of exonerations, in
city after city, of police charged with murder. On the other side, and more
importantly, there was the emergence of a new, diverse but unified national
movement of resistance determined to fight police brutality. A nodal point
of this movement was October 22-the National Day of Protest to Stop Police
Brutality. Thousands of people from over forty cities coast to coast, all
ages, nationalities, and classes, staged a powerful protest-they wore black,
marched, sang, held vigils and cultural events. October 22nd organizers
summed up that:
[T]his was a Great Day for people nationally. We did accomplish turning
things right side up, making it clear that it is the people who have right
on their side, not their brutalizers. The continuing project of the collection,
documentation, and eventual publication of the List Of Names will build
on this sentiment....The very generation they are trying to criminalize
were out in force on that day, showing that they have a different plan for
the future!
Routine and Epidemic
Thousands were drawn to act on October 22 because police brutality had risen
to epidemic proportions. The extent of this longstanding problem is a secret
closely guarded by the authorities and the mainstream media. Yet few people
today can honestly claim ignorance of the fact that police abuse exists.
Not after the repeatedly televised video of Rodney King's beating by LAPD
officers on national TV, or after the broadcast of Mexican immigrants Alicia
Soltero and Enrique Flores being beaten by sheriffs in Riverside, California
on April 2, 1996-again on national TV. Not after the Mark Fuhrman audio
tapes-again on national TV. Not after the live footage from a TV helicopter
of Kim Hong II, shot 15 times by the LAPD on February 14, 1996. Still, some
claim that these are isolated incidents of a few rogue cops. Reality tells
a different story.
IN CITIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY, incidents of police violence similar to the
above or worse have been all too routine. But the overwhelming majority
of incidents are not caught on video tape and shown on the six o'clock news.
In New York City and Long Island, between January 1994 and August 1996 (20
months), at least 100 people died at the hands of the NYPD, including Antonio
Baez, who was beaten and choked to death by police after his football accidentally
hit a squad car.
At least sixty people nationally have died in police custody after being
sprayed with pepper spray, including Aaron Williams and Mark Garcia, killed
by San Francisco police in 1996. In Philadelphia, police framed over 1,000
people, planting drugs on many of these victims. One case was that of Betty
Patterson, a black grandmother, whom the police railroaded into jail where
she stayed for three years before her innocence was proved. In New Orleans,
the police were caught taking out contracts on area residents. In Chicago,
there were over 37,000 police brutality complaints from 1984 to 1994. In
a survey of 1,000 high school students in 1993, 84 percent said they were
treated with "disrespect" by police or saw others treated the
same way, and over 20 percent of those said they were "slapped, shoved,
kicked, threatened with a gun to the head, inappropriately searched and
beaten to the point bruises were left." Police brutality is so widespread,
it would be safe to guess that most readers of this essay know a relative,
a friend, or an acquaintance who has been affected.
Systematic arid Systemic
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL has issued in-depth reports on police abuse in two
of America's largest cities. In a 1996 study on police brutality in New
York City, Amnesty International found that:
--claims against police violence in New York City increased from 977 in
1987 to more than 2,000 in 1994, with a substantial rise in both deaths
in police custody and police shootings between 1993 and 1994 (the last year
that figures were available);
--groups of officers were protecting and assisting narcotics traffickers
and robberies, and that the department from the top downwards practiced
a "deliberate blindness" to corruption, with internal affairs
investigations serving to minimize rather than expose corruption;
--in many cases, the victims were not involved in, nor suspected of, any
crime prior to contact with the police but were brutalized after questioning
police behavior, for example, taking pictures or criticizing police ill
treatment of others;
--it was common for police "involved in misconduct to charge victims
with offenses in order to justify the use of force and cover up abuses"
including multiplying charges in order to pressure victims not to file complaints;
--"police perjury and falsification of documents were common among
officers guilty of abuses and were often used to conceal corruption and
excessive force";
--most police violence happened in black and Latino communities. Thirty-two
of the 35 people shot by NYPD in the 18 months of Amnesty International's
study were people of color.
THE VERY SAME PATTERN of police brutality, murder and mayhem is documented
in another Amnesty International report-on the LAPD and LA County Sheriffs.
An especially incriminating finding was that "officers with a history
of allegations, including sustained complaints, were frequently promoted
or placed in supervisory positions."4 Not only was this same practice
documented in the Amnesty International report regarding the NYPD, but similar
promotional policies were also found in the San Francisco Police Department
where police officers with repeated brutality complaints against them were
placed in positions of supervising and training rookies. Could this be anything
but a conscious policy? Could this really be just a few bad apples and not
a whole rotten barrel from top to bottom?
Consider the Rodney King beating: Four LAPD officers beat King mercilessly,
while 22 others watched. How did the four know that the other 22 would not
report them? Not because they met first and decided that beating Rodney
King was acceptable police conduct. They knew they would not be reported
because they were all cops and therefore knew that administrating such beatings
was S.O.P. (Standard Operating Procedure), and given that some of these
officers were rookies, the beating also served as O.J.T. (On the Job Training).
Though the police practices captured in the Amnesty International reports
cited above are horrifying, they are but the tip of the iceberg. No governmental
agency even bothers to keep nationwide statistics on incidents of police
murder and brutality. This is one reason why the National Lawyers Guild,
in conjunction with the October 22nd Coalition, has launched a "Names
Project" to document and compile such a list, and expose the true dimensions
of this horror.
THE SYSTEMATIC and systemic nature of police violence is revealed by the
support and protection of the entire legal system: by the district attorneys
that refuse to prosecute, by the hearings that exonerate guilty police-and
by the judges and juries that acquit killer cops. Although this pattern
is repeated in too many cities to list here, consider the following:
·in Philadelphia's 39th precinct, district attorneys as well as judges
ignored the pleas of innocence of 1,000 people whom the police had framed
and helped send to jail;
--in Chicago, 93 percent of 37,000 police brutality complaints were not
sustained;
--in October 1996, the Pittsburgh police officer involved in the murder
of Jonny Gammage, the cousin of Pittsburgh Steeler Ray Seals, for the crime
of D.W.B. (Driving While Black), was exonerated, even though a tow truck
driver testified that the police attacked Gammage without provocation;
--also in October, the NYPD police officer who choked Anthony Baez to death
was exonerated;
--again in October, police who killed black people were exonerated in St.
Petersburg, Florida; New Brunswick, New Jersey; and San Francisco, California.
As Mumia Abu-Jamal recently wrote: "How else could killer cops be acquitted
when they say in their defense that they are just doing their jobs, unless
they are really doing their jobs-and that job is terrorizing, and killing
black, brown and poor youth?"
Root of the Problem
THE POWER STRUCTURE MAINTAINS, and many people are led to believe, that
the police are needed to control street crime. This logic is never extended
to corporate crime, however, even though studies show that the human as
well as monetary costs of white collar crime are much greater than street
crime. Every year approximately 14,000 workers in the United States are
killed on the job. Annually 100,000 workers die from diseases contracted
in the course of their occupation as a direct result of violations by corporations
of health and safety codes," as compared to 20,000 murders and 850,000
assaults annually on the streets. "The economic losses resulting from
street crimes are generally estimated to be about 10 billion a year (Webster,
1984). The total monetary damage from white collar crimes is somewhere between
$174 billion and $231 billion annually." However, one does not hear
any calls for massive crackdowns on corporate violence, nor does one see
police pre- dawn raids with battering rams at the front door of Ford and
General Motors!
The reason for the different treatment of street crime vs. corporate crime
points to the real function of the police in this society. The police are
the first line of defense for the capitalist system. Who do the police protect
and serve, if not the capitalist class? Without police force brutalizing
and terrorizing people, the system that exploits and oppresses people everywhere
in the world, including here in the "belly of the beast," could
not exist. The capitalists obey only one law: the law of maximum profit.
The armed might of this system works to protect U.S. capital from whatever
threatens its dominant position in this country or overseas. As long as
this society is based on a small group having a stranglehold on the means
to create wealth, then a police force is needed to maintain an unjust and
unequal social order. That is, this system creates the grinding poverty
and degradation that forces millions into desperation. That is a crime in
itself. Then this daily misery for millions is backed up by the brute force
of the power structure (police, courts, judges, jails, etc.) to preserve
an upside-down status quo.
Resist the politics of cruelty
PEOPLE ARE REPEATEDLY TOLD to seek relief in the electoral arena. Yet election
after election has shown that these problems will not be solved by that
route. Clinton campaigned and won in 1996 based upon having slashed welfare,
ended benefits, even for legal immigrants, built more prisons, passed more
repressive laws, expanded the death penalty and put more police officers
on the streets. The Republican "opposition" program was they would
"one up" all that. The bi-partisan consensus currently in Washington
is to increase attacks on the people for the next four years.
We need to rely on our own efforts and not on the cruel representatives
of a cruel system, to bring about justice, and real (not simply cosmetic)
change. A positive development in this regard has been the growing resistance
to police brutality. There was the massive, multi-racial rebellion that
began in LA but spread to 150 cities across the U.S. in 1992. In 1996, Leland,
Mississippi, and St. Petersburg, Florida, both exploded in rebellion after
police killed black drivers during routine stops. In April 1996, a protest
in the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts, targeted police brutality.
In this mainly black area, where the LAPD is accustomed to calling the shots,
several hundred people-black, Latino, and white-took to the streets with
signs that said "Rodney King-Alicia Soltero, SAME THING!" They
defied the police who ordered them to disperse-a force of 60 officers in
riot gear, backed up by helicopters. Nine people were arrested, and seven
still await trial.
History proves that this system is bankrupt and will never change its oppressive
ways, nor solve the problems of the great majority of people. It is a lesson
many of us learned from the 1960s, and are learning again today, as all
the social concessions fought for and won by the powerful struggle of the
1960s are being attacked and dismantled. If we do not build massive resistance
to such assaults as the onslaught of police violence, the people's fighting
capacity will be crushed, and nothing positive will come of our hopes for
justice, and for fundamental change.
Endnotes
1October 22nd Coalition Against Police Brutality, Newsletter #5, p. 1. The
"List of Names" refers to a joint project of the October 22nd
Coalition and the National Lawyers Guild to compile a list of statistics
and documentation of police brutality.
2Revolutionary Worker #872 (September 8, 1996), pp. 8-9.
3Amnesty lnternational report, "United States of America: Police Brutality
and Excessive Force in New York City Police Department" (June 1996),
pp. 1-13.
4Amnesty International report, "United States of America: Torture,
Ill-Treatment and Excessive Force by Police in Los Angeles, California,"
(June 1992), pp. 37-38.
5Revolutionary Worker #886, (December 15, 1996) 5.
6Kappeler, Blumberg and Potter, The Mythology of Crime and Criminal Justice,
(Waveland Press. Inc., 1993), p. 104.
-Reprinted and edited from The Black Scholar, Vol 27, No. 1. Carl Dix was
one of the initiators of the October 22nd National Day of Protest to Stop
Police Brutality-the topic of this article. A politically active member
of anti-war, black workers' and African liberation organizations since the
1960s, and the national spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party,
he served two years in Leavenworth for refusing to fight in Vietnam.
Build a National Movement
Against Police Abuse
People Against Racist Terror (PART) is maintaining an e.mail distribution
list of incidents of police killings, abuse, racism, and corruption around
the country. If you want to be on this list or submit items to it, please
send email to mnovick@igc.org. The files will be going up on a website,
killercops, which can be found at http: //www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/4801.
For more information, contact PART at P.O. Box 1055, Culver City, CA 90232,
(310) 288-5003
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