Top Quotes: “The End of Policing” — Alex Vitale
Introduction
“Black Americans are disproportionately victims of police shootings; black teens are up to 21 times more likely than white teens to be killed by police, though these rates are often proportional to the race of gun offenders and shooting victims more broadly.”
“There’s now a large body of evidence measuring whether the race of individual officers affects their use of force. Most studies show no effect. More distressingly, a few indicate that black officers are more likely to use force or make arrests, especially of black civilians. One new study suggests that small increases in diversity produce worse outcomes, while large increases begin to show some improvements; but only a handful of departments met this criterion. In the end, the authors conclude, ‘There’s no evidence to suggest that increasing the proportion of officers that are black is going to offer a direct solution.’ Use of force is highly concentrated in a small group of officers who tend to be male, young, and working in high-crime areas.”
“Even detectives (who make up only about 15% of police forces) spend most of their time taking reports of crimes that they’ll never solve — and in many cases will never even investigate. There’s no possible way for police to investigate every reported crime. Even homicide investigations can be brought to a quick conclusion if no clear suspect is identified within 2 days. Burglaries and larcenies are even less likely to be investigated thoroughly, or at all. Most crimes that are investigated aren’t solved.”
“In the 60s and 70s, local and state elites used Rangers to suppress the political and economic rights of Mexican Americans and played a central role in subverting farmworker movements by shutting down meetings, intimidating supporters, and arresting and brutalizing picketers and union leaders. They were also frequently called in to intimidate Mexican Americans out of voting in local elections. Most Latinos were subjected to a kind of ‘Juan Crow’ in which they were denied the right to vote and barred from private and public accommodations such as hotels, restaurants, bus station waiting rooms, public pools, and bathrooms. The first direct assault on this system occurred in 1963 in the small farming town of Crystal City, in which Tejanos made up a majority of the population but had no political representation. The white political establishment enforced segregation, charged Latinos higher taxes, and provided them with substandard services. In 1962, local Mexican Americans began attempting to register to vote, only to be faced with harassment and intimidation from local police and employers. After an extended effort involving outside monitors, press attention, and lawsuits, they registered and, in 1963, ran a slate of candidates for the local city council. In response, the TX Rangers undertook a program of intimidation. They tried to prevent voter rallies, threatened candidates and their supporters, and even engaged in physical attacks and arrests. In the end, because of extensive outside press attention, the Rangers had to back down and the slate swept the election, ushering in a period of greater civil rights for Mexican Americans.”
“From 1962–74, the US government operated a major international police training initiative, staffed by experienced Amer. police execs, called the Office of Public Safety (OPS). This agency worked closely with the CIA to train police in areas of Cold War conflict, including S. Vietnam, Iran, Uruguay, Argentina, & Brazil. According to internal documents, the training emphasized counterinsurgency, including espionage, bomb making, and interrogation techniques. In many parts of the world these officers were involved in human rights abuses including torture, disappearance and extrajudicial killings. Over $200 million in firearms and equipment was distributed to foreign police departments and 1,500 US personnel were involved in training a million officers overseas. Even more troubling is that many of the trainers moved in large numbers into law enforcement, including the DEA, FBI, and numerous local and state police forces, bringing with them a more militarized vision of policing steeped in Cold War imperatives of suppressing social movements through counterintelligence, militarized riot-suppression techniques, and heavy-handed crime control. They applied this counterinsurgency mindset to the political uprisings occurring at home.”
“As Michelle Alexander has put it, ‘We need an effective system of crime prevention and control in our communities, but that’s not what the current system is. This system is better designed to create crime, and a perpetual class of people labeled criminals…Saying mass incarceration is an abysmal failure makes sense, though only if one assumes that the criminal justice system is designed to prevent and control crime. But if mass incarceration is understood as a system of social control — specifically, racial control — then the system is a fantastic success.”
Schools
“Over the last 20 years there has been an explosion in the number of police officers stationed in schools — one of the most dramatic and clearly counterproductive expansions of police scope and power. In the 2013–14 academic year, there were more than 43k school-based police officers in the US. Over 40% of all schools now have police officers assigned to them, 69% of whom engage in school discipline enforcement rather than just maintaining security and enforcing the law.
While the origins of ‘school resource officers’ (SROs) can be traced back to the 1950s, there was a dramatic change in their number and focus in the 90s, thanks in large part to the Justice Department’s ‘Cops in Schools’ program, which gave out $750 million to hire 6,500 new school-based police. While many of these officers work hard to maintain a safe environment for students and to act as mentors and advisors, the overall approach of relying on armed police to deal with safety issues has led to a massive increase in arrests of students that fundamentally undermines the educational mission of schools, turning them into an extension of the larger carceral state and feeding what has come to be called the school-to-prison pipeline.”
“A teacher or administrator who wants keep their job or earn a bonus has an incentive to get rid of students who are dragging down test scores through low performance or bad behaviors that disrupt the performance of other students. This gives those schools a strong incentive to drive those students out, either temporarily through suspensions or permanently through expulsions or dropping out. “
“States that rely heavily on high-stakes tests tend to shift teaching toward test prep and rote learning: this drives out creativity and individualized learning, which contributes to discipline problems as students grow uninterested or resentful. Schools too often respond to this dynamic by adopting ever more restrictive and punitive disciplinary systems. As a result, suspension, arrests, and expulsions increase, driving students out of school and into the criminal justice system. In this environment, teacher morale declines and dropout rates increase.
NC became one of the first states to fully embrace these measures in 1996. Teachers there report spending more and more time on test prep, while subjects not covered by the tests, such as social studies, science, and PE, have been dramatically scaled back. New punitive disciplinary systems, created in the wake of the passage of No Child Left Behind, led to increased suspensions and arrests. Suspensions of less than 10 days increased 41%, long-term suspensions increased 135%, and by 2008, the number of SROs had doubled, leading to 16,499 students being arrested. Racial disparities in suspensions became worse as well, with black students 3.5x more likely to be suspended.”
“Special-needs children make up over a quarter of those referred to police (even though they represent just 14% of students), sometimes leading to horrific results.”
“In 2003, administrators at Goose Creek High School in SC coordinated a massive SWAT team raid of their school in an effort to ferret out drugs and guns. Armored police, with guns drawn, ordered hundreds of mostly black students onto the ground without any specific probable cause as administrators went around identifying students to be searched and arrested. A video of the incident shows students freezing or fleeing in terror as black-clad officers burst out of closets and stairwells screaming commands and pointing guns. Police dogs were brought in to find the drugs that supposedly necessitated the raid. None were found. The administrator who’d organized the raid apologized to parents but pointed out that ‘once police are on campus, they are in control’ — which is exactly the problem.”
“To respond to needs, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has recently been supporting the creation of ‘community schools.’ These schools provide a range of wraparound services, such as medical and mental healthcare, personal counseling, tutoring, community service, and social justice programming, as well as adult education and counseling for parents. Services are often provided by community orgs working in partnership with the schools, allowing services to be tailored to the particular needs of that community. In Salt Lake City, the United Way has partnered with 11 community schools that serve more than 10k students, over half of whom are very low income and over a quarter of whom are English language learners. The program has increased academic achievement and reduced chronic absenteeism, a strong indicator of future problems. Baltimore has 45 community schools serving an overwhelmingly poor and minority student body. These schools have improved attendance rates, and, with restorative justice programs, have reduced suspensions. In many, grad rates and test scores have improved significantly as well. There are some uniformed police in Baltimore schools, but state law requires that they be unarmed and there’s public pressure to further reduce their presence.”
“Restorative justice programs are an established alternative. They were originally conceived to deal with crime in communities but have taken off in schools. Across the country, schools are implementing programs that turn away from punitive approaches to managing student behavior, embracing mechanisms for addressing the underlying causes of student misbehavior and working to integrate students into the community as responsible community members rather than pushing them out, as current disciplinary systems tend to do.
Restorative justice practices are based on a variety of indigenous practices from around the world that predominate in traditional, close-knit communities, in which problems need to be resolved in ways that encourage community stability, cohesion, and self-sustainability. These practices are being implemented in many forms, including peer juries, problem-solving circles, community service, and conflict mediation.”
“Metal detectors, police on campus, and zero-tolerance discipline codes drive a wedge between students and teachers and create a climate of distrust that can actually increase disruptive and criminal behavior. It also reduces the chances that students will alert teachers and administrators to real threats. In most of the mass school students committed by students, there were other students who were aware that plans and threats were in place. Too often, they didn’t report those concerns. According to Mayer and Leone, ‘creating an unwelcoming, almost jail-like, heavily scrutinized environment may foster the violence and disorder school administrators hope to avoid.’”
Mental Health
“The UK police rely on a Mental Health Liaison Officer (MHLO) system, in which a few officers receive extensive training and are supposed to respond to difficult calls and smooth bureaucratic processes between service providers and police. In addition, mental health nurse practitioners are stationed in police dispatch rooms to give responding officers patient histories and real-time advice. They’re also expanding the number of street triage teams in which a nurse rides along with the responding officer.”
“According to the FL Mental Health Institute, chronically mentally ill people are a major source of spending for the criminal justice system. Its study identified 97 ‘chronic offenders’ who, over 5 years, accounted for 2,200 arrests, 27k days in jail, and 13k days in crime units, state hospitals, and ERs. The cost to taxpayers for those people alone was nearly $13 million, or $275k per year per mentally ill person. In Miami-Dade jails, some 1,400 inmates take psychiatric drugs, making the corrections system the largest warehouse for PMI in FL. Mental healthcare there costs taxpayers $80 million / year. The Vera Institute of Justice found that incarcerating PMI costs 2–3x what community-based treatment does.”
Homelessness & Housing
“LA’s Safe Cities Initiative was a bald-faced attempt to drive homeless people out of the historic Skid Row area to make way for gentrification. Ironically, Skid Row itself was originally created as a kind of ghetto of social services for the very poor in order to keep them out of other residential neighborhoods. But as LA’s downtown has become more developed and desirable, Skid Row has become a valuable area for real estate development.
The main stated goal of SCI was to reduce crime in a targeted 50-block area through intensive broken-windows-oriented enforcement. 50 additional police officers were assigned to the area, along with numerous specialized units. Homeless encampments were cleared away, thousands of arrests made, and many more citations issued. In addition, the police were used explicitly to drive people into social services through a variety of formal diversion programs and informal street practices. Forrest Stuart describes how police routinely treated people in programs more leniently than those they perceived to be ‘service resistant.’ In general, however, these programs were based on a variety of self-help and 12-step approaches that rarely succeeded in part because there were no permanent housing, jobs, or sustained health services available.”
“NYC spent $129 million over 5 years to jail those 800 people. That’s over $30k per person per year. Supportive housing costs less. And that amount doesn’t include the costs of ER visits, shelter stays, outreach efforts, etc. In 2013 the UT Housing and Community Development Division reported that the cost of ER treatment and jail time averaged over $16k/year per homeless person, while the cost of providing a fully subsidized apartment was only $11k. A U of NM study documented that providing people with housing reduced jail costs by 64%.”
“There are more than 10 million extremely low-income renter households in the US but only 3.2 million rental homes that are available and affordable to them. As a consequence, 75% of extremely low income renter households spend more than half of their income on housing.”
“One of the lessons learned in the last 20 years is that the best way to get people off the streets and out of the shelters is to make immediate permanent housing available to them at very low or no cost, and to provide a range of optional support services to help them stay there. This is known as the housing-first approach, and it’s growing in prominence. In the past, homeless programs focused on providing emergency and transitional shelter, in the belief that if you stabilized someone and got them a job or necessary benefits, they could then enter the housing market and obtain stable long-term housing. This isn’t the case. This mismatch between low-wage work or government benefits and increasingly expensive housing makes the process untenable. Governments are going to have to intervene in housing markets by building large numbers of heavily subsidized units.”
“VA has been a major proponent of a housing-first approach, including rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing. From 2010 to mid-2015, the state experienced a 31% drop in overall homelessness, including a 38% decrease in family homelessness. In 2015, it became the first state to end veteran homelessness.”
Sex Work
“A 2005 survey of sex workers found that 14% had had sexual experiences with police and 16% had experienced police violence, while only 16% reported having had a good experience going to the police for help. Another study found that a third of the violence young sex workers experienced came at the hands of police.”
“The pioneer of this approach [of criminalizing buying of sex work] is Sweden, which in 1999 voted to decriminalize sex work but increased penalties for trafficking and coercion of sex workers and the purchase of sexual services. This change was motivated by mostly liberal female legislators taking an abolitionist approach to prostitution on feminist grounds. They argued that all sex work is degrading to women (even though not all sex workers are women) and that all women involved in sex work have been coerced in some way — even if just out of economic desperation. Framing sex workers as victims made criminalizing them unjust, so instead they placed the burden on those who coerce women into the trade and those who demand their services.
This ‘Nordic model’ also provides sex workers with access to social services, government benefits, and pensions. Since the law was enacted, there’s been evidence of a decline in the overall number of prostitutes and an increase in the price of services. Interestingly, no one has actually been incarcerated for soliciting sex. The rise in prices suggests a drop in the supply of sex workers rather than an increase in demand. The rhetoric of victimhood has also served to further stigmatize and socially isolate sex workers. Many report that they’re voluntary participants and that criminalizing clients further isolates them. Because their clients are at risk of arrest, they must still work covertly. They still report feeling hunted by the police and driven into the margins of society. In addition, some sex workers have lost custody of their children; others have been evicted by landlords concerned about being prosecuted for facilitating sex work. This means that women must often work alone, as opposed to their having an organized setting in which security and working conditions could be more easily controlled and improved. In the Netherlands and NV, where organized prostitution is permitted, workers are better able to organize to improve safety and working conditions.”
“Brazil has largely decriminalized sex work. Adult sex work is legal, though operating a brothel isn’t. In practice, organized brothels exist fairly openly in many cities, including the central business districts of Rio and Sao Paulo. Different establishments offer services to different classes of clients. The street trade is somewhat minimal because there are so many indoor work environments; it’s often specialized — such as catering to elderly clients around Praca de Republica — and is largely ignored by police. Sex workers catering to women or gay men are also more or less open and rarely subject to police action. There’s also a strong aversion to pimps among police and in the general culture, and they’re involved in only a small and marginal part of the market. This market is remarkably unregulated. There are no licensing or health check requirements, and widespread competition has helped to undermine abusive practices, though the low end of the business is still fraught with unpleasant and dangerous working conditions. Sex workers can go to the police for help when dealing with abusive customers or pimps. Brazil’s deregulated approach is no panacea; there are underage prostitutes working in many areas, especially as part of the sex tourism sector in resort areas, and safe sex practices aren’t always ubiquitous.”
“Organized prostitution in brothels has been legal in rural NV since 1974. Workers (all female) are part of the formal economy, paying taxes and participating in Social Security. They’re treated as independent contractors. They’re required to pay the house a percentage and have regular health checks. The house provides clean workspaces, security, and administrative support. Numerous studies show a high degree of worker satisfaction, low levels of violence, and long work histories. There have been no allegations of forced or underage prostitution. Most workers report having previously worked in other kinds of employment, but find sex work more remunerative. Despite the consistently positive findings of researchers, the urban areas of NV have resisted legalization, and politicians and moral entrepreneurs frequently challenge the law.”
“Sex work is formally decriminalized in parts of Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Red-light districts operate openly in cities and are highly regulated. Women have full rights as workers and police enforcement is largely limited to underage and coerced sex workers, including intl trafficking, and there’s very little evidence of these; usually when they do arise it’s in underground establishments. Sex businesses are generally zoned into specific areas; even some public strolls are allowed. Violence is largely unheard of in the regulated areas, and police respond to calls for assistance. While organized crime has been somewhat displaced by open competition, the limited number of venues and a significant underground trade allow it to remain a substantial and problematic part of the industry.
New Zealand has fully decriminalized prostitution in public and in organized settings, subject to local regulations. Government health and safety workers regularly inspect work premises; sex workers participate in national social benefit schemes and are protected by employment laws. A similar system exists in parts of Australia as well. Violence and trafficking are largely nonexistent, as are underage and coerced sex work.”
“Legalized sex work has dramatically reduced the role of organized crime and police corruption, and in many cases allows for greatly improved working conditions in which sanitation, safety, and safe sex practices are widespread and reinforced through government oversight. Civilian health workers rather than police are the primary agents of regulation, encouraging greater cooperation and compliance. This approach also undermines the view of sex workers as helpless victims in need of saving, which is degrading, stigmatizing, and simply inaccurate.”
Drugs
“In 1995 the FDA approved a prescription opioid called OxyContin, kicking off a boom in the use of prescription opioids. Sales of OxyContin grew from $45 million in 1996 to $3.1 billion in 2010. The manufacturer, Purdue, told doctors that this new opioid formulation was less likely to be addictive and that they should prescribe it aggressively to reduce pain. Unfortunately, many patients became addicted and a huge black market in the pills developed. Eventually the DEA and FDA realized this and took steps to tightly control the availability of the drug. Millions of people who were now dependent on it could no longer get it legally. Instead, they had to pay very high prices on the black market, or switch to heroin, which is much less expensive and much more dangerous. People who were takin medically regulated pills shifted to totally unregulated street heroin, which can vary in strength and contain impurities and additives — which is what produces the vast number of overdoses. Indeed, Oxy overdoses only began to spike after the pills became harder to obtain. In addition, heroin is more likely to be injected, leading to the spread of disease, abscesses, and other complications. It’s also been suggested that the ongoing prohibition of weed has contributed to this crisis. There’s growing evidence that marijuana is effective in some forms of chronic pain management. Prohibitionist policies, including restrictions on research, have led doctors to rely on opioids in circumstances where weed might be used, thus eliminating the risks of addiction and overdose posed by opioids.
The prohibition efforts of the 20th century weren’t about improving public health; they were about political opportunism and managing ‘suspect populations.’ The first major prohibitionist measure was the Harrison Act of 1914, which created legal restrictions on opium, heroin, and cocaine, all of which had been widely available in patent medicines and other forms. Arguments in favor of restricting these drugs had a profoundly racist character. Opium, which was associated with laborers from China, was largely ignored until it became popular with upper- and middle-class white women, who were obtaining it in ‘shady’ Chinatown opium dens. Racial purists and xenophobes were alarmed by white women mixing with Chinese opium users and sellers, fearing a breakdown in the social distance between them.”
“Those who railed against cocaine did so in anti-black terms. Plantation foremen had given it to enslaved workers to stimulate work and reduce hunger. Now cocaine was vilified because black people were taking it of their own accord. Prohibitionists raised the specter of drug-induced attacks on white women, and many accusations of rape and concomitant lynchings were tied to the drug. There was also a widespread fear in the South that blacks on cocaine had superhuman strength and couldn’t be stopped with .32-caliber bullets, then the standard police issue, prompting the widespread adoption of .38-caliber bullets.
Weed had been used along the Mexican border for many decades without much concern. However, there was a significant upsurge in migration following the Mex. Revolution of the early 20th century. States passed antimarijuana laws, giving police a legal pretext to search and question migrants and create a climate of fear. In the N, marijuana was criminalized after becoming popular among black Americans in the big cities. Its close association with jazz and black culture led to a moral panic. These twin forces came together nationally with federal prohibition in 1937.
Intensive drug prohibitionism was tied to conservative nativist policies. Johann Hari describes the exploits of the nation’s first drug czar, Harry Anslinger, who from 1930–63 waged a never-ending battle focused primarily on immigrants and POC. He was personally involved in arresting and harassing jazz legend Billie Holiday and may’ve directly contributed to her death in police custody in 1959. Using junk science and political intimidation, he forced doctors and officials to embrace prohibitionism despite robust medical evidence to the contrary. He also helped drive the adoption of international treaties that allowed for a greater federal role in drug control and spread the prohibitionist ideology internationally.”
“A medical approach to heroin allows for some normality. People on their treatments can go back to work, live with their families, and generally experience a gradual reduction in usage. It also keeps them off the streets and reduces the need for theft, removing them entirely from the criminal justice system. Instead, most judges order immediate abstinence, often in jails, with no medical treatment for the intense symptoms of withdrawal. This is usually followed up with an outpatient treatment program. In many cases, the person immediately returns to the streets and begins using again. This dangerous cycle increases the likelihood of overdosing and, in a few cases, has resulted in deaths that might’ve been avoided. This may be a violation of the ADA, with specifically lists addiction as a disability; courts shouldn’t be denying people access to medically proven treatments for their conditions.”
“In 2001, Portugal decriminalized all drugs and dramatically shifted its enforcement practices to a harm-reduction model. The results have been mostly very favorable. Most drug use is now treated as a health problem. Doctors can prescribe drugs, personal possession is no longer a crime, and police are no longer involved in trying to stop low-level dealing. Needle exchange is available and opioid addicts are offered replacement drugs such as methadone. Studies have found significant reductions in heroin addiction, overdoses, and disease transmission. In 1999, Portugal had the highest rate of HIV infection among injecting drug users in the EU; by 2009, the number of newly diagnosed HIV cases among drug users had decreased substantially. There is some indication of a minor increase in lifetime usage rates, though this may be due to more truthfulness in reporting as social and legal stigmas decline. In addition, the problems of excessive use of incarceration, police corruption, and harassment of addicts has declined. What remains, though, is the illegal importation of drugs, which is tied to intl organized crime. Police continue to pursue interdiction efforts, seizing large quantities of drugs, which keeps the door to police corruption open.”
Gangs
“Even in the most gang-intensive communities, only 10–15% of young people are in gangs; research consistently shows that most involvement is short-lived, lasting on average only a year. While some become intensively involved and identified with their gangs, many more have a looser connection and drift in and out depending on life circumstances. Rarely does leaving result in serious consequences. A new child or job are generally sufficient explanation for not being on the streets any longer.”
“Communities often have good ideas about how to reduce crime through nonpunitive mechanisms, when given access to real resources. One model for pursuing this is community-based restorative justice. In this model, community members, through a representative body, are asked to assess the risks of taking some offenders back into the community instead of sending them to prison. They use some or all of the resources that would’ve been spent on incarceration to develop rehab and prevention programs.”
“This model would engage offenders on restitution and harm-reduction projects to help repair the damage they’ve caused. Abandoned houses that are sites of drug dealing and violence could be rehabilitated to provide stable housing. Older youth could be trained to mentor younger ones about how to resolve disputes without relying on violence, stay in school, and prep for a difficult job market.
So much of the young gang and violence problem stems, as David Kennedy’s research points out, from a sense of insecurity. When young people are constantly at risk of victimization, they turn to gangs and weapons to provide some semblance of protection. Communities need help in exercising informal controls to try and break this dynamic. There’s no one solution to this, but active, positive adult involvement in the lives of these young people would be a major step in the right direction. This would require developing the capacity of parents to be more involved, which means looking at the structure of working hours and the high costs of childcare. Often parents are unable to supervise their children adequately because of the intense demands of multiple jobs with erratic schedules. We also need to invest in drug treatment and mental health services to address the difficulties some parents face in managing themselves, much less their children.
Youth workers, coaches, and school counselors can all play a role in mentoring and monitoring young people. In too many cases, however, we’re replacing them with more police. When communities demand more police, those resources have to come from somewhere else, and too often they come from schools and community services.”
“Another way to empower communities is to invest heavily in public-health-oriented prevention programs that operate at the neighborhood level. Often undertaken under the banner of ‘Cure Violence,’ these programs try to send strong anti-violence messages to young people, engage them in pro-social activities like after-school art and job training programs, and hold workshops in nonviolence conflict resolution. They also employ outreach workers as violence interrupters, who can talk to young people from a shared position. The power of that connection for building credibility cannot be overstated. These workers are trying to break the cycle of violence through rumor control, gang truces, and ongoing engagement with youth and on the streets.”
Immigration
“The 1924 passage of the National Origins Act established nationality-based immigration quotas for the first time. To enforce these quotas, Congress created the US Border Patrol.”
“In 1992 there were just over 4k Border Patrol agents; following 9/11, that number increased to 10k; today it stands at more than 20k, making it larger than the ATF, FBI, and DEA combined. The Border Patrol is aided by local and state police and a variety of federal agencies, including the National Guard, the US military, and ICE. In fiscal year 2012, the federal government spent more than $18 billion on immigration enforcement — more than all other federal law-enforcement spending combined.”
“The US government developed the Bracero Program to try to regularize migrant farm work. Employers were obligated to provide decent wages and working conditions, and migrants received official permits to work in the US. Enforcement was lax, and wages and working conditions were quite poor and well below the standards set for other workers. Women, children, and domestic workers weren’t covered by the program, so unauthorized immigration continued. In addition, many employers refused to use the new program, especially in TX. Farmers and ranchers resented federal intervention in their longstanding labor systems, which often amounted to peonage. Workers who complained or organized against low wages were simply handed over to the Border Patrol for deportation.”
“From early on, the Border Patrol has engaged in racial profiling. They’ve argued that ‘looking Mexican’ is sufficient grounds for stopping, questioning, and demanding ID. In 1973 the Supreme Court codified these practices in US vs. Brignoni-Ponce, in which it upheld the right of the Border Patrol to use racial profiles as the sole basis for vehicle stops and force identification. This is based in part on the 1953 federal law that gives Border Patrol agents the right to suspend constitutional protections within 100 miles of the border and stop, search, and ascertain the immigration status of any person, whether or not they have any probable cause or even reasonable suspicion. The ACLU maintains that this is a violation of the Constitution. They also point out that Border Patrol abuses have been reported far away from the border as well. In 2008, Sen. Patrick Leahy was stopped on I-95 in VT, 75 miles from the border, ordered out of his vehicle, and forced to produce ID.”
“In 2003 ICE created Fugitive Operations Teams intended to focus on finding migrants who’ve committed serious crimes. Over the last decade and a half, the number of these units has risen from 8 in 2003 to 129 today, at a cost of $155 million/year. These units were created to get serious criminals off the streets and out of the country, which is likely to make them a focus of increased funding under T****p. In practice, however, they engage in fishing expeditions in which they enter homes and workplaces on flimsy evidence and undertake dragnet type tactics that ensnare primarily non-criminal migrants. DHS’ inspector general reported that the info used to plan and justify these raids is ‘grossly inaccurate.’ The Migration Institute documented that, from 2001–8, about 3/4 of those arrested had no criminal record. In 2007, despite spending over $100 million, these teams arrested only 672 people with serious criminal histories. In more recent years, the percentage of serious arrests has declined even further, quotas have been established, and the number of units increased. In 2012, these teams arrested 37k people, the vast majority of whom had no history of violent crime.
ICE also created a Worksite Enforcement Unit in 2006 that conducts heavily armed raids of workplaces and reviews employee lists looking for possible undocumented migrants, who are then intimidated into agreeing to deportation without a hearing or access to a lawyer. The Obama admin. claimed to have shifted the focus to targeting employers, but employee audits led to mass firings of legal and undocumented workers. Of almost 100k prosecutions in 2009, only 13 were of employers.”
“Journalist Laura Poitras was detained multiple times after she worked with whistleblower Edward Snowden and produced a film which criticizes US policy in the Middle East. Amer. scholars of Islam and the Middle East have been accused of terrorism, detained without lawyers, and had their personal and electronic possessions searched and seized without a warrant. In none of these cases was there any question about their citizenship.”
“In 2014 the Amer. Immigration Council found that, out of 809 official complaints against BP agents, only 13 resulted in any discipline. In the most serious case, 1 officer was suspended; the rest received little more than reprimands.”
“In 2014, then-Gov Rick Perry ordered the TX National Guard to the border at a cost of $12 million/month to ‘enforce state law.’ This involved thousands of heavily armed troops, with little or no civilian law enforcement training, in domestic law-enforcement operations. This seems to contradict the spirit, if not the letter, of the Posse Comitatus Act, which outlaws the use of the military for domestic law enforcement.”
“There’s no logistical way to build an effective wall between the US and Mexico. The terrain is too difficult, the cost too great, and the ways around it too many. For one thing, 40% of all people in the country illegally come by plane and overstay one of a variety of visas. Walls can’t just be built and left to do their thing. They must be staffed and maintained. Any wall can be breached, climbed over, or tunneled under if no one is watching. That would require a vast army along the fence, which would undoubtedly contribute to more unnecessary deaths. 700+ border tunnels were discovered between 2006–14, and further wall building will undoubtedly stimulate more tunnel building.”
“Today’s migrant farmworkers aren’t covered by minimum-wage laws, have few enforceable workplace protections, are routinely exposed to dangerous chemicals, and receive only the most minimal access to housing, health, education, and welfare.”
“When the EU lowered its internal borders, there were fears that organized crime would benefit, local cultures would be undermined, that mass migration would create economic chaos as poorer S. Europeans moved N. None of this happened. In fact, migration decreased as the EU began developing poorer areas within Europe as a way of producing greater economic and social stability.
We could do the same thing in N. America, but instead have largely done the opposite. NAFTA had devastating consequences for agricultural production in Mexico, displacing and impoverishing millions. The end of state-subsidized corn farming in Oaxaca led to the collapse of the rural economy there, driving hundreds of thousands to attempt to migrate to the US.”
The War on Terror and Protest
“In 2009, the US government backed a coup against the democratically elected left-wing government in Honduras. That government is now torturing, executing, and disappearing environmental and labor activists.”
“India, while more democratic, has a police force primarily concerned with political management. After independence from Britain, it retained colonial forms of policing, with their emphasis on political surveillance and riot control to suppress industrial actions, ethnic conflicts, peasant uprisings, and guerrilla movements such as the Naxalites. Efforts to deal with crime and everyday public safety have been consistently sidetracked in favor of beefing up intelligence-gathering and developing more sophisticated systems of suppressing political activity. The only units to receive extensive training and resources are intelligence and riot control divisions. Corruption and low wages for regular units remain endemic. Rural police are usually under the control of local agricultural elites, who rely on them to maintain control over the vast rural poor, especially the lowest ‘scheduled’ castes and ethnic minorities. Police are routinely implicated in atrocities against such groups. Everyday policing is characterized by the release of politically connected or rich suspects and the torture and imprisonment of those unable to secure their release through bribes. Police are specifically authorized to spy on opposition political parties and do so with great thoroughness. orgs must receive prior approval from the police for demonstrations and even meetings and conferences that might draw intl participation.”
“The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund uncovered, through litigation, evidence that the FBI treated Occupy as a ‘terrorist threat’ even before it undertook its first action. While there’s insufficient evidence to support claims by Naomi Wolf and others that the federal government organized or coordinated the local efforts to shut down Occupy, it’s clear that federal intelligence agencies, working with local law enforcement, were actively gathering and sharing info about the movement with each other and with financial institutions. In the end, the decision to break up Occupy encampments in hundreds of cities was made by local political leaders and carried out by local police, though the timing and tools used to accomplish them may have grown out of federally-coordinated info sharing.”
“Police have fought the War on Terror nationally and locally through widespread surveillance, entrapment, and inflaming public fears, with little increase in public safety. Whistleblower Edward Snowden, with the help of journalist Glenn Greenwald, helped to expose the true extent of government spying, which violates constitutional principles and existing laws. Americans have come to understand that their phone and email communications aren’t secure and that this is being done in collusion with major communications corps. The government has yet to produce a single terrorism case from this surveillance.
In 2004, the NYPD arrested 24-year-old Pakistani immigrant Shahawar Siraj for plotting to bomb the Herald Square subway station in Manhattan. Lawyers say Siraj was entrapped by a paid police informant facing drug charges, who spent months hatching the plot and pushing the idea of a bombing. Siraj had ‘no explosives, no timetable for an attack, and little understanding about explosives.’ According to Human Rights Watch, the NYPD’s own records showed that he was unstable and ‘extremely impressionable due to severe intellectual limitations.’ When asked to participate in the plot Siraj replied that he had to ask his mother first and never actually agreed to participate, according to the NYPD’s own assessment. Nevertheless, he was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
In 2011, Rezwan Ferdaus was arrested by the FBI for participating in a plot to blow up the Pentagon and Capitol. He was targeted by an FBI informant who infiltrated his local mosque, coaxed Ferdaus into the plot, and supplied him with fake weapons, although it was clear he had a mental disability. As the plan unfolded, Ferdaus’ condition deteriorated dramatically. He lost control of his bladder and began to suffer from seizures and extreme weight loss. Eventually his father had to quit his job to care for him. Despite this, Ferdaus was convicted of supplying material support to terrorism and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. These cases were hailed as proof that police were winning the War on Terror.
The NYPD undertook a massive secret spying operation run by its ‘Demographics Unit,’ targeting Muslim and Arab communities throughout the city without any specific probable causes. Documents obtained by journalists Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman described undercover operatives dispatched to mosques, cafes, community centers, and college campuses to search for hints of extremist viewpoints and to learn the social, cultural, and political layout of these communities.”
“These practices are counterproductive and substantially undermine the credibility of police. Most real info about extremist violence is obtained by community members reporting on people they fear are up to no good. However, when whole communities feel discriminated against, abused, and mistrusted, they’re less likely to come forward for fear that their role will be misunderstood or that well-meaning but mistaken tips will hurt the innocent rather than sparking an honest investigation. In the words of the ACLU, this type of policing makes us both less safe and less free.”
“Decisions about the granting of permits and the plans for deploying police should be largely removed from police control. Police may share their views about traffic management and serious security risks, but decisions should be in the hands of elected leaders operating within legal frameworks that protect the right to dissent. This shift won’t be without problems; some leaders will undoubtedly politicize the decision-making process in ways that benefit some groups and not others. This will, however, make clearer the lines of accountability that today are often masked by a technocratic framework. Police make discretionary decisions about when, where, and how groups can protest based on their own threat assessments, which have always been clouded by political bias. That political influence is hidden behind the police bureaucracy.”
Conclusion
“In the 20th century, 2 major areas of policing were eliminated when alcohol and gambling were legalized. These 2 changes reduced the scope of policing without sacrificing public safety. Prohibition had led to a massive increase in organized crime, violence, and police corruption but had little effect on the availability of alcohol; ending it reduced crime, enhanced police professionalism, and incarcerated fewer people.
Similarly, fruitless attempts to stamp out underground lotteries, sports betting, and gambling proved totally counterproductive, empowering organized crime and driving police corruption. Government control and regulation of gambling has raised revenue and undermined the power of organized crime. By creating state lotteries, regulating casinos, and only minimally enforcing sports betting, the state has limited police power without sacrificing public safety. There’s no reason the same couldn’t be done for sex work and drugs today. The billions saved in policing and prisons could be much better used putting people to work and improving public health.”
“These communities also need more political power and resources to develop their own strategies for reducing crime. Concepts like restorative justice and Justice Reinvestment offer alternatives. The money that would be saved by keeping people out of prison could be spent on drug and mental health services, youth programs and jobs in the community. At the same time, offenders could be asked to make restitution to their victims and the community through community service projects, agreements to stay clean and sober, and participation in appropriate programming. The Justice Reinvestment movement also looked to use savings achieved by reducing incarceration rates to invest in high-crime communities. Unfortunately, many of these programs ended up only moving money around within the criminal justice system and excluding communities from any role in the process. The basic ideal remains sound, but new efforts at realizing it are needed and communities need to play a major role in deciding how the resources are used. But not all problems can be solved at this level. Access to decent housing and employment and the ongoing problems of polarized income structures and racial discrimination in housing must be dealt with systemically. Raising the minimum wage, restoring transit links, and cracking down on housing discrimination are big problems that operate largely outside these poor neighborhoods. If we want to make real headway in reducing the concentrated pockets of crime in this country, we need to create real avenues out of poverty and social isolation.
The Black Youth Project in Chicago envisions a program for economic development that would substantially improve the lives of people in high-crime communities as an alternative to relying on police and prisons. Their ‘Agenda to Build Black Futures’ calls for reparations to address the long legacy of systematic exploitation of black Americans. Just as importantly, it focuses at length on decent jobs that can sustain a family above the poverty line. That means raising the minimum wage through direct government action, as well as giving workers the right to self-organize for better wages.”
