Left, Right or Center – The police state does not discriminate

The US administration’s militarized police force and its brutal crackdown on protesters is being meted out to Americans across the political spectrum.

The US is steadily turning into a brutalized police state as is evident by the frequent crackdown of the state security apparatus, in the cruelest manner, on not just the black coloured Afro-Americans and Hispanics, but also against all and everybody else. Here's an analysis in this regard by John Whithead for MintPress.

The US administration’s militarized police force and its brutal crackdown on protesters is being meted out to Americans across the political spectrum.

Justice William O. Douglas, while presiding over the Colten vs. Kentucky case in 1972 had said: Since when have Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent them? The constitutional theory is that people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials are only agents. The People who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. They can seek to challenge and annoy, as they need not stay docile and quiet.”

Journalist Whitehead says: Today forget everything you’ve ever been taught about free speech in the US. It’s all a lie. There can be no free speech for the citizenry when the government speaks in a language of force.

What is this language of force?

Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.

This is not the language of freedom. This is not even the language of law and order. This is the language of force.

Unfortunately, this is how the US government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in public and challenge the status quo.

The overkill of the US police isn’t just happening in troubled hot spots such as Ferguson in Montana, and Baltimore in Maryland, where police brutality gave rise to civil unrest, which was met with a militarized show of force that caused the whole stew of discontent to bubble over into violence.

A decade earlier, the New York Police Department (NYPD” engaged in mass arrests of peaceful protesters, bystanders, legal observers and journalists who had gathered for the 2004 Republican National Convention. The protesters were subjected to blanket fingerprinting and detained for more than 24 hours at a “filthy, toxic pier that had been a bus depot.” That particular exercise in police intimidation tactics cost New York City taxpayers nearly $18 million for what would become the largest protest settlement in history.

Demonstrators, journalists and legal observers who had gathered in North Dakota to peacefully protest the Dakota Access Pipeline reported being pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, and strip searched by police.

To be clear, this is the treatment being meted out to protesters across the political spectrum throughout the US. The police state does not discriminate. As a USA Today article notes, “Federally arming police with weapons of war silences protesters across all justice movements… People demanding justice, demanding accountability or demanding basic human rights without resorting to violence, should not be greeted with machine guns and tanks. Peaceful protest is democracy in action. It is a forum for those who feel disempowered or disenfranchised. Protesters should not have to face intimidation by weapons of war.”

A militarized police response to protesters poses a danger to all those involved, protesters and police alike. In fact, militarization makes police more likely to turn to violence to solve problems.

As a recent study by researchers at Stanford University makes clear, “When law enforcement receives more military materials — weapons, vehicles and tools — it becomes … more likely to jump into high-risk situations. Militarization makes every problem — even a car of teenagers driving away from a party — look like a nail that should be hit with an AR-15 hammer.”

Even the color of a police officer’s uniform adds to the tension. As the Department of Justice reports, “Some research has suggested that the uniform color can influence the wearer—with black producing aggressive tendencies, tendencies that may produce unnecessary conflict between police and the very people they serve.”

If you want to turn a peaceful protest into a riot, then bring in the militarized police with their guns and black uniforms and warzone tactics and “comply or die” mindset. Ratchet up the tension across the board. Take what should be a healthy exercise in constitutional principles (free speech, assembly and protest) and turn it into a lesson in authoritarianism.

Mind you, those who respond with violence are playing into the government’s hands perfectly. The government wants a reason to crack down and lock down and bring in its biggest guns. They want the people to be divided. They want citizens to turn on one another. They want people to be powerless in the face of their artillery and armed forces. They want people to be silent, servile and compliant. They certainly do not want people to remember that they have rights, let alone attempting to exercise those rights peaceably and lawfully.

And they definitely do not want us to engage in First Amendment activities that challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

You know recently, how the Charlottesville mayor characterized the tear gassing of protesters by the riot police? He called it an “unfortunate event.”

Unfortunate, indeed. Do you know what else is unfortunate?

It’s unfortunate that these overreaching, heavy-handed lessons in how to rule by force have become standard operating procedure for a government that communicates with its citizenry primarily through the language of brutality, intimidation and fear. It’s unfortunate that “the people” have become the proverbial nails to be hammered into submission by the government and its vast armies. And it’s particularly unfortunate that government officials—especially police—seem to believe that anyone who wears a government uniform—soldier, police officer, prison guard—must be obeyed without question.

The rationale goes like this: Do exactly what I say, and we’ll get along fine. Do not question me or talk back in any way. You do not have the right to object to anything I may say or ask you to do, or ask for clarification if my demands are unclear or contradictory. You must obey me under all circumstances without hesitation, no matter how arbitrary, unreasonable, discriminatory, or blatantly racist my commands may be. Anything other than immediate perfect servile compliance will be labeled as resisting arrest, and expose you to the possibility of a violent reaction from me. That reaction could cause you severe injury or even death. And I will suffer no consequences. It’s your choice: Comply, or die.

Indeed, as Officer Sunil Dutta of the Los Angeles Police Department advises: If you don’t want to get shot, teased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what he told to you. Don’t argue; don’t call names, don’t tell that he can’t stop you, don’t say you are a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue the officer and take away his badge. Don’t scream at him that you pay his salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards him.

This is not the rhetoric of a US government that is supposed to be: of the people, by the people, and for the people. This is not the attitude of someone who understands, let alone respects, free speech. And this is certainly not what would be called “community policing,” which is supposed to emphasize the importance of the relationship between the police and the community they serve.

Any police officer who says he needs tanks, SWAT teams and pepper spray to do his job shouldn’t be a police officer in a constitutional republic.

All that stuff in the First Amendment (about freedom of speech, religion, press, peaceful assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances) sounds great in theory. However, it amounts to little more than a hill of beans if you have to exercise those freedoms while facing down an army of police equipped with deadly weapons, surveillance devices, and a slew of laws that empower them to arrest and charge citizens with bogus “contempt of cop” charges (otherwise known as asserting your constitutional rights).

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are other, far better models to follow. It can be done. Police will not voluntarily give up their gadgets and war toys and combat tactics, however. Their training and inclination towards authoritarianism has become too ingrained.

If American people are to have any hope of dismantling the police state, change must start locally, community by community. Citizens will have to demand that police de-escalate and de-militarize. Remember, they work for us. They might not like hearing it—they certainly won’t like being reminded of it—but we pay their salaries. “We the people” have got to stop accepting the lame excuses trotted out by police as justifications for their inexcusable behavior. Either “we the people” believe in free speech or we don’t. Either we live in a constitutional republic or a police state. The Constitution does not require Americans to be servile or even civil to government officials. Neither does the Constitution require obedience (although it does insist on nonviolence).

This emphasis on nonviolence goes both ways. Somehow, the government keeps overlooking this important element in the equation. There is nothing safe or secure or free about exercising your rights with a rifle pointed at you.

The police officer who has been trained to shoot first and ask questions later, oftentimes based only on their highly subjective “feeling” of being threatened, is just as much of a danger—if not more—as any violence that might erupt from a protest rally. Compliance is no guarantee of safety.

Then again, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if we just cower before government agents and meekly obey, we may find ourselves following in the footsteps of those nations that eventually fell to tyranny.

Had Martin Luther King Jr. obeyed the laws of his day, there would have been no civil rights movement. And if the founding fathers had marched in lockstep with royal decrees, there would have been no American Revolution. We must adopt a different mindset and follow a different path if we are to alter the outcome of these interactions with police.

It may be that things are too far gone to save, but still, we must try.

AS/EA