By Elaine Magliaro
Charlie Pierce wrote a post for his Politics Blog at Esquire about some of the police forces in this country acting like “armies of occupation.” He noted that President Obama was to host a meeting earlier today that would focus on “the problems that we’re having with policing in this country, especially if we are black and come across some nervous cop with an itchy trigger-finger.” Pierce said he thinks that meetings are good…that meetings can help. He added, though, that he thought this meeting with the president was likely to be “absolutely fking useless.”
Pierce:
This is not a meeting that should happen in Washington. In fact, this is not a meeting that should be a single meeting. This is a meeting that should take place in every city and in every town and in every county in America. We have a lot of fun every Thursday with our tour of what’s goin’ down in the Laboratories of Democracy, but there is a serious purpose behind our semi-regular weekly survey. The real damage to democracy, to civil liberties, to economic justice, and to most of the progressive accomplishments of the 20th century is being done at the state and local level. And the people who are doing that damage are the people who one day will be members of Congress. That is the way it goes now. And, while the crisis in our local police forces has been encouraged by policies set in place by the national government, the implementation of those policies has been handed over to local officials with disastrous results.
Pierce went on to talk about the militarization of local police forces, the civil forfeiture scandal, the killing of US citizens by police, and the complete lack of police accountability.
Pierce:
We should have meetings everywhere.
And those meetings should have as their theme one simple truth.
You work for us.
You cannot steal from any of us.
You cannot kill any of us without cause.
You cannot lie to us about stealing from us or about killing one of us without cause.
You work for us.
You work for all of us.
Pierce said that for much too long, local police forces in the United States “have been allowed to cultivate in their membership the attitudes usually found in armies of occupation. For far too long, the local police forces in this country have been allowed to weaponize those attitudes with the kind of firepower usually used by armies of occupation.” He added that the events of 9/11 had acted “as an accelerant to trends that already had gathered considerable momentum”–including our attitude toward civil liberties being “a luxury we no longer could afford…”
In his post, Pierce also addressed the St. Louis Police Department’s reaction to St. Louis Rams players displaying the “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” pose as they entered the field yesterday
Click here to read Charlie Pierce’s piece Armies of Occupation or Local U.S. Police Forces?
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
Elaine,
Unfortunately I share the anger and the pessimism that Pierce expressed in his article.
Elaine,
Good rant. I passed it on.
Thanks.
If Wilson was watching he probably shot the T V
Yet, there are grants that are made for equipment and training.
Without enough traffic, you will never have enough customers and this
means you won’t be making enough money. What you give away
doesn’t have to be costly, but it must be valuable.
It is ironic isn’t. The gesture and chant indicate cooperation with LE and a request that LE used professional standards – yet some, including LE, find that offensive.
BFM,
It’s both a suggestion and a stimulation cementing immediately on the mind.
As a student of Gene’s propaganda series, I’d recommend an A+
BFM
I don’t think “bend over, spread cheeks” would play well on Monday Night Football.
That would have been my initial guess but I believe it actually worked for CincoOcho, didn’t it?
Here’s a perfect example of how not understanding the Constitution creates the occupying force mentality:
‘An infuriated spokesman for the St. Louis Police Officers Association, Jeff Roorda, called the display “unthinkable,” and has demanded the NFL discipline Stedman Bailey, Tavon Austin, Chris Givens, Kenny Britt and Jared Cook for making their feelings known “so publicly.”
But Roorda didn’t stop there. He added a veiled suggestion that the only thing protecting the Rams and the NFL from mob violence at games is the cops. And then he said, “I know that there are those who say that these players are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. Well I’ve got news for people who think that way. Cops have First Amendment rights too, and we plan to exercise ours.” …
To begin with, the First Amendment only protects free speech against government action. That’s all it does. It doesn’t protect the St. Louis players from NFL owners, or league commissioners, or talk radio hosts who disagree with them. But it does protect them from the government. So the person in danger of abusing the First Amendment here is not the football player with the edgy gesture in a public stadium. Or the NFL owner who might want to tell them to shut up to protect advertising. It’s the governmental agent — like, say, a cop — who seeks to punish someone for expressing certain views.’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/st-louis-rams-dont-shoot-gesture-was-free-speech-and-the-police-should-know-it/2014/12/01/a55c2656-7995-11e4-9a27-6fdbc612bff8_story.html?hpid=z4
Blouise;
You get a 3 smiley award for the “probably shot the tv” post.
🙂 🙂 🙂
Two necessary phrases for talking about police in the US:-
Army of occupation policing;
SWAT team policing.
Carlyle;
An acquaint of mine (Professor Kauffman of Univ. Of Michigan) arrived back from Russia military convention (Prof is an engineer expert in wespons) and immediately went to D.C. trying to get media attention to the fact that military gear was being gifted to Police across the country.
Resulting in biys, with bigger toys, eager to play robo cop.
Scary stuff
Young people would never believe that there was a time that no matter what community or state or city there was a cop on the beat who walked and knew the shopkeepers even some of the kids ,knew the parents by name and would patronize the area business be they black or white.
blouise:
Joe Scarborough is another who goes into conniptions seeing that picture.
Eniobob,
I think Joe may have sustained too many concussions on the football field. Talk about someone who’s dumber than a bag of hammers!
Here’s a Ben Carson story for you:
Ben Carson Manages To Blame Ferguson On The ‘Women’s Lib Movement’
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-womens-liberation-ferguson
Conservative activist and former pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson recently blamed police shootings of black men on the “Me” generation that grew out of the “women’s lib movement.”
During an appearance Tuesday on American Family Radio’s “Today’s Issues,” Carson speculated about the behavior that led to the fatal shooting of black unarmed teenager Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
“Certainly in a lot of our inner cities, particularly in the black inner cities, where 73 percent of the young people are born out of wedlock, the majority of them have no father figure in their life,” Carson said. “Usually the father figure is where you learn how to respond to authority.”
He also addressed comments made by host Lauren Kitchens Steward about respecting authority and the entitlement, which she claimed, “dominates” this generation.
“I think a lot of it really got started in the ’60s with the ‘Me’ generation. ‘What’s in it for me?'” Carson said. “I hate to say it, but a lot of it had to do with the women’s lib movement. You know, ‘I’ve been taking care of my family, I’ve been doing that, what about me?’ You know, it really should be about us.”
I don’t believe Darren Wilson will have much trouble affording a new LCD flatscreen
http://www.inquisitr.com/1642830/darren-wilson-supporters-reportedly-raise-estimated-1m-in-donations-via-facebook-for-ferguson-police-officer/
Makes you wonder how many others out there would like to win the Shootabrothawinamillion lotto.
From Charlie Pierce this morning:
FOLLOW THE LEADER
By Charles P. Pierce on December 2, 2014
Excerpt:
Give our elite political media a warm meme and they’ll wallow in it forever like elephants in a mudhole — or, more accurately, like dinosaurs in a tar pit, stuck forever. Comes now Dana Milbank, working Ron Fournier’s side of the street, chiding the president for his lack of Leadership (!)tm regarding the events in Ferguson, Missouri. Once again, the argument is very long on banal generalities, and very short on what the real-world politics of the United States are like in the year 2014 C.E. First, though, a brief stop at Maureen Dowd’s Ye Olde Shoppe Of Daddy Issues.
“The grand-jury decision not to charge the white police officer who killed an unarmed black teenager in Missouri has given Obama another opportunity to show strong and decisive presidential leadership. And, once again, Obama is using the bully pulpit like a 98-pound weakling. If any more chin-stroking goes on at this White House, the president’s advisers are going to have chafe marks on their jawbones.”
Jesus H. Christ On Human Growth Hormones, can we stop already with the wimp business? Thoughtfulness is not weakness. Prudence is not cowardice. The way I know this is that, for eight years, we were subject to the Leadership (!)tm of an ignoramus whose gut told him what to do, and his gut was even dumber than he was, and the whole country nearly fell apart. Given the choice between that and chin-stroking, I know which way I’m leaning.
“Democratic lawmakers have privately expressed their wish that Obama go to Ferguson. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, preaching in Portland, Ore., on Sunday, said Obama should go to Ferguson, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Obama ally Deval Patrick, the Massachusetts governor, said on NBC that Obama “wants to go” to Ferguson but faces a “quandary” because of an ongoing Justice Department investigation.”
Let those “Democratic lawmakers” show themselves or shut up. Let them go march in Ferguson. Nothing’s stopping them. And would anyone like to guess what the reaction would be if the president went to Ferguson on the advice of Jesse Jackson? The president — who did, as we have been endlessly reminded by the people who worked the hardest to sabotage his entire administration, promise to make us one country again — doing the bidding of the Mayor of Hymietown? Marty Peretz would have a stroke.
eniobob,
There is an article in the Washington Post about Mike Brown’s mother titled “I Know Who I Raised, I Know” that’s worth a read. It’s gut wrenching.
As to Joe’s snit, people like to pretend everything is back to normal. Those 5 Rams players stripped away that pretense. Joe’s reaction was white privilege yelling, “Stop It, Stop It Now!”
My brother, a Milwaukee cop, now retired and his wife a former Milwaukee cop, now a Ph.D have both remarked on how young cops seem to be overly fearful and too quick to use deadly force or the taser, or violence. My brother has a Masters in Psychology and was the counselor and liason for troubled cops on the MPD. He made recommendations that some leave the PF. He had one that committed suicide. This certainly isn’t a profession for those who have psychological problems. They do screen them before hire, but makes me wonder when these psychological problems manifest themselves?
pete,
Reportedly raised and actually raised are 2 very different things. The IRS will be watching. So will the attorneys for Brown’s mother.
Elaine, it always seems to be that Feminism gets blamed for all of society’s ills, eventually. Easy scapegoat.
“They do screen them before hire, but makes me wonder when these psychological problems manifest themselves?” – Inga
Some jurisdictions have started ongoing screening every 2-5 years which is written into the condition of hire. It’s expensive but more and more insurance providers are demanding it. Cleveland just paid a record $3 million to the families of the two victims in that car chase.
The upcoming case in Cleveland involving the rookie cop’s killing the 12 year old is going to be another heartbreaker on all sides.
Blouise,
The Ohio case is especially egregious. That rookie cop shot the child dead in all of two seconds. So many one errors, such as pulling up alongside the boy in the cruiser, also the terribly botched info given to the cops describing the boy, just awful. Also the guy in Walmart buying a BB gun. How many times have we seen those pictures of redneck Walmart shoppers carrying their AR15s across their backs? I think when the next police shooting of an unarmed white male happens we may see more interest by the white population in this phenomenon. Black youths don’t seem to have much value in our society.
blouise
That would be karmic justice, the Brown family awarded all that in a civil suit. All the people that contributed could know what they sent went to the Browns.
Even better if Wilson is later arrested in Nevada and shares a cell with O.J.
Inga,
I know. The rookie started his 26 week Academy training on March 3, 2014 which means he came to active duty late July or early August. There’s a 6 month probationary period once active duty commences so I’m guessing he’s still in that limbo.
The entire thing is on video including the boy harassing pedestrians with the airgun and then his putting the gun down and making snowballs and throwing them on the sidewalk, not at people, right before the cops show up. After playing in the snow he goes and sits down, picks up the airgun and puts it in his waist band. The rookie claims he saw him pickup a gun and put it in his waistband and the video confirms that action. From car arrival to shot is just a little over 1 1/2 seconds. From the dispatch call the officers were responding to “man with gun threatening …”
A heartbreaker on all sides
There are also questions being raised about the two officers’ actions immediately thereafter. Within 4 minutes an FBI agent who was in the park for other reasons (no explanation offered) arrived on scene and he’s the one who started CPR and called for the ambulance … the 2 Cleveland cops hadn’t done any of that. Why not? We’ll see.
pete,
Gotta love karma
Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly Think Ferguson Story Will Be Over In A Week
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/bill-oreilly-ferguson-megyn-kelly-ferguson-over-in-a-week_n_6254288.html
The decision not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown has sparked nationwide protests and civil unrest.
But according to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly, it’ll all be over by the end of the week.
After discussing President Obama’s decision to create a task force in the wake of Ferguson, O’Reilly asked Kelly just how much longer she thinks this story is going to stay in the headlines.
“So you see a couple more days on this?” O’ Reilly asked. “Maybe this week will be the end.”
“I think past this week, that’ll be it,” Kelly responded.
Aren’t these the same folk who were absolutely certain Ohio was going to deny Obama the election?
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/xl1k7u/instigate
Blouise n Pete;
I concur!
Justice would be much better (ironically) served – “if” – those support funds were yanked away to Brown’s