Prior to this Saturday the last member
of the New York Police Department gunned down in the city streets was
Omar J. Edwards on May 28th, 2009. A recent graduate of the police
academy, the 25 years old Edwards had been assigned to
undercover detail in East Harlem. At approximately 10:30 PM Edwards,
pistol drawn, was in pursuit of an attempted carjacker on 125th
street and 2nd avenue, where he encountered three uniformed police
officers. The three men did not recognize Edwards as their
colleague; assuming him to be a criminal one of the three officers,
Andrew P. Dunton, fired his gun, shooting Edwards three times.
Edwards died en route to the hospital.
Omar J. Edwards was black. The three responding officers were white.
There was no palpable disquiet
throughout the streets of New York that following morning. There was
no international outpouring of grief and condolences. There was no
hysterical wall-to-wall coverage on cable news. There was no media
frenzy salivating over every detail of the shooter's identity, no
pouring through internet profiles for evidence of incendiary
rhetoric or radical politics. In covering the Edward's murder the
next day, The New York Times ran with the euphemistic headline “Two
Officers Path to a Fatal Encounter in Harlem.” There was little
attempt to link Edwards' death to the broader narratives of
racialized policing or State violence. There was no collective
mourning, no condemnation, no calls by Mayor Bloomberg for
reflection, unity or peace.
For his part, Edwards' killer, Andrew
Dunton, expressed little remorse four years later, “I'm
trying to get along with my life and hopefully the other side is
getting on with their life.” Despite then Governor Paterson's
calls for an independent inquiry, no formal investigation was made
and no charges had been filed. It was widely acknowledged both by
the NYPD and the media that the death of Edwards was an unfortunate
accident and little else. The cop responsible for Edwards' death was
later promoted to sergeant.
Over the next month there was a
perfunctory effort by the NYPD to retrain police on the proper
procedure when engaging with undercover cops. This amounted to
little more than a twenty minute instructional video and a weekend of
role-playing in the Bronx. Yet this was the closest the NYPD had, in
a decade, ever gotten to openly admitting that it had a race problem.
The efforts to retrain police were a tacit admission by the NYPD
that racialized policing was rampant, to the extent where it
endangered the lives of even black officers themselves.
In 1996, five years removed from the Crown
Heights riots and in response to recent allegations by Amnesty
International of police brutality, who in a report claimed that
brutality and the use of unjustified force were a “widespread
problem,” the NYPD made a concerted attempt to rebrand itself as an
organization explicitly in service of the public interest. The
“Courtesy, Professional & Respect” agenda was part of a
strategy intended to foster trust within communities that had a
historic distrust of police.
Mayor Giuliani announced the intention
of the CPR initiative was to “to strengthen the bonds of mutual
respect between the New York City Police Department and all the
people of the city.” He also instructed the people of New York to
express their gratitude to police more often, “Let's go the extra
mile to give them extra respect by saying 'thank you' to them [the
NYPD.]” Giuliani concluded this speech by noting, with great
relief, that baseball was back in season and extended his “best
wishes from the city of New York to [former Yankees manager] Joe
Torre” who was recovering from surgery at that time. Giuliani
clearly understood the gravity of the situation.
A significant part of the CPR agenda
was a technique the NYPD had dubbed “verbal judo,” a curious
term for conflict resolution training intended to deescalate
conflicts with the public. Neither CompStat, an organizational crime
reduction tool pioneered by then & current Commissioner of the
NYPD Bill Bratton, nor the “broken windows” theory of policing
were amended or altered. CPR was little more than a tokenistic
attempt at “community policing” that was not meaningfully
reflected in policy or procedural change.
Less than 14 months after the heavily
publicized roll out of the CPR initiative, Officer Justin Volpe, with
the assistance of three other arresting officers, sodomized Abner
Louima with a broom handle while Louima was held in police custody.
Police dismissed hospital inquiries into the source of Louima's
injuries, alleging they were a result of “abnormal homosexual
activities.” Louima remained hospitalized for two months after the
incident.
As with any public relations campaign the CPR initiative was bolstered by posters and public service
announcements. A conscientious attempt was made to emphasize the
diversity of the NYPD; one particular poster showcased the
heterogeneity of the modern department, accompanied by the tagline,
“Everybody in New York; Black, White, Yellow or Blue Could Use A
Little C.P.R.”
Every NYPD cruiser is now outfitted
with the decal “Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect.” The obvious
implication of this motto being the NYPD is an organization that
exists to serve the public interest; the acronym CPR suggesting that, akin to
its namesake medical procedure, the NYPD is a force trained to
preserve life in the wake of an emergency. It is of profound irony
then that this courtesy of CPR was not extended by any of the five
officers directly responsible for Eric Garner's death. Strangled to
death by police for selling untaxed cigarettes, Garner was repeatedly
denied timely access to CPR that could have saved his
life.
Officer Pantaleo, the officer
responsible for administering the chokehold on Eric Garner, a tactic
banned for its lethality by the NYPD for the past two decades, was
the subject of two civil rights lawsuits in 2013 in which plaintiffs
accused Pantaleo of brutality and false arrest. One of the litigants
complained of being subjected to "humiliating and unlawful
strip searches in public view.” The complaint reads that Officer
Pantaleo, "pulled down the plaintiffs' pants and underwear, and
touched and searched their genital areas." Both suits were
summarily dismissed.
In that same article recounting the
murder of Omar Edwards, the New York Times described the neighborhood
in which Edwards performed his undercover duties as a “stubborn
pocket of lawlessness.” That areas crippled by abject poverty,
failing schools and systemic neglect are broadly described as
“lawless” by the newspaper of record demonstrates our country's
one-dimensional approach to addressing the concerns of the
marginalized and the underclass. Our main recourse for dealing with
urban poverty has been mass incarceration and State violence. A cultural hegemony perpetuates the idea that police are in constant danger. This is a paranoid approach predicated
on an assumption of guilt; a schizophrenic inability to distinguish
between material threats and imaginary ones. We
must challenge policies that criminalize poverty and protocols that
presume guilt.
An isolated incident of violence
against police would not have been prevented by stopping and frisking more blacks and Latinos. In recent days the NYPD union
has accused Mayor deBlasio of having “blood on his hands.” The
implication being that, if any policies to further consider the
dignity and safety of alleged criminals were ever enacted, it would
place the lives of all officers in imminent danger. It is clear from
such rhetoric that the NYPD's primary concern is self-preservation
and not public safety. We must understand that the supremacy of
police power and public safety aren't synonymous. However desperately the NYPD and their lackeys in the media conflate the two, we must
understand how such reckless policing is an active danger the public.
In October of this year, Commissioner Bratton himself admitted that the NYPD has a problem with
brutality and corruption. Within the past two years ticket fixing, extortion, blackmail, interdepartmental theft, shakedown rackets in
conjunction with the Albanian mafia and the selling of state's
evidence back onto the streets have been exposed among both the NYPD's administrators and its rank
and file. Any NYPD precinct could just as easily be described as a “stubborn
pocket of lawlessness” as Brownsville or East Harlem.
With the deaths of Officer Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos New York had not experienced collective trauma of such
magnitude since the days and weeks following September 11th. Both
the City Council and Mayor deBlasio called for a cease in protests in
the aftermath of their deaths. DeBlasio stated, “It's deeply
divisive to hold political protests during this period of
remembrance.” A vast majority of New Yorkers and the NYPD did not
know Officers Liu or Ramos or their families personally. Yet there
was an outpouring of grief from millions across the nation. We
commemorate the lives of Officer Liu and Ramos, who in their deaths
had given our city a common purpose, however temporary and vague.
The deaths of Ramos and Liu, in
contrast to Edwards, were of particular significance because a black criminal had killed these two officers ostensibly in response to the
police murder of Eric Garner. Their physical lives mattered far less
than what their deaths symbolized; the longstanding racialized
policing and military tactics of the State had come under scrutiny
and the deaths of these two officers had somehow retroactively
legitimized this approach. Ultimately both men served as fungible
parts of a coercion apparatus; the State proceeds to cynically
exploit their deaths to justify its own existence.
An officer attending the inspector's
funeral of Omar Edwards had stated, “We all wear a similar uniform.
We do the same job.” As per that logic, police officers congregated
to the memorial site where Ramos and Liu were slain in Bedford-Stuyvesant to “pay their respects” in a show of
solidarity. This solidarity among police exists insofar they share
the same job, and by extension, the same occupational hazards.
If Bob from accounting took a nosedive
off the twelfth floor, or if a masked intruder beat Bob to death at
his desk, his death would not resonate with accountants nationwide.
The New York Accountants Association would not issue a statement
admonishing Bob's firm for lax security or a lack of mental health
screenings. Bob would be remembered as a particularly dedicated
accountant and little else.
The government and media response to
the murder of Officers Ramos and Liu is a potent example of how
identity politics work in service of the State. In a capitalist
framework profession dictates identity. Behavior and identity are
therefore largely determined by labor. This static identity
expresses itself through atomization and alienation, the lack of empathy routinely
exhibited by police speaks as much to the stratification of power as
it does to any particular policy or protocol. By reducing one's
identity to merely an officer and not as a human, we seek to affirm
the same power structures responsible for the perpetuation of the
marginalized and underclass. That the police would prioritize the
solidarity of a shared profession over our collective humanity speaks
to this dilemma.
In a sense, in their deaths both
officers functioned as the State intended, fulfilling their role as
the public's first line of defense against a homicidal maniac.
Police, by definition, submit themselves to threats of violence in
the interest of public safety. It logically follows that the
standards for self-defense should be higher for police than of an
average citizen. By contrast, being born poor, black or Latino
should not mark one for death. We, as a nation, regard these
marginalized not with empathy but suspicion. Unlike police these
are conditions they did not willingly accept. The poverty and
violence in urban communities is reflective not of a moral failure but
a systemic one.
In addressing race as a construct, it
is naïve to assume that by eliminating superficial instances of
racism that the State will address its corruption of its own
volition. That, in the spirit of reconciliation, the State will
suddenly become more amenable to the needs of a people it has
historically neglected if not abused outright for the last four
centuries. That, even among activists, the pervasiveness of
racialized policing is seen as an isolated issue and not symptomatic
of broader concerns is deeply troubling. This reinforces a notion
that the State can simply be amended and not that the ethical
foundation of State itself is inherently flawed.
That any critique of police brutality in
the immediate future made by public figures will be couched in NYPD
apologia is predictable and gross. An infantile fantasy of police
as above reproach and incapable of unjustified violence persists with
little objection. It is now a more morally consistent position to be
an unrepentant criminal than a member of law enforcement. Criminals
do not actively seek to subvert whatever values they claim to uphold.
Most criminals conceal the extent of their crimes; they do
not justify their violence and brutality under the aegis of law.
In an
internal bulletin the NYPD declared themselves a “war-time”
department. There is precedence for this; 18 months ago, in response to protests over the death of Kimani Grey, the NYPD declared martial law in East Flatbush and designated it a "frozen zone," regulating speech and press. This NYPD bulletin amounts to a declaration of war on the general
public. The NYPD should rest assured that these feelings are mutual.
We are a people actively under siege from a violent horde who, much
like the mafia, operate in secrecy and exploit fraternal bonds to
further their own ends. This is a violent horde whose behavior is
actively legitimatized by the State.
For more of my work:
"Policing: The Most Dismal Science" in Skin Deep Magazine 08/03/15
https://ohyeahproductions.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/policing-the-most-dismal-science/
My El Diario editorial on NYPD's implementation of ShotSpotter in Brooklyn & the Bronx (en español) 05/07/15
http://www.eldiariony.com/la-policia-debe-escuchar-mas-a-la-comunidad
