Tasers and Torture: Technology and the Expansion of Police Power

Hardly a newscycle goes by these days without two seemingly contradictory things happening: a police officer praises the “less lethal” TASER as his savior in a tight spot; and, someone gets killed or seriously injured by a TASER. It isn't unusual for this second case to occur in circumstances that shed considerable doubt on the first case, whether because of the nature of the victim (young, old, incapacitated, restrained, etc) or because of the victim was either justified in their actions or attempting to comply with police orders. What's behind this phenomenon?

Police cite the TASER as a critical weapon filling a gap in their arsenal between the billy club and the handgun. Rather than engage a suspect in close combat, cops say, the TASER allows them the flexibility to take someone down at a short distance without risking serious injury to either the officer or the arrestee. This is supposed to be more humane than merely beating or shooting someone, especially if there is some doubt as to the criminality of the victim's actions, such as when police merely desire compliance (although police rarely concede such doubts publicly). Likewise, this is alleged to be safer for the officer, who the media and police agencies almost universally portray as constant targets of violence.

But what's the truth of it? We can start by debunking two notions that underlie the case used to justify TASERs. First of all, when we get right down to it, policing isn't a very dangerous job. When ranked by the rate of on the job deaths and injury, cops don't even rank in the top ten, showing up far below truck driver, roofer and farm worker, among others [1]. Jobs we all do every day without the benefit of TASER protection (from our boss, for instance). Indeed, a recent study cited in the New York Times showed that cops are much more likely to die by their own hand than by a so-called “criminal” [2].

Secondly, the truth is that police don't use less force when they have TASERs. If TASERs were serving as a substitute for other forms of violence, or as a deterrent, we would expect the number of uses of force to drop. According to a well-documented study by Amnesty International, however, when police forces get TASERs, their propensity towards violence actually increases [3]. TASERs actually increase police violence. Indeed, Amnesty International specifically pointed out that precisely because of the short distance attack that TASERs make possible, police increasingly use them to compel obedience rather than for actual law enforcement.

Why is this? It's because the police are a tool of class oppression. They are like soldiers, only deployed here at home, enforcing the will of a small elite that is rich and powerful. As the army does in Iraq, so do the police here at home. They are defenders of the status quo, which happens to be one in which folks like us don't have much power while the elite they are defending have a lot of it. For instance, when the bank comes to enforce your foreclosure or eviction, who shows up? The police, of course, toting their TASERs and guns. But when's the last time you saw the cops TASER a yuppie in the rich part of town? That'll be the day!

So, since the police are really a domestic army, not public servants, why would we expect that giving them more weapons (i.e., TASERs) would reduce the level of violence? That's counter-intuitive. For instance, if we gave the army a new weapon, would we expect them to be less violent because of it? Clearly not. The TASER, then, is a way for the police to increase their ability to efficiently project their power or, more accurately, the power of the elite in general (the ones who make the laws and pay for the politicians, for example), onto folks like us – people who want to create our own lives and not bow down before people who don't have our best interests at heart. This explains the vigorous defense of TASERs by police agencies despite the fact that they are used too often and remain quite deadly in many circumstances [4]. They're not concerned with reducing violence. They're concerned with projecting their power.

Thus, it's obvious that all the rhetoric about TASERs doesn't match up with reality and in fact obscures a very fundamental truth: the rich and powerful want to control us so that they can get richer and more powerful. TASERs make it easier for them to do so, especially because police can hide their violence behind the cover of TASERs bogus claim of being less-violent (a claim they continue to make even as the deaths mount). But, once we see through that lie we are ourselves armed to make our arguments against the deployment of TASERs. If we want to be free, we must limit and ultimately challenge the ability of the police to project power onto us. And that means opposing TASERs and the class society they defend.


CITED:

[1] “America's most dangerous jobs”, CNN Money. com, 9 August 2007

[2] “Suicide Bigger Threat for Police Than Criminals”, New York Times, 8 April 2008

[3] “USA: Excessive and lethal force? Amnesty International's concerns about deaths and ill-treatment involving police use of tasers”, 30 November 2004, accessed at http://www. amnesty. org/en/library/info/AMR51/139/2004

[4] “Police defend use of Tasers”, Knoxville News Sentinel, 4 December 2007

###

I contributed this article to the July issue of Modesto Anarcho.

Wi-Fi's Golden Promise and the Jackboot of the State

The Chicago Times reported last week that the city has linked up all the high school surveillance cameras into a network that feeds into the city's 911 headquarters, forming a network of 4500 cameras. Already, the city's transit cameras and some private business cameras have been similarly routed to police headquarters.

Here's the thing about this article: the real news isn't the cameras being linked up. That's scary enough if you care about freedom and privacy, but it's not the real interesting bit about this. The part to pay attention to is not the cameras streaming to the 911 center, but that they can now stream to cops in their patrol cars.

In an emergency, arriving officers also will be able to view real-time images from the cameras on screens in their squad cars.

'The key is getting the information to the police officer in that car," said Mayor Richard Daley.'

How is this accomplished? The article doesn't say, but if it's like other cities, I'll bet it's with Wi-fi.

The spread of wi-fi across city landscapes has vastly increased the ability of the police to project force in their war against the poor (which is what policing is). It allows them to deploy units strategically and with increasingly pinpoint precision, which of course also increases the ability of the ruling class to impose their version of order (exploitation, prison, povery, etc) on the rest of us. Meanwhile, we are fed the lie that wi-fi is a great boon to humanity. At worst, the detractors will say it is neutral. But is something that increases the power of the ruling class to stomp our faces into a bloody pulp "neutral"? I don't think so.

Of course, knowing this perhaps now you'll look at Tempe's much-hyped neighborhood wi-fi plan a little differently now. Tempe, as you all know, is at the forefront of municipal wi-fi. At the time it was, as such things always are, boosted as a convenience for the neighborhood and the downtown business set, while in fact it was a foundation for the coming police state. But you already knew this if you read my blog, because I warned about this in 2005. Of course, folks thought I was a crazy Luddite then...

Still, poor marketing may have bought us a little time here in Tempeasy: the roll-out of Tempe's wireless police state hasn't gone as smoothly as planned. Last month the Republic reported that both Tempe and neighboring Chandler's wi-fi projects have foundered thanks to poor marketing. At it's peak, Tempe's plan only pulled in 800 subscribers and currently it's being offered free to those who can manage to pick up a signal. If the company currently running the project pulls out, Tempe may takeover the network.

Now that things aren't turning out quite as planned, city bureaucrats are reassessing the progressive spin they put on municipal wi-fi. As reported in Computer World last month:

Dave Heck, the [Tempe's] CIO, remembers how municipal Wi-Fi advocates talked about wireless networks as shining beacons that would bring Internet connectivity to the masses. But that kind of optimism is nearly gone in Tempe, and the city's network is dead in the water.

On Dec. 28, Kite Networks Inc., a division of Gobility Inc. that had been operating the network in Tempe, cut off connections and pulled the plug on its customer service phone line and Web site. Heck said subscribers have been hounding city officials to restore the Wi-Fi service. But the city's leverage over Gobility is limited, he added.

"Obviously, the city never thought this would happen, or we would have never gotten into it," Heck said. "People are pointing fingers, with some citizens thinking [the city] had more involvement than we did. Nobody could have foreseen this."

With the failure of the business end comes doubt about the government projects as well. Last year, as an in kind substitution for rents Gobility offered the city free access for fire and police, but the project's rocky future may put the elite's short-term plan for increased policing power in jeopardy, although, knowing it's potential utility in the war against the poor and working class, they continue to defend the system.

In Philadelphia, which is experiencing a similar situation as Tempe, the project is defended in both policing terms and for the so-called progressive benefits it will bring to poor people (aside from the heavier foot of the police state, I assume). Craig Settles, the author of Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless, who has written about Philadelphia's wireless experience put it this way:

Mr. Settles insists wireless can help the Nutter administration attain its goals.

"It puts more police on the street," Mr. Settles stresses, "when they don't have to go back to the station to access data and write their reports. They can do mug shot six packs. They can obtain witness identification in the streets.

"When paramedics respond in Houston and Corpus Christi, they can bring up patient data and send data and photographs ahead to the emergency room. There is more effective medicine going on in the ambulance that way. They can coordinate their efforts so the emergency room can be a better responder and treatment can move more quickly.

Settles sounds a bit desperate as he pleads with us:

"You have to use the technology," Mr. Settles emphasizes. "The wireless technology gives you the ability to work ex-offenders through some sort of computer training program."

Mr. Settles is an unabashed cheerleader for Wireless Philadelphia and its mission to bridge the digital divide with low-cost computers and training for low-income households in Philadelphia.

"Some sort of computer training program?" Like prison, perhaps? What a joke.

Sure, we're told, this will help poor people, too, even as it polices them. Indeed, the real purpose of municipal wireless becomes apparent when we consider a recent article in Information Week. Aside from subsidizing gentrification and business, we're reminded by Firetide's company spokesman (the company responsible for the wi-fi project in Los Gatos, California) that, "It's free to residents wherever they can get a signal." But what else is free?

Late last month, Firetide reported that its wireless mesh system tied a video surveillance network of cameras to the West Palm Beach Police Department in Florida. Deployed in the toughest neighborhood in the 100,000-resident city, the network is aimed at helping deter gang activity, drug dealing, and prostitution. Mesh nodes are connected to Wi-Fi-enabled laptops in police cruisers.

West Palm Beach's police communications manager Michael Cambisios said the Firetide network enabled the police force to "reach into areas not accessible by fiber or cable, extending resources without increasing manpower."

There: you couldn't have it put more clearly. Wireless is what the army calls a "force multiplier" and it's bad news for the poor and working class who, we know, never get anything for free from the elite (except a prison cell or a military uniform, perhaps). When the elite begins holding out freebies to us, we had best think twice about the deal we're getting. Municipal wi-fi is a net loser for us, and we need to recognize it as such. When the uprising comes, don't forget to take out the wi-fi. It benefits them far more than it helps us.

Police news roundup

This is a special edition of the news roundup dedicated to police. As the city gets set to have another public beatification ceremony for another dead cop, let's take a second to remember what cops really do in a day's work. And this is just what they've been up to recently!

Officials fire Alton police chief accused of sex assault

Alton's chief of police has been fired weeks after the South Texas lawman was accused of sexually assaulting two male employees.

Jose Luis Vela was suspended after his August 29 arrest on two charges of sexual assault. Since then, three current and former police department employees have accused Vela of sexual harassment.

Vela was officially fired yesterday for poor record keeping and possible theft of confiscated items. City Manager Jorge Arcaute said allegations surfaced accusing Vela of stealing alcohol confiscated by his department.

E. Bruns. cop claims DWI bias

He has made more than 100 drunken-driving arrests a year and has won convictions in 99 percent of his cases.

But Patrolman Joseph Marcantonio, 17-year veteran of the East Brunswick Police Department, alleges in a lawsuit that drunken off-duty police officers skated from DWI arrests in East Brunswick, and his complaints to supervisors brought retaliation against him.

Marcantonio, in a complaint filed in Superior Court, New Brunswick, in July also claims that East Brunswick police officers engaged in racial profiling, failed to deal appropriately with DWI arrestees — some of whom later died. And the department destroyed video evidence, misused breath-testing devices and misspent funds used to combat drunken driving, he alleges.

Officer referred to murder-suicide during fight with wife, police say

An area police officer was arrested Thursday night at his Bethlehem home after his wife told police he was acting erratically and made reference to a murder-suicide this week involving another police officer and his wife.

John Fiore, 44, of 1041 N. New St. was charged with making terroristic threats and harassment. He was arraigned before District Judge James Stocklas of Bethlehem and released on $10,000 unsecured bail. According to court documents, Fiore is being treated at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg.

Police said Fiore was acting ''erratic and explosive'' and made statements about having nothing to lose after mentioning the murder-suicide, according to court documents.

Cop who shot, killed a man had been involved in 2 previous shootings

But King's parents, Gary and Catherine King, decried what they believed was excessive force. Their son had just left a liquor store with a bag of chips and soda, they said.

"My son didn't deserve to be brutally murdered this way," Gary King, 52, said. "Gary is a good boy, and he didn't hurt anybody and he was well-loved."

Catherine King, 50, acknowledged that her son could have been armed. "If he had a gun, I don't know," she said. "It's possible, and that wouldn't necessarily be the kind of thing he would share with his mom and dad."

Still, she said she didn't believe the sergeant had to shoot to kill.

Their son wasn't involved in any homicide, she said, adding her son probably fit the description of "thousands of 20-year-olds - or thereabouts - men who are light-skinned and have braids around here."

Friends of the slain man set up a makeshift memorial Friday in the median of Martin Luther King Jr. Way that featured pictures of King and messages that read, "RIP G-Money" and "The police did this."

Santa Cruz councilman accuses Santa Cruz police of racial profiling

City Councilman Tony Madrigal, upset with a city plan to step up law enforcement on Halloween, accused police of "racial profiling," which city police immediately responded to as "wildly irresponsible."

Madrigal's allegations came Tuesday as the council was considering a plan to increase public safety on a night that draws up to 30,000 people, many outlandishly dressed, to Pacific Avenue.

Madrigal told the council he visited downtown during last year's Halloween celebration and witnessed officers "patting down" a group of young Latinos. But police didn't question a group of young white people nearby, he said.

"I asked [the Latinos], and they said they weren't doing anything," Madrigal said. "There was racial profiling going on. Those issues concern me."

Castroville Residents, Police Square Off Over Racial Profiling

A public forum was held in Castroville Monday night after civic leaders said racial profiling by the Monterey County Sheriff's Department was putting residents on edge.

Nearly 150 residents, elected officials and civic leaders, were on hand to hear what the League of United Latin American Citizens said is the improper targeting of Hispanic men.

Victor Mejia said he was disappointed in what he always thought was a sheriff's department going after the bad guys. But instead, Mejia said he discovered that he should fear authorities more.

Mejia, the executive director of the nonprofit agency said he was unfairly targeted in December due to his ethnicity and was consequently arrested by a sheriff's deputy.

Mejia's complaint was one of a number of recent alleged incidents that brought community members to the Castroville Community Center.

Martha Padilla Chavarria, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the evidence is overwhelming -- especially after she said her son, a Fresno State student, was pulled over and questioned as to his gang affiliation.

Among the long list of racial profiling examples community members cited were: intimidation; mocking residents; and excessive force.

Police complaints abound at initial open forum

Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick got an earful of complaints from citizens at her first ever open forum Wednesday night.

Not sure how many people to expect, Kirkpatrick was met by a mostly crowded room, with many in attendance voicing their concerns about racial profiling, bullying, police brutality and a handful of other related issues.

Spokane’s top cop set up the meeting after receiving a petition of more than 100 signatures calling for the Spokane Police Department to be held accountable for their actions.

“I think you’ve seen already in my one year being here,” Kirkpatrick said, “that we have been pretty upfront.”

However, there were a number of people in the audience who didn’t feel that her sentiment properly addressed the extent of the problem. They feel that there should be more oversight on the Police Chief’s part.

Police brutality victim says he was targeted because he's black

A Twin Cities man who won more than $700,000 in a police brutality case says he is still haunted by that day two years ago when he was arrested by Golden Valley police. He believes the arrest was motivated in part by race.

Two Golden Valley officers pepper sprayed and arrested Al Hixon in April 2005 as he was filling his car at a gas station. They believed he was involved in a robbery at a nearby US Bank.

Hixon says police knew the suspect was white, but assumed he was involved because he's black.

He says he hopes winning the trial last week sends a message.

"Justice is a very big word in reference to the situation," Hixon said. "Going to trial so the nation and the world could hear the story meant a lot to me."

Hixon says he suffers from depression, stress and physical injuries because of the incident, but says the trial was even tougher for him than the arrest itself.

"To sit on the stand to testify, and to sit and listen to people lie about you is the most difficult thing I've ever gone through," Hixon said.

Group Alleges Racial Harassment by Police

About 100 Flora residents gathered outside City Hall Tuesday protesting what they call unfair treatment at the hands of the city's police officers.

"Concerned Citizens of Flora" called for the resignations of former Police Chief Ernie Scarber, Sgt. Mike Alderman, and Mayor Scott Greaves.

The group of African-American residents says police target them for tickets, set up roadblocks in their neighborhood and place them under curfew.

"It's a whole lot of things that are going on in this town that's being swept up. It's time for them to come out. What are some of those things? Those things are we have a chief of police here. He's still chief. He's still getting the same pay. That was told to us by a alderman. He still getting the same pay and everything. Nothing has changed," said group spokesperson Rosetta Harris.

Hispanic Heritage Month event banned by UW police

A national fraternity says a decision by University of Wisconsin Police to cancel an event that was to kick off Hispanic Heritage Month is "very close to racial profiling, if not racial profiling."

The Madison branch of Lambda Theta Phi, a Latino fraternity, had arranged for the celebration to be held Saturday in Memorial Union's Tripp Commons, but was told last week that the event would be canceled due to concerns the University Police had about security.

Agustin Garcia, national chairman of the Lamda Theta Phi Foundation, said in a telephone interview from Florida this morning that the police would not give the fraternity specific reasons why they thought the event was unsafe.

"They kept coming back to the music and the nature of the event," said Garcia. "They said the event was unsafe but we don't have a reputation for problems, so that's where we got concerned with racial profiling."

According to Garcia, the fraternity felt there was no reason behind the decision to cancel an event planned only to be a dance with "a melody of Latin music."

Garcia said when the fraternity learned of the cancelation Sept. 11 they did everything to try and prevent it, even offering to pay for additional security.

Wife says man killed by Sunnyvale police was unarmed

The wife of a man killed Wednesday by Sunnyvale police said that her husband was unarmed and was shot in his car while leaving for work.

Erika Cañas, 22, said she was standing in the front yard of her apartment complex with her 18-month-old twin sons when police confronted her husband, Jose Cañas, 32.

"They shot my husband in the head," Erika Cañas said.

The Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety is investigating the death and has placed two officers on paid administrative leave, keeping with departmental policy on officer-involved shootings, Capt. Doug Moretto said. Police, with a warrant, were seeking to arrest Cañas and two others for investigation of an Aug. 17 killing in the neighborhood.

About the claim that Cañas was unarmed, Moretto would only say that an unspecified weapon was involved.

The other two men, whom police would not name Thursday, were arrested without incident.

At 11:35 a.m. Wednesday, Jose Cañas was pulling out of his parking place on the street when a car rammed his, his wife said. She said an officer drew a gun and shouted "Stop." She said her husband turned to look at the officer and was shot twice.

"I said, 'Don't shoot him, leave him alone,' " she said.

Then, she said, another officer threatened to shoot her, as she was standing in front of her apartment at 1144 Ayala Dr., and also threatened to handcuff her if she didn't go inside.

"I said no, you guys are shooting my husband."

A neighbor then took her keys and her crying sons, Jesus Angel and Jose Emmanuel, inside, she said.

Parents of man fatally shot by Hayward police sue city

The parents of a 20-year-old man killed by Hayward police while he fought with his brother have filed two $10 million lawsuits against the city alleging the man had surrendered before he was fatally shot.

Naser Solis of Hayward was unarmed and pinned to the ground by Officer Jason Corsolini moments before Corsolini shot him, according to separate lawsuits filed by Saleh Ali and Maria Joya last week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

"Witnesses also confirm that although there was a struggle between Mr. Solis and the officer, Mr. Solis gave up and surrendered, and that's very clear," said Ben Nisenbaum, a lawyer for Joya. "For whatever reason, the officer didn't take it that way."

City Settles On Police Brutality Suit

One of Chattanooga's most high profile brutality cases does not go to trial...but reaches a settlement. And taxpayers will be footing the bill. But the two men who sued the department got nowhere close to what they were seeking.

Jason McCollum and Matthew Jones combined will receive 114 thousand dollars, well short of the 20 million they were seeking together. Both men agreed to not release the terms, but because this is public money we were able to find out the details.

This is what each young man looked like after their arrests in September three years ago.
The city agreed to pay McCollum 42 thousand dollars and Jones, the more seriously injured man, 72 thousand dollars. The two young men raced out of north Georgia. Both had been drinking. And when they stopped at Kanku's convenience store, the video surveillance shows officers hitting Jones.

Instead of going to trial, the city agreed to pay both men damages. McCollum told me it was not about the money, but the principle. His attorney spoke for him. Robin Flores said, "He felt wronged and rightly so. If it was up to him and he had the inclination to do it, he may have gone to trial just for the principle of it."

The lawsuit also used testimony from former officer Ray Brantis, who got the maximum 28 day suspension. Brantis testified that before this happened, then deputy chiefs Freeman Cooper and Skip Vaughn both told officers they were authorized to use whatever means at your disposal to clean up this city.

Force was excessive, ex-police chief testifies in brutality case

Former Minneapolis Police Chief Tony Bouza was unequivocal on Monday in U.S. District Court. "The force used in this case was excessive, unnecessary and constituted police brutality," he said.

Bouza testified as an expert witness on behalf of Al Hixon, who is suing the city of Golden Valley and two of its police officers over an incident on April 2, 2005.

Hixon is seeking damages in excess of $75,000, alleging that his civil rights were violated by excessive force, battery and assault.

Everyone agrees that Hixon was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had just taken his Jaguar out of winter storage and pulled into a Sinclair gas station near his home to fill it up and get some fresh oil.

Unbeknownst to him, a U.S. Bank branch inside a nearby Byerly's grocery store had been robbed. Officers swarmed the gas station on the heels of possible suspects. They saw Hixon allegedly trying to run and captured him.

The next thing Hixon knew, he was on the ground, handcuffed and had been sprayed in the eyes and nose with a chemical irritant. He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is a changed man as a result of the ordeal, he said in testimony Friday.

The bloody circus never ends: the media post-humously knights another dead cop.

Another Phoenix cop has been killed while executing a racial profiling stop (jaywalking!?). The media has been so busy focusing on the fact that his killer was undocumented that it has completely missed the racist motivation behind the initial police contact. As police in Arizona have increasingly become enforcers of immigration laws, they have surged to the front lines of the battle over the border, which of course leads inevitably to racial profiling.

But, as anarchists, it's times like these that offer us the opportunity to examine the relationship between the ruling class and the police. Just why is it that the elite, who care nothing about the deaths of thousands of other workers in more dangerous professions, cry such crocodile tears over the death of a police officer? Typically they pay no notice at all to the deaths of common workers - who they generally despise. Our friends and family die every day for the convenience (!) and profit of a tiny elite and yet where is the public outcry at our graves? For instance, construction workers die much more frequently on the job than cops do, and yet they are not treated as heroes when they are killed on the job. This despite the importance of the housing industry to Phoenix's economy. Indeed, my own line of work - and most of ours - is more dangerous than policing but still the rich do not look upon my comrades as saints to be venerated whenever our blood stains the city's streets. Of course, there's a reason for that.

In 2005 a police officer named David Uribe was killed when he made a traffic stop. While the whole of elite society automatically offered him up for sainthood (without ever looking into his record on the job to see if he deserved it), I took the opportunity to consider the reason why. What is it about policing that the elite value so much and what are the myths that reinforce our perceptions of law enforcement? What are the origins of the policing in the US and what can that tell us about the relationship between the police and their homies in the elite class, who weep so disingenuously at their gravesides whenever we are lucky enough to be rid of one?

But in the outrage spewing forth from the vultures now feeding on Officer Nick Erfle's still warm body, and as they demand increased immigration powers for the ever-expanding police force, we don't hear an immigration problem. We hear a police problem. We hear the echoes of the slave patrols and the Fugitive Slave Act of old. Everything old is new again. And couldn't those patty rollers claim they were protecting the community as well?

Now recognizing our history in the present, we're not fooled anymore by their grand pronouncements or false emotions. When they say this is a loss for the whole community, we can now reply with a question of our own: "Which community are you talking about?" In their broad statements we see not a description of reality, but rather a sermon from their civic religion of the state, capitalism and white supremacy. Likewise, their oh-so-sincere genuflecting before the monument of the dead cop, transforming him into a fallen, righteous defender of all things civilized now appears a mere empty, self-serving public ritual to us. When they say that the police put themselves on the line for us every day, we can now ask, "Put themselves on the line for who?" And therein lies the crux of the matter.

So, while the media opportunistically gushes over the fresh corpse of Officer Nick Erfle, I'll delve into the archives and consider the deeper implications of the institution of policing and the role of police in society. Below is the original article, as relevant now as ever.

Officer Down: The media and cop-killings

Phoenix Insurgent
Summer 2005

The recent shooting death of Officer David Uribe, shot in the head and neck while making a traffic stop, offers several opportunities for radical analysis. Typical of its easy-going treatment of local police departments, the media fell lock step behind the idea of the police officer as defender of public order and all things good. In fact, where any dissented from the gushing media monotone, they demanded an even more gratuitous lavishing of praise on Uribe and police in general.

Such was the case with John McDonald’s melodramatic column in the Arizona Republic. In his sensationally titled article, “The day a cop died, this city lost its soul,” McDonald expressed his exasperation at the TV when “two anchors and a weatherman laughed and giggled about the delightful mild temperatures just minutes after detailing the brutal execution of a local veteran cop.” One wonders if McDonald even watches local television news, which in fact was dominated by endless coverage of the murder, manhunt and reaction for several days as local talking heads beatified Uribe with all due haste.

A LOSS FOR THE WHOLE COMMUNITY?

The media uniformly treated the Uribe killing as a loss for whole community. Even the killing of an unarmed man by Phoenix PD the very next day could not damper the media’s enthusiasm for the story. Remarking on the second shooting, Patty Kirkpatrick, a Channel 3 anchor, expressed relief that the conflict had ended in the death of the suspect, rather than a cop. In her mind it was preferable that an unarmed man die than a cop get hurt trying to carry out murder.

On May 12th, Benson’s cartoon in the Republic featured a simple sketch of a police badge bearing Uribe’s number. Written across a black band of mourning were the words, “thank you.” But for what? "When we lose someone like that, we lose part of ourselves," answers the Phoenix Fire Department's chaplain, Rev. Father Carl G. Carlozzi in the Arizona Republic. In a letter to the editor, Patricia Fay of Phoenix explained it this way, “They are my protectors. Someone killed one of my protectors.”

THE MEDIA COVERAGE

But there is a real tension between the public image of policing, defended so single-mindedly by the media, and the reality. Introducing channel 12’s coverage of the Uribe funeral the following Tuesday, Lin Sue Cooney described the event as “a whole community” saying thank you. Effusive in their coverage of a car-wash fundraiser for the Uribe’s family, local media outlets actively campaigned for valley residents to participate. Can the same police force that regularly kills unarmed people of color be the protectors of the community? Can the same police force that uses Tasers to kill, just as the Phoenix Police did on May 4th, 2005, killing a 24 year-old man, be protectors? Are the same police forces that disproportionately target, arrest and incarcerate the poor, and especially people of color, really defenders of the “community?”

But, everyone knows that police don’t protect everyone equally and that they specifically target some segments of the community over others. For years the Scottsdale PD enforced what they called a “no-n****r zone,” pulling over and harassing black people driving through the city. Incarceration rates for poor people versus rich people are so obvious that they hardly require mentioning. But many whites still continue to deny the just as obvious disparities in white and non-white incarceration rates. To believe that these disparities exist apart or in exception to the overall system of policing makes no sense. They exist because this is the way the system was meant to function.

THE ROLE OF THE POLICE

The police system is designed primarily to defend the rich and toward that end to police poor people and poor people of color in particular. Made up of reporters primarily drawn from middle and upper classes, and owned by very rich people, the media serves that goal as propagandist for the police and defender of its own class interest, and they reflect the racism that all white people learn in their upbringing.

Let’s look at the numbers. According the Princeton Review, the average television reporter, after five years on the job, earned $65,000 dollars a year. In the top 25 television markets the median salary as reported by the Missouri School of Journalism stood at $78,000 in 2000. According to the US Census, that rate stood at nearly twice the same figure for male workers in general, a rate which, it should be pointed out, itself remains higher than the median for non-whites and women. That disparity appears even sharper when we consider the Bureau of Labor Statistics count, which put the average annual wage in the U.S. as $36,764 for 2002. Even print reporters, generally paid less than their television comrades, fair better than average Americans. Clearly there is a class divide between many of us consuming the news and the people reporting, not to mention the editors and owners, and the media coverage shows it.

For example, the bulk of the media ignored a story that ran in the Arizona Republic the 11th, the very day Uribe was killed. Jahna Berry reported that a federal jury had awarded Gerardo Ramirez-Diaz $1 million dollars after a Phoenix police officer shot him in the gut without just cause. And just four days before the shooting of Uribe, in a rare display of public criticism, the Arizona Republic came out against the reinstatement of Chandler police officer Dan Lovelace. Lovelace was fired for using excessive force after he shot and killed unarmed Dawn Rae Nelson in her car, from behind, with her 14 month-old son sitting in the seat behind her. That murder occurred on October 11th, 2001, making the Republic’s opposition to Lovelace’s reinstatement a little late in coming, to say the least, though it does show just how extreme a case it takes for the local media to take a critical position towards local police.

A DANGEROUS JOB?

Much of the coverage of Uribe’s killing focused on the supposed danger cops face in the carrying out of their duties. Multiple newscasters and residents interviewed regarded the police as “putting themselves on the line” for other people, risking their lives regularly or standing as soldiers on the front lines of American society. But reflecting a rate that has remained pretty consistent, police officers don’t even rank in the top ten most dangerous jobs as most recently listed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, just a little over a week before Uribe’s killing, a farm worker was killed in Arizona when a bale of hay fell on him. Another worker, a roofer, was killed when he fell and drowned in a pool. The first didn’t even merit mentioning his name in the brief Arizona Republic article that ran. Both farm worker and roofer do rank within the top ten most dangerous occupations. Interestingly, Latinos represent a large proportion of workers in these fields. Another recent study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found a rate of five fatalities per 100,000 Hispanic workers in 2002 that was 25 percent higher than for all workers. This wouldn’t happen if white workers would stand up with Latino workers against these kinds of abuses. But apparently local media finds the deaths of workers, especially workers of color, as too commonplace to merit coverage, even though that contradicts their attitude towards the job of police officer, who they misreport as in constant jeopardy.

So, in order to understand why the media, the rich and so many white people have fallen all over themselves to praise Uribe and to condemn his murder – while rarely admitting police excesses - we have to delve a little into the history of American police forces. The alleged danger of the job doesn’t stand up as a sufficient explanation. Policing in America has two main origins, both of which serve to accomplish the same mission: to protect the wealth of the rich and powerful.

THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN POLICING

The first origin lies in the violent class struggles of the 19th century. During those times, workers were forced into the emerging factory system that the capitalist class was creating in the cities of the Northeast. In these factories workers had little power and were subjected to long hours and brutal conditions. When armed class struggle broke out, the capitalists, outnumbered and not generally wishing to risk their own necks in the fighting, created police forces to wage war on the working class in defense of their factories and wealth. The first real police force in the US was founded in 1845 in New York City, center of the country’s emerging industrial economy. As industrialism and modern capitalism spread, other cities followed New York’s example.

Private property lies at the heart of capitalist exploitation. The authority of the boss derives precisely because s/he owns the means of production – the workplace, the computers, the machines and thus the profits. Because workers’ interests depend on a redistribution of wealth and equality in the workplace, this brings us in inevitable conflict with the boss and his lackeys, the police. It’s the same thing with the landlord. The landlord’s ability to evict or demand rent couldn’t exist without the system of private property and the police to back it up with violence.

The second main origin of American policing centers on the slave patrol system of the South. Charged with protecting white plantation owners, the slave patrols, or “patty rollers” as they were often called, brutally oppressed blacks, both slave and free. It is from the slave patrollers that American policing gets many of its traditions and powers. Patty rollers worked specific “beats” and could demand identification from any black person they encountered. The slave patrols incarcerated and returned, frequently with violence, any black person who could not prove their free status or provide written permission for their travel. Even in the North the police were charged with capturing and returning escaped slaves.

The influence of this racist tradition reverberates today in a variety of ways. An Arizona Daily Star review of Department of Public Safety records revealed that during traffic stops police searched Latinos more than twice as frequently as whites. And police searched blacks almost three times as frequently as whites – despite the fact that searches of whites turned up contraband much more regularly. Beyond racial profiling, which brings them into police contact more frequently in the first place, non-whites also face racist judges, unequal access to competent defense and sentencing guidelines that send them to prison at rates many times that of whites and for longer duration.

In fact, the history of Arizona police forces combines both origins. Back in the day, as now, Arizona was a mining state and Latinos composed a large percentage of the miners. In response to militant organizing by mine workers, the state created the Arizona Rangers. Ostensibly formed to combat cattle rustling, in actuality the government used the force primarily against miners and people of color. This tradition continues to contemporary times, and many of us remember the UMW strike of 1983 when then-Governor Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat, called out police and national guardsmen against workers in defense of the Phelps-Dodge Corporation. Police guarded scabs brought in by the company, effectively breaking the strike.

It is critical for working class white people to understand the true origins and purposes of American policing and to be critical of both the aims and causes of media defense of police and police departments. In the end, supporting police power means supporting the rich people that exploit the entire working class, white or not. The American system has given white workers privileges that non-white workers don’t get, and many of them directly involve reduced exposure to police violence and policing in general. American history has shown, though, that when even white workers organize against the bosses and politicians, the police are brought in against us as well. It’s time for white workers to stand in support of communities of color when they organize against the police of all kinds, including La Migra. We need to recognize that the police are a racist institution that cannot be justified if what we want is a world of equality and justice, and media defense of policing amounts to defense of racism and the rich.

Blast from the past: 'Officer Down: The media and cop-killings'

I wrote this article in late 2005 in response to the killing of a Phoenix police officer. It analyzes the history of policing in the US (and locally), putting the media love affair with the police department and dead cops in the context of American class struggle and the system of white supremacy.

But there is a real tension between the public image of policing, defended so single-mindedly by the media, and the reality. Introducing channel 12’s coverage of the Uribe funeral the following Tuesday, Lin Sue Cooney described the event as “a whole community” saying thank you. Effusive in their coverage of a car-wash fundraiser for the Uribe’s family, local media outlets actively campaigned for valley residents to participate. Can the same police force that regularly kills unarmed people of color be the protectors of the community? Can the same police force that uses Tasers to kill, just as the Phoenix Police did on May 4th, 2005, killing a 24 year-old man, be protectors? Are the same police forces that disproportionately target, arrest and incarcerate the poor, and especially people of color, really defenders of the “community?”

But, everyone knows that police don’t protect everyone equally and that they specifically target some segments of the community over others. For years the Scottsdale PD enforced what they called a “no-n****r zone,” pulling over and harassing black people driving through the city. Incarceration rates for poor people versus rich people are so obvious that they hardly require mentioning. But many whites still continue to deny the just as obvious disparities in white and non-white incarceration rates. To believe that these disparities exist apart or in exception to the overall system of policing makes no sense. They exist because this is the way the system was meant to function.

Re-reading the piece, I would add perhaps a third origin for modern American policing: the Red Squads, as the Village Voice reminds us this week. I would also add to the class analysis of reporting as a profession by citing the experiential differences between reporters and most other workers, specifically relating to college and the university system.

Read the Officer Down: The media and cop-killings by clicking here. It originally appeared in the Summer 2005 print edition of Phoenix Insurgent and was distributed as an independent flier. Enjoy!

Automating justice: speed cameras proliferate throughout the Valley

Brian Powell over at the East Valley Tribune has done those of us who love freedom a real solid by revealing that some of the old intersection speeding and red light cameras that Scottsdale has stationed around the city are in fact deactivated and not working at all. Freedom! You can now safely disregard them and reclaim a little public space back from Scottsdale's ever-growing techno-police apparatus.

Although the machines no longer physically function, city officials and police are counting on their inherent Big Brother powers to remain largely intact because the city has left their empty shells lurking in the intersections as a deterrent to unsuspecting drivers.

Motorists traveling northbound on Scottsdale Road through McDowell Road still see a red-light camera on the northeast corner. But that camera hasn’t snapped a violation since October 2002. Motorists heading east or west on Shea Boulevard haven’t had the chance of a camera citation at Hayden Road since December 2001.

The main reason the old boxes aren’t removed is deterrence, officials say.

“One of the reasons considered is would they offer a deterrent? And yes they would,” Scottsdale spokesman Pat Dodds said. “There was no harm in leaving them there, so it was decided to leave them, and through natural attrition, remove them.”

The cameras, which are in gray or white boxes with two visible lenses pointing at vehicles, do look different than the more modern digital cameras that currently exist at eight intersections, along Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard and Loop 101. But unless a motorist is familiar with the differing tech- nology, one would likely have no idea.

The conflicting cameras even appear at the same intersection. Southbound Scottsdale Road travelers at Thomas Road see a deactivated camera, but northbound travelers face a live camera that could cite them for running a red light or speeding.

Scottsdale has no immediate plans to take the old cameras down, but will remove them if an intersection undergoes construction or it is once again slated for live cameras, Dodds said. The old camera at Hayden and McDonald roads, for instance, was taken down when the intersection was widened.

“If police believe it’s a good deterrent and it’s not conflicting with something else, I really have no problem with them being there,” said Councilman Wayne Ecton, who was unaware of the deactivated cameras.

Indeed, the speed camera business is booming, according to a Tribune article that ran last week. Other Valley cities are getting in on the act and are considering installing cameras both to automate justice and to spy on local drivers, not to mention to extract revenue from unconsenting residents of other cities that pass through town (who, conveniently, can't vote against the politicians supporting their installation).

And an East Valley company is one of the front-runners in the race for national dominance in the camera-centered road crime-catching business.

American Traffic Solutions grew its client base by a whopping 40 percent in just the last three months.

The privately owned company, which located its headquarters and global operations center in Scottsdale and its regional customer service and tech center in Mesa, has added 17 clients so far in 2007, upping its portfolio to 60.

Mesa, Phoenix, Glendale and Avondale are among those who use American Traffic Solutions services.

The company is pitching to Tempe, Scottsdale and 18 others that use other service providers or haven’t yet installed a traffic camera system, said Sherri Teille, the company’s marketing manager. And if the Arizona Department of Transportation decides to dot Loop 101 with cameras, the local company is itching to bid for the business, she said.

The cameras on the Loop 101, which Scottsdale controversially turned back on after a brief hiatus for evaluation, snapped more than 24,000 pictures in the month following their reactivation.

So, unless the locals here start registering their discontent with the new police automation in a forceful way, we can expect a lot more of it - and not just at intersections. Already, the police in several Valley cities have automated license plate reading, moving their attack on poor people (those who can't afford to register their cars but need them for work, etc.) into high gear. It's worth noting that automating so-called justice has the added effect of shifting control over the policing process out of the hands of police themselves and into the hands of technicians, who are even less democratically accountable than cops! Civilian review boards will surely not cover police technology or the techs tasked with maintaining, deploying and developing it.

Worse, these technologies shift policing into the realm of science, which as an institution is totally resistant to public oversight of any kind. When policing becomes a technical matter, it's class war purpose is even more easily camouflaged with the illusion of technological neutrality, the false claim of technology (in this case, that automation is neutral rather than a specific weapon deployed by the elite against the poor and working classes). Thus, these speed cameras - and all police cameras - need to be opposed broadly. A line must be drawn and defended.

But in framing our attack, we must reject the public safety argument because that is one that the elites have mastered and can only lead us instead to other forms of policing, like more cops on the streets (as the police union suggested last year as an alternative to cameras). Instead, we should focus on the theme of protecting and expanding freedom, since everyone already distrusts the government's commitment in this regard.

All is not lost, however. In Britain, a shadowy organization has been targeting the cameras for some time now with good ol' fashioned direct action, setting them on fire and even exploding them. To avoid a felony, I suspect a black plastic bag carefully placed and taped up would accomplish the same effect, albeit temporarily.

Burn the speed cameras, before it's too late. Just make sure it's a working one!

###

For more analysis, check out this past PI article:
Sheriff Joe's 'techno cops' goes online and Scottsdale's freeway cameras go live