"The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state." - Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court in Houston v. Hill (1987).

We live in a police state. The existence of worse police states does not change that fact.

This is nothing compared to what’s gonna happen when protestors start claiming that corporations aren’t people or demanding to know why we have billionaires as millions more formerly middle-class families collapse into poverty.

We ignored the fact that the drug wars were actually wars on the American people. That's why we're at this place. We think we can change human nature with prisons.

When even National Review is running a piece like “It’s Time for Conservatives to Stop Defending Police,” you know that the issue is becoming too acute to ignore.

Freddie deBoer's naivete is extraordinary.

http://www.policemisconduct.net/

That's a site run by libertarian Cato Institute. They are ahead of most people with respect to the police being out of control.

The police exist primarily to enforce the state monopoly on violence, usually by acting out the violence directly. It's much worse for people of color, working class or poor people, young people, people with disabilities including addiction, any target group member. But the police maintain their right to beat the shit out of anyone they want, for any reason, at any time. This is not a new phenomenon. After 10,000 years of civilization, is anyone surprised about this?

Is it worse now, or just documented better?

I'd wager half these incidents are attributable to panic on the part of the police - like the John T Williams shooting in Seattle. They're really jittery and have military protocols drilled into their heads.

#6

Well...maybe. I question whether the problem is not too much enforcement but too little.

What I have seen around Seattle for over a decade is that the police were used as all purpose caretakers of the outdoor insane asylum known as downtown as well as human shields for the rampage shooters and knife wielders in addition to doing their job of preventing and apprehending mostly rational criminals.

When you take a person who is out there all day being abused beyond what they are paid for, and then suddenly snap, is it 100% their personal, or even organizational fault?

Were these police strained to the gills and taking on that same caseload of every ill in society?

My guess would be yes...that everything from day care to combat warfare was put upon them.

It's great for SLOG liberals to be roused out of their ergo-metric standing desk to focus for a few days at a backwater like Ferguson. Harder would be to see how the same situation of societal neglect and under-policing have lead to the same situation with John T. Williams.

Halle-fucking-lujah, it's about time this became an issue for national discussion. Here in NYC, one of the names for the NYPD is "the gang in blue," because they often behave like a well-organized street gang, they protect their own, won't speak to outsiders, and ostracize "rats," or worse.

A policeman's bonds to the citizens who employ him should be stronger than his bonds to his "brothers" in blue, especially when those brothers are bad, dirty, or incompetent.

@8

1) The social workers who work with the Seattle mentally I'll population make a FRACTION of what cops make and they certainly don't complain or react violently. Furthermore, there are lower incidents of violent crime in the mentally I'll population than the mentally sound population.

2) And just how many rampage shooters have SPD had to act as human shields for? How many police have been injured or killed in such situations?

Being a police officer isn't nearly as dangerous as their propaganda would lead us to believe. Sure, sometimes they are injured or killed. But they know about those dangers when apply for the job. And their reaction to that risk, namely overzealous violence, is absolutely inexcusable.

The Blue Klux Klan doesn't stop at making war on people of color. Just look at Occupy. And our allegedly liberal president was backing up the violence by cops against those middle class and mostly white Occupiers.

#6

Surprised? No, but that doesn't mean I should not still be outraged. It also doesn't mean I don't think reform is required. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure anyone's level of surprise on this issue means much of anything really.

#7

If the job of policing is too tough for a cop then they shouldn't be one, full stop. And that means yes, they should be personally responsible when they go too far.

I have my doubts that policing is so hard that cops can't help but overreact. I think a good part of the problem are the type of people who go into policing in this day and age. Instead of being motivated to keep the peace in their communities, many cops seek the job just for the excitement, and the actual work of keeping the peace is boring to them. I have met more than one cop on a personal level that fit that description, and I don't think those kinds of people should be cops at all.

JBITDMFOTP

I'm very skeptical that this is going anywhere after the Ferguson furor dies down but it sure is nice to see the drug war gestapo on the defensive for once. I wish they would roll the whole property forfeiture criminal racket into these calls for reform as well.

A policeman's bonds to the citizens who employ him should be stronger than his bonds to his "brothers" in blue, especially when those brothers are bad, dirty, or incompetent.

@9's comment brings up a noteworthy issue. Yes, the FPD's makeup should better reflect the community it serves — but that community is not only about two-thirds black, it's also at least half female.

Incidents like the inciting one here happen because many police "services" are infused with an unhealthy level of macho bullshit. If women were represented on them in ratios which reflected their share of the population, it would go a long way toward reining that in.

#10

Part of the Agenda is to put police and communities at odds with each other. This allows for the resultant anarchy that allows the crooks to prosper.

Thus, you get these cities with some very expensive neighborhoods, and huge swaths of formerly middle class areas that become gang-infested no man's lands!

Everyone knows there should be more, not less, policing but because the powers that be get us to fight each other rather than building up more land into "good" neighborhoods, the people who want to restrict access and charge top dollar win.

In the end, these Cops vs. Crooks battles are no different than Gladiators vs. Lions, put on by royals as a circus for the populace.

@17 did you have a point other than calling the black community "crooks"?

#17

Now what agenda is that exactly? I'm sure there are some white papers you can point the curious towards.

And where are these huge swaths of formerly middle-class areas that are now gang-infested no man's lands? There must be giant chunks of neighborhood in every city and town in the nation to justify all this police militarization, I'd like to hear where they are. Let's start with Seattle, care to list some names?

Well, I for one welcome any "Conservative/Right Wing" efforts to reduce police misconduct (cf. the Nat'lRev article), and the removal of their military-grade weaponry. I don't think it will amount to much, but you never know.

(side note: Where are all the 2ndAmendment types on this? Why aren't they out in the streets protesting police brutality & tyranny & stuff? oh right, the victims are black. Never mind.)

OTOH, with inequality rising & the continued profit-mining of our country's economy, the well-to-do will need heavily armed cops more than ever.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see the rise of officially-deputized --and well-armed-- private 'policing' services protecting rich enclaves and corporate property.
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@17 - WTF? That sounds like a bunch of fantasy-land mumbo-jumbo. It's certainly not supported by actual reality.

@ 20 Yup. We already see a lot of it and it's going to grow.

Part of the problem is the anti tax crowd - you get what you pay for.