Enforcers category archive

Another black man shares his memory.

When I was 14, my grandfather sat me down for “the talk” – not the birds and the bees, but “the billy clubs and the bullets.”

I brushed him off. I thought that in my majority-black hometown of Newark, racism would not reach me. Little did I realize that a healthy fear of the police would become a survival skill for a young black man.

My wake-up call came at 16.

Follow the link for the rest of his story.

What you don’t know won’t hurt them.

San Jose officials who demanded an accounting of airport security breaches that have raised questions about passenger safety in the post 9/11 era were frustrated Thursday after the city’s aviation director said federal authorities wouldn’t let her discuss them.

Director of Aviation Kim Aguirre told council members on the city’s public safety committee that two highly publicized stowaway incidents at Mineta San Jose International Airport this year were the only “major” breaches in her 19 years at the airport. But she said the federal Transportation Security Administration prohibited her from releasing more information about those or any other incidents.

More “What you don’t know can’t hurt us” at the link.

In the light of recent news stories, this is easy to believe.

Aside:

Thom seems to have forgotten what century this is.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Lynne Soraya remembers when, after she packed up her belongings in a rented van and moved across the country, she was lost and confused on a strange road in unfamiliar territory and a cop decided that she was driving in a suspicious manner.

Convinced I was attempting to flee, the officer had whipped his car around in front of my half-turned vehicle, T.J. Hooker-style, lept out and drew his gun, screaming. Terrified, I stopped cold and put my hands in the air. The officer, it seemed, had begun to suspect that I was a thief, attempting to make off with a vanful of stolen goods. And when I failed to respond appropriately to his siren (which I couldn’t hear), that was his signal that I was spooked and attempting to flee capture. So, he’d taken immediate action to head off my escape.

Given that level of intensity that had developed in a matter of minutes, the intensity that left me staring down the barrel of a gun, it’s interesting what happened next. Nothing. The gun dropped as quickly as it had been raised. The officer’s manner changed in a split second.The very second he saw my face. I didn’t even have to speak. His utter confusion at seeing me was evident, even to me. Even in that moment. So why was that?

Follow the link to find out her answer.

The first half-hour or so of this week’s Linux Outlaws, hosted by an Englishman and a German, was all about events in Ferguson, Mo.

Oh, yeah. There’s an app for that.

. . . because the facts lean left.

(Video moved below the fold because it autoplays on some systems. Autoplaying is rude.)

Read more »

Part One:

Part Two:

Also, please read Der Spiegel’s report from Ferguson.

In the Seattle Times, Ace Robinson explains why he left St. Louis and plans not to move back. A nugget:

As a teenager, I never drove without a tape recorder in the car. When I experienced my weekly — often biweekly — police pullover, I would place it on the dashboard and hit record.

When the officer walked up to the car, I would say: “Good afternoon, Officer (Insert name),” announce the date and time, and ask why I was being stopped. This script might have saved my life more than once. After Rodney King, black men learned police may be held responsible when their actions are recorded. And even in Los Angeles, that was not guaranteed.

I used academics to get away by attending college on the East Coast, in the same way that my mother used education to flee the Jim Crow South 35 years prior to my birth.

“Legal intervention” is a lawyers’ term for someone’s being killed by police while committing (or assumed to be committing) a crime.

er, yeah.

From the Sunlight Foundation, which has much more.

Chez reports from the scene. (Among other topics, he addresses the reality of those reputed “outside agitators.”)

If you can get through it, listen to the mayor of Ferguson, Mo., claim that “there’s not a racial divide in Ferguson . . . .”

I’ve heard this before. It’s the same crap that Orville Faubus, Bull Connor, and the like spewed in the 1960s as they turned fire hoses on Civil Rights demonstrations.

in related news (much more at the link),

The violence that turns a small-town protest into a fiery national spectacle like the one that has played out this month in Missouri is often unwittingly provoked by police, according to researchers at UC Berkeley.

The research team, which studied clashes between police and activists during the Occupy movement three years ago, found that protests tend to turn violent when officers use aggressive tactics, such as approaching demonstrators in riot gear or lining up in military-like formations.

Recent events in Ferguson, Mo., are a good example, the study’s lead researcher said. For nearly two weeks, activists angered by a white police officer’s fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager have ratcheted up their protests when confronted by heavily armed police forces.

The only folks who will take exception to the study will be those who like the sound of cracked heads.

Chez reports first-hand from Ferguson.

One of the last things I remember seeing was a group of cops taking down someone just a few feet in front of me as I retreated quickly to what I thought was the relative safety of the media staging area, which had been specifically cordoned off for us. Then one of the officers reached for his belt, turned and sprayed me directly in the face with a deep orange liquid that created spots all over my camera. I blinked a few times — kept shooting. And then it hit me. If you’ve never been shot with law enforcement-grade oleoresin capsicum, trust me when I tell you you never want to. It’s excruciating. My eyes slammed shut and I doubled over, grunting. “Motherfucker!” I said more than once to no one. From then on, all I could do was hear what was going on rather than see it. I know it was protesters who attended to me at first, giving me milk for my eyes and water for my burning mouth and skin and telling me to hold still so I wouldn’t run into anyone. That should give you some idea of what most of the residents of Ferguson, Missouri — those people furious about the death of Mike Brown — are really like. I have no idea how much time went by. I heard the police chopper. I heard police announce that the media staging area was moving and that everyone would be arrested if they didn’t vacate the area. I heard fights, yelling, cops shouting. I eventually fell over in pain then got back up.

It’s clear that these cops are not trying to “keep the peace.”

Much more and pictures at the link.