I got assaulted by the police, and all I got was this big bag of money.

In our latest installment of Some Cops Behaving Badly we have the story of Dana Holmes, a white woman that was recently arrested for DUI just outside of Chicago. I will post the video, but it's 6 minutes long. For me, that is pushing it when it comes to attention span for videos on the internet. Here is a recap of the important parts: Three cops are there, and she is being patted down by one female officer. She lifts up her foot, the way someone might when being asked to show the bottom of their foot to someone else. All of a sudden, the cops grab her and throw her into a cell. They then proceed to strip her clothes off. She just lays there in the cell face down crying. Then a few minutes later they throw in a blanket for her to cover herself with.

Feel free to watch for yourself:



[ETA: here is a link to a shorter video that actually shows her clothes being removed.]

A couple things: In the police report, the officers claimed that she "kicked" one of them. Anyone with functioning eyes can see that is not what happened. To me, it looked like she was following instructions to show them her feet and then all of a sudden they got pissed and went cray. Also, they claimed they removed her clothes because they were performing a "strip search." I'm no cop, but I've watched plenty of cop shows. That is not how you do a strip search. For one thing, when you're searching someone with no clothes on you have them bend over so you can look up their butt to make sure they haven't hidden anything there. That didn't happen.

Why?

Because they weren't strip searching her, they were taking all her clothes off because they could, and she had clearly done something that they didn't like. They were trying to humiliate her and teach her a lesson. That lesson being: Don't F with the police.

I'm guessing she got the message.

This example shows us, that we live in a nation where regardless of race, color, creed or national origin--if you give cops attitude they all can (and some will,) make your life a living nightmare.

So let me tell you what is most likely going to happen next. First, I have to point out if this video didn't exist, absolutely nothing would happen. This would be a disturbing story that Dana Holmes told her friends and family, and that would be the end of it.

But since we have moving picture proof of the encounter, here's what's going to go down: Dana Holmes is going to sue the police department, and the officers involved are going to be put on paid administrative leave while they investigate. Ms. Holmes and the police are going to reach a settlement, where she receives a lump sum cash payment. It'll be anywhere between 50,000 and 500,000 dollars, depending on how good her lawyer is. The cops may or may not be reprimanded, but most likely all the cops involved will be allowed to keep their jobs. On the off chance they do get fired, they will go to their police union and challenge their firing(s). Then they'll get re-hired once all the media attention dies down. Ms. Holmes might spend her money to buy a house, or she might blow it all on meth to deal with the PTSD she got from being treated so callously by the police. Since it's her money now, she is free to do with it what she wishes.

Here are just some of the problems I have with the likely outcome to this situation.

1) I am a bit uneasy with the idea that people that go through traumatizing things get money for it. Obviously, no one is going to turn down money. But it seems like if you were the recipient of a bunch of cash from a lawsuit like this, the money would seem like blood money. How would you enjoy it? It seems like whatever you bought with it would just be a constant reminder of your horrible ordeal.

2) Paying money as punishment for doing something wrong makes a little more sense when you are talking about suing corporations, because corporations are motivated by money. But what about when you are talking about the government? The government doesn't have a profit motive. I'm not sure what the government is supposed to be motivated by. If I had to guess, I would say something like the common good . How is it in the interest of the common good to pay one person a large sum of taxpayers' money, and let the so-called public servants that caused the money to be paid to continue to work and receive more of the taxpayers' money? It's not.

3) I am not necessarily opposed to the idea of any victim of police brutality getting money. But the problem is that when we just pay off victims, and do nothing to change the system that caused the incidents in the first place. We are just inviting more incidents to happen. A better outcome in this situation would be for Ms. Holmes to get her check (or not,) AND have all the police involved in this incident fired and banned from working in law enforcement at any point in the future. The PD where this happened could put out a strongly worded statement saying how those officers were wrong, and they have no tolerance for such behavior. They would show this by retraining their officers and continuing to fire cops that decided to engage in such behavior in the future.

If I can turn this into a follow up friday for a moment, I want to go back to the last time I wrote about an incident of some police behaving badly. Except this was an unarmed black man who got shot 10 times by a cop. Yeah, he died.

My white friend Paula (whose late father was a cop,) said this:

I can assure you that no one dislikes bad cops more than good cops do.

Well Paula, they sure have a funny way of showing it. I have never heard a cop that is currently employed by a police department speak out publicly against another cop when they do something wrong. People who know me in real life, know that I don't use absolute language often. So when I say never, I mean never...not even one time.

It would be so great if these good cops would come together and create and organization called Police Against Police Brutality. Or maybe Police for Positive Policing. I said here that I don't like it when people always define themselves as against something.

I googled the first term I mentioned, and you know what I came up with? A group called something like Black Cops Against Police Brutality. And it looked like their website hadn't been updated since 1988.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy to see such a group exists. But it doesn't surprise me that black cops are against police brutality, since black people are disproportionately the victims of police brutality. Since cops are disproportionately white, I think it would be nice to see a group that encompassed police officers of all races that were committed to ending abuses in departments across the nation.

I'm gonna wrap it up here, because I've been writing for awhile. Once again, I have to give my disclaimer that I am in no way attempting to disparage all cops. I know from personal experience that some cops are quite cool. My general impression of the number of fleeting experiences that I've had with them is that if you're neutral or nice to them, they will be neutral or nice to you.

I am talking about the minority of cops that do damage to the reputation of cops as a whole. Some other examples of positive policing that could occur would be:

--Making videotapes like the one that recorded Ms. Holmes standard in all police departments, big and small. I also think that all cops on patrol should wear cameras on their person. There should also be serious penalties for departments that "lose" footage, because that seems to be an unusually common occurrence when said footage is subpoenaed in court cases.

--Removing the Internal Affairs department and having incidents of cop misbehavior be investigated by a panel that has nothing to do with the police. It would be awesome if the panel was just made up of randomly selected residents of the area that the department served.

--Making it easier to fire bad cops. This goes for teachers too. And anyone else that is protected by a union. If you're pro-union, you should not be pro-union so incompetent people can keep their jobs. There are many benefits that unions bring about, but keeping substandard employees employed shouldn't be one of them.

So, we'll see how the situation with Dana Holmes plays out. I am interested to hear what you think about what I've written, or about any of the topics I've discussed more generally. Click below all those colorful boxes at the end of this post where it says, " _some number_ comments" and leave me a comment.


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This just in...

Well, would ya look at that? No sooner than I write about how we finally have a case with a clean victim, someone in the Sanford police department leaks information about how Trayvon Martin had been suspended three times from school.

Well, this changes everything! People who get suspended and/or smoke marijuana totally deserve to be followed down the street and shot to death.

Keep it classy, Sanford PD.

Who are we kidding? This is a blatant attempt to distract us from the the issues at hand. An unarmed boy was shot to death, and the police responsible for investigating the matter chose not to look into it further, until hundreds of thousands of people told them to.

I am really debating how much more I want to keep arguing the details. I will ask these questions: was Trayvon's school record a factor in deciding in whether or not to arrest George Zimmerman? If yes, what makes it relevant? If no, then what are the reasons for the information being leaked?

Moving on.

I said in my last post that I was going to talk more about how the connotation of black = dangerous got drilled into people's heads. But then I got all riled up and ended with that awesome video instead.

It is quite the fascinating story though, so I want to take this opportunity to share it with you.

I recently watched a documentary called Slavery by Another Name on PBS. From the website:

Slavery by Another Name is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans’ most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality. It was a system in which men, often guilty of no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of masters.

Some brief lowlights from the film:

Pre Civil War, fifty percent of the capital that was invested in the South was invested in the purchase of slaves. So when the Emancipation Proclamation happened, slave owners were at risk of losing a huge amount of money. Because you know, they couldn't return their slaves and get their money back.

What happened then?

Well, lawmakers in the South started criminalizing a lot of normal behaviors and greatly increasing the penalties for petty crimes. New crimes were created like loitering (aka walking around and looking about,) vagrancy (aka not having a home since you used to be a slave and now you weren't anymore,) and walking next to a railroad track, became things for which you could be arrested, fined and sentenced to hard labor. And if you didn't have the money to pay the fine, that was no problem--they just increased the amount of time you had to do hard labor.

So, how did the hard labor work?

Well, wouldn't you know it--the State would rent out these "criminals" to private business owners. Some of the same people, who a few years before, had been slave owners! Imagine that.

The business owner gets to profit from the labor, and the State gets to profit from the renting. And the black people? They get to be forced to work for free.

And they were actually get treated worse than when they were slaves, because as rented workers, there was no incentive for the business owner to treat them well. If they got sick from horrible living conditions, or just got worked to death, the business owner would just go and rent another guy. Under slavery if a person died, the slave owner would lose the money invested in the purchase of the enslaved person.

myblackfriend, you're really starting to bum me out--what does this have to do with the connotation between black and dangerous?

I know, it bums me out too. Let me get to my original point.

Before the Emancipation Proclamation, most people in the criminal justice system were white. Not long after slavery officially ended, 90% of the inmates in the criminal justice system in the South were black. So this disproportionate number of black people in jail thing has been going on ever since we were freed.

And here's something curious about how white people's perceptions of black people changed over time. While black people were being dominated in almost every way under the institution of slavery, many white southerners saw them as hardworking, trustworthy and obedient. Once slavery ends, that's when you see the narrative of black people being dangerous criminals start to form.

And in some ways it would make sense. If you're a young white kid driving around the South with your parents, and you see a chain gang full of people in prison stripes and they all just happen to be black, in your mind you may start to think black people are inherently dangerous.

It's only when you start to examine things a little more closely, that you begin to wonder if there aren't other factors at play.

Well, myblackfriend...slavery was a really long time ago.

True, but as we just learned, it would appear that it wasn't nearly as long a time ago as we were originally led to believe. And it just so happens that things like this are still happening today.

Have you ever heard of stop and frisk? That's when the police can stop and search you, just cuz. It's completely legal, and apparently happens a lot in inner-city neighborhoods. Lots of black and brown people get stopped and frisked, and some have drugs on them ( little known fact: 83% of drug arrests are for possession.)

Do you know how many white people I've known that would have drugs on them if they were stopped and frisked? Several.

What kind of neighborhood do you live in? When is the last time the police routinely stopped and searched people who were minding their own business in your neighborhood?

I am not even trying to say that people should or shouldn't be arrested for having drugs. What I am saying is if you're going to have such an invasive procedure in place, apply it to all citizens equally. Don't target and punish one group of people and let another group get a pass. Don't put one group of people in jail and call them violent and dangerous, while another group of people is doing the same thing, and they're allowed to get high and watch Workaholics in peace. That is just plain UnAmerican. At least the America that I like to believe, and sometimes just have to hope (despite depressing evidence to the contrary,) actually exists.

But do you want to know the most pernicious thing about it?

All of these things: don't run away, don't learn to read, don't walk next to the railroad tracks, don't raise your voice around white women, don't try to come to my school, don't walk down the street with marijuana in your pocket, don't date my daughter, don't wear a hoodie, don't come into my gated community, don't look at me when I'm looking at you, don't write a blog that focuses on race, don't be smart, don't be stupid, be just like me, remember you'll never be like me.

All of these messages exist to support one basic belief: Everything will be just fine, as long as you stay in your place. If you don't stay in your place--we're going to have problems.

Well, my friends? I roundly reject these messages. And I invite you to reject them too.

Comments? You know what to do.

More on Trayvon.

So, it's a few days later. I have been getting close to up-to-the-minute information on the Trayvon Martin case because of this facebook group. I have also seen the story covered as the lead or close to the lead story on Inside Edition and the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley. I believe that the story went from online only coverage, to weekend television coverage, to the primetime specials currently playing, in large part because of the role of social media. Facebook, twitter and blogs are technologies that the government has yet to figure out how to control and corporations have yet to figure out how to corrupt. As a result, we are seeing stories that the people want to give attention to leading our evening newscasts. Incredible.

I think the two best things to come out of this situation are the close to 2 million signatures this petition has received, and President Obama's statement that we as a nation need to do some "soul searching." I am ready to search my soul, and I invite you to search yours as well...

As far as I can see there are two separate, but related issues in the Trayvon Martin case.

1) What were the reasons behind George Zimmerman following and shooting Trayvon Martin?

2) What were the reasons for the Sanford Police Department making the decision not to arrest George Zimmerman and charge him with a crime?

You'll notice I didn't start those questions with Why? I told you in a previous post not to say but, and why is another word that is close to useless. I think people have been programmed to hear the word why and have the immediate response, I don't know. Why makes things very abstract like, Why do fools fall in love? Has anyone ever bothered to answer that question? No.

However, if you say what it shifts things a little bit, and opens the door to answers that can be explained: What is 2+2? It can also help people to be less defensive, because it doesn't sound accusatory.

Okay let's attempt to answer question #1

here are some reasons off of the top of my head.

--There had been a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood.
--George thought Trayvon was suspicious because he didn't recognize him. And he was black. And he was wearing a hoodie. Remember in this post when I talked about how being black is already one strike against you, so if you have any other strikes against you, you're more likely to be screwed? This case is another good example of that. I can reasonably believe that seeing someone in your neighborhood that you don't recognize (assuming you know all the people you live near,) is something that might arouse your initial suspicion. I can even see how wearing something that could be used to cover your face might be another cause for concern. But being black, walking down the street, "looking about," and staring at someone that is staring at you, are not reasonable causes for suspicion. And supposedly Trayvon didn't put on his hoodie until Zimmerman started following him. And even if he did have his hoodie on the whole time, it was raining, and hoodies are good for keeping the rain off of your head.

In my estimation, I don't recognize you + you have something that you can use to cover your face ≠ call 911. It also ≠ get out of car and follow and/or question and/or chase, and/or whatever happened when George Zimmerman made the completely unnecessary decision to get out of his car. Let the police handle it, guy.

If there is one point that I want to make crystal clear before I move on to point two, it is that black is not synonymous with dangerous. People of all races (including black,) need to work very hard to get this connotation out of their heads. People have worked very hard to drill it into your head (more on that later,) so you are going to have to work very hard to drill it out of your head.

I am not saying that black is synonymous with safe, what I am saying is that there are clues that you should use to help determine if someone is a danger to you, but he's black is not one of them. If a person is following you, confronting you in the middle of the night on dark street, or pulling a gun on you--these are all legitimate reasons to be afraid for your safety.

All right, let's get to question two. More thoughts off of the top of my head.

--George Zimmerman had a bloody nose and blood on the back of his head.
--George Zimmerman told the police he acted in self-defense, and in Florida if you think someone is threatening your life, you can shoot them without having to make attempts to flee.
--George Zimmerman's dad is a retired judge, and some unscrupulous law enforcement officials think taking care of their own is more important than following the law.
--George Zimmerman was a police informant, and that is why he has been protected by the police from the beginning. [Note: this is just a theory I heard on the internet, but it's it's worth looking into.]
--The police saw a young black male with a hoodie on, and thought of all the other young black males with hoodies they've arrested and seen as dead bodies over the years, and thought to themselves, This is probably just some thug who sells drugs and has all kinds of baby mommas, it's probably better that he's dead anyway. Yeah, I went there.

On a related note, part of the reason this case is getting so much attention is that we finally have a young black male victim who is (as Joe Biden would say,) clean. No record, no weapon, and we all know that thugs don't shop at Hollister. It's like, it's just getting harder and harder to deny that people are targets because they are black.

Okay, back to the police. Like I said at the beginning of this post, what George Zimmerman did, and what the police did are two separate issues. George Zimmerman is an individual who is making his own individual (bad) decisions. The Sanford Police Department is an arm of the government, whose job is to protect and serve the citizens of Sanford, Florida. As a part of the government, in some ways they represent all of us as citizens of the United States. And that is where the outrageous part comes in. I expect more from officers of the law. Even if there is a stand your ground law, stand your ground does not mean follow someone, and then shoot them if/when they start beating your ass. There is so much evidence out there already, why did they not think to call a grand jury before hundreds of thousands of people started signing a petition? How did they not think there was enough probable cause the night of the shooting to arrest George Zimmerman on suspicion of something? Reckless endangerment, involuntary manslaughter, for the love of God, we've got a unarmed kid with a bullet through his chest! Why did they list Trayvon as a "john doe" instead of going through his phone, finding the number that said mom and calling it to tell her that her son was dead?

Yeah, I just said why, but I am getting really pissed off right now. Look, I just said but too. I was going to write more, but I am going to end it here for now. Soul searching doesn't happen in one afternoon.

Before I go, there is a video that I have always wanted to put on my blog, but it never seemed like the right time. I think that time is now.



Please, wake up.