Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The Roots of Police Violence

There have been way too many instances of police violence against peaceful protestors during the OWS movement (see the eleven videos on Garance Franke-Ruta's post at the Atlantic for examples). Glenn Greenwald gets behind the roots of all the recent police violence:

The now-viral video of police officers in their Robocop costumes sadistically pepper-spraying peaceful, sitting protesters at UC-Davis shows a police state in its pure form. It's easy to be outraged by this incident as though it's some sort of shocking aberration, but that is exactly what it is not... 
There are several points to note about this incident and what it reflects:
(1) Despite all the rights... guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, the reality is that punishing the exercise of those rights with police force and state violence has been the reflexive response in America for quite some time...
The intent and effect of such abuse is that it renders those guaranteed freedoms meaningless. If a population becomes bullied or intimidated out of exercising rights offered on paper, those rights effectively cease to exist. Every time the citizenry watches peaceful protesters getting pepper-sprayed -- or hears that an Occupy protester suffered brain damage and almost died after being shot in the skull with a rubber bullet... they become fearful... of exercising their rights in a way that is... threatening to those in power. That's a natural response, and it's exactly what fear imposed by all abusive police state actions is intended to achieve...
Implanting fear of authorities in the heart of the citizenry is a far more effective means of tyranny than overtly denying rights.... Overzealous prosecution of those who engage in peaceful political protest... are all about deterring meaningful challenges to those in power... Rights are so much more effectively destroyed by bullying a citizenry out of wanting to exercise them than any other means.
(2) Although excessive police force has long been a reflexive response to American political protests, two developments in the post-9/11 world have exacerbated this.
The first is that the U.S. Government -- in the name of Terrorism -- has aggressively para-militarized the nation's domestic police forces...
The second exacerbating development is more subtle but more important: the authoritarian mentality that has been nourished in the name of Terrorism. It's a very small step to go from supporting the abuse of defenseless detainees (including one's fellow citizens) to supporting the pepper-spraying and tasering of non-violent political protesters. 
(3) Beyond the light it is shedding on how power is really exercised... this UC-Davis episode underscores why... the Occupy movement is one of the most exciting, inspiring and important political developments in many years. What's most striking about that UC-Davis video isn't the depraved casualness of the officer's dousing the protesters' faces with a chemical agent; it's how most of the protesters resolutely sat in place and refused to move even when that happened... We've repeatedly seen acts of similar courage spawned by the Occupy movement.
It was the NYPD's abusive pepper-spraying, followed by Mayor Bloomberg's lawless destruction of the Zuccotti Park encampment, that prompted far more people than ever to participate in the next march across the Brooklyn Bridge. A tear gas attack on Occupy Oakland was followed by a general strike of 20,000 people. And this truly extraordinary, blunt and piercing open letter demanding the resignation of the heinous UC-Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi was written by a young, untenured Assistant Professor -- Nathan Brown -- who obviously decided that his principled beliefs outweigh his careerist ambitions.
This is the most important effect of the Occupy movement: acts of defiance, courage and conscience are contagious.... The protest movement is driving the proliferation of new forms of activism, citizen passion and courage, and -- most important of all -- a sense of possibility...

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