(A very good friend of mine consented to re-publishing a conversation he had with an old friend):
"My friend messaged me about the Ferguson situation and police brutality. We had the following back and forth. I asked if he/she would be okay with me sharing it since I thought it might offer some perspective. He/she said "Yes."
Friend:
T, I am confused about the police brutality videos. (not the shooting). Its seems in the videos. both this new one and the one where the man had a heart attack that the people were resisting arrest. What are cops supposed to do when the arrested do not comply? sincere question to you cuz I am honestly confused.
4:57pm
Hey pal, in the Eric Garner case the cops used a choke hold, which is illegal. I know the cops have a difficult job and it's made exponentially more difficult when they are sent out to police poor communities of color for petty offenses to keep their quotas and statistics up. I think this is an inherent flaw in policing. They are targeting petty crimes in their "Broken Windows" policy rather than widespread white collar corruption and illegality.
To me, it's more of a macro level problem than micro. Eric Garner, a 43 year old black man, is dead because they went after a black guy selling loose cigarettes in a black neighborhood, easy pickens that pads their crime statistics. Now he's dead because of the excessive force used to take him down and his medical condition. And mind you, we only know his name because he's dead and it was filmed. Take either of those factors out of the equation and we probably don't know the name Eric Garner, yet those type of aggressive police tactics go on every day in black and brown neighborhoods.
Can you even fathom that video taking place in a white neighborhood with a white drug dealer? On a college campus where middle class kids drink and smoke and do drugs? Can you imagine SWAT teams in riot gear showing up in a white neighborhood or at a vigil for a white person who died?
So much of our media coverage dehumanizes black and brown people so that when someone is killed in the streets, the knee jerk reaction is "What did they do to deserve it?" In Ferguson, people held a vigil to grieve the murder of an unarmed young man and seek justice. And they were met with SWAT teams in riot gear firing bullets, tear gas and sound cannons at them. Thank god we live in the age of cellphone cameras and social media or a lot of this would go under the radar.
This starts at the top. Cops follow orders. Since 9/11 local police forces have been militarized to insane levels and people are so anesthetized to it that they don't even blink when a neighborhood is being gassed by police. Again, since it's a black neighborhood a lot of white people are conditioned to think of black and brown lives, particularly male, as disposable or less important, so the reaction isn't one of horror but of accusation "What did they do?"
We are supposed to live in a free and equal society in America. Situations such as Ferguson demonstrate all too starkly, that we are neither free nor equal. And as someone who experienced police brutality at Occupy, with a baton to my kidneys while following orders to disperse with my hands raised, I know how easy it is to get caught in the unaccountable, all-powerful net of police force that does what it wants, when it wants without consequence.
Mind you, the NYPD violently cleared Zuccotti Park in the middle of the night with riot police and sound canons. They strategically did this in the middle of the night and journalists were shut out of a five block radius of the park. They even shut down the airspace above so no news outlets could film or report. I was there that night and I saw journalists showing their credentials and being refused admission by the NYPD. Cops follow orders. This came from Bloomberg or Homeland Security or whoever but cops follow the orders and crush dissent and make a mockery of the constitution.
But to answer your question, what do cops do when someone doesn't comply? I don't know. That is for the police force to decide and implement at the training level. But choke holds are illegal and a SWAT team at a peaceful protest is excessive and insane. And firing bullets and tear gas at civilians and journalists is a shaky precipice for democracy. That's why I think it's important that people pay attention to this and give voice to it because it's a violation of rights. To allow it to continue makes us all responsible. Where does it stop?
5:13pm
Thanks Pal. I agree. I see a lot of differing opinions but at the end of the day we need to ask what kind of society we want or are supposed to have. Killing, gassing and violently squashing dissent are not things a free people should endure. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain this to me.
5:16pm
Any time, pal. This is really upsetting to me and I think it's important that people realize it, talk about it and act on it."