Not Racist Policing, But US State Oppression is Key Issue
By Finian Cunningham
May 05, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Sputnik"
- Of the three cops charged over the death of African-American man Freddie Gray,
media hand-out photos show that three of the arraigned officers are themselves
of black ethnicity or "people of colour".
The brutal death of 25-year-old Gray from a severed spinal cord while in police
custody has become the latest symbol of racist policing in America.
Amateur video footage shows the young Baltimore man being hauled into a police
van, limp and in agony, moments after his prone body on a sidewalk had been
knelt on by at least two officers. Gray died a week later on April 19, with an
autopsy showing that at least three of his spinal vertebrae had been crushed.
Maryland state attorney Marilyn Mosby has concluded that Gray's death was
homicide and she has moved to bring criminal charges against all six police
officers involved in the man's arrest. He had, by the way, been arrested for no
probable cause, or as some witnesses said because he merely "looked at the cops
the wrong way".
All across America, thousands of indignant citizens — black, white, latinos and
others — have taken to the streets over the past week to proclaim "Black Lives
Matter" and to denounce "racist policing". One protest banner read: "End
America's Blue KKK" — comparing the blue-uniformed law-and-order force to the
white supremacists of the banned Klu Klux Klan.
But what do we mean by "racist policing" when three of the officers charged over
Freddie Gray's killing are themselves non-Caucasian?
Moreover, the public face of Baltimore's police force has emerged as senior
officer Anthony Batts — an African-American — who has been leading the forces's
media response.
The Maryland state attorney, Marilyn Mosby, who delivered the homicide charges
on the suspected police officers in the Gray case, is also of African-American
heritage.
Justice campaigners and the Gray family welcomed Mosby's decision to prosecute
as a step in the right direction. Previous cases of black men dying as a result
of police misconduct have conspicuously gone without any prosecution of the
officers concerned, compounding the anger of civil rights and justice advocates.
State attorney Mosby trenchantly declared that "no-one would be above the law"
before her announcement on the filing of charges.
Furthermore, it is noted that the mayor of Baltimore City — whose population is
63 percent black — is an African-American woman.
And while we are at it, let's go all the
way to the top here to include President Barack Obama — the first elected black
holder of the White House. Also only last week, Obama appointed another
African-American, Loretta Lynch, as the US federal attorney-general — the
highest law-and-order official in the country.
With African-Americans featuring
prominently in the Gray case — from the prosecuting attorney to the three cops
who are being charged over the man's death — what does it mean to accuse US
police forces of racism? Some might ask, is it even appropriate to level the
accusation given the circumstances of Baltimore?
These apparent contradictions in the Gray
case are just that. The operative word is "apparent". That three police officers
who allegedly meted out lethal force to Freddie Gray are themselves black should
not distract from the fact that in the vast majority of cases black people are
the victims of a largely white police force.
The deaths last year of Michael Brown
in Ferguson, Missouri, and of Eric Garner in New York are much more typical
of the circumstances surrounding police violence. Black men are 20 times more
likely than whites to die from lethal police force. And, disproportionately,
in such cases no officer is ever charged.
What we are dealing with is the
structural nature of police violence and impunity in America. And a racial
aspect of this structural problem is irrefutable. From stop-and-search practices
on the streets, to traffic police harassment of "driving-while-black", to prison
incarceration rates and ultimately the use of lethal extra-judicial force — the
oppressive problem is predominantly burdened on African-Americans and people of colour.
America therefore surely has institutionalised racist policing.
However, it would be mistake to see the problem as merely a
racial issue.
What needs to be addressed is the
structural condition of oppressive state policing that is now prevalent
in America. Last week, the Washington Post published an analysis of deaths
at the hands of US police officers during the last 10 years. It reported that
out of thousands of deaths over the past decade, only 54 police officers ever
faced criminal charges, and most of those prosecutions resulted in the officers
being acquitted.
The increasing militarisation
of America's police force, from the deployment of heavy-duty weaponry to the use
of "war on terror" tactical assaults on inner-city communities, seems to be the
bigger issue that needs to be addressed. Black communities, being
disproportionately impoverished and ghettoised, are at the front-line of this
systematic police state violence.
But it is all marginalised communities
within the US that are potential targets for the country's surge in militarised
policing.
Growing poverty, social exclusion and
the erosion of civil liberties for all citizens across the US go hand-in-hand
with this increasingly oppressive police power.
The debate over racist policing
in American needs to be broadened to confront the general state of oppressive
policing that is directed against all those — the majority of the population —
who are increasingly disenfranchised by an oligarchy where one per cent of the
nation owns nearly 90 per cent of the total wealth. That polarisation of wealth
and massive impoverishment of the majority is itself a form of state violence
inflicted on the nation; and the police are the front-line enforcers of this
systematic violence.
The fact that three police officers implicated in the brutal
death of Freddie Gray are non-whites; the fact that the police chief and mayor
of Baltimore are African-Americans; the fact that government attorneys are
black; and the fact that the president of the United States is also black, all
that serves to show that the inherent nature of police state violence in the US
is both structural and endemic. The problem of how America has now degenerated
into an oppressive police state is thus the central issue.
Today over 2.2 million people are imprisoned in jails
across America — an incarceration rate that is said to be the highest in the
world.
Some observers have noted that the US has
locked away more people in its jails than there were even during the supposed
Stalinist despotism of the former Soviet Union. Now that is saying something
about the Orwellian nature of life in present-day USA — the "land of the free".
