American devotion to order over justice must end

[n2doc]

by Chaumtoli Huq

Last summer, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, I stood on the sidewalk in Times Square while my husband took my kids to use a restroom in a nearby restaurant. We had just left a rally for Palestinian children killed in Gaza. As I waited alone, a police officer monitoring the rally ordered me to move. I did, stepping back towards the restaurant wall. This was not good enough for him. In seconds, he flipped me, pushed me against the wall, pressed his body on mine and while I was handcuffed, said I was resisting arrest. Photos later revealed his arms bulging with the ferocity of the arrest.

As a lawyer, I have done “Know Your Rights” trainings on this very police tactic: bootstrapping charges to justify arrest. As I was being arrested, I began to repeat in a monotone voice, “I am not resisting arrest,” to which the officer responded, “Shut your mouth.” When I objected to him going through my purse and pulling out my photo I.D., he said, “I can do whatever I want, because you are my prisoner.” At that moment it was true. It didn’t matter that I had been appointed in January 2014 as top counsel to New York City’s Public Advocate, the first Bangladeshi-American to reach that level of city government and one of few Muslim Americans in the newly elected administration.

The command “Shut your mouth” stuck out for me, because it is symbolic of how our legal and political system views and expects people of color to behave: quietly. Sandra Bland asked why she was being arrested. Asserting her rights as a woman of color to a white male officer was seen as disruptive and met with an aggressive response. Wearing my traditional South Asian tunic, visibly an immigrant, my mere presence was disruptive as well.

I was separated from my family and funneled through the criminal legal system, which black and Latino communities sadly know too well. After 9/11, the Muslim American community experienced aggressive surveillance and policing, by both state and federal authorities. Black Muslims have borne the brunt of both racial and religious profiling.

more

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/8/american-devotion-to-order-over-justice-must-end.html

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I recommend this article to everyone.

It highlights several very basic problems with our 'justice' system, starting with the notion that 'Do what I tell you to do, because I told you to do it' is a legitimate way for police to interact with the public. If they have the time to arrest you, they have the time to tell you why whatever you were originally doing, BEFORE they came up with trumped up charges of 'resisting arrest' or 'obstruction' was actually something worthy of arrest. Was anyone being harmed by the author of the piece simply standing and waiting for her spouse and child? No. There was no legitimate public interest being served in police telling her to 'move along'.

Second, the next line, of 'I can do whatever I want, because you are my prisoner'. Another basic flaw of the system, if police actually believe that is true.

What we need more than 'justice', is what the author mentioned in passing - a 'rights based' system. A system where a non-violent alleged offender has a right not only to challenge any use of force against them immediately, but at every following step of the system until it is dealt with, and excessive force results in swift responses that materially affect those who commit them. Where the body camera footage and arrest reports, INCLUDING victim statements about the arrest by the arrested person are automatically reviewed by a panel of external people who are not 'part of' the police force, and do not 'owe' them anything.

And one in which bogus arrests that result in instances such as this are permanent black marks on a record, and enough of them result in loss of job, and a ban from working in any form of law enforcement anywhere in the country.

[2naSalit]

2. Indeed...

The city adamantly refused to include any police reform in the settlement, not even the basic suggestions I had made: a town hall meeting with the mayor for those affected by policing or a meeting with the police captain of the precinct in which I was held in custody. I was only offered money. I knew my rights, but they were not of use to me. Weighing the options, I settled, giving up what should be a basic civic right — to be heard by those elected to serve and those hired to protect us. I am reminded again of what the officer said to me: Shut your mouth.

Even as an experienced litigator knowledgeable about law and with supposed access to elected officials, I was unable to exercise my legal or political rights. In the U.S., we have a culture of rights rhetoric that distracts us from the reality that we don’t have a rights-based legal system. Structural racism and sexism, interacting with seemingly neutral rules, exclude people of color and women from participation in our legal-political system. If both the legal and electoral systems are unable to realize the rights and remedy the concerns of communities of color and the working poor, then disruption tactics by activists, and in particular Black Lives Matter activists, become a necessary strategy.

Disruption is key during the electoral cycle, because it is the only time that elected officials need votes of communities of color.