ProfessorPlum
ProfessorPlum's JournalWell, what do we expect the police to do?
I hear this question all over the media and sadly DU as well. A video emerges (because it has to be video before anyone gets upset about anything) with a police officer or a security officer tackling, beating, tasing, punching, wrestling, kicking, dragging, or otherwise pounding a part of a human being’s body into something solid.
The people who defend the police state, fascism, and authoritarianism show up and scratch their heads, and collectively ask, "Well, what do we expect the police to do? They issued an order, and the person didn’t obey them. Or didn’t obey them fast enough. Or didn’t obey them in the way they expected. Or walked away."
What do we expect the police to do? They issue orders, which the little fascists assume everyone must obey, and if they don’t obey, well, what can the police do? *scratches head* The only possible response in their minds is that the police or other authority figure must lay hands on them immediately, and grab and twist them, suppress and sedate them, taser and club them, bash them and beat them until compliance is achieved.
The actual answer to this question, and it applies to police dealing with black people, crazy people, dumb people, poor people, . . . . ALL people, is that we expect the police to TALK. To talk and talk and talk. To keep talking until they are blue in the face. To engage verbally. To establish and keep open communication. To create a dialog. To talk until an agreement or understanding can be reached. To talk, to talk, to talk. TALK.
THAT is what police officers or security officers or anyone else SHOULD DO if someone doesn't "comply" with their "orders". Unless someone is in immediate physical danger, you talk. Maybe in the end they will do what you want. Maybe you will find some other solution to the issue together. Laying hands on another person should be the ABSOLUTE LAST RESORT, and never done out of convenience or impatience. People's bodily integrity needs to be RESPECTED and MAINTAINED. This should be the number one criterion for judging how an encounter with law enforcement proceeds. Anything that breaches that integrity should be regarded as a failure, with attempts to change those encounters in the future.
There is a British show streaming on Netflix called “Happy Valley”. In the first episode, a distraught and not very bright young man is on a kids’ playground, threatening to light himself on fire. The protagonist, a middle-aged, working class, tough, and smart woman policeman . . . TALKS to him. She talks and she talks and she talks. And in the end, on this fictional show, the man’s life is saved, without a broken bone, without a crushed larynx, without a truncheoned leg. That is how a public servant needs to deal with a member of the public. Watching it, I thought with sadness how this encounter would end in the US.
Our new Science Fiction Dystopia
I read a lot of science fiction when I was younger. One very popular book, Snow Crash, by Neil Stephenson, predicted a lot about our current world, including social media, live streaming, virtual reality, and . . .
. . . the dissolving of our nation into a group of corporate city-states. That had their own territories, their own armies/security, their own rules and laws.
As I watched the United passenger being dragged off the plane, first screaming, and then ominously quiet, I flashed back on that book and felt the first real fear that this was happening in real time, to us, right before my eyes.
I feel like the state is about to dissolve away, leaving only corporations, who are free to exploit, poison, cheat, and manhandle people as much as they can, with obedience to them enforced at the end of a club and a taser.
Trump's self-destructive cabinet - or rather destructive of their own cabinet departments - signals the end of the rule of law, our government, our self-rule - in favor of the corporate "beings" who we've given more and more power over to since the supreme court rulings in the 70s that began to pave the way for all of this.
It is fascism. It is corporate rule with no appeal. It is the closing of the courts to mere citizens. It is the boot stomping a human face, forever.
United feels it can physically force screaming people to do what they order them to do. And who is going to stop them? Coca Cola? Apple? Halliburton? Because it sure as shit doesn't seem to be the government. How long before other corporations start demanding obedience and immediate compliance? Because our Justice Department is out to lunch.
Welcome to the world of Snow Crash, where corporations aren't merely the most powerful controlling forces of the government, but are indeed governments unto themselves.
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