Part 15--Police Violence and a Community's Remedies

The truth of a problem and the solution to it will not be derived from reactionary emotions but objectivity. 
There are several problems that the above incident, and others like it, could highlight, crime and violence in poor communities and crime and violence in Americas policing agencies are two possibilities. Often though, instead of our media presenting well-balanced useful information regarding causal factors, it plays to our assumptions and emotions. Fingers get pointed, nothing changes.  The media showcases polarizing figures from the left and right, who only serve to entrench the passive viewer in their previous ideas of who is on the righteous side. By framing the discussion as the media does, it allows this to continue, while not presenting intelligent alternatives to fix the problem. But answers do exist and they are not just simply punishing the offending officers, and mass incarcerating the poor.

The murder of this young man who had his bike stolen was an example of unnecessarily violent "policing", but where do murderous officers such as this initially acquire the idea that their attacks might just be accepted? If not their departments, the media is a likely suspect. Often what it presents is not truth, but opinions. Opinions that only serve to obfuscate the truth. For example, despite what it might have us thinking, statistically, being a police officer is not a very dangerous job. In fact, it might be said that trash men are the truly endangered public servants. Still, the media and government continue to act as though policing is a very dangerous occupation. It is not. Moreover, they continue to allow rogue officers to commit acts of violence, even murder, with little accountability.

Despite the many shortcomings of corporate media, we have been continually presented with ideas from it that it is an adequate protector of our society. That it in fact even polices the police. Through repetition, we are encouraged to believe what we hear, and we are told that there are no real alternatives to our system. And that our system, though not perfect, is more or less fair and as it should be. Our media also conveys the message that being a cop is a dangerous job and by implication police are highly dignified servants, continually risking their lives to protect us. Again, the reality is that their job is less dangerous than a job as a garbage man. And, what they primarily protect, are the wishes of the establishment--everything else is closer to PR.

As for who is allowing to have innocent lives put at risk, while every slain cop is reported in the media, the vast majority of police violence towards citizens, especially those in the state & county institutions, has been under-reported in and via policy, promoted by the government.  The government allows the police to investigate themselves. To say it more broadly, we have local police investigating their peers while under the watch of local prosecutors who have to maintain a positive relationship with them. This has led to violence against certain citizens to occur on a daily basis for years unchecked with the complicity of all ranks of the justice system, from the cop on the beat, to the justice on the bench.  Just like the cops in traffic court, even repeat violent offenders have been given the benefit of the doubt. And our media does little to analyze or fix this.

Though many cops’ criminal and/or violent acts may be in the hundreds, retired and active alike, they'll never be jailed, much less struck-out. But violent police have gotten countless leaves with pay (paid vacations) for excessively provable criminal abuses that get no independent investigation. We are told that something is being “investigated” while, in reality,  the departments work to bury the crime. While the investigations and evidence are fought to be kept from the tax-payers, the resulting vacations aren't. They have included information right along in the embarrassing, for us all, press releases of an “investigation”. We usually just brush it all off as if it is all isolated from the condition of American Justice. Our internalized idea of a just world that has been taught to many of us clouds our vision. It makes us assume that everywhere else the cop and those he protects--protecting him in return--are law abiding. And that they normally choose to abide by their oath by honestly enforcing the law upon themselves and their brotherhood of coworkers.  But one cannot hold an alliance with man and law simultaneously.

What would happen if the Federal Government really dared to covertly investigate how many state cops beat up suspects (especially those already in custody)? And how many other cops just watch? Physical violence though is only one aspect of corruption. How many cops, while on the stand against a three-striker facing life, lied (committed perjury)? How many cops didn't, yet still witnessed the veritable planting of evidence by a fellow officer yet said nothing? It has long since been rather obvious that, as a whole, the police force members function as co-protectors of each other and each other's stories. In Southern California, I would guess most or all of them that remain on the beat have continued this tradition. The majority of our street police are likely varying combinations of either participatory or enabler. Others who refuse to be a part of it for long, often opt for office jobs to keep their paychecks and their consciences clean.

 Overall, these criminal behaviors have been becoming less and less common on an individual basis, yet police power has been growing. Supplied now with military equipment, their ability to attack and suppress society only grows. Now even motorcycle cops ride around with AR-15 military-style assault rifles attached to their Motorcycles. Are bicycle cops next?

Especially as the militarization of police escalates, police corruption must end. We cannot tolerate police who break the law, answer to no one, lie on the stand, and live outside of the communities they patrol. Good people are falling victim to an unjust justice system.

Surely some of the police that help cover for the lies of their coworkers resent and regret it but what does that matter to the mom whose son was killed by police?  What does it mean to the human being condemned to die in prison by lying police? How does it help the person forced to spend 25 continuous years in prison, and then go "home" (of course with parole for 3 more years)?  These are injustices that cannot be fixed. The cop can not simply tell the mother that he didn't talk to his partner for 2 weeks after seeing the bullets enter her son or hearing the lies in court.  Either way, the real pain revolves around the person that has been labeled “bad”. The liars go on to live rich lives.

Despite these facts, there are those who understand the corruption of Justice and yet still feel that it is acceptable. Others simply don’t believe that there is any savagery or unfairness.  After all, it largely only afflicts the poor, the non-white, or those with felony convictions and/or their acquittance's.  Others still are simply too programmed to feel threatened or bothered by state violence and surveillance, the planting and manipulation of powerful evidence and the widespread adherence to the unwritten code to protect a fellow officer as he/she commits a crime.  

Some people seem to think that once the officer takes the oath, swearing to uphold the law, that it becomes perfectly legitimate at that moment for he/she to begin breaking the law.  Who are those that believe street justice committed by police is legitimate since our justice system condones it? Often blind supporters of the system, people like me before I began waking up. Others are hypocrites and/or bigots who figure that the corruption will help take more minorities off the street. Others still are successful attorneys for the state prosecutor’s office and superior court judges. Though these people may not express in words such viewpoints if they care for their jobs, but their actions surely do. If for no other reason a judge, much like a D.A., will lose his position if he causes the prosecution too much frustration.

It is time for justice reform. We cannot eternally allow this institutionalizes injustice to grow. We have hard decisions to make for the good of the community. Moreover, our violent foreign policy is nothing more than an extension of our domestic policy, which is another reason to begin at the local level.  Let's start promoting city ordnance's that mandate that our police live in the cities they patrol. Lets make police payouts for wrongful deaths come, say 40 percent, from police retirement funds. Have police wear 1 or even front and back cameras that cannot be turned off or taken off by them, punishable by law, and the camera footage must be made public. Police investigations must be conducted by teams not associated with the local county Justice system. Then we will have a more just model which we can hopefully export.  You may think that this will expose the police to danger.  Well, as of now their job is safer than a garbage man's job (true, police holding desk jobs may have skewedthis statistic), yet listening to the media you would never know any of this. 

So, from here on, let's stick to the facts, move forward and adapt from there. It is time for justice reform. We cannot eternally allow this institutionalized injustice to grow. We have hard decisions to make for the good of the community. This violence must end.

Part 14--America, the best democracy money can buy.

Tokenism is behind much of our "Freedoms".

Of course, it is wonderful that I get to live in a country that does not band messages from being disseminated. It is often stated that we have retained the right to Free Speech and in many ways we have--in other ways we have not. 
When it comes to free speech and ideas on T.V. and radio,  the game is rigged. 
Though not directly through law, speech is definitely controlled, much of it outright censored, even condemned.  The Internet is still relatively free, at least for now, but it is currently under attack.  And due to this, I am continually on the phone with the offices of elected officials telling them to vote this way or reword that way, whatever bill has been, yet again, influenced by the world's media giants. Media giants like Comcast are continually trying to curtail our access to free information. The mass media is attacking our ability to access locally generated information and free speech.  It wants the market and since it cooperates with the politicians, the politicians cooperate with it. Both rather that we see their own idea of what we should hear, see and be taught. Within the mass media, taboos, illusions, and manufactured truths are created and perpetuated. Again, real free discourse is functionally forbidden. New and intellectual ideas of language, economics, race, democracy, war; ending government corruption and protecting justice, are left to a few public radio stations like  (www.kpfk.org)  KPFk.  Our current media system is not far in function from what existed in Nazi Germany.  Just as there, when dealing with those the state has targeted as criminals, the government's side is inevitably presented most favorably, only lip service is paid to the rest. When it comes to those seen as the “others”, facts are indeed given but, just as in Nazi Germany, the side of the police is the one made believable.

In truth, the real-life persistence of widespread corruption within the political and justice systems have been everywhere for centuries.  In general, the black and white (pun intended) between good and bad that we are shown is much more pervasive and gray than we are led to believe. The foggy gray is everywhere. It is there when things like Citizens United is protected by the supreme court e.g., money equals Free Speech, so billionaires can easily “speak” to politicians). It was there in true black and white when the Pentagon Papers were revealed and the revealers condemned.  It is also there when the patrol car breaks a traffic law.  It was there when we were teenagers watching a cop lie or threaten some form of violence and/or use excessive force while disrupting our social gatherings. It was there when they stopped you or a friend of yours and told a lie or showed up in traffic court lying to gain a guaranteed conviction. The judge acting as a puppet for the street cop.  The cops do not even have to make complete sense, but the judge still sides with them. It has been there as friends we know in law enforcement or fire continually break traffic laws but don't get ticketed--often even when their offense involved alcohol. And on those rare occasions that a cop is not let off, full-blown vendetta-like retribution is sparked. Ticketing wars between the two involved departments explode--evidence of a corrupt system is there too. Though with the proliferation of cameras and avenues to disseminate the images much of the corrupt policing has been reduced, they are none the fewer signs of the corruption of an unbiased law and benevolent government.

Also similar to Nazi Germany, proof makes it out in the form of a defecting officer who comes forward to expose that justices' worst nightmare is departmental policy. We have been told about a culture of lying, both to gain convictions of others and to protect other police from conviction. Though police openly attacking suspects has long since not been the norm in America, again dropping with the proliferation of video cameras, It's also there with those police beatings and murders that are videotaped by the wrong person and one way or another make it public. The police no longer can simply make their patrol car video get “lossed”. For decades, some Americans naively