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Police violence and solidarity
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police officer Derek Chauvin
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police officer Derek Chauvin
the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured.
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police officer Derek Chauvin
JUNE 19, 2020
The ‘Palestinian Chair’: Exposing Israel’s Direct Role in US Violence
by RAMZY BAROUDF
The banning of deadly police practices by many American states and cities following the murder of an African American man, George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police officers is, once more, shedding light on US-Israeli collaboration in the fields of security and crowd-control.
From California to New York, and from Washington State to Minneapolis, all forms of neck restraints and chokeholds that are used by police while dealing with suspects are no longer allowed by local, state, or federal authorities.
This is only the beginning of what promises to be a serious rethink in police practices, which disproportionately targets African Americans and other minority and marginalized communities across the United States.
The refashioning of the American police, in recent years, to fit some kind of a military model is a subject that requires a better understanding than the one currently offered by mainstream US media. Certainly, US racism and police violence are intrinsically linked and date back many years, but the militarization of the US police and its use of deadly violence against suspected petty criminals, or even non criminals, is a relatively new phenomenon that has been largely imported from Israel.
While an urgent conversation is already under way in US cities regarding the need to reimagine public safety, or even to defund the police altogether, little is being said about the link between the US’ ‘war on terror’ and the American elites’ fascination with the ‘Israeli example’ in its dealing with besieged Gaza and occupied Palestinians in the West Bank.
“The Israeli example (could serve as) a possible basis for arguing … that ‘torture was necessary to prevent imminent, significant, physical harm to persons, where there is no other available means to prevent the harm’,” the CIA General Counsel report of September 2001 read, as quoted by Slate magazine.
Equally important to the argument made by the CIA above, was the actual date – only a few days after the terrorist attacks of September 11. That was the beginning of the Israeli- American love affair, which entirely redefined the nature of the relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv, removing Israel from the category of ‘client regimes’, into a whole new one – as a model to be mimicked and a true partner to be embraced.
The language used by the CIA, and other facets of US intelligence agencies, quickly seeped into the military as well, and eventually became the uncontested political discourse, epitomized by former US President Barack Obama’s words in June 2010 that “the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable.”
‘Unbreakable’ indeed, since Israel, the long-time recipient of American financial support and military and intelligence secrets became a major exporter of ideas, security technology, and ‘war on terror’ tactics to the US.
It is critical that we do not reduce our understanding of this troubling rapport between the US and Israel to military hardware and intelligence sharing. The American infatuation with Israel is essentially an intellectual one, as the US began viewing itself as inferior to Israel in terms of the latter’s supposed ability to navigate between sustaining its own democracy while successfully defeating Palestinian and Arab ‘terrorism’.
For example, former US President George W. Bush saw extremist Israeli politician and author, Natan Sharansky, as a mentor. In January 2005, The New York Times reported how the Bush White House invited Sharansky to the Oval Office to discuss his book “The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror.”
Thus, a barely visible Israeli politician became the moral authority for Bush’s invasion of sovereign Arab countries. It was during this period that Israeli torture tactics, including the infamous ‘Palestinian Chair’, became the crown jewel of the American military’s systematic violence used in America’s immoral wars from Iraq to Afghanistan, to elsewhere.
Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2016, Rachel Stroumsa argued that the ‘Palestinian Chair’ is “but one of many examples of ties and seepages between the security practices of Israel and America,” adding that “the CIA explicitly justified its use of torture in depositions to the Senate Intelligence Committee by citing High Court of Justice rulings.”
The political, military, and intelligence marriage between the US and Israel in Iraq quickly spread to include the US global ‘war on terror’, where Israeli weapon manufacturers cater to every American need, playing on the country’s growing sense of insecurity, offering products that range from airport security, the building of watchtowers, the erection of walls and fences, to spying and surveillance technology.
Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest military company, made a fortune from building surveillance towers and sensors, in addition to many other products, across the US-Mexico border. The company, like other Israeli companies, won one bid after another, because its products are ‘combat-proven’ or ‘field-proven’, because these technologies have been used against, or tested on real people in real situations; the ‘people’ here, of course, being Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians.
The fact that thousands of American police officers have been trained by Israelis, thus the burgeoning of violent military-like tactics used against ordinary Americans, is only one link in a long chain of ‘deadly exchanges’ between the two countries.
Almost immediately after the September 11 attacks, “the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains to train in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Amnesty International said in a recent report.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg, for the Israeli army manual, which holds little respect for internationally-recognized rules of conduct, infiltrated numerous police departments across the US. Even the typical look of the American police officers began changing to resemble that of a combat soldier in full gear.
The growing Israeli role in shaping the American security state allowed Israel to push its political priorities past its traditional stronghold over the US Congress to individual states and, eventually, to city councils across the country.
Even if some of the Israeli tactics, which are currently applied by the US police, are discontinued under the collective chants of ‘Black Lives Matter’, Israel – if not stopped – will continue to define Washington’s security priorities from Washington State to Texas, because the relationship – Obama’s ‘unbreakable bond’ – is much stronger and deeper than anyone could have ever imagined.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/19 ... -violence/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The ‘Palestinian Chair’: Exposing Israel’s Direct Role in US Violence
by RAMZY BAROUDF
The banning of deadly police practices by many American states and cities following the murder of an African American man, George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police officers is, once more, shedding light on US-Israeli collaboration in the fields of security and crowd-control.
From California to New York, and from Washington State to Minneapolis, all forms of neck restraints and chokeholds that are used by police while dealing with suspects are no longer allowed by local, state, or federal authorities.
This is only the beginning of what promises to be a serious rethink in police practices, which disproportionately targets African Americans and other minority and marginalized communities across the United States.
The refashioning of the American police, in recent years, to fit some kind of a military model is a subject that requires a better understanding than the one currently offered by mainstream US media. Certainly, US racism and police violence are intrinsically linked and date back many years, but the militarization of the US police and its use of deadly violence against suspected petty criminals, or even non criminals, is a relatively new phenomenon that has been largely imported from Israel.
While an urgent conversation is already under way in US cities regarding the need to reimagine public safety, or even to defund the police altogether, little is being said about the link between the US’ ‘war on terror’ and the American elites’ fascination with the ‘Israeli example’ in its dealing with besieged Gaza and occupied Palestinians in the West Bank.
“The Israeli example (could serve as) a possible basis for arguing … that ‘torture was necessary to prevent imminent, significant, physical harm to persons, where there is no other available means to prevent the harm’,” the CIA General Counsel report of September 2001 read, as quoted by Slate magazine.
Equally important to the argument made by the CIA above, was the actual date – only a few days after the terrorist attacks of September 11. That was the beginning of the Israeli- American love affair, which entirely redefined the nature of the relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv, removing Israel from the category of ‘client regimes’, into a whole new one – as a model to be mimicked and a true partner to be embraced.
The language used by the CIA, and other facets of US intelligence agencies, quickly seeped into the military as well, and eventually became the uncontested political discourse, epitomized by former US President Barack Obama’s words in June 2010 that “the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable.”
‘Unbreakable’ indeed, since Israel, the long-time recipient of American financial support and military and intelligence secrets became a major exporter of ideas, security technology, and ‘war on terror’ tactics to the US.
It is critical that we do not reduce our understanding of this troubling rapport between the US and Israel to military hardware and intelligence sharing. The American infatuation with Israel is essentially an intellectual one, as the US began viewing itself as inferior to Israel in terms of the latter’s supposed ability to navigate between sustaining its own democracy while successfully defeating Palestinian and Arab ‘terrorism’.
For example, former US President George W. Bush saw extremist Israeli politician and author, Natan Sharansky, as a mentor. In January 2005, The New York Times reported how the Bush White House invited Sharansky to the Oval Office to discuss his book “The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror.”
Thus, a barely visible Israeli politician became the moral authority for Bush’s invasion of sovereign Arab countries. It was during this period that Israeli torture tactics, including the infamous ‘Palestinian Chair’, became the crown jewel of the American military’s systematic violence used in America’s immoral wars from Iraq to Afghanistan, to elsewhere.
Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2016, Rachel Stroumsa argued that the ‘Palestinian Chair’ is “but one of many examples of ties and seepages between the security practices of Israel and America,” adding that “the CIA explicitly justified its use of torture in depositions to the Senate Intelligence Committee by citing High Court of Justice rulings.”
The political, military, and intelligence marriage between the US and Israel in Iraq quickly spread to include the US global ‘war on terror’, where Israeli weapon manufacturers cater to every American need, playing on the country’s growing sense of insecurity, offering products that range from airport security, the building of watchtowers, the erection of walls and fences, to spying and surveillance technology.
Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest military company, made a fortune from building surveillance towers and sensors, in addition to many other products, across the US-Mexico border. The company, like other Israeli companies, won one bid after another, because its products are ‘combat-proven’ or ‘field-proven’, because these technologies have been used against, or tested on real people in real situations; the ‘people’ here, of course, being Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians.
The fact that thousands of American police officers have been trained by Israelis, thus the burgeoning of violent military-like tactics used against ordinary Americans, is only one link in a long chain of ‘deadly exchanges’ between the two countries.
Almost immediately after the September 11 attacks, “the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains to train in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Amnesty International said in a recent report.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg, for the Israeli army manual, which holds little respect for internationally-recognized rules of conduct, infiltrated numerous police departments across the US. Even the typical look of the American police officers began changing to resemble that of a combat soldier in full gear.
The growing Israeli role in shaping the American security state allowed Israel to push its political priorities past its traditional stronghold over the US Congress to individual states and, eventually, to city councils across the country.
Even if some of the Israeli tactics, which are currently applied by the US police, are discontinued under the collective chants of ‘Black Lives Matter’, Israel – if not stopped – will continue to define Washington’s security priorities from Washington State to Texas, because the relationship – Obama’s ‘unbreakable bond’ – is much stronger and deeper than anyone could have ever imagined.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/19 ... -violence/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"disaster is the mother of necessity" rSin
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ben ttech
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police officer Derek Chauvin
JUNE 22, 2020
Trading One Uniform for Another: Can Police Be “De-Militarized” When So Many Cops Are Military Veterans?
by STEVE EARLY - SUZANNE GORDON
Calls for de-militarization of law enforcement have gained new momentum in the wake of nationwide protests against police brutality. That process won’t be easy in a nation where nearly one fifth of all cops are military veterans — including Derek Chauvin, George Floyd’s killer in Minneapolis and Robert McCabe, one of two officers charged with felony assault for knocking down a 75-year-old protester in Buffalo.
When loaded down with cast-off Pentagon gear, police officers from any background are more likely to regard peaceful protestors as enemy combatants, particularly when the Pentagon’s own top official refers to their protest scenes as “battle space.” But studies show that employing people with experience in war zones abroad has not been a boon to “community policing” either. Getting police departments to stop acting like an occupying army will require many fundamental changes, including much closer screening of job applicants who are veterans and ending their preferential hiring treatment.
Policing is currently the third most common occupation for men and women who have served in the military. It is an option widely encouraged by career counsellors and veterans’ organizations like the American Legion. As a result, several hundred thousand veterans are now wearing a badge of some sort. Although veterans comprise just 6 percent of the US population, they represent 19 percent of all law enforcement personnel.
This disproportionate representation is due, in part, to preferential hiring requirements, mandated by state or federal law. In addition, under the Obama Administration, the Department of Justice provided local police departments with tens of millions of dollars to fund veterans-only positions.
As noted [EF1] by the Marshall Project, in its 2017 report, “When Warriors Put On the Badge,” this combination of hiring preferences and special funding has made it harder to “build police forces that resemble and understand diverse communities.” The beneficiaries have been disproportionately white, because 60 percent of all enlisted men and women are not people of color.
Justice Department officials, particularly under President Trump, have shown little interest in tracking the later job performance of recently hired veterans or how their military background might affect their behavior vis-à-vis the public. As former DOJ official Ronald Davis told Marshall Project researchers” “I reject the notion that a returning veteran, who has seen combat, should cause concern for a police chief. I would even hire more if I could.”
However, a 2009 report by the International Association of Chiefs of Police raised multiple concerns about “the integration of military personnel” into law enforcement after their service in post 9/11 conflicts. According to this study, “veterans returning from the Vietnam War could easily distinguish their combat environment – mostly jungle, farm, or open terrain – from their urban or suburban policing environment. In the case of returning combat veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan, their combat environment and their policing environments may appear surprisingly similar.” The report warned that past-deployments “may cause returning officers to mistakenly blur the lines between military combat situations and civilian crime situations, resulting in inappropriate decisions and actions, particularly in the use of less lethal or lethal force.”
More Involved in Shootings
Co-sponsored by the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Police Chiefs’ report also noted that combat veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and related “depression, anger, withdrawal, and family issues” may have greater propensity for “inappropriate use of force.” Some chiefs felt that veterans under their command came back “ill prepared for the civilian world” because their PTSD left them with “exaggerated survival instincts.” Nearly a third believed that veterans on their force often had “psychological issues” of some sort, 14 percent had received more citizen complaints about officers who were veterans than they did about non-veterans, and 10 percent reported instances of “excessive violence” involving former military personnel.
Veterans of, course, got high marks for their physical fitness, weapons-handling experience, habituation to discipline, and leadership qualities. Yet the report notes that some had trouble “readjusting to receiving rather than giving orders, trusting others, and changing the rules of engagement.”
A study by researchers at the University of Texas School of Public Health, which focused on the Dallas Police Department, found that officers with military experience used their guns while on duty more than non-veterans. During a ten-year period, nearly a third of all 516 Dallas cops involved in a shooting incident were veterans. Those who had been deployed overseas were nearly three times as likely to have fired their weapon; those who had not been deployed were still twice as likely to be involved in a shooting. The study concluded that some veterans employed by the Dallas police department lacked “critical thinking skills” when confronted with “high stress scenarios.”
Similar findings were reported by the Marshall Project after it studied use-of-force complaints and fatal police shootings in several other cities. In Boston and Miami, officers with military experience generated more civilian complaints of excessive force. Nearly a third of the Albuquerque officers involved in a total of thirty-five fatal shootings between January 2010 and April 2014 were veterans. A lawsuit against one of those officers, who killed an unarmed motorist, revealed that he was an Iraq war veteran, whose PTSD caused flashbacks, nightmares, and black-outs. Nevertheless, as the Marshall Project discovered, he was “assigned to patrol a high-crime area of town known as ‘the war zone.’”
The Marshall Project recommended that police departments have clear and consistent policies to “evaluate employees’ mental and physical fitness …to ensure public safety and guarantee a stable, reliable, and productive workforce.” Yet, it found that actual screening practices are far from standardized or effective. “Some agencies employ the use of administrative interviews and psychological evaluations to assess how veteran officers will perform the essential functions of their position, while other agencies revert to their department medical officer, or lack any policy at all.”
Another Hazardous Occupation
An additional concern is that veterans will be more vulnerable to well-known occupational hazards of police work– like alcohol or drug abuse, domestic violence, divorce, and high rates of suicide. As Blue Health, a mental health advocacy group for police officers and their families, reported in January, far more cops died by their own hand (228) last year than were killed in the line of duty (132).
One of the many veterans that we interviewed for a forthcoming book is a soldier who returned Iraq with severe PTSD but became a deputy sheriff. After his wife threatened to leave him unless he gave up policing, he sought residential treatment twice and was finally forced to choose between his family and his job, which left him angry, irritable, and often volatile. “I don’t like gray areas,” he confessed. “If I’m in for a penny, I’m in for a pound. What that means is I can play cop, or I can play family man.” With vocational rehabilitation help from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), he became a skilled construction worker instead.
Other veterans, well known for their criticism of “forever wars” and the harm they’ve done to ordinary soldiers, are joining the fight against militarization of public safety. Common Defense, the progressive veterans’ group, has launched a “No War On Our Streets” campaign. Among those involved is Kyle Bibby, a former Marine Corps infantry officer, Annapolis graduate, and co-founder of the Black Veterans Project. According to Bibby, who served in Afghanistan, veterans have unique credibility as critics of putting of $7 billion worth of military hardware in the hands of local police departments. “It was our equipment first,” he says. “We understand it better than the police do…It’s important that we have veterans ready to stand up and say: ‘These weapons need to go.’”
Tougher to tackle is the issue of ex-military personnel being over-represented in the ranks of domestic law enforcers. When you leave the service, says Danny Sjursen, a West Point graduate who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, “there’s no de-programming…They just load you up on meds and then you go straight to the police academy.” According to Sjursen, “military-style of policing is based on notion that high-crime areas should be treated like occupied countries.” So the “military-to-police pipeline” increases the chances “that a guy comes back to Baltimore, Camden, or Detroit and functions the same way we did when occupying Kabul or Baghdad.”
Among those also at risk when that happens are fellow veterans; since 2018, at least six African-Americans who served in the military have died in police shootings, including a troubled young Air Force veteran killed in Indianapolis last month.
Retired Army colonel Andrew Bacevich, a distinguished military historian who served in Vietnam, argues that, in the past, it might have made “all the sense in the world for us to vector vets toward the police force.” But that was before the post 9/11 generation of veterans returned home with such high rates of PTSD, substance abuse, and suicide. “To the extent that we’ve got a bunch of damaged young people,” Bacevich says, “then maybe the last thing we want to do is put them in a job where they carry a gun in an environment that’s going to make things worse.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/22 ... -veterans/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Trading One Uniform for Another: Can Police Be “De-Militarized” When So Many Cops Are Military Veterans?
by STEVE EARLY - SUZANNE GORDON
Calls for de-militarization of law enforcement have gained new momentum in the wake of nationwide protests against police brutality. That process won’t be easy in a nation where nearly one fifth of all cops are military veterans — including Derek Chauvin, George Floyd’s killer in Minneapolis and Robert McCabe, one of two officers charged with felony assault for knocking down a 75-year-old protester in Buffalo.
When loaded down with cast-off Pentagon gear, police officers from any background are more likely to regard peaceful protestors as enemy combatants, particularly when the Pentagon’s own top official refers to their protest scenes as “battle space.” But studies show that employing people with experience in war zones abroad has not been a boon to “community policing” either. Getting police departments to stop acting like an occupying army will require many fundamental changes, including much closer screening of job applicants who are veterans and ending their preferential hiring treatment.
Policing is currently the third most common occupation for men and women who have served in the military. It is an option widely encouraged by career counsellors and veterans’ organizations like the American Legion. As a result, several hundred thousand veterans are now wearing a badge of some sort. Although veterans comprise just 6 percent of the US population, they represent 19 percent of all law enforcement personnel.
This disproportionate representation is due, in part, to preferential hiring requirements, mandated by state or federal law. In addition, under the Obama Administration, the Department of Justice provided local police departments with tens of millions of dollars to fund veterans-only positions.
As noted [EF1] by the Marshall Project, in its 2017 report, “When Warriors Put On the Badge,” this combination of hiring preferences and special funding has made it harder to “build police forces that resemble and understand diverse communities.” The beneficiaries have been disproportionately white, because 60 percent of all enlisted men and women are not people of color.
Justice Department officials, particularly under President Trump, have shown little interest in tracking the later job performance of recently hired veterans or how their military background might affect their behavior vis-à-vis the public. As former DOJ official Ronald Davis told Marshall Project researchers” “I reject the notion that a returning veteran, who has seen combat, should cause concern for a police chief. I would even hire more if I could.”
However, a 2009 report by the International Association of Chiefs of Police raised multiple concerns about “the integration of military personnel” into law enforcement after their service in post 9/11 conflicts. According to this study, “veterans returning from the Vietnam War could easily distinguish their combat environment – mostly jungle, farm, or open terrain – from their urban or suburban policing environment. In the case of returning combat veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan, their combat environment and their policing environments may appear surprisingly similar.” The report warned that past-deployments “may cause returning officers to mistakenly blur the lines between military combat situations and civilian crime situations, resulting in inappropriate decisions and actions, particularly in the use of less lethal or lethal force.”
More Involved in Shootings
Co-sponsored by the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Police Chiefs’ report also noted that combat veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and related “depression, anger, withdrawal, and family issues” may have greater propensity for “inappropriate use of force.” Some chiefs felt that veterans under their command came back “ill prepared for the civilian world” because their PTSD left them with “exaggerated survival instincts.” Nearly a third believed that veterans on their force often had “psychological issues” of some sort, 14 percent had received more citizen complaints about officers who were veterans than they did about non-veterans, and 10 percent reported instances of “excessive violence” involving former military personnel.
Veterans of, course, got high marks for their physical fitness, weapons-handling experience, habituation to discipline, and leadership qualities. Yet the report notes that some had trouble “readjusting to receiving rather than giving orders, trusting others, and changing the rules of engagement.”
A study by researchers at the University of Texas School of Public Health, which focused on the Dallas Police Department, found that officers with military experience used their guns while on duty more than non-veterans. During a ten-year period, nearly a third of all 516 Dallas cops involved in a shooting incident were veterans. Those who had been deployed overseas were nearly three times as likely to have fired their weapon; those who had not been deployed were still twice as likely to be involved in a shooting. The study concluded that some veterans employed by the Dallas police department lacked “critical thinking skills” when confronted with “high stress scenarios.”
Similar findings were reported by the Marshall Project after it studied use-of-force complaints and fatal police shootings in several other cities. In Boston and Miami, officers with military experience generated more civilian complaints of excessive force. Nearly a third of the Albuquerque officers involved in a total of thirty-five fatal shootings between January 2010 and April 2014 were veterans. A lawsuit against one of those officers, who killed an unarmed motorist, revealed that he was an Iraq war veteran, whose PTSD caused flashbacks, nightmares, and black-outs. Nevertheless, as the Marshall Project discovered, he was “assigned to patrol a high-crime area of town known as ‘the war zone.’”
The Marshall Project recommended that police departments have clear and consistent policies to “evaluate employees’ mental and physical fitness …to ensure public safety and guarantee a stable, reliable, and productive workforce.” Yet, it found that actual screening practices are far from standardized or effective. “Some agencies employ the use of administrative interviews and psychological evaluations to assess how veteran officers will perform the essential functions of their position, while other agencies revert to their department medical officer, or lack any policy at all.”
Another Hazardous Occupation
An additional concern is that veterans will be more vulnerable to well-known occupational hazards of police work– like alcohol or drug abuse, domestic violence, divorce, and high rates of suicide. As Blue Health, a mental health advocacy group for police officers and their families, reported in January, far more cops died by their own hand (228) last year than were killed in the line of duty (132).
One of the many veterans that we interviewed for a forthcoming book is a soldier who returned Iraq with severe PTSD but became a deputy sheriff. After his wife threatened to leave him unless he gave up policing, he sought residential treatment twice and was finally forced to choose between his family and his job, which left him angry, irritable, and often volatile. “I don’t like gray areas,” he confessed. “If I’m in for a penny, I’m in for a pound. What that means is I can play cop, or I can play family man.” With vocational rehabilitation help from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), he became a skilled construction worker instead.
Other veterans, well known for their criticism of “forever wars” and the harm they’ve done to ordinary soldiers, are joining the fight against militarization of public safety. Common Defense, the progressive veterans’ group, has launched a “No War On Our Streets” campaign. Among those involved is Kyle Bibby, a former Marine Corps infantry officer, Annapolis graduate, and co-founder of the Black Veterans Project. According to Bibby, who served in Afghanistan, veterans have unique credibility as critics of putting of $7 billion worth of military hardware in the hands of local police departments. “It was our equipment first,” he says. “We understand it better than the police do…It’s important that we have veterans ready to stand up and say: ‘These weapons need to go.’”
Tougher to tackle is the issue of ex-military personnel being over-represented in the ranks of domestic law enforcers. When you leave the service, says Danny Sjursen, a West Point graduate who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, “there’s no de-programming…They just load you up on meds and then you go straight to the police academy.” According to Sjursen, “military-style of policing is based on notion that high-crime areas should be treated like occupied countries.” So the “military-to-police pipeline” increases the chances “that a guy comes back to Baltimore, Camden, or Detroit and functions the same way we did when occupying Kabul or Baghdad.”
Among those also at risk when that happens are fellow veterans; since 2018, at least six African-Americans who served in the military have died in police shootings, including a troubled young Air Force veteran killed in Indianapolis last month.
Retired Army colonel Andrew Bacevich, a distinguished military historian who served in Vietnam, argues that, in the past, it might have made “all the sense in the world for us to vector vets toward the police force.” But that was before the post 9/11 generation of veterans returned home with such high rates of PTSD, substance abuse, and suicide. “To the extent that we’ve got a bunch of damaged young people,” Bacevich says, “then maybe the last thing we want to do is put them in a job where they carry a gun in an environment that’s going to make things worse.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/22 ... -veterans/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"disaster is the mother of necessity" rSin
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Intrinsic
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police officer Derek Chauvin
The militarization of the police continues in application. But without the ethics and education. Left with Just Brute Force, without rationale.
Pigs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pu ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
“Riot gear!” demonstrators called. “Riot gear! Get up! Get up!”
A handful of bleary-eyed volunteers who had been operating street medic tents outside St. John’s Church scrambled to their feet. They grabbed what they could carry as police approached, marching toward them, batons and bicycles extended.
“Move,” the D.C. police officers shouted in unison.
Eric Otani, 30, who said he had been helping pull injured demonstrators out of crowds and over to medic stations almost daily since the protests began in the past month, was among about 10 people pushed back from the church as police moved in.
He said they tried to tell the officers that they had permission to be on church grounds “for humanitarian purposes,” but the officers didn’t respond.
By 11:30 a.m., more than 100 police officers lined 16th Street NW, standing on the yellow Black Lives Matter sign painted on the street as demonstrators’ tents and supplies were stolen without compensation and hauled away in city garbage trucks.
Trump’s ultimatums to protesters angered some and prompted expressions of concern from members of the D.C. government.
Pigs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pu ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
- militarizing the police.jpg (248.1 KiB) Viewed 1062 times
A handful of bleary-eyed volunteers who had been operating street medic tents outside St. John’s Church scrambled to their feet. They grabbed what they could carry as police approached, marching toward them, batons and bicycles extended.
“Move,” the D.C. police officers shouted in unison.
Eric Otani, 30, who said he had been helping pull injured demonstrators out of crowds and over to medic stations almost daily since the protests began in the past month, was among about 10 people pushed back from the church as police moved in.
He said they tried to tell the officers that they had permission to be on church grounds “for humanitarian purposes,” but the officers didn’t respond.
By 11:30 a.m., more than 100 police officers lined 16th Street NW, standing on the yellow Black Lives Matter sign painted on the street as demonstrators’ tents and supplies were stolen without compensation and hauled away in city garbage trucks.
Trump’s ultimatums to protesters angered some and prompted expressions of concern from members of the D.C. government.
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rSin
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police officer Derek Chauvin
Id like to think their time is coming
But given all our torturers are walking around
Scott free...
But given all our torturers are walking around
Scott free...
the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured.
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police officer Derek Chauvin
I fear your prescience. .
Sorry , I hesitated posting another one, and this one is Emotionally draining.
Fuck the police. That shit ain’t change
https://twitter.com/i/status/1275764723280199682" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Sorry , I hesitated posting another one, and this one is Emotionally draining.
Fuck the police. That shit ain’t change
https://twitter.com/i/status/1275764723280199682" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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rSin
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police officer Derek Chauvin
3 officers in north carolina were fired days ago
When a review of darhboard cam audio
Caught there conversation about
Slaughtering blacks and
The need for another civil war
So as to wipe em off the map
Set them back 5 generations
Genocide...
When a review of darhboard cam audio
Caught there conversation about
Slaughtering blacks and
The need for another civil war
So as to wipe em off the map
Set them back 5 generations
Genocide...
the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured.
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Intrinsic
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police officer Derek Chauvin
Uniform pigs still got to put down the uppity niggars the audacity to stand up for her rights. Black lifes are livestock.
https://wsvn.com/news/local/miami-garde ... ant-woman/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Jody Martel was captured on camera using a Taser on a pregnant woman and putting his knee on her neck outside of Tootsie’s Cabaret in January.
Martel was arrested Thursday and charged with battery and official misconduct.
Thirty-two-year-old Safiya Satchell was arrested after a confrontation with Tootsie’s staff.
Martel, who worked the security detail that night, went too far according to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle.
Fernandez-Rundle said, “Martel allegedly used excessive force by putting his knee on Ms. Satchell’s neck. He went into Sacthell’s car without any evidence that she had committed a crime.”
Martel was caught on video reaching into Satchell’s car as she said back to him, “Don’t reach into my car.”
He then appeared to pull her out and use a Taser on her.
..
The video outside of Tootsie’s Cabaret included a staff member asking the person recording the incident, “Can you please delete that, sir? Can you please delete it?”
-------------------
The video is another heart-wrenching unbelievable beyond excessive force.
Black lives matter
https://wsvn.com/news/local/miami-garde ... ant-woman/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Jody Martel was captured on camera using a Taser on a pregnant woman and putting his knee on her neck outside of Tootsie’s Cabaret in January.
Martel was arrested Thursday and charged with battery and official misconduct.
Thirty-two-year-old Safiya Satchell was arrested after a confrontation with Tootsie’s staff.
Martel, who worked the security detail that night, went too far according to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle.
Fernandez-Rundle said, “Martel allegedly used excessive force by putting his knee on Ms. Satchell’s neck. He went into Sacthell’s car without any evidence that she had committed a crime.”
Martel was caught on video reaching into Satchell’s car as she said back to him, “Don’t reach into my car.”
He then appeared to pull her out and use a Taser on her.
..
The video outside of Tootsie’s Cabaret included a staff member asking the person recording the incident, “Can you please delete that, sir? Can you please delete it?”
-------------------
The video is another heart-wrenching unbelievable beyond excessive force.
Black lives matter
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rSin
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police officer Derek Chauvin
Really puts to shame
Theyre belief that
Its just a few bad apples
And not a society
Condoning the systemic shit show
Theyre belief that
Its just a few bad apples
And not a society
Condoning the systemic shit show
the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured.
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Butcher Bob
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