Another incident of police abuse in Texas, another death in custody leading to more calls for a “conversation on race”. President Obama said in his eulogy of Charleston 9 that another national conversation on race is not needed; He is right, it is time for public officials to act and make some difficult changes.
The demands are not new, they have been made continuously for decades and now there is enough statistical proof present to indict the whole policing system as racially biased or as anti-social, rife with “us against them” mentality. But to label it as either and then struggle to disinfest that thinking process could be too complicated and lead to unnecessary confrontations. The answer is to take major steps towards scrutinizing and breaking up large Police Unions and to clipping their bargaining powers to working conditions and wages alone.
Police Unions are excessively powerful and too unreasonable when it comes to negotiating terms relating to best practices and community relations. All reasonable reforms that have been suggested by informed politicians and civil rights organizations, such as independent civilian review boards, have been stonewalled by them, using the inherently dangerous nature of police work as a shield from any criticism, forgetting that police work is not a draft; it’s a voluntary job acceptance, and the immense trust and goodwill they receive for dealing with dangerous situations, is built into the position.
The consequences of such stonewalling has been staggering; Sandra Bland, as an activist, knew the law and believed in asserting ones rights against an abuser in a position of authority, Her crime? She responded to the questions asked but they were not to the liking of the man with a Blue Ego. Jonathan Sanders, an unarmed man in Mississippi died after a twenty minute choke hold; His crime? He dared tell an officer to leave someone alone; whom he felt they were harassing and by doing so hurt the officer’s Blue Ego. He was on his way home after making that comment, on a horse and buggy, pulled over for no reason, and an escalation lead to him being in a chokehold for twenty long minutes, leading to his death. Michael Brown, a teenager, who did not like the language used by the officer, trying to get him to stop jaywalking, His crime? He spoke back to the police officer who was shouting a mix or orders and profanities at him, he hurt the officer’s Blue Ego, and an escalation followed, and the teen ended up with a bullet in his head.
There is a trend in all these instances; A civilian dared speak up, questioned, or reacted to the indignity towards their sense of justice that was hurled at them or another, and an officer with a fragile Blue Ego was deeply offended. The officer then proceeded to unprofessionally escalate the situation, abusing their power, without taking measure of what is expected from one given a badge and a gun, and bestowed with an authority to govern lives and bodies in their detention or custody.
What allows this fragile Blue Ego to permeate the attitude in a position which is structured largely as public service? The Blue Wall of Silence, also called Blue Code, essentially turns police departments into clubs and fraternities, and has long functioned as a de facto immunity and a tacit acceptance of the “might is right” philosophy, which no democratic society should have to tolerate. This ineffable empowerment and respect that comes with the police authority , beyond the gun and badge, coupled with the historically oppressive relationship of the policing institutions with minorities in the U.S has become a lethal concoction, one where brutality is easily justified, and what could be determined as unreasonable paranoia is justified as actions taken for “office safety”.
Nothing illustrates this better than the May 4th, 2015 incident in Virginia, where the officers armed with guns, despite having back up, tased a man who was having a stroke in his car, for failure to respond to their verbal commands. The expectation of good judgment is not enough. The fact that one must be concerned enough with consequences, for failure to use good judgments, is the key.
The tales of high handedness and some of absolute brutality that come to the social media forefront every other week have been silently going on for decades. Were they always known to the police departments but were swept under the carpet? Even now most police unions resist even the talk of reforms, as was obvious in the aftermath of Eric Garner’s death, and the police union’s belligerence towards Mayor De Blasio’s public recognition and scrutiny of certain police behavior and practices.
City leaders in most municipalities are tone deaf to the atrocities that occur against their citizens, perhaps they are certain that their families will never be affected by this, and hence deal with their police departments, under their control, with silent assent to ignoring the public outcry. Large cities like NY, LA, Chicago and Dallas have seen unarmed deaths by the dozens but hardly seen any prosecutions of police officers. Dallas police has even gotten, through bargaining agreements, policies that allow their officers who face inquiry, an extra 72 hours to work on their story without having to talk to someone. This is an unreasonable departure from the common sense of documenting events with immediacy, when matters are still fresh in the mind. The so-called bodycam bills that made the rounds of some legislatures after the riots in Ferguson, and even passed in some, met with Police Union resistance, and were so watered down, putting in jeopardy the intention that the bodycams will be used to capture neutral evidence. The officers are being allowed to turn them off at their discretion for “officer safety” and the footage is only to be released to public and the victim’s families, when convenient to the police department or procedurally required through courts.
Surely one could argue, that the police unions are doing what all unions are expected to do, protecting and advocating for their members, but we must ask the questions; Are police unions the same as any other workers union? Is it in the best interest of the police function itself and contradictory to the larger interest of justice for them to have such leverage? By defending the indefensible status quo, the police unions are essentially doing the work of defense attorneys whose job it is to defend the officers after being accused. There seems to be role confusion, and it is not one we should any longer accept.
While conducting institutional business, racism and prejudice must be treated as addiction, with the ever present realization that it lives and breathes in the institutional structure of the police departments, the recognition that one never recovers from it, and that the agents of such institutions, officers of any race, must make a determination every day, not to act out of racial animus or allow racial or socio-economic prejudice to enter their words and actions. This alone can keep their Blue Egos in check, one day at a time.
