Tag Archives: law enforcement

“Garbage”

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Dehumanization is one of the most important tactics used to justify the denial of rights, of freedoms, and of life itself. We dehumanize people to rationalize killing them in warfare, exploiting them in sweatshops, stealing their land and their natural resources. We dehumanize people to rationalize, withholding services or assistance, discriminating and segregating and limiting freedoms. We dehumanize to rationalize the denial of justice.

Garbage doesn’t deserve protection. People, though, people do. And people, no matter how troubled or unpleasant they are, are not garbage. They are human beings.

– Elizabeth Wood, “Dehumanization In A Nutshell: ‘We Work With The Garbage Of New York'”

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What I’m Reading, June 17, 2014

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Law Enforcement Agencies Continue To Obtain Military Equipment, Claiming The United States Is A ‘War Zone’, Tim Cushing, TechDirt, June 12, 2014

That law enforcement agencies across the US are swiftly converting themselves into military outfits is hardly a surprise at this point. The problem is that nothing seems to be slowing them down, not even the dismayed reactions of citizens supposedly under their care.

The government’s desire to offload its unused military hardware at deeply discounted rates has turned a few outliers into the new normal. Towns as with populations well under the 10,000 mark have secured Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, supposedly in order to keep up with a non-existent arms race between the good guys and the bad guys.

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The problems with this sort of ad hoc “mobilization” are numerous. The dangers of outfitting police with military gear can best be signaled with a combination of “if all you have is a hammer…” and Chekhov’s Gun. If you give police military gear, they’re going to want to use it. The very occasional shootout with heavily-armed criminals simply won’t satisfy the urge to deploy the new acquisitions. The slightly-more-occasional no-knock warrant served in the dead of night to known drug offenders won’t sufficiently scratch the itch.

*** Continue reading →

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How Not to Get Arrested

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A former police officer and prosecutor, Dale Carson, has written a book offering his pointers on how to avoid police trouble. It’s both scary and depressing. Via Mike Riggs at Business Insider:

“Law enforcement officers now are part of the revenue-gathering system,” Carson tells me in a phone interview. “The ranks of cops are young and competitive, they’re in competition with one another and intra-departmentally. It becomes a game. Policing isn’t about keeping streets safe, it’s about statistical success. The question for them is, ‘Who can put the most people in jail?'”

His book includes tips on how to “be invisible to police,” and seemingly reasonable things one should never do when a cop is talking to you. The theme, at least as presented in Riggs’ article, is the importance of compliance over any issues of personal pride. Being questioned by police is likely to be humiliating, Carson says, but getting arrested is worse, so suck it up.

The other day, Clark at Popehat wrote about a police chief who thinks cops should be prepared to tackle nearly any suspect:

[U]nless the citizen is “bracing for submission” and maintaining eye contact, the cop should consider “tackling” him.

On light of that, being invisible seems like the better course of action, but I’m still looking around for someone with an idea of how to actually improve things.

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