In the US, it is a
long-accepted practice that domestic military exercises are opened to the
participation of troops from a small number of select allied nations. The same
pattern now appears to have been extended to domestic police exercises as well.
Blumenthal reports that the "mutual aid" exercise held on the
Berkeley campus included a contingent of military police from Bahrain,
"which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by
opening fire on protest camps," and a delegation of Israeli Border Police
called the Yamam. According to
Blumenthal's report, the Yamam is
"known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant
leaders."
What Was the Cops-per-Vandals Arrest Ratio?
While a great deal of
justified criticism was directed at the damage wrought in downtown Oakland by
the "black bloc" vandals who broke windows and sprayed slogans on the
walls of banks, a significant question remains unanswered: How many of the 80
citizens arrested by the police during the night and early morning hours of
November 2-3 were vandals?
It is difficult to know. The
Oakland Police Department's Weekly Crime
Report (WCR) for October 31-November 6 does not list any arrests for
vandalism -- although it does list one arrest for arson and two arrests for
"Assault on Officer -- Other." (In fairness, the WCR notes helpfully
that: "both reporting of crimes and data entry can be a month or more
behind.")
In 2003, Oakland's newest
Police Chief Howard Jordan was caught on tape reflecting upon the ease with
which police could infiltrate public demonstrations. "It's not that
hard," Jordan said. "San Francisco does it. Seattle"." In
addition to using infiltrators embedded inside crowds to gather
"intelligence," Jordan also boasted these infiltrators could even
"make them [the protestors] do what we
want them to do!" (Local video-journalists have posted clips showing OPD
officers caught participating in the demonstrations out-of-uniform.)
This, of course, raises the
possibility that the police (who, remember, have a "conflict of interest
in conflict") could easily place "provocateurs" in the streets
to encourage -- or even instigate -- acts of vandalism that could justify police
violence. The release of the arrest figures for the OPD's generalized strike
against people in the streets of Oakland might help remove some of these fears.
A good number of solid arrests for vandalism, upheld by court hearings, would
suggest that the police are "doing their job." On the other hand, a
paucity of busts for significant crimes might suggest the police were mainly
out to bust heads, not to bust criminals.
The Planet
has made repeated calls to the OPD's media department in an attempt to glean
how many of the 80 arrests that followed the peaceful day-long General Strike
were for crimes of violence, arson or vandalism. As of press time, the OPD had
not responded to any of these calls.
Are the Police Doing Their Job?
Another case that questions
the role of civic accountability occurred after an argument near the Occupy
camp at Frank Ogawa Plaza erupted in gunfire that left one man dead. Mayor Quan
responded by demanding that Occupy Oakland had a choice: it either had to take
responsibility for controlling violence in the area or, if it failed to do so,
Quan would be forced to remove the tents from the Plaza.
It was an odd bargain. Put
in a different context, it would be comparable to the mayor demanding that the
residents of East Oakland accept responsibility for ridding the neighborhood of
violent crime. And, if they failed to do so, the mayor would see to it that
they would be driven from their homes.
Quan seemed to have
forgotten that it is the role of police
to deal with violent crime. Instead, the onus was shifted to the civilian
community while the cops were left free to "police" public protests. An essential point about the proper role of the police in a
democratic society is now being reinforced by a new crowd-chant: "Who do you protect? Who do you serve?"
The role of the
police has mutated towards what Dick Cheney famously called "the dark
side" with up-armored cops becoming increasingly indistinguishable from
combat troops. One of the key reasons the US was forced to pull its troops out
of Iraq by the end of this year was not Barack Obama's campaign vow to
"bring the troops home." Rather, it was the Iraqi government's
absolute refusal to guarantee "immunity from prosecution" for US
troops who committed crimes inside the country.
In this regard,
the Iraqi government showed the kind of moral courage that seems to be absent
in the United States where the police are rarely called before the courts to
answer for crimes committed against the civilian populations they are supposed
to be safeguarding.
Recent events in
Manhattan, Oakland, Portland, and other "Occupied" cities, have further
underscored the fact that, in the UPSA, police are still largely "above
the law." Think about it: in what other profession can you kill someone knowing
in advance that your only sanction will be a paid vacation? (In police
parlance, this is known as "paid administrative leave.")
The sad fact is
that, under these prevailing standards of indecency, any pistol-packing beat
cop who feels stressed-out by the demands of the job -- and feels like
indulging in some fully paid R&R -- might be tempted to gun down a random
unarmed protester just to claim some of that precious "paid administrative
leave."
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