So, there’s this poster that’s been circulating around anarchist, civil libertarian, and lefty blogs for a few months now. It’s become popular because it’s funny (in a nerdy way), and also because it makes an important point:

But, well, the awful truth is that, as with so many other things in American politics, the answer to that rhetorical question can’t really be taken for granted, because it really depends on what kind of neighborhood you live in. The poster makes an important point addressed to, and about the daily lives of, people of a particular socioeconomic class (specifically, the people who most often spend their time reading blogs). For many if not most people in other social classes, the answer really is just, You bet it will. Or, It already is. Has been for decades. Where you been?

For example, consider the cops plans for improving neighborhood safety in the D.C. Ghetto. No, I’m not using that last word as a careless synonym for slum. I am using it in the most literal sense.

D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate Neighborhood Safety Zones. At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn't live there, work there or have legitimate reason to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

— Michael Neibauer and Bill Myers, The Examiner (2008-06-04): Lanier plans to seal off rough 'hoods in latest effort to stop wave of violence

Guess who decides what counts as a legitimate reason for being in the neighborhood — the people who live and work in that neighborhood, or the government’s goon squad?

Lanier has been struggling to reverse D.C.'s spiraling crime rate but has been forced by public outcry to scale back several initiatives including her All Hands on Deck weekends and plans for warrantless, door-to-door searches for drugs and guns.

Under today's proposal, the no-go zones will last up to 10 days, according to internal police documents. Front-line officers are already being signed up for training on running the blue curtains.

Peter Nickles, the city's interim attorney general, said the quarantine would have a narrow focus.

This is a very targeted program that has been used in other cities, Nickles told The Examiner. I'm not worried about the constitutionality of it.

— Michael Neibauer and Bill Myers, The Examiner (2008-06-04): Lanier plans to seal off rough 'hoods in latest effort to stop wave of violence

Just so we’re clear, neither am I. I couldn’t possibly care less whether surrounding poor neighborhoods with cops, giving everyone the Ihre Papiere, bitte treatment, and chopping a community up into police-occupied strategic hamlets for the purpose of a government quarantine without any probable cause whatsoever for believing that any of the individual people you will be surrounding, stopping, hassling, and threatening with jail have ever committed any crime against any identifiable victim, is or is not countenanced by the United States Constitution. Who cares? The basic problem with terrorizing and brutalizing entire neighborhoods is that it is evil and incredibly dangerous, whether or not the Constitution allows for it.

Others are. Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the D.C. police union and a former lawyer, called the checkpoint proposal breathtaking.

Shelley Broderick, president of the D.C.-area American Civil Liberties Union and the dean of the University of the District of Columbia's law school, said the plan was cockamamie.

I think they tried this in Russia and it failed, she said. It's just our experience in this city that we always end up targeting poor people and people of color, and we treat the kids coming home from choir practice the same as we treat those kids who are selling drugs.

The proposal has the provisional support of D.C. Councilman Harry Tommy Thomas, D-Ward 5, whose ward has become a war zone.

They're really going to crack down on what we believe to be a systemic problem with open-air drug markets, Thomas told The Examiner.

Thomas said, though, that he worried about D.C. moving towards a police state.

— Michael Neibauer and Bill Myers, The Examiner (2008-06-04): Lanier plans to seal off rough 'hoods in latest effort to stop wave of violence

But what the hell did D.C. Councilman Harry Tommy Thomas expect, anyway? You can’t go around pushing your paramilitary crack downs with rhetoric about war zones and then act all surprised when you get a police state. If you plan for an occupation, you can expect that you are going to get lock-downs and de facto martial law.

Radley Balko writes:

Last week, I received the following email:

I live in Eckington, a transitional neighborhood in northeast DC. I got a knock on the door this morning from a guy with ACORN (looks like a lefty community group that I'd never heard of) saying that DC police would be coming around shortly asking to search homes in the neighborhood for guns, and explaining we had the constitutional right to refuse, etc. He added that anything the police find they can use against you because you never know what a friend of a friend might have left in your house Not sure if he told me this because I had just gotten out of bed and had answered the door in my bathrobe looking disoriented, but I digress. He was handing out a packet of info from the ACLU including a nifty doorhanger you can put out that says NO CONSENT TO SEARCH OUR HOME. One of my neighbors told me the guy told them they were only doing this in poor black neighborhoods, and this notice from the ACLU that I found online seems to bear this out.

I know it's not exactly a wrong-door no-knock raid, but I am concerned because while I certainly don't want the police (or any other strangers) rummaging through my junk, I'm kind of afraid of what would happen if I refuse the search. I already live on one of those streets with the surveillance cams installed. Does my address get marked for being uncooperative or suspicious? I should mention of course that I don't own any guns and have never touched anything more powerful than a bb gun.

You are free to refuse the searches. But if a regular reader of this site feels uncomfortable asserting that right, you can imagine how other people subject to these searches might feel.

— Radley Balko, The Agitator (2008-06-04): Police State D.C.

Please also keep in mind that this is the same metro police force which will toting around AR-15 assault rifles as they surround and cordon off and do door-to-door searches and raids in these inner-city neighborhoods.

Do you feel safer now?

See also:

• GT 2008-05-15: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter... (#3)
• GT 2008-05-12: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter... (#2)
• GT 2008-05-06: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter...
• GT 2008-04-28: Is it just me or is the water in this pot getting a little hotter?

Cops are here to protect you by stopping an upset man from cutting himself with a knife by shouting at him in a language he doesn’t speak, then, after he fails to obey commands he couldn’t understand, by tasering him, firing pepperballs at him, and then shooting him dead — with several shots fired after he had dropped the knife.

All for his own good, of course. It became necessary to kill Odiceo Valencia in order to save him.

Cops are here to protect you by pulling you over if your car seems suspicious to them and then, if you want to know what you were pulled over for, pulling you out of the car, getting up in your face, and shouting, Ever get smart-mouthed with a cop again, I show you what a cop does, threatening to arrest you for some fucking reason I come up with, bragging that they can come up with nine other things to arrest you for, insisting, when you tell them that their conduct is being recorded, shouting I don’t really care about your cameras, ’cause I’m about ready to tow your car, then we can tear ’em all apart, and then proceeding to give you a ten-minute lecture on how you should properly address your public servants.

Please note that Officer James Kuhnlein’s dash cam tape from that night was inexplicably missing when Brett Darrow filed a complaint with the St. George police department. Actually, I don’t think it’s particularly difficult at all to explain what happened to the tape.

Cops are here to protect you by pulling you over for possibly speeding and then arresting you on a 10-year-old dog violation. Then, since they just can’t be bothered to wait half an hour until your sister arrives, leaving a 15 year old girl and a 7 month old infant stuck alone in a car on the side of the road at 11 o’clock at night.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—A Grand Junction woman says a state trooper left her baby and her teenage niece unattended in her car for 25 minutes one night when he took her to jail after a traffic stop.

Keio Saupaia said Trooper Jeffrey Vrbas pulled her over at about 11 p.m. on April 28 when she had her 7-month-old daughter and 15-year-old niece with her.

She said Vrbas contacted her sister to come get the children, but that he didn’t wait for the sister to arrive before taking Saupaia to jail.

If that was me, I could have been charged with child abuse, she told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

Colorado State Patrol Capt. Ed Clark confirmed to The Associated Press Monday that Vrbas had arrested Saupaia. Clark said he doesn’t dispute Saupaia’s account but declined to discuss specifics of the incident.

Clark said the matter had been handled internally, but he declined to say whether Clark had been disciplined or to give any other details, citing confidentiality rules covering personnel matters.

I just ask the public to trust that we would handle this appropriately, he told the AP in a telephone interview.

— Denver Post (2008-05-19): Woman says trooper left her baby, teen alone in car at night

But why the fuck would anyone trust them to handle it appropriately?

Trust is earned, not bestowed, and in the case of out-of-control cops like Trooper Jeffrey Vrbas, there is no empirical evidence at all to justify putting trust in the police department administration to do a damned thing about it, beyond possibly ripping him for causing a P.R. problem. When every fucking week brings another story of a Few More Bad Apples causing Yet Another Isolated Incident, and the police department almost invariably doing everything in its power to conceal, excuse, or minimize the violence, even in defiance of the evidence of the senses and no matter how obviously irresponsible or dangerously out-of-control the cop may be, it beggars belief to keep on claiming that there is no systemic problem here, that cops ought to be given every benefit of the doubt, that the same police department that hires and trains these goons ought to be trusted to handle it internally (which means secretly), and that any blanket condemnation of American policing is a sign of hastiness and unfair prejudice. The plain fact is that what we have here is one of two things: either a professionalized system of control which tacitly permits and encourages cops to exercise this kind of rampant, repeated, intense, and unrepentant abuse against powerless people–or else a system which has clearly demonstrated that it can do nothing effectual to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

See also:

• GT 2008-05-20: Cops are here to protect you. (#5)
• GT 2008-05-11: Cops are here to protect you. (#4)
• GT 2008-05-10: Cops are here to protect you. (#3)
• GT 2008-02-26: Cops are here to protect you. (#2)
• GT 2008-02-18: Cops are here to protect you.
• GT 2007-11-09: You got served and protected.

Government cops protect you by roughing up a suspect woman and breaking her arm, then by making up demonstrably false excuses about how she must have been drunk, and besides which, she might have yelled at them and struggled when a cop tried to grab her. I mean, she was a preschool teacher and he only had about 150 pounds or so on her; what else could he do?

But, before we go any further, let’s review.

Cops in America are heavily armed and trained to be bullies. They routinely shove their way into situations where they aren’t wanted, aren’t invited, and have no business being; they deliberately escalate confrontations in order to stay in control through superior belligerence; they commonly use force to end an argument and then blame it on their victim; and they invariably pass off even the most egregious abuses of power as self-defense or as the necessary means to accomplish a completely unnecessary goal. Cops carry a small armory of weapons and restraints that they can freely use to hurt or immobilize harmless or helpless people, and a small library of incredibly vague laws (disorderly conduct, resisting a police officer) that they can use as excuses for hurting, restraining, and arresting their victims, with virtually no danger of ever being called to account for their actions by as long as other cops, who already have a professional interest in minimizing or dismissing complaints about abusive pigs, can figure out some way to fit the use of these incredibly vague offenses into the police department’s incredibly vague Official Procedures for arrests and for the use of force. And they can always count on their fellow cops to make up, and the mainstream newsmedia to dutifully repeat, absolutely any lie at all, no matter how implausible, and a chorus of city officials and freelance sado-fascist bully boys to get their backs and smear the victim in every media outlet that they can befoul. The practical consequence of the training cops get, and the institutional culture of impunity within which they operate, are squads of arrogant, unaccountable, irresponsible hired thugs with massive senses of entitlement, organized into a paramilitary chain of command, who contemptuously regard their neighbors as mere civilians, who treat anyone who dares to give them lip or who questions their bellowed commands as a presumptive criminal, who have no scruple against using pain or arrest in order to force you to comply with their arbitrary orders, and who excuse any sort of abuse by sanctimoniously informing you that it became necessary to stomp on you in order to protect you — whether or not you ever asked for the protection in the first place.

Thus, for example, consider the case of Kelly Medora and Officer Christopher Damonte. Officer Christopher Damonte found it appropriate to pull Ms. Medora and her friend aside over jaywalking, to scream at them, grab them, and then, when Ms. Medora asked for his name and said he was acting improperly, called in his posse to surround them, then grabbed her arm and wrenched it behind her back, breaking the bone with an audible crack.

Kelly Medora, a petite preschool teacher who weighed about 118 pounds, went out with a friend in North Beach one Saturday night in 2005 for some fun.

Instead, San Francisco police officer Christopher Damonte, who weighed about 250 pounds, arrested her for jaywalking, twisted her arm behind her back and broke it with an audible crack.

. . .

Damonte grabbed her friend’s arm, held it up by her face and demanded she tell him her age, Medora said. Damonte said he would cite her, but didn’t say why.

Medora saw the name R. Fitzpatrick on Damonte’s jacket — he had borrowed it from another officer — and asked if that was his name. This seemed to set him off, she said. He said yes and demanded why she wanted to know. I don’t believe you’re treating my friend appropriately, she replied, court records show. You haven’t told us what we’re being cited for. Please let go of her arm.

Medora said Damonte started to scream at her. Fearful, she said she turned and walked up to another officer and complained about Damonte.

By her account, Damonte then demanded Medora’s driver’s license. Medora said she’d give him her license if he told her what she did.

Instead, Damonte said detain her, by this account, and he and two other officers surrounded her. She said she did not resist them, but merely clutched her purse. Then Damonte grabbed her right arm.

It all happened very quick, she testified. Like he physically took my arm and twisted it up back by my neck to a point where I was completely immobilized. And I said ow, ow. And he pulled even harder, and he snapped it.

There was an audible pop, according to a police report.

— Seth Rosenfield, San Fransisco Chronicle (2008-05-11): S.F. settles excessive force suit for $235,000

The violence against women and the hypermasculine domineering control-freak behavior aren’t the only things that this uniformed thug has in common with a walking, talking stereotype of a wife batterer. For example, there’s the self-pitying lies, and the retaliation, and the bizarre victim-blaming excuses.

The city’s lawyer said in court papers that Damonte used an approved method of holding her arm, but she struggled. Then in an effort to escape, she squatted down and broke her own arm.

— Seth Rosenfield, San Fransisco Chronicle (2008-05-11): S.F. settles excessive force suit for $235,000

Let me just pause to say that I wish I could say that I never expected to see another excuse from a violent cop that’s as contemptible and ridiculous as She fell. But honestly, there is no excuse so contemptible and ridiculous that I would be surprised, at this point, to hear it from cops and their defenders. She broke her own arm included. Maybe next week a cop can explain that his victim wasn’t beaten; she just ran into a door.

Medora cried out in pain. Police called an ambulance and cited her for jaywalking.

At Kaiser Hospital, she was treated for a spiral fracture to her right humerus. Medical records state she was not intoxicated.

Medora said she phoned police from Kaiser to file a misconduct complaint, but no one responded.

Instead, an officer delivered a new citation for resisting, delaying and assaulting an officer. The charges were later dismissed.

— Seth Rosenfield, San Fransisco Chronicle (2008-05-11): S.F. settles excessive force suit for $235,000

So, according to Officer Christopher Damonte, Medora assaulted him. By breaking her own arm.

If you're baffled as to how violent pigs could feel free to indulge in this kind of outrage, and why it keeps happening over, and over, and over again in so many different cities, on so many different police forces, even in these days when brutality like this can no longer be kept in the back of the paddy-wagon, and are easily documented, commonly exposed and widely discussed in newspapers, local TV, on YouTube, on blogs, well, here’s why:

Although Damonte and the city denied wrongdoing, the city recently mailed Medora a check for $235,000, the largest amount ever to settle a lawsuit claiming San Francisco police used excessive force not involving a weapon.

The Office of Citizen Complaints, meanwhile, has found that Damonte used excessive force in the incident and that another officer failed to investigate Medora’s complaint. Damonte faces a disciplinary hearing at the Police Commission and potential punishment including dismissal.

— Seth Rosenfield, San Fransisco Chronicle (2008-05-11): S.F. settles excessive force suit for $235,000

Cops don’t have to give much of a damn about being exposed, because even when they are exposed, cops almost never face any kind of personal consequences whatsoever for their actions, no matter how violent, no matter how widely known, and no matter how obviously helpless, harmless, or innocent their victim. Officer Christopher Damonte, an aggressive, domineering control freak of a man, who flies into violent rages over ridiculous non-crimes and broke a woman’s arms over the slightest questioning of his conduct, will never face any legal consequences for his actions; at the worst, he faces potential administrative discipline from fellow cops, which amounts to either a paid vacation and a verbal reprimand, or else, if they’re really ready to throw you to the wolves, losing your job. If you or I ran up to a woman, a complete stranger, and got in her face about jaywalking, grabbed her, shoved her around, and then, after she dared to ask for a name and object to her treatment, called in our posse to surround her, and grabbed her and broke her arm, we wouldn’t get fired; we’d be in jail, and we’d also be on the hook to pay her money as damages for her injuries and for her pain and suffering. Officer Christopher Damonte, however, has the Gangsters in Blue and the city government of San Francisco to get his back, so instead of him paying damages, the city government will pay it out for him. And then — dedicated public servants that they are — they will turn right around and send the bill for Officer Christopher Damonte’s brutality to a bunch of innocent San Francisco taxpayers, who will be forced to pay for what he did, even though they had absolutely nothing to do with it.

The State will never police itself; the government will never make a serious effort to protect you from your supposed protectors. Why should they, when there is nobody to check their abuses and when they can always force you to cover the bill for their own fuck-ups?

Support your local CopWatch.

(Story via Mike Gogulski @ nostate.com 2008-05-11 and Five Before Midnight 2008-05-12.)

See also:

• GT 2008-05-11: Cops are here to protect you. (#4)
• GT 2008-05-10: Cops are here to protect you. (#3)
• GT 2008-02-26: Cops are here to protect you. (#2)
• GT 2008-02-18: Cops are here to protect you.

Posturing macho warrior cops in Chicago, Miami, Palm Beach County, Montana, and Johnson City, Tennessee are all now starting to carry AR-15 or M4 assault rifles with them on ordinary street patrols, for all those tactical situations that they expect to find themselves in.

Throughout the 1990s, Washington, D.C. had more of its residents killed by police officers than any other city in the United States. Now the D.C. metropolitan police department has ordered 500 AR-15 assault rifles, which they will begin issuing to inner-city patrol cops to start carrying on the streets this summer. I guess so they can more effectively shoot 14 year old black bike-thieving suspects in the back of the head.

Do you feel safer now?

(Via Manuel Lora 2008-05-10.)

See also:

• GT 2008-05-12: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter.... (#2)
• GT 2008-05-06: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter....
• GT 2008-04-28: Is it just me or is the water in this pot getting a little hotter?

From the Arkansas Tactical Officers Association and the North Little Rock Police Department:

The ATOA would like to announce:

Warrior Mindset is a class being offered by the North Little Rock Police Department. Taught by Dr. Jason Winkle, It is an opportunity to train with one of the most sought after tactical trainers in the country. Class includes topics (but is not limited to topics) on fear management, decision making, emotional survival, physical fitness as they pertain to law enforcement officers.
Class is designed for all officers from patrol to investigations to SWAT. This class is limited to law enforcement and military only. Proper credentials are required. It will be a state certified course and officers will receive 8 hours of credit for the course. The class will be held at the North Little Rock Police/Fire Training Facility 2400 Willow St. NLR, AR 72114. Class will run from 0800-1600 and will be offered on three different dates: May 9th, August 8th, and October 24th, 2008. Contact Officer Steve Chamness at steven.chamness@nlrpolice.org or 771-7190 for details and registration. Slots for this class are limited.

Checks should be made payable to Dr. Jason Winkle ($150.00 per officer) and sent to the North Little Rock Police Department C/O Officer Steve Chamness
2400 Willow St.
NLR, AR 72114

JASON WINKLE, Ph.D. is President of the International Tactical Officers Training Association and the senior, contributing editor to SWAT Digest. ** Jason is currently a Professor at Indiana State University. **He was the former Director of Combatives for the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Dr. Winkle has over twelve years experience working with and training members of the joint special operations community, **SWAT teams, and corrections special operation groups. ** Jason has over two decades of martial arts experience and holds black belt instructor rank in seven martial arts systems. His combat-readiness regimens have revolutionized the training approach utilized by numerous SWAT teams and military special operators. Dr. Winkle is recognized as a top international consultant in school, military, and law enforcement communities.
He has been published in the areas of tactical operations, combat readiness, warrior mindset, combat martial arts, fitness, and leadership.

The class is being offered for a discounted rate with assistance from the Arkansas Tactical Officer's Association.

— SWAT News & Events

Here’s more of Winkle’s workshop schedule, courtesy of his Martial Concepts [sic] website:

Dr. Winkle will be a keynote speaker as well as the MC for the XTREME CERT Special Operations Conference and Expo in Virginia from May 8-10. Dr. Winkle will be speaking on the Warrior Mindset for Corrections Officers as well as introducing his classified corrections CQB system to the US C-SOG operators.

May 15: Dr. Winkle will be presenting his Warrior Mindset workshop to the Indiana State University Police Department.

June 5: Dr. Winkle will be presenting Active Shooter Doctrine at the ITOTA’s conference on Active Shooter Doctrine In Academic Environments. The conference will be held from 0900-1500 at Indiana State University. Cost for the conference is $50. For more information contact Jason at jwinkle@itota.net.

Here’s what he was doing last fall:

Ending the week in Florida are two 4 hour classes taught by the President of the International Tactical Officers Training Association, Doctor Jason Winkle. Doc served as the Director of Combatives at West Point Academy and is currently an assistant professor at Indiana State. He is a contributing editor for SWAT Digest and published many times over in for his work in tactical operations, martial arts, fitness, and leadership. Doc will hold his Active Shooter class in the AM and finish the day with Warrior Mindset in High Risk Law Enforcement. Active Shooter is designed to prepare participants for the reality of violent encounters and their resolutions in high stress environments. Warrior Mindset deals in practical preparation and operation for, as well as, recovering from traumatic tactical engagement.

Here’s some of what he covers:

THE WARRIOR MINDSET

Louis Rapoli, a police sergeant in the School Safety Division of the New York Police Department, debriefed workshop attendees on the shooting at Virginia Tech, and explained each step that was taken by law enforcement and administrators.

A picture of Jack Bauer from the TV show 24 appeared on the screen behind him, and Rapoli said to the attendees, When an incident like this happens, there will be no Jack Bauer to come and save your school. You're the people who are either going to prevent this from happening or be first on the scene when it does happen. You need to be prepared. If not me, then who — that's what you need to be thinking about to get your schools ready for a terrorist attack.

Winkle calls this the Warrior Mindset.

These are situations of extreme stress, extreme fear, and extreme violence, and that shuts down most people. We need to be prepared, Winkle said.

The defining characteristic of a warrior — whether you're a police officer or a business owner — is your willingness to move toward danger, he said.

People are trying to run out of building, and you, as a school administrator, need to get on the PA system and call out codes for lockdown. You have to be a warrior at that moment, he said.

The role of law enforcement is to move toward something that everyone else is running away from, he said.

Charles Butler, Vincennes district officer and firearms instructor for the Indiana State Excise Police [! –R.G.], attended the workshop because excise officers might be called in by state police to assist in active shooter situations, he said.

**It was good to hear the warrior mindset emphasized, Butler said, and they gave good examples of training that law enforcement needs to have. An officer can never get enough training. It is the best tool a police officer can have.

Winkle recommended the following guidelines for law enforcement to be successful in active shooter situations:

• Develop physical fitness and toughness through challenging, contact-driven training.
• Become familiar (and comfortable) with the physiological changes that accompany high-stress and high-fear situations.
• Become familiar with the nature of violence and be willing to use it when appropriate.
• Engage in training that is as close as possible to the actual situation, involving fear and stress.
• Internalize a code of conduct.
• Know the nature of the enemy [sic] and active shooter doctrine.

Here’s Radley Balko on the Arkansas tactical officers’ class (read the whole thing):

I'm afraid this intermingling of domestic police and military is well beyond the point of no return.

Do you feel safer now?

See also:

• GT 2008-05-06: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter....
• GT 2008-04-26: Is it just me or is the water in this pot getting a little hotter?