Broken windows, broken people

[drwex]

Popehat (Ken White) is incendiary. You should read the original because it's extensively linked to supporting material, but I want to quote the punchline paragraphs:

[J]ust as neighborhood thugs could once break windows with impunity, police officers can generally kill with impunity. They can shoot unarmed men and lie about it. They can roll up and execute a child with a toy as casually as one might in Grand Theft Auto. They can bumble around opening doors with their gun hand and kill bystanders, like a character in a dark farce, with little fear of serious consequences. They can choke you to death for getting a little mouthy about selling loose cigarettes. They can shoot you because they aren't clear on who the bad guy is, and they can shoot you because they're terrible shots, and they can shoot you because they saw something that might be a weapon in your hand — something that can be, frankly, any fucking thing at all, including nothing.

What are we doing about this? Are we pushing back against unwarranted uses of force and deprivations of rights, to prevent them from becoming self-perpetuating norms?

No. We're not pursuing the breakers of windows. If anything, we are permitting the system steadily to entrench their protected right to act that way. We give them second and third and fourth chances. We pretend that they have supernatural powers of crime detection even when science shows that's bullshit. We fight desperately to support their word even when they are proven liars. We sneer that "criminals have too many rights," then give the armed representatives of our government stunning levels of procedural protections when they abuse or even kill us.

I grew up around Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia. The phrase "police riot" has been in my vocabulary since early adulthood.

Comments

[psybelle.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to go take a look at that… but I need to add that we are also arming our police as if they were soldiers - it makes *us* the enemy combatants.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Popehat is a great blog.

Best fix I can think of is to cut back on unnecessary laws. If selling cigarettes one at a time was legal we would never have heard of Eric Garner. Empowering cops to go after victimless crimes makes for an inevitable level of aggression because it's the only way they can get the proof.

[drwex]

I think that's the issue Ken is addressing - it's not a question of what crime is or is not, it's a matter of how police and the community interact. That intersects racism (and racial-ism), training, equipping, hiring, attitudes, learning. I don't think changing laws to eliminate minor crimes would change that, though I agree that we have too many laws about too many petty things.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I think drug legalization would make for a huge shift in cop attitudes. Right now they look at a crowd and can be pretty sure that a pat-down would net evidence for arrest in half-a-dozen cases. Change the law and they'll see law-abiding citizens.

[vibrantabyss.livejournal.com]

So when do we start seeing "blue privilege" as a term?