As darkness fell on Canfield Drive on August 9, a makeshift memorial sprang up in the middle of the street where Michael Brown's body had been sprawled in plain view for more than four hours. Flowers and candles were scattered over the bloodstains on the pavement. Someone had affixed a stuffed animal to a streetlight pole a few yards away. Neighborhood residents and others were gathering, many of them upset and angry.Do I even need to expound on how insulting that was for a cop to have a police dog piss on the memorial to a man gunned down by the police? It might not have made it into the papers right away, but you can be pretty sure that the folks on the street knew about it.
Soon, police vehicles reappeared, including from the St. Louis County Police Department, which had taken control of the investigation. Several officers emerged with dogs. What happened next, according to several sources, was emblematic of what has inflamed the city of Ferguson, Missouri, ever since the unarmed 18-year-old was gunned down: An officer on the street let the dog he was controlling urinate on the memorial site.
Within the last few days, I stumbled across a police chief's blog. Fuck me, I can't find it, now.* But he was bitching that the cops are at war and they need even more militarized gear
Not only no, but hell, no. If we need an army patrolling out streets, then the proper way to do that is to declare martial law (as Dick Cheney probably wanted to do) and bring in the fucking Army. We are supposed to have civilian cops in this country, not heavily-armed paramilitary goon squads.
I'll make a sad prediction: If the police want to keep acting like an occupying army, sooner or later, they're going to be treated like one.
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* But did you know that former NYPD Commish/convicted felon Bernie Kerik has a blog?
1 comment:
Cops are really hard to prosecute. But until seeing what it looks like from the other side of that screen becomes a very real possibility in their minds, I don't see their behavior changing much.
It can happen, though. Back in the '80s, the Oakland Housing Authority cops pretty much went rogue, violating all kinds of laws and civil rights and threatening anyone who crossed them with faked drug cases. The OPD finally had to intervene by setting them up, busting them, and shutting them down.
But then in the '90s there was the famous "Riders" case, where four OPD cops were accused of pulling the same bullshit in the same neighborhoods and we didn't get any convictions (though one fled the country) and the reforms required by the civil lawsuit still haven't been fully implemented after more than a decade.
I will say this though, getting the cops to respect the residents in poor neighborhoods would probably be a lot easier without the hate and mistrust in the mix because of the enforcement of the drug prohibition laws. The cops are viewed as the enemy, and even they can feel that. And come to think of it, that does sound a lot like your prediction.
-Doug in Oakland
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