Gray Lady Bangs the Drum on Institutional Racism/Police Accountability

On the one hand, we have The New York Times daily laying the foundation of the New Cold War; while on the other, the "newspaper of record" nearly as often shines a light on institutional racism, the criminal justice system and the lack of police accountability. It is a strange age we live in. A Cold War is being resuscitated sans the specter of international communism at the the same time one of the main tenets of the 1960s New Left -- black liberation -- is making a comeback.

Make no mistake, the Gray Lady is advocating for black justice. She didn't need to run a story (Carol Cole-Frowe and Richard Fausset, "Jarring Image of Police’s Use of Force at Texas Pool Party") about the police storming a pool party in a Dallas suburb, but she did. And it is decent story to boot, drawing attention to the racial divide in the city where the incident took place:

McKinney, with around 150,000 people, is a fast-growing, mostly middle-class suburb with deep racial and economic divisions. In 2009, according to an article in The Atlantic, the city settled a lawsuit in which it was accused of hindering the construction of affordable housing in the western part of the city, which is more white and more affluent.

The pool party took place on the west side, in a neighborhood that residents said is usually marked by friendly relations among black, white, Hispanic and Asian residents.

Of course the video speaks for itself. You would be hard pressed to find a better depiction of domination: an armed cracker in a dark uniform manhandling a black girl in a colorful bathing suit. It as if white fascistic America's pornographic daydream was caught on a cell-phone camera.

And the McKinney pool party story is not even the best black justice report featured in today's paper. Michael Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo have an excellent piece, "Cleveland Leaders Bypass Prosecutors to Seek Charge in Tamir Rice Case," on how an obscure Ohio law is being used to attempt a bypass of the grand-jury system so that the murder of Tamir Rice might receive a public trial:

Ohio is one of a handful of states that allow residents to request an arrest without approval from the police or prosecutors. It is difficult to know how the case will play out because there is little precedent for a citizen to request an arrest in such a contentious, high-profile case. 

Mr. Madison [lawyer for the Tamir Rice family] said that he knew of no instance in which an Ohio judge had ordered the arrest of a police officer based on a citizen complaint, but that most previous complaints had been frivolous. 

Shooting deaths by officers over the past year have prompted the most significant national discussion on policing since the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. The debate has highlighted, among other things, the differences in how prosecutors handle cases involving investigations of police officers. 

In a typical murder case, prosecutors often present only their best evidence to a grand jury in order to get an indictment. Arguments that a shooting was justified are typically not made until much later, at trial. 

In cases involving police officers, prosecutors are more likely to let grand jurors hear conflicting testimony or see evidence favorable to the officer. Critics say that has established two standards for bringing charges: a high one for police officers, and a much lower one for everyone else. 

A task force appointed by President Obama recommended in March that all cases involving the use of force by police officers be handled by independent prosecutors to “demonstrate the transparency to the public that can lead to mutual trust between community and law enforcement.” In the Cleveland case, however, Cuyahoga County prosecutors will decide whether to bring charges. Those prosecutors work regularly with Cleveland police officers, a closeness that activists have said is a conflict of interest.

By going directly to a judge, community leaders are trying to circumvent that process. Ohio law allows anyone with “knowledge of the facts” to file a court affidavit and ask a judge to issue an arrest warrant. If approved, the arrest would be followed by a public hearing, and community members said that was preferable to allowing prosecutors to make the decision in secret.

“Here we are taking some control of the process as citizens,” Mr. Madison said. “We are going to participate without even changing the law.”

Tamir was fatally shot in November while he played in a park. A 911 caller had reported that the boy was waving a gun that was “probably fake.” When officers arrived, they pulled their car into the park, next to the boy. Within two seconds, an officer, Timothy Loehmann, shot Tamir in the abdomen. The boy’s gun, it turned out, was a toy replica of a Colt pistol and fired plastic pellets.

The shooting raised questions about whether the officers followed procedures and whether they had time to warn Tamir three times to put down the gun, as they said they had done. Lawyers for the city have defended the shooting, saying the officers mistook the toy for a real gun. 

The Rev. Jawanza K. Colvin, who signed affidavits seeking charges of murder and manslaughter, said: “We have the video, and having witnessed it, you can see that it took two seconds for the officers to shoot a 12-year-old boy who showed no malicious intent or aggressive behavior. There is certainly reasonable suspicion that a crime was committed.” 

The planned filing comes as Cleveland tries to move past what the Justice Department recently said was a pattern of police abuse and unconstitutional behavior. The city agreed to put in place new training and civilian oversight to head off a civil rights lawsuit.

It is hard for me to imagine a Cleveland judge issuing an arrest warrant for Timothy Loehmann. The judicial system exists to protect the status quo, and the status quo allows law enforcement to operate with impunity. This impunity embraces the regular murder of black people.

For some reason, the NYT has taken up the cause of the #Black Lives Matter movement, an amazingly progressive thing to do and something that doesn't square with the paper's crude, backward parroting of USG propaganda when it comes to foreign affairs. But why?

Are the editors privy to some secret government study that foretells of a crackdown by the police state and they're, in the finest tradition of public service, trying to get out front and build a movement of civic resistance? Doubtful to impossible. Something is happening here, some form of mass awakening that is broader and simultaneously more cynical than what happened in the 1960s/early 1970s and the Gray Lady is just trying to keep up.

The Walter Scott Homicide: 1984 in Reverse?

With the latest video of lethal force by the police -- in this case, a South Carolina officer, Michael Slager, nonchalantly gunning down a fleeing Walter Scott -- topping the national news for a second day, the question I have is how often does this happen? It seems like every other week -- whether it is a homeless guy in Los Angeles, a kid playing with a toy gun in a snowy Cleveland park, or Michael Brown or Eric Garner, to name a few -- we are confronted with another example of the police ruthlessly committing homicide.

A problem I have with television police drama like The Shield, even though I watched all seven seasons, is the body count that the cops rack up does not seem believable to me. Certainly they would be suspended constantly pending interminable investigations conducted by the local department, the FBI or the Justice Department. Right?

Well, apparently not because the Justice Department and the FBI don't know how many of these shootings take place. So, in answer to the question, "How often does a Walter Scott incident take place?" We don't know.

As Michael Schmidt explores today in "Scant Data Frustrates Efforts to Assess Number of Shootings by Police":

Under current federal laws, there is nothing requiring any of the 18,000 police departments and other law enforcement agencies across the country to report to the public or to the Justice Department anything about shootings involving officers.

Roughly 91 percent of departments and agencies in the country voluntarily report crimes like murders, rapes, car thefts and burglaries to the F.B.I., which releases an annual report.

But under the current reporting systems, there is no category for episodes in which the officer’s use of force was not deemed legally justified, and there is no category to report police shootings in which the officer has not killed a person. There are categories for “justifiable” or “excusable” homicides by police officers, ones in which officers kill a felon.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund keeps data on how often people shoot police officers, and departments willingly share that data. But the statistics on the police shooting civilians are much harder to find.

In the aftermath of police officers’ using lethal force in Staten Island, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere last year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, have strongly advocated changing reporting requirements. A White House task force created to look into the episodes made similar recommendations in a report released in March.

So far, though, those efforts have not provoked much interest on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers would most likely need to pass legislation to require departments and agencies to report figures to the Justice Department.

In January, Mr. Holder spoke about the issue at a Justice Department ceremony honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington.

“I’ve heard from a number of people who have called on policy makers to ensure better record-keeping on injuries and deaths that occur at the hands of police,” he said. “I’ve also spoken with law enforcement leaders, including the leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police, who have urged elected officials to consider strategies for collecting better data on officer fatalities. Today, my response to these legitimate concerns is simple: We need to do both.”

Mr. Holder said that in the 1990s, Congress passed a law that was intended to help the Justice Department collect better statistics about shootings involving officers. But that law was ultimately not effective because the reporting was optional, and local departments and agencies may not have the proper resources to be able to make reports to the Justice Department in a timely manner.

In a speech in February about the relationship between the police and minorities, Mr. Comey said that during the riots in Ferguson last summer, he had asked his staff members for figures on the number of blacks who had been shot by the police. They told him there were no uniform statistics on such shootings.

“They couldn’t give it to me, and it wasn’t their fault,” Mr. Comey said. 

Mr. Comey said that law enforcement officials and minorities “must find ways to see each other more clearly.” He added, “Part of that has to involve collecting and sharing better information about encounters between police and citizens, especially violent encounters.” 

Mr. Comey said he had spoken with the police chief in a major American city who said that he did not know whether the Ferguson police “shot one person a week, one a year or one a century.”

Since Congress is controlled by a neo-Dixiecrat GOP, I wouldn't expect a mandatory reporting law for the nation's 18,000 police departments anytime soon. Police use of lethal force overwhelming targets blacks, and that works well for the 113th Congress. The more the people are divided -- whether by race or sect -- the better for the money bags that run the show.

Another aspect of the Walter Scott murder that needs to be addressed is the positive role played by technology; here, a smartphone camera. Lately I am coming closer to the conclusion that the explosion of digital technology is creating a dystopia rather than utopia, that The Postmodern Condition leads us to a "dream machine" of endless passivity and distraction and not the upturning of old, rancid power narratives.

But smartphone videos capturing the police in the act of homicide prove that the Panopticon can be turned back on the jailers, a sort of 1984 in reverse.