A: A black mans’ life is worth 2-4 years of a white man’s life.
I heard about the verdict just after my wife and I left Mandolin’s place, where we’d met her for lunch. As we drove north on 101, I turned on the radio, and as the NPR reporter discussed the verdict and the protests, my wife silently wept.
2-4 years.
I’m 35. My life is worth somewhere between 9 and 17 black men’s lives.
And you know, if Oscar Grant’s murder hadn’t been caught on tape, Mehserle wouldn’t have even received the slap on the wrist he got.
The woman who sits next to me at work is black and from Louisiana. On Tuesday, she talked about how worried she was about the possibility of riots, and how she’d told her children to stay at home and stay inside, just in case. She lives in San Francisco, just across the bay from Oakland.
I said that if we don’t want people to riot, we have to show them a reason to buy into the system. We have to give them a reason not to burn shit down. We never give black men a reason not to burn shit down. How long can we possibly say, “deal with this peacefully,” when everyone knows that what we mean is, “don’t deal with this at all. Allow your children to be fucking executed and don’t say a fucking thing.”
And yeah. I hope that people do deal with this peacefully. Ghandi’s strategy was to rely on the basic decency and humanity of the British. He believed that if their options were to become monsters or grant India it’s freedom, they would choose the latter. He believed that they would be too disgusted and horrified by the things they’d done to continue them endlessly.
Look at yourself, America. Take a good long look. Are you disgusted? Are you horrified? I sure as fuck am.
This cannot continue.
Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people.
Also, if you want to justify the verdict, do it elsewhere.
The verdict is completely horrendous. 2-4 years? Really?
In Australia, we had a similar case on Palm Island about 2 years ago, in which an indigenous man was beaten to death by the police – no one was convicted or even disciplined. The Indigenous community didn’t riot, but they did hold large scale protests and made their voice heard. I believe the Australian government is re-opening the investigation into the case. And Indigenous people make up less than 3% of the Australian population.
I believe African-Americans make up a little over 10% of the US population – I’m very surprised this verdict has not resulted in civil disturbance or much media coverage.
I think it’s a troubling sign of times to come. I don’t want African-Americans to burn things down, of course, I don’t want anything burnt down because I’m horribly afraid of fire of any sort. But I do want them to start a fight over this. And the worrying thing is that they aren’t. 10-20 years ago, this would have provoked justified outrage. But today, it’s not provoking much of anything. I think this signals that the black community is becoming disparate and separated, distancing itself from its own past. It needs to band together stronger than ever, because if they don’t, stuff like this will continue to happen.
Or maybe they’ve just become too cynical and jaded to care. I know I have. But then again, I’m weak. I just hope the majority of African-Americans are not as weak or as cynical as I am.
I said that if we don’t want people to riot, we have to show them a reason to buy into the system. We have to give them a reason not to burn shit down. We never give black men a reason not to burn shit down.
Yes, and I find their general restraint amazing.
Also, let’s keep in mind that in Oakland, a lot of the violent “rioters,” maybe most of them, have been white:
Officials said the main instigators appeared to be organized “anarchist” agitators wearing black clothing and hoods. Many of the most aggressive demonstrators smashing the windows of banks and shops were white.
I consider “anarchist agitators” a suspect descriptor there, but I find the motives (and actions) of the violent white demonstrators suspect as well.
Yes. I’d like for this to receive more attention, especially since we know for a fact that many of the past Oakland riots were initiated by people with no political motive beyond a desire to smash shit, who used legitimate political grievances as a pretext.
To see white people doing that, over this, infuriates me.
—Myca
I’m not in Oakland right now, but I can attest that, despite being white, I have a massive amount of rage over this and would happily smash some shit. Breaking the window of a Footlocker and taking some shoes isn’t a coherent political statement, but it’s not violent either. Violence is something that happens to /people./ What happened to Oscar Grant was violent. Footlocker’s windows don’t have feelings.
They’re a giant corporation. Who cares if their stuff gets taken? I could feel bad for smaller shop keepers. They should have insurance, but it’s a shame to harm a local business. But a multinational? Fuck them. Footocker is happy to sell stuff made by poor people, at inflated prices to other poor people. Their shoes are steeped in human rights abuses. They should get smashed more often.
The abuses of the capitalist system are not incidental to racist police violence.
Les, I certainly sympathize with your anger, but I do find it troubling how often the desire of white people to break shit ends up being portrayed in the media as,”Black people are destructive animals.”
You can probably break some shit and get away with it.
I can probably break some shit and get away with it.
Let’s not let our privilege in terms of police interaction be the defining factor in terms of racial conflict. Taking a conflict that’s about police brutality and racism and murder and making it about vandalism is a huge win for the Oakland PD.
When the media says “riots by protesters of the Oscar Grant verdict,” what people hear is “riots by black people.” Let’s not do that.
I mean, yeah: fuck Footlocker. But I’m not so committed to fucking Footlocker that I’m willing to say “fuck black people along with them,” you know?
—Myca
If the sentencing judge upholds the gun enhancement charge, then Mehserle will do 5-14 years.
SFist reports that only 25% of those arrested in the protests after the verdict actually lived in Oakland.
Yeah, and this is what I hope, but still.
—Myca
The original shooting was not by Oakland PD, it was by BART PD. The Bart system runs through a number of communities. That shooting could easily have happened in San Francisco, in Berkeley, in Richmond or in any of those cities. If some of the protestors weren’t from Oakland, it doesn’t mean they were “outsiders” in a meaningful sense. Even if they were from a non-BART town, if somebody from Santa Cruz is outraged by police violence and comes to Oakland to protest that, their credibility is not diminished.
The reporters on the scene were saying, live, that protestors had blown up a news van. This was before any rioting started. They would repeat the “violent black people” bullshit no mater what. That the media are racist fuckwads is not the fault of protestors of any race.
True. But hopefully you can see that black people getting blamed for white people’s misdeeds (or getting punished much more harshly for the same deeds) is a racist cycle that feeds into all of this.
Feel like kicking in a Footlocker window? That’s cool, but if you’re white, maybe you ought to wait a few days.
Don’t make your issues their issues. Don’t make your actions their actions.
—Myca
Heh, I’m personally not kicking in any windows anywhere, as trans people don’t tend to do very well in police custody. But I’m not going to condemn anybody that did. And when we repeat the laughably stupid claim that kicking in windows of giant corporations is “violent,” we’re participating in the media’s racist lie.
I think the protests have been remarkably quiet, given the level of provocation.
“And when we repeat the laughably stupid claim that kicking in windows of giant corporations is “violent,” we’re participating in the media’s racist lie.”
How is the idea that destruction of property is violence a “racist lie”?
Because storefront windows aren’t people, and we shouldn’t use the same terms and moral reasoning to refer to damage to storefront windows that we use to refer to damage to people.
I’m not sure I accept the argument, but there it is, more or less.
—Myca
If some of the protestors weren�t from Oakland, it doesn�t mean they were �outsiders� in a meaningful sense.
Yes it does.
Oakland takes the brunt of thinly-veiled racist abuse from people in the Bay Area and all over the country. We are constantly talked about as if we are nothing but a lawless third world country full of (black) savages. You cannot read two comments into an SFGate article on Oakland without someone invoking the word “thug.” Our residents of color are treated in the minds of many white people like a homogeneous mass of violent sub-humans.
Oakland has its problems (its government being the first and foremost; its state government being neck-and-neck; institutional racism and poverty trying to make it a three-way tie). Any “activist” from outside the community (particularly a white one) with 10 cents worth of political analysis would figure out that burdening our people – our protestors, our business owners, our communities of color – with the backlash generated from their violent actions is selfish, hurtful, and will have far more consequences for future Oakland residents than it ever will for them.
All week the media has been harping on about “WILL OAKLAND RIOT?!?!?!?!LEVENTY!!” All month the racists have been sharpening their rhetoric on every report about the trial, police prep for the verdict, etc. I watched nearly 3 hours of live coverage of downtown Oakland after the verdict was read, and what I saw was white TV anchors doing their best to project their white anxieties onto the peaceful protest gathering in order to reduce their cognitive dissonance and whip up news. “IT’S FEELING PRETTY TENSE DOWN HERE, JUDY! YOU REALLY FEEL LIKE OSCAR GRANT DIED!”* [look past reporter to see a multi-racial crowd standing around, riding past on bikes, lighting candles, playing chess, praying]
Anyone from outside Oakland who came into our city to get their rage on without thinking about how they would affect the residents of our city deserves to get thrown under a BART train. I mean, people walked 15 blocks away from the speak-out to smash windows in the Whole Foods. That is not “people whose communities also have BART coming out because they feel affected by the BART shooting,” that is some damn black bloc jackasses pulling some stunts for which they certainly did not ever risk getting shot in the back.
* second sentence here is an actual quote
How, exactly, did Foot Locker get involved in this? I mean, I know how they became part of this discussion (their windows got smashed), but is there any nexus between Foot Locker and the Oscar Grant case aside from that?
As an anarchist (in Minneapolis, not Oakland; loosely supportive of certain forms of smashing but not all) I find almost all the coverage of the protests very suspect. IME, what tends to happen is that anarchists hold a militant protest; those anarchists are invariably described as exclusively white and middle class even when this is obviously not the case; opportunist violence and police-provocateur violence is blamed on the white anarchists; and the progressive narrative turns into “white anarchists versus people of color”.
This also erases anarchists of color and militant radicals of color–all violence and smashing of shit is described by many progressives as coming from outside, from those ignorant, over-privileged white activists–who are implicitly described as rich, spoiled, straight, male.
If there are a bunch of anarchists holding a militant but not violent demo, we still cannot control any fool who jumps in and does something dumb. Many anarchists don’t want to spend a lot of time on “I’m going to distance myself from even the shadow of violent protest” because that’s just the game the state wants us to play–fighting amongst ourselves about who is pure enough to be “good” radicals.
On another note:
We had a sixty-person multiracial-but-majority-white anarchist-organized protest of the Grant verdict and some recent police brutality cases here last night. The protest started out at the transit station and marched right on down the middle of one of the big crosstown streets. People had made flyers for anyone who hadn’t heard about the case. Our protest was cheered like crazy–like nothing I have ever seen– until we got to the rich part of town, when we got heckled by a bunch of white people. Unexpectedly, I heard many times from immigrants and people of color when I was stopping to interview people that they were glad to see white people doing this protest–because they felt that they’d get beat down or arrested doing a similar protest. I mean, I heard this multiple times from people from various different social backgrounds. I had expected people to be like “oh yeah, right, you privileged white people pretend to care now, have fun with that.”
Nothing got smashed. Even respectable people passing by were accepting of the “fuck the police” kinds of chants–pretty much as hyperbole–except for the white conservatives who heckled us. I feel like there’s this narrative about white radicals that says “white radical positions are inevitably out of touch–people of color are not radical, they want to achieve middle class security”. But IME it’s not the political theory of white radicals that is racist and jackass; it’s the day to day routine actions, the refusal to be led when POC activists and organizations express specific wishes, the erasing of POC’s experiences. I don’t think this is reducible to “white radicals ruin everything because they riot”.
(However–I really firmly believe that most white people including myself are consciously or unconsciously being racist jackasses virtually all the time and we virtually constantly need to try to check ourselves; I think that some of what motivated us to hold that march was “oh look, give us a cookie!” I know that of the people on that march, only about half do sustained anti-police-brutality work. I also know that it’s easy to do something glamorous like a march and boring to do the long term work, and it’s white activist privilege that we can chose to stop the boring parts if we get bored. )
Also, to me Gandhi and other pacifists are ambiguous figures; I’m not entirely on board with Ward Churchill’s Pacifism as Pathology or Peter Gelderloos’s polemical How Nonviolence Protects The State, and I firmly believe that nonviolent protest is sometimes the absolute best approach, but I feel that when activists use the narrative that it is a terrible, regrettable thing whenever there is any kind of property destruction, we are really making a bad mistake. We are implying that society would be governed properly if only the oppressed classes would ask nicely–that it’s completely okay for regular citizens and politicians to dismiss concerns about police brutality because those affected by police brutality react angrily or with violence. Frankly, in a just society citizens and politicians would see riots as signs of distress and anger and seek to solve those problems, not delegitimate the rioteers.
I agree that smashing a thing and smashing a person are qualitatively different.
However, smashing a thing can be an act of violence toward a person. During a domestic, when one person smashes the heirloom crystal that the other person’s mother bequeathed to him/her on her deathbed … that’s violence. If someone, knowing that there is no one in a house, and knowing that the absent resident built that house with her own hands, and has her children’s heights marked on a doorjamb, and her children’s handprints in paint on the bathroom wall … that’s violence.
Even a simple burglary is generally an act of violence. It’s a violation. It’s non-physical, but a violation nonetheless.
I also agree that putting a cinder block through the window-front of a building owned by a corporate chain is less violent than burning the house described above. And putting a cinder block through the window of the local thrift-store-cum-soup-kitchen is somewhere in between.
But if you’re seeking to define “violence” as “physical harm to an individual person”, I think the definition is too narrow.
Grace
The preponderance of media coverage about Foot Locker plays neatly into the racist stereotyping on display after the verdict.
I agree with the sentiment of the OP, but I find the conclusions drawn by most of the people in this thread kind of clueless.
1) Has there ever been a time in the history of the U.S. when “burning shit down” solved anything? Does anyone think the L.A. riots in 1992 improved anyone’s life? Do you all forget the riots in the 60s that destroyed many cities’ economic cores and put thousands of people, black and white, out of work, made thousands of middle-class people flee to suburbia, and set back racial progress? Here is the press conference the (black) mayor of Oakland had after the verdict. He doesn’t seem to think violence in his city will help anything.
2) “We never give black men a reason not to burn shit down.” I have a bunch of problems with this sentence but I’ll save them for later when I can be more coherent.
3) Les’ statements about violence and corporatism are ridiculous. Of course destroying a store is violent, whether it’s locally owned or part of some mega-corporation. Does Les think only white people work there? Will Les hire the people who lose their jobs when it gets closed down?
The verdict was unjust, and people are angry. I don’t think they want revenge, though – I think they want justice.
Pardon me for asking but “we” know this how? Have you been tapping people’s phones and hacking into their email? Most of my white anarchist friends have been the victims of police brutality to some degree. I certainly have. If white anarchists see, in the Oscar Grant case, a clear example of what the police have the capacity and propensity to do to anyone in this society, and can connect that with their own experiences, then it should hardly be surprising that they are enraged.
You know, when I hear white progressives talking about Gandhi (who did, btw, sell out the untouchables) I immediately flash back to the images from Seattle in 1999, when scores of peaceful, white Evergreen State students were holding sit-down protests, and being attacked with pepper-spray and batons and ultimately arrested. You can chant your “violence never solves anything” refrain until you are blue in the face, but the fact remains that the State and Capital are very adept at using violence to solve THEIR problems.
I know that my friends and I will never have very much traction with sanctimonious white progressives (I mean really, “outside agitators”, do you have any idea who you sound like? Are you members of the White Citizens’ Councils or what?), but I’ll stick with Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Nat Turner, Tom Paine, Lucy Parsons and the like when it comes to determining whether violence (against people) and property destruction can be an effective tactic in making revolution.
I am not arguing that property destruction is always an invalid tactic. I am conflicted on property destruction as a tactic. What I am not conflicted on is that in a situation where black people will bear near-100% of the costs, they ought to be the ones making the decisions.
I think violence is sometimes justified. I’m not sure whether it’s ever smart. I’m not even arguing against violence, though. I’m arguing against hijacking a protest for your own selfish, racist ends.
Therefore, it’s awesome for white anarchists to go into black neighborhoods, smash up some shit, get a bunch of black people arrested, and spend a couple hours in jail themselves while they wait for their daddies to post their bail! Awesome!
Yeah, and they’re way better at it. And they’ll win. And you’ll lose. And you’ll take a protest about the murder of Oscar Grant and, in typical over-entitled white person fashion, make it all about you.
—Myca
Ah, I missed this.
Banned.
—Myca
Exactly. So whenever I hear whites say that, that’s privilege talking. Because no, they won’t get looked at twice. They’ll go on their merry way and the neighborhood they have broken stuff in will be doubly or triply policed as a “hot spot” before they arrived. That’s what happens. If you’re white, go break “shit” in your own neighborhood. And that goes for the “violent” masked anarchists (and this is a minority of anarchists, most of whom aren’t violent) too. Most of the neighborhoods you smash “shit” in don’t want you there either. That’s what comes up in many meetings in my city and others when violence like that happens and communities debrief about it. Here’s something to think about, instead of destroying property in other neighborhoods during times of rage, why not spend more time trying to build and collaborate with communities, work with them rather than come in only to smash some store? Because as others stated, the rioting is an outcome of much more serious problems that existed for years.
I know quite a few anarchists of color, and most of them don’t smash property anywhere let alone in their own neighborhoods. They’re among the most active of activists involved in building communities and tackling these issues that lead to rioting including CJS issues all the time. But as I said, the majority of anarchists are too busy to engage in violent acts and they have way too much stake in what gets destroyed by others who have little stakes in those neighborhoods and see them as focus points of violence where it’s okay to break things. And that’s very racist and classist IMO. I told some visiting anarchists from L.A. County to just maybe cool it with some friends of mine who lived in the neighborhood they were trying to throw rocks at some counter demonstrators and myself and my friends, the neighborhood residents, were threatened with violence and called “bitches” and “whores” and stuff like that. Now what does misogyny (and racism, because maybe as far as others were concerned, it’s easier for them to call women of color these things) play into a protest for justice? The answer is, it doesn’t, the protest for justice is just a cover for entitlement and privilege of being able to come into a neighborhood to commit violence for “justice” when there might not even be a clue what that means. Whites smash shit, pat themselves in the back over it and then they go home.
And a few hours or days of violence is often keenly felt afterward when the rage dissipates and people see what’s done. That’s one of the tragedies of rioting. You don’t feel its impact until later and then it’s for years or decades.
And the problem with vandalizing businesses even chain ones is that the time it takes to repair them, the employees are out of work and no, most of them won’t be paid for their lost time but will have to support themselves or their families on even less than minimum wage. That’s where the “violence” comes in my opinion. People vandalize businesses without thinking about the employees. If it takes a month to repair a damaged building for example, or even a week, what happens to the workers? Some cases, they can be farmed out to other outlets in a chain but it’s amazing how few provisions there are to protect workers in these situations.
It amazes me when people are always so amazed, even leftists and including the media that African-Americans can protest without violence. What’s so amazing about that? It happens all the time, in different ways. This just strikes me as so amazing when people are like, “but they were so calm and peaceful…” Talk about racist? When anarchists wearing masks almost like desperado show up for protests involving men and women of color and then stand around in their own groups, almost agitated that something’s not happening. Then they go home. They never stay for the gatherings in the parks or community centers or the local eatery to debrief on the demonstration which obviously isn’t their cup of tea. And they don’t notice how even after peaceful demonstrations, the cops park in the lots of all these places, the vehicles with the SWAT emblems on the side keeping an eye for “trouble”.
As far as the verdict, I remember when acquittals were the norm, any conviction was a bizarre anomaly. That’s still true in most places. The one in my county I watched that was very similar to Grant’s had the involuntary manslaughter lessor conviction. The man in that case got seven years. But the sentence here can be anything from probation to more than 10 and it depends on whether the 10 year gun enhancement is included or not. That’s somewhat discretionary. Like the case in my county, the jury gave the cop the benefit of the doubt by IM as both these cases were too egregious and too chock with evidence to convict on higher which is extremely difficult for cops anyway. The only first degree murder conviction w/ special circumstances I can think of was federal and was a cop who murdered another cop to prevent him from testifying to a grand jury about a robbery ring inhouse in NOPD.
In the Grant case, the cop lied about the taser being intended. The taser and firearm are on opposite sides of the belt precisely so you don’t have officers pulling out the wrong one by mistake and using it. Also close contact tasing requires removal of the cartridge and there’s no sign he tried to do that on the video. At that point if he did, he would have known it was his gun.
California laws are really narrowly defined for police officers and frankly, that’s where some of the focus on CJS issues needs to be. Yes, the feds are involved but they are more stringent on filing charges than the state. I wouldn’t expect much from them and it takes them 2-3 years sometimes to do their own investigation. This is from having talked to US Attorneys on one particular local case for over two hours hashing all that out. I also learned about this problem with narrow definition of laws on cases involving sexual assault under the color of authority laws. Too narrow there and juries unable to convict on a couple charges on one case though they did convict on one that fit the narrow parameters of the law which states that the officer has to say his intention to trade sex to avoid arrest or deportation rather than just imply it through his authority. I’m researching those laws right now having gotten more complaints about officers in my city who might be violating them or heading down the road.
They can hope the feds might file but they are less than half likely to do so and time will pass before they’ll even decide. And in the meantime, go after BART and hold them accountable. And the OPD while you’re at it, because it’s a good time to do that with both the feds and state AG’s in their backyard.
My first comment is that this is a horrible decision. My second is that it appears to be a joining of two strains of injustice–racism and over-deference to police actions. My challenge to people is to really see both. If your normal mode of analysis is race, see the injustice also from the police deference angle. If your normal mode of analysis is a more libertarian one that would focus on the police deference angle also look at it from the point of view of race. Both feed strongly into it.
I’m reminded of the comedian whose name I unfortunately can’t find right now who said he was touring and was so caught up worrying about homophobia that he forgot about anti-Semitism. So one day someone called him a kike at his show and he originally thought the guy said ‘dyke’. He went off on the guy, and the guy said “you’re !@$$^ kike not a kyke”.
Amp, if you think the second paragraph is out of line, please delete it.
Elusis, hopefully governmental watchdogs are looking closely at Oakland’s books at City Hall.
Yeah…they hate covering protests because like they say, “one’s just like any other” (an actual quote by an long-time ABC reporter here) but if you’ve got tension preparing to erupt…
I always find it a bit suspicious when the “fools” wind up walking to their cars with the ones who weren’t associated with them talking excitedly about how they managed to be a show of force against the “pigs” today. Not knowing of course (how could they?) that the police will have a heavier presence in that community long after they’ve hit the freeway. And while some White anarchists have been victims of police violence, it’s mostly while protesting not most often in their communities where they’re under surveillance before they even step out their door. Or while driving down the street by their home. Or in some place they’re not deemed to “belong”. I’ve talked to some of these anarchists after and they’re always so shocked they got batoned or pepper sprayed because they never thought it could happen to them. Because most often it doesn’t. Or their kids. If they have kids, they can sit and wait for them late at night when they’re a few minutes late and think, maybe they got delayed, traffic, an extra few minutes with a date or friends, lost track of time or worse scenarios of accidents and crime perhaps. But often, the police don’t enter into that context as a scenario behind them not seeing their kid for a few minutes, a few days or alive again, ever.
Not that violence by police at demonstrations towards anyone is right but there’s a definite difference between visiting that culture and living in it.
Oh yes, this “won’t someone please think of the white anarchists?” rhetoric is just more of the same old, same old “white people must be at the center of everything” game. My goodness, it would be terrible if some people were unfairly painted due to their superficial similarities with others who misbehave… oh, wait.
A quote from someone on my FB: the dehumanization of Oakland’s citizens that assumes they will riot is the same dehumanization that leads cops to shoot them in the back.
And in the meantime, media outlets still focus on people of color as responsible for the violence – The SFIst used an image of a white person to illustrate the post-hoc conclusion that most of the arrests were of out-of-towners, but their live blog author decided to “leave [the reader] with this image” the night of the protests. Their photo gallery also raises questions for me about where their reporter(s) chose to turn their camera(s).
This whole thing still sickens me. How could anyone do this. But more than that, how could anyone watch the videos, see him laying prone, not fighting at all, with his hands cuffed and clearly pinned down, the image of the purist of cooperation, watch the cop kill him, just because he could, and think that there’s any justification for that.
This story is most interesting when you pair it with the abuse of Tasers. Clearly, we have a culture of violence, where that violence is considered justified if the person wielding the weapon is a cop, regardless of whether or not the force is merited.
I cry for the family and friends who lost someone. But I cry even more for our country where anyone could ever think this was okay. In 40 years, our children will look back on this, and they will see that there was no justice to be had for the lost life of a young black man at the hands of someone we are all ordered to trust.
I’ve been thinking about this all weekend because I was troubled by what I wrote above–I did rush to center white anarchists in a thread that was not about that and I apologize. That was a headstrong and privileged thing I did, and I should have stepped away from the computer before I posted. ETA: And what’s more, I knew better and could have done better–I’m certainly familiar with derailing and with centering white people, but that didn’t stop me from doing it.
I also think that protests vary a lot by city and neighborhood; my experience in my part of Minneapolis among a very specific group of people is probably a pretty poor parallel to Oakland!
And mostly I should have remembered “if it’s not about you, don’t make it about you”.
Actually, Frowner, the “centering” (i.e. trashing) of white anarchists was kicked off by commenter “macon d” way up at comment #2:
Then, myca chimed in at comment #3:
White anarchists were already “centered”, (or actually, trashed — see Jo Freeman’s excellent essay Trashing for a description of this process) by the time you and les commented.
For an analysis of the situation that does not depend on trashing people in favor of militant protest, see this piece.
Unfortunately, it looks like the liberal “blame the anarchists” response will win out, as usual.
There was a case is Mississippi a few years ago where the roles were reversed and there certainly was a case for (at most) involuntary manslaughter but instead a capital murder sentence was handed down.
Basically the police had a warrant for a drug raid on the neighbor of Cory Maye, a black man with a young daughter who were both in the house at the time. Cops mistakenly busted in Maye’s door in the middle of the night, and Maye, thinking a burglary was going on (a perfectly reasonable assumption given that he lived in a high-crime area) fired his gun at one of the intruders, killing the police officer.
At most, this would be involuntary manslaughter, if a crime at all, since he was acting on an assumption of self defense and police made a mistake raiding his home in the first place. He was convicted of capital murder and spent 8 yrs on death row before the sentence was commuted to life in prison, and there’s now been legal arguments over whether he should be granted a new trial.
It’s true that a Taser and a handgun are usually carried on opposite sides, for exactly that reason. Many departments mandate it, but I strongly suspect not all. If we can trust Wikipedia, then Mehserle carried his Taser on the opposite side, but in a cross-draw position so that he would draw it by reaching across with his dominant hand.
What you are referring to as “close-contact tasing”, the manufacturer refers to as a “Drive Stun”. You can drive stun with or without a cartridge in the device. If there’s a cartridge in the device when you do it, then the cartridge will activate and you’ll get probes in the target. However, the probes are too close together to produce the neuro-muscular incapacitation (NMI) which you would get if the discharge happens from a few feet away. To get the NMI, you must then move the taser to another location on the body and drive-stun so that you have two points of contact, spread more than a few inches apart.
I had originally heard that he carried his gun and Taser on the same side, and made an egregious but mechanically simple mistake. However, I now read that he carried on the opposite side, which certainly suggests much more strongly that he was not intending to draw his Taser.
Possibly even more significant than that, however, is that the Taser has a manual safety which is operated with the thumb. In the “safe” position, the safety is down at an angle, lower in front, at the end of the lever, than in back, at the pivot. To operate the Taser, you have to bring that safety up to a horizontal position.
A Sig Sauer P226 handgun does not necessarily have a thumb safety. I don’t know if Mehserle’s did. If it did, however, then the lever operates opposite to the Taser’s: the safety is engaged when the lever is UP, rising as you run your finger lightly from the rear pivot to the front of the lever, and to disengage the safety, you must push it DOWN, to a horizontal position.
(There ARE semiautomatic handguns with manual safeties which work similarly to the Taser. Most of Smith & Wesson’s do.)
So, whether or not his handgun had a manual safety, his Taser did, and it would have worked opposite to the handgun’s safety, if the handgun had one.
That further suggests that he was not intending to draw his Taser.
Training differs between Taser and handgun. It is very expensive to train with a Taser. At best, training cartridges cost upwards of $10 each. Handgun ammunition, bought in bulk, costs less than 50 cents per round. So you have over an order of magnitude in difference in cost-per-trigger-pull. Furthermore, a Taser is an intermediate weapon, intended to be used strategically, and not as a last resort. It is much less likely to be lethal, but also permits only one use before re-load and has a severely limited range. A handgun is a weapon of last resort, used only when no other weapon is likely to be effective, and you have no better alternative (like a rifle, which is superior in most situations, but not all). Because of all that, officers will almost always get more training with a handgun than with a Taser. And, that training will be more likely to be directed to training reflexes to work under extreme stress, while the Taser training is more likely to be directed to tactical considerations about when and how to use it. In general, an officer under extreme stress, operating by reflex, will tend to go for that weapon of last resort, the handgun, over the other alternatives, because that’s where the training is.
—
I’d like to speak a little bit to how we, as citizens, deal with situations like these, and the police officers who are called and sworn to deal with them.
When you respond as an officer to a fight call involving multiple people, and you’re surrounded by a shouting crowd as you try to deal with the situation, and the people you’re dealing with are hostile and physically resisting, and you can’t see their hands and don’t know if they have weapons, and you need 100% of your ability and attention just to deal with the one person in front of you, but you also need 100% of your ability and attention to deal with the people he was fighting with, because there’s no reason they couldn’t attack you, and you need 100% of your ability and attention to scan for threats in a crowd which is all around you, and therefore partly behind you, and everything needs to be split-second perfect, and human beings by nature perform very poorly in divided-attention tests, and your attention could not BE more divided … it is about the most stressful thing an officer can experience, and it is very easy to make mistakes. No fighter pilot in combat has nearly as many demands on his attention. Small mistakes are guaranteed, medium mistakes are common, and horrible, egregious mistakes do happen.
The only things which reduce those mistakes are personnel selection followed by training, supervision, training, training, and more training. (Oh, and enough personnel on scene to divvy up the tasks enough that people have a little more time and security to think and do it right.) All of these things cost lots of money. Training costs money and it’s the first thing to go in a budget cut. And if you’re very unlucky in the budget cutting, soon after you slash the training budget, personnel selection becomes less rigorous, and you end up with people who shouldn’t be cops carrying badges and guns, trained inadequately.
We still have to hold officers accountable for those mistakes. There’s no alternative. But as we sanction the mistakes, and the people who make them, we should perhaps do it in the knowledge that there but for fate go we. And we should think very, very hard before we utter the words, “Under stress I would NEVER do that, under any circumstances.” Human beings do truly bizarre things under stress, things which make no sense whatsoever in another context. There are physiological reasons for this which I won’t go into, here, because it would require a lot of space and this isn’t my thread.
I don’t know what Mehserle’s state of mind at the time was. The jury found that it led to an act that was illegal and fatal to another human being, but not deliberate. Many people think he should face a more severe consequence. The jury has decided, and the judge will decide.
And no matter what happens, nothing will give Oscar Grant his life back, and nothing will give Oscar Grant back to the family and friends who have lost him.
Mehserle must be punished for what he did, clearly. But that’s only treating the symptoms, which is often all we can do. (In fact, 99.9% of policework IS treating the symptoms, because very few cops get much of a chance to change the root causes of criminal behavior.) If we, as citizens, want to get at the root causes, we need to look at personnel selection and training. In other words, if Mehserle was actually racist, then how can we improve the selection process so that we don’t hire similar people, and if Mehserle made a mechanical mistake, then how can we improve training?
And even if we can get those right, 100% (which we can’t), how do we deal with the people who are working now, who were hired with imperfect selection processes, and trained inadequately?
Grace
Tasers have ambidextrous safeties so he has two opportunities. In my city, taser training is about four hours, given biennially pursuant to POST requirements and there’s a lot built into it to avoid the wrong weapon. I’m not sure what BART does, but if they’re a POST agency they have to fall under those requirements including training.
Tasers are also expensive, ranging from $700 to a grant with a fairly decent warranty but no bulk sales and that impacts how many can be purchased by an agency and how many officers can be trained and equipped. My city it’s about 55% and increasing and there’s also transition from the M26 advanced model to the lighter X26. In my city when you have officers in close proximity to each other, and one pulls a taser, he says “taser”. I doubt BART does that however.
I agree that the root issues ultimately are the ones that must be addressed because as far as individual criminal cases of onduty conduct in the CJS, there’s a very limited role for most people to play, especially to prevent future cases. But if you want to discuss racism and hiring (or not) racists, then that’s one of those critical “root” issues that has to be addressed, not just individually as someone acting that way being a “bad hire” but systemically within the agencies themselves (and often above to city or county oversight or management). That’s my opinion as someone who’s been looking at this issue for a while and has talked to experts, officers, city and county employees or elected officials and members of the public and it’s huge unfortunately. Both in scope because you’re dealing with roots here and in addressing. Individually, most officers don’t seem to be more racist than most people though there are exceptions but they might still act as racists or in ways that are racist because of training, supervision or because their agency engages in that behavior or teaches it including a reward/punishment system. Like when training use of force and other means of addressing situations that don’t involve force. Do officers who verbally de-escalating situations so force is avoided positively enforced, ignored or punished for doing that?
Are they treated as examples of the right thing to do in those situations or as jokes? As macho men or as wimps? Are officers who are more “physical” even when they don’t have to be treated as examples of what to do instead or as brave men (women have to work double time to fit here) to emulate? These interactions even when informal make a huge impact on especially newer officers. I didn’t know how prevalent they were until I talked to rookies (or probational officers) at different agencies, those who made it, quit or “washed out”.
But if this is a generalized trend in LE and not isolated (and I doubt that), then why does it exist? Is it for or against that agency’ or city’s (because government exerts a lot of influence or direction in policing) philosophy?
It might help if you’re dealing with a LE agency that views racist behavior which can run a broad swath of different examples as an undesirable quality, enough so to be a disqualifier or to be screened for and in some cases, yes but in many, unfortunately no. It’s a major problem and it certainly is to officers who experience either that and/or sexism and homophobia (which is applied at both gays and lesbians and often straight women). How do you screen for racism, sexism or homophobia when many LE agencies have cultures entrenched in these behaviors? And they do.
Was Mehserle a racist? I don’t know enough about him to know if he were an “individual” racist in his life, including off-duty or his previous background. Presumably he wouldn’t have been hired if it had been blatant but that’s often a large presumption particularly in smaller agencies like transit police. Was he no more of a racist or prejudiced than most people but screened and found acceptable by an agency that has issues with racism/sexism/homophobia within its ranks? How would anyone with any of those leanings be screened out? What if he’s a “good fit” otherwise?
And what point is it a disqualifier. What type of behavior? And that’s difficult to believe in agencies where inhouse racism (and sexism) are serious institutional problems including as seen by members of those racial and gender groups that constitute a minority. If they have inhouse racism/sexism and that’s how they treat each other, then the community has really little or no hope of being treated fairly. And it has to be clear at the top and practiced there as well. No, you can’t say as a chief or management that you’re against sexism when everyone goes to topless bars to “relax”, have affairs with female employees or sexually harasses them (which doesn’t get reported b/c the department is 2/2 for prosecuting female officers for crimes after they file claims of sexism) and doing things like sex texting which is discovered and doesn’t become an issue until another male high ranking management needs to oust that high ranking management person out of a favorable position.
And there’s enough inhouse claims and lawsuits (and huge settlements and verdicts) of racism, sexism and homophobia inside LE agencies to show that it’s a disturbing trend. Not only that but how complaints of any or more of these behaviors are treated as being worse than the behaviors themselves and those who complain are often the ones ostracized and punished for it. Systemically that appears to be a pattern that is very much the rule, not the exception across this country (and others as well as there’s been cases from Canada to Australia and back again).
Have you ever passed the hat for an officer who’s broke b/c he’s on some form of quasi-unpaid leave for not being able to work in an agency for fear of his own safety b/c he reported racism and/or sexism? Often ironically it’s the public who step in and help keep them fed, find them work or keep their homes until their situations get sorted out down the line in a manner of speaking. When I did some research work for the NAACP where I live, I looked into some grievances like these and the retaliation is pretty blatant because the people doing it think or know they can get away with it. So if this is so blatant, what hope does the public and communities have of not being impacted in a big way as well? It’s really a majorly negative impact against whistle blowers even though it’s supposedly legal and some say preferred to come forward on bad behavior. But words and actions don’t line up together, if they say they won’t punish and they do.
This has to be addressed but the agencies need to see it as important to address and mean it mostly at the top where some of that commitment is somewhat less than enthusiastic.
The “outside agitator” is a line of bullshit put out by the local politicians, corporate media and establishment in order to 1. scare people off 2. divide the movement. It’s unfortunate that the otherwise sophisticated progressives (like here at Alas) are being played when they repeat this. I was at the protest for 4 hours, I saw what went down and it absolutely wasn’t the “white anarchists” who kicked off the mini mayhem by looting foot locker.
I hope Myca and Macon D. reconsiders their parroting of the outside agitator line.
Here’s what activist Oakland based lawyer Walter Riley (and father of Boots Riley) who got arrested last Thursday had to say about about it:
Don’t put the “outsider” label on people who are standing up for justice and civil rights!
The murder of Oscar Grant is a universal issue of justice and civil rights.
I do not like this divisive campaign to divide our community and protestors by calling people outsiders. Oakland is not an isolated town in the desert. This is a great metropolitan area with people from all over; with a world class university; we expect people from all over the map to participate in Oakland. Calling people outsiders in this instance is a political attack on the movement. The subtext is that the outsiders are white and not connected to Oakland. From the days of the civil rights movement to now the outsider labeling failed to address the underlying problems for which people came together.
For those whose frustration with progress leads them to violent protest, we must engage in respectful political struggle. I understand the frustration; I do not support destruction and looting as political protest. I adamantly object to calling our youth and political activists outsiders. I call upon everyone to push back against this tendency.
Walter Riley
Attorney at Law
1440 Broadway, suite 612A
Oakland, CA 94612
WalterRiley [at] rrrandw.com
Myca also writes: “Yes. I’d like for this to receive more attention, especially since we know for a fact that many of the past Oakland riots were initiated by people with no political motive beyond a desire to smash shit, who used legitimate political grievances as a pretext.
To see white people doing that, over this, infuriates me.”
Really? I’ve lived in Oakland for the last 20 years, I have no idea what “riots” you are referring too? Perhaps you could name them.
Outside agitator? It’s been used by an assortment of people for different things and not just from the “State” as it’s often called.
It’s good that there were a lot of demonstrations in different places across the country too. I think that is important and actually reaffirming.
Riots, I don’t think so. They’re less common, much less so than they are labeled by the media. By their nature, the anger they expend takes decades to rebuild if the root causes of them remain unchanged or worsen. Having talked to people who’ve participated in them or their kids have including those whose kids nearly killed bystanders (i.e. Reginald Denny), it’s often a very painful thing even for those who engage in them and their families especially when they face the brunt for the fallout. They’re not really in most cases uprisings as they’re often romanticized to be usually from the location of a computer, they’re anger turning into rage. I’ve heard a lot of, “that just wasn’t me/my kid”. Also bearing the brunt of pain from the aftermath are the families of those whose behalf they were allegedly done on. Often it just adds to their pain. In my city, when there were temptations to go that route, the family members were heavily involved because they wanted to push for change in a nonviolent way because their daughter had died so violently while essentially unconscious, possibly after an epileptic seizure (as they ran in her family). But not every case is the same.
Actually most rioting has been done by Whites particularly earlier in the nation’s history. Including so-called vigilante riots.
But if you’re an activist or anyone else from “outside” and show up at a demonstration and a woman who lives in the neighborhood you’re visiting (and has for decades) is working there as a peace monitor because there’s kids with their parents nearby tells you to back up a few feet, don’t call her a bitch, a slut or a snitch. Or at least take off your handkerchief when you call them that. And then videotape her face and put her at YouTube as an FBI snitch. That happened to a friend of mine who’s spent her life working grassroots and has worked in different neighborhoods. Thankfully at least most people knew that was a pile of crap but she did worry about people outside of the city, especially with the snitch jacket.
That’s why some people in the neighborhoods in my city might have a problem with people coming from the outside because there are other stories like hers. Of that kind of disrespect by people who had come to the neighborhood solely to demonstrate.
It’s not b/c they’re being played into this or that, or that they’re hoodwinked by the State (of which the abuses they know better than most the people who lecture on that do) and it’s kind of presumptive to label them as essentially fools enough to be played while the outsiders are the wiser ones who know all.
Go to the planning meetings and the debriefs (the people you march with in solidarity don’t bite) and engage more in the grass roots work between protests. That’s what I hear the most often in discussions of demonstrations especially those where violence erupts. Some neighborhoods or coalitions have spent long hours planning demonstrations or rallies and have chosen their methods after careful consideration, debate and a life-time of knowing their own neighborhoods. Respect that, don’t just show up and want to be confrontational in ways that the neighborhood has already decided against. Don’t make assumptions about their relations with police.
I’ve seen a neighborhood coalition face off against Nazis and skinheads in their neighborhood and then a group of protesters from L.A. and Orange County read about it online and show up and turn it into a confrontation between them and police.
In this case, the police just looked at them, the coalition members just looked at them, the neighbors really looked at them (and commented) and then they kind of…left. Didn’t even stay for the post-demonstration dinner gathering in the park. The protest didn’t get much of a write up online afterward. Like it did when a small group of OC based activists physically confronted some Nazis (20 activists to three Nazis) and punched them while neighborhood residents either watched or told them to stop because they didn’t want the police to be called to their neighborhood. But the police were and the neighborhood had SWAT there for the rest of the night long after the group of activists left patting each other on the back for really showing those Nazis…That didn’t give them the best of reputations in that neighborhood and it’s not the State that fooled the neighborhood into thinking they were outsiders, it’s the group of activists that treated the neighborhood residents as outsiders in their own neighborhood. It was a spot to be claimed by them for a physical confrontation that could result in police response for longer time.
My city’s communities welcome outside demonstrators from other places but what I’ve learned over time is there’s a strong sense within the neighborhoods that they take the lead on demonstrations within them. It might be different in other cities and similar to that in still others but it’s something that I think should be respected. The local anarchists get that this is an important thing and they’re very active in the issues so they were helpful in trying to explain this to some of the anarchists from other counties.
This is a more derailing of the thread than I planned to take. But while I think the “outside agitator” label might be strong, I do believe that people who don’t live in a neighborhood where a demonstration is planned might want to be respectful to try to find out from people who live there what the plans are.
I haven’t received updates lately on how the efforts with BART were going, including civilian oversight which I assumed means civilian review of some sort. That’s a mixed bag because most civilian oversight mechanisms bet they auditors or review boards are only as strong as the government in place allows them to be. In my city, it’s next to useless. Last I heard they were trying to move their meetings to mornings so city residents couldn’t attend. But in some places particularly with a strong community backing, they do better.
Oakland PD is getting state attention and had or has a federal conservatorship arrangement in place which is somewhat different than a federal consent decree. But Brown’s office has been in there. I think state decrees are too short to really be effective long-term after watching what happened in my city after our five-year one with the AG dissolved. Not pretty.
Personnel hiring and training, is a critical issue. In a smaller agency like BART, is that done in an accountable and thorough way? I don’t know Mehserle’s background but smaller agencies often have more problematic hiring pools including rejects from other agencies and in a couple well-documented cases, registered sex offenders. It would be difficult to find his employment background in California which has the strictest confidentiality laws for police officers in the country. Maywood PD hired 13 out of 39 officers who had been arrested, fired or failed probation. Actually, the percentage of officers from these backgrounds given “second chances” was much higher. The city hired two interim chiefs in a row with criminal records. The State AG was in there for a while but Maywood disbanded its department (along with the rest of its workforce) and is now a contract city.
But not just smaller agencies. One well known case involved the NYPD hiring one new officer who while undergoing the hiring process showed up in some surveillance video given to the department as a man who robbed stores. He didn’t get hired.
It’s unfortunate that your friend’s intentions were apparently misconstrued. And the rough language is deplorable. But too many of my friends have been fingered by self-appointed “peace police” for me to be too discomfited by this anecdote. If you go to a demonstration and you act like someone who will work with the cops to arrest activists, it should hardly come as a surprise when the objects of your collusion with the security forces take exception to your actions. Peace police who collaborate with the cops get no sympathy from me, and hiding behind “kids with their parents” as a justification for that collaboration seems even more suspect.
You know, of all the planning meetings and debriefs I’ve been to, I’ve never seen representatives from mainstream organizations show up to see how they could support radicals. Quite the contrary. When anarchists get arrested, we are on our own. It doesn’t matter how many rallies against police brutality or against foreclosure or in support of strikes or to protest education cuts we’ve been to. It doesn’t matter that we open our spaces to all kinds of groups, that we host womens-and-trans-only spaces, or write letters to the editor, or vote Democratic or create community gardens or any of that. For 124 years, anarchists have been extending completely unreciprocated solidarity to the broadest possible range of other left-wing groups and people. And how are we repaid? The second a window breaks, the peace police scream “Anarchists! They’re not with us! Arrest them, officers!” When we’re beaten, shot, deported, jailed — nobody else comes to our rallies. Nope, we’re left to hang there, twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.
Nope, we’re left to hang there, twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.
So stop breaking windows.