Cult of Compliance: 77 Year Old Blind Man Beaten by Police; Police Department says "Within Department Policies"

This case is from 2012, but I first noticed it on this DailyKos diary. It's a perfect example of the "cult of compliance," a phrase I've been using since 2013 to link otherwise discrete incidents of police brutality, creeping authoritarianism, and broader examples of cultural discourse that venerate compliance as the greatest of all virtues.

Here's a 77-year-old blind middle class white man beaten by police. It's not knowable how this case would have turned out had he not been disabled, or been black, or been younger, but it's important to mark the ways in which he could resist police narratives of justified use of force, at least in the eyes of a jury. It often takes a "perfect victim" to win any kind of restitution. He sued and just won $400000. Here's what seems to have happened:

White of Eagle was trying to get back home from a conference on technical advancements to assist the blind. He arrived at the Greyhound station downtown to learn the bus he wanted to get on was full. He says the employee told White he could stay at the station and wait.

Then a security guard told White he was trespassing and called police. The security guard did not tell White the police were on the way. When Officer Kyllion Chafin arrived on scene White asked to see his badge.
"He says how are you going to look at my badge if you're blind?" explained White. "I said I just want to touch your badge. He said you're not touching me."
That's when the incident escalated. Chafin pulled White's arms behind his back and threw him onto the counter, hitting and causing bleeding to White's head.
...
After putting the man in cuffs, Chafin's supervisor Sergeant Robery Wyckoff began to record an interview with White without reading him his Miranda rights.
...
Wyckoff was promoted to Lieutenant last year.

Another article notes: "Bleeding from the head, White was handcuffed and taken to the Denver jail. He was released about eight hours later, near midnight. No criminal charge was filed against White."

Both Chafin - the officer who decided that a blind man asking to touch his badge - and the Lieutenant, are still Denver police officers.

The Denver Police Department did not respond to specific questions but did send the following statement:
"We believe in the judicial process and respect the jury's decision. The Department of Safety and the Denver Office of the Independent Monitor took part in reviewing the incident, and the Denver Police Department found that the officers' actions fell within department policies. We are always looking for ways to improve."

Here we have a civilian, as nonthreatening as could be, asking for a reasonable accommodation to verify the identity of a law enforcement officer (LEO). Instead, the LEO decided that his non-compliance justified force, and slammed him down on a desk (there are pictures of his bloody head, if you're the doubting kind). Notice, though, the chain of the cult of compliance, starting with the bus employees who decided that throwing out an old blind man was the right call.

Here are two principles:

1. Lack of compliance, on its own, absent other threat indicators, must not be used to justify force. 
2. Officers who violate principle #1 must be held accountable for their actions by law enforcement itself. If such actions do not violate department policies, change your policies.

Sandra Bland and Disability

When Brian Encina slammed Sandra Bland's head into the ground, this happened:

Encinia: Get on the ground!
Bland: For a traffic signal!
Encinia: You are yanking around, when you pull away from me, you’re resisting arrest.
Bland: Don’t it make you feel real good don’t it? A female for a traffic ticket. Don’t it make you feel good Officer Encinia? You're a real man now. You just slammed me, knocked my head into the ground. I got epilepsy, you motherfucker.
Encinia: Good. Good.
Bland: Good? Good?
Female officer: You should have thought about it before you started resisting.

Here is Sandra Bland's booking form. The New York Times says:

The intake forms also said that Ms. Bland was taking an antiseizure medication, Keppra, for epilepsy. The drug comes with a warning label approved by the Food and Drug Administration that includes a long list of possible side effects, including depression, aggressive behavior and thoughts of suicide. It was unclear whether she had access to the drug while in jail.

A friend of mine notes that three days without one's anti-seizure medication might well affect one's mental state.

Here's a really important note from the editor at "This Bridge Called Our Health" (A Trans-Inclusive, Intersectional, Sex-Positive Health & Healing Blog by & for Women and Femmes of Color of all Genders.):

I think some of the discourse emerging from these ‪#‎IfIDieInPoliceCustody ‬&‪ #‎WhatHappenedToSandraBland‬ conversations are dangerously limited. Folks are saying “Sandra Bland was mentally sound” and “Black women like her would never commit suicide”, etc. Not only are we upholding precarious and dehumanizing ‘strong black woman’ archetypes that neglect to hold Black women in the fullness and breadth that we embody, but our failure to operate within a mental health & disability justice framework by making the assertion that Sandra Bland was ‘mentallly sound’ in order to prove that she did not commit suicide is a dangerous narrative that both devalues black people who navigate mental health difficulties and trauma and also erases their/our narratives from the conversation.

Stevens, the author, continues:

The carefully calculated last moments of Sandra Bland’s life of getting pulled over for a minor traffic violation on her way to work, being brutalized by law enforcement officers, and subsequently seized and held in captivity for being a Black woman is what killed Sandra Bland. THE STATE DID THIS TO HER. Whether she committed suicide or not THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE.

Race occupies the center of this narrative. But intersectionality demands we think about gender too, and that's happening. And then we discuss class. And perhaps region (Texas racism vs Chicago racism). And so on. Disability needs to be part of this discussion.

At the moment that Bland identified as epileptic, FWIW, the ADA kicks in. It doesn't mean she can't be arrested, but it does mean she has the right to reasonable accommodations. When she spoke about her mental health at intake, again, the ADA kicks in. She can be incarcerated, but not without reasonable accommodations.

Don't erase her self-disclosed identity as a disabled person. And adding her status as a disabled person to the discussion doesn't erase her identity as a black woman.

And none of that excuses the state.

Freddie Gray and Disability

When Eric Garner's killers were not charged, I wrote a piece for CNN about the intersection of disability and race in his and other deaths at the hands of law enforcement.

Ever since I heard that Freddie Gray asked for an inhaler before the police closed the door on the van and began give him his (alleged) rough ride, I've been pretty sure that the same lens applies to his death.

That sentiment was confirmed by an excellent piece on Gray's lead paint poisoning a few weeks ago in the Washington Post.

“There was a big hole when you go up the steps,” Gray recalled in 2009. “There was a couple of walls that wasn’t painted all the way, peeled. . . . And like the windows, paint was peeling off the windows.”

Before Freddie Gray was injured in police custody last month, before he died and this city was plunged into rioting, his life was defined by failures in the classroom, run-ins with the law and an inability to focus on anything for very long.

 Many of those problems began when he was a child and living in this house, according to a 2008 lead-poisoning lawsuit filed by Gray and his siblings against the property owner. The suit resulted in an undisclosed settlement.

Reports of Gray’s history with lead come at a time when the city and nation are still trying to understand the full ramifications of lead poisoning. Advocates and studies say it can diminish cognitive function, increase aggression and ultimately exacerbate the cycle of poverty that is already exceedingly difficult to break.

It is nonetheless hard to know whether Gray’s problems were exclusively borne of lead poisoning or were the result of other socioeconomic factors as well. From birth, his was a life of intractable poverty that would have been challenging to overcome.

It's impossible to point to a single factor and say - lead paint! Or - poverty! Or - racism! That's why intersectionality matters. We don't have to, and shouldn't, because that's not how humans work. Each of us is shaped by intersecting factors, and for Gray, those intersections proved fatal.

“Jesus,” Dan Levy, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University who has studied the effects of lead poisoning on youths, gasped when told of Gray’s levels. “The fact that Mr. Gray had these high levels of lead in all likelihood affected his ability to think and to self-regulate and profoundly affected his cognitive ability to process information.”

Levy added, “And the real tragedy of lead is that the damage it does is irreparable.”
By the time Gray and his family moved into the hovel on North Carey Street, which became the subject of the subsequent litigation, the amount of lead in his system had fallen. But he and his sisters began developing problems.

His sister, Fredericka, developed issues with aggression, Gray said in a 2009 deposition. “She still got problems like that,” he said. “She still do. She always was the aggressive one. She liked to fight all the time and all of that.”

Equally troubling was the children’s performance in the classroom. The twins and an older sister were diagnosed with either ADHD or attention-deficit disorder ADD, and Fredericka’s academic career was “riddled with suspensions,” court records say.

It wasn’t any better for Freddie, who never graduated high school and was often absent from his studies because of truancy or suspensions. “All the schools that I went to, I was in special education,” Gray said.

Today in the Baltimore Sun, there's a letter Zosia Zaks, who is the manager of programs and education at Towson University's Hussman Center for Adults with Autism and also teaches disability studies courses. Zaks writes:

Why is no one discussing Freddie Gray's disabilities? Historically, disabled persons have had a higher risk for ineffective interactions with law enforcement personnel. Recent examples in our geographic area include the cases of Nellie Latson and Robert Saylor. This is not to discount factors of racism at all. But disability discrimination or "ableism" is the most hidden "ism" of all and our society is just not dealing with it. In Freddie Gray's case, racial discrimination is compounded by disability discrimination and when we ignore this fact, any solution to the problem of police bias and brutality will be incomplete.
The police must be trained in how to respond to individuals with developmental disabilities of all races. This does not mean we make excuses for the actions of adults with disabilities — visible or invisible. All adults must be held to the same standards of the law. What is does mean is that people who communicate, think, learn and emote differently must have the accommodations, supports and guidance needed to level the playing field. This also means that civil workers in a city like Baltimore in which hundreds of children have sustained lead poisoning must receive training to ensure public safety for all citizens.
We have been promising persons with disabilities the right to full community integration for decades. This promise rings hollow when society refuses to analyze and to discuss openly how we collectively and personally respond to the diversity of disability.

Readers of this blog will know how wholeheartedly I back Zaks' analysis here. It's vital to include the disability lens in our understanding both of this tragedy and how to reduce the risk of these incidents in the future.







http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-gray-disabled-letter-20150502-story.html

On Freddie Gray, the Washington Post, and Journalistic Ethics

The Washington Post has published a report based on a leaked document. We don't know who leaked it to them. In it, a prisoner who was placed in the police van some time after Freddie Gray was restrained, claims that he heard banging from Gray's compartment. At no time did this anonymous prisoner see Gray.

That's news. A prisoner heard banging. That ought to get published.

Unfortunately, WaPo decided to go with a reiteration of the prisoner's suppositions.

A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.
The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.
The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van. It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner’s version, which is just one piece of a much larger probe.

I just wrote about questioning narratives. Here's another case where the narrative must be taken apart.

First, notice all the hypotheticals and room for doubt: "might have" "not clear" no "additional evidence" "written by a police investigator"  "could not see him" - there is literally no evidence here except that Prisoner A heard banging.

But instead, we get in the lede, the headline, and crawling across cable news channels, the message that Freddie Gray broke his own spine. It's not going to persuade many, but it will introduce enough doubt to keep pro-law individuals and policy-makers from vigorously pursuing justice for Gray.

Moreover, imagine this prisoner, now caught up in the Freddie Gray story. The police interrogate him about what he heard. I can imagine a scenario in which the investigator says, "You heard banging?" "Yes." "Like he was trying to hurt himself?" "Yes." And then writes down, "Prisoner A says Gray was trying to hurt himself."

Did that happen? No idea. And the Washington Post also has no idea either.

There is a good story to write about this leaked document, a necessary story even. Banging could mean an attempt to self-injure in an effort to get a big settlement (the implication here), but also could be the last pleas of a dying man for help, unable to call out anymore. Banging could be a lot of things. All we know is Prisoner A heard sounds.

The people who wrote this piece are journalist pros in a way I will never be, sludging through the day-job of it all for one of the great papers in America. But I believe the way this piece was written reflects poorly on the ethical decisions made by the writers and the editors. It serves the agenda of the leaker and those who want to introduce doubt to the investigation of the death of Freddie Gray.

Because when there is doubt, time and time again, in front of juries, the media, and the public, law enforcement officials receive the benefit of that doubt. And the Washington Post has made it easier for Gray's killers to escape justice.

UPDATE: Let's imagine that the BPD had reliable evidence beyond this one prisoner that Gray's injuries were self-inflicted. They would have released that within 24 hours of his death as an attempt to forestall unrest, rather than letting the investigation play out. This leak is a sign of the weakness of the investigation to exonerate the police, rather than a sign of Gray's culpability.

The Shooting of Jeremy Hutton and Law Enforcement Narratives

In 2010, Jeremy Hutton, a 17 year-old-boy with Down syndrome, was shot by a police officer who claimed Hutton was driving right at him. That claim held up in the post-incident review.

Here's a video showing that's untrue (original source), the officer was safely to the side.

A video of police shooting a car driven by a boy with Down Syndrome. The video contradicts police narratives that the boy was deliberately driving straight at the deputy.
Posted by David M. Perry on Wednesday, April 29, 2015

We cannot trust police narratives, even if 99% of them are true, because the other 1% involves life and death. Moreover, all video must be made accessible to all parties in a case.

More to come on this case.

Narratives: The Latest Victims of the Cult of Compliance

Walter Scott's killing has made national news, propelled by a cell phone video that allegedly shows the officer dropping a TASER by the body, trying to make the death look justified. When Scott died, I expected to hear defenders of the killing blame Scott for running, but there's been relatively little of that. Instead, Officer Slager is being rendered a bad apple, rather than the sign of a systemic problem.

But absent video, there's little question in my mind that Slager would have gotten away with this. That tells me two important things.

1. Body cams are necessary. They must be deployed with appropriate mandatory activation policies. They will cause some new problems and need to be carefully monitored in terms of storage and use of video, but they are quite simply needed. The failure to turn on one's body camera must function as a gross violation of policy and perhaps indication of wrongdoing. There is no other way to regain trust than to have the verification of video.

2. Police testimony generally has a powerful evidentiary status, a fact that Slager tried to exploit in his alleged crime. For example, Justus Howell was killed in Chicago just a few hours after Scott. He was allegedly in the midst of a deal to buy a handgun when the cops got involved, and ran away with the gun. Running with a firearm is likely justified legally (although I have not heard any evidence that Howell was in fact trying to use the firearm, so any threat remained speculative). The police have told a very clear and consistent story about the incident. Do we believe them? How can we, when this story about the death of Walter Scott, told before the video was out, also is very clear and tells the story of a justified shooting.  I am not saying I in fact think the Zion police are lying. In fact, I think that it's almost certain that their narrative is accurate. But, Slager's conduct forces us, as responsible citizens, to question police narratives.

EDIT - The New York Times has a piece about officers being assumed to tell the truth unless there's evidence to the contrary. They suggest that might have to change. I agree.

Moreover, these are not the only deaths in the news of late.

I wrote about Lavall Hall, the man in mental health crisis holding a broomstick, who police chased as he ran, and shot as he allegedly turned back to them (fearing the broomstick). Now the lawyers for Hall's family have released video, I suspect trying to link their case to Scott's.

The police aren't happy.

As the video played at the news conference, one of the attorneys for the family said Daniels can be heard telling police before the shooting, “Please don’t hurt my child, please.”
A spokesman for Florida State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle told ABC News that the investigation is ongoing and they have concerns the video may endanger the investigation into the incident, but the office could not stop the family from releasing the video.
"We investigate every police use of force as a potential criminal case, and that’s why the premature release of this video may well interfere with the investigation," the spokesman told ABC News.

Maybe the premature release is an issue, but to me, I think it's that the video makes the police narrative more questionable. The narrative is:

"The officers were faced with a dangerous situation. They have already given statements to investigators indicating Mr. Hall struck them with a weapon and deadly force was used. The reasonableness of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene. The reliable evidence will establish Officers Trimino and Ehrlich acted appropriately.”

And then there's Donald "Dontay" Ivy - Tasered to death in Albany.

The family of Donald "Dontay" Ivy, 39, described him as a paranoid schizophrenic they said suffered from heart problems. His relatives waited for answers later in the day about the death of a man they said was quiet and introverted as they gathered outside their Second Street residence, several blocks from where the incident unfolded.
Police said Ivy fought with the officers, Michael Mahany, Joshua Sears and Charles Skinkle, at Lark and Second streets and led them on a brief foot chase. The officers started performing CPR on Ivy 11 minutes after the confrontation began at 12:36 a.m., according to a police spokesman.
Police leaders have not said why the officers confronted Ivy or how many times he was struck with a Taser. Ivy was pronounced dead at Albany Medical Center Hospital after he arrived in an ambulance at 1:10 a.m., a spokesman said.

Details on the case are still pending. But Ivy is remembered as a "good kid." Family members argue that the police knew that Ivy was disabled and should have approached the situation differently.

Police nationwide have faced scrutiny for their use of deadly force, especially toward the mentally ill. Ivy's family is questioning the fatal actions of Albany police, since they believe Ivy's illness was apparent.
"They would have known that he was mentally ill," Okwuosa said. "And they would have dealt with it from that perspective. Which they did not, and as a result, I had to see my nephew in the morgue today."

Meanwhile, the DA has announced an independent investigation.

Lawful but Awful - Rethinking Police Strategy to Avoid Violence

Louis Hayes is a Chicago area SWAT and CIT trained police officer trying to change certain core strategic approaches employed by police. He's got a new piece up about "lawful but awful" cases, many of which involve disability. Hayes writes:

What I read from activists’ and advocates’ intelligent responses (SPECIAL NOTE: intelligent) to many of the high profile “Lawful But Awful” cases is a sense of officers needlessly rushing into action. While I dispute many of their claims in the recent national cases, they do have a point. In SOME cases, I see videos of officers creating their own jeopardy – by closing the distance, acting too quickly, moving in before gathering more information. When this is combined with the agency not properly training its officers in recognition of mental illness or disability, this is counter to any claim of “risk management.”
Critics of the above stabilize mindset (generally from inside police work) claim this higher goal is too risky for officers and puts them at risk. I contend not. I argue that when taken from an analytical perspective of risk, I am not asking officers to accept more risk. Actually quite the opposite – expose officers to less risk, thereby needing less force to overcome the lower risk! I also advocate the complete empowerment of police officers to use quick, decisive force levels and options when necessary…up to and including deadly force.

Hayes and I don't always agree (he's too fond of TASERs for my liking, for example), but I think he's one of the sharper voices from WITHIN the law enforcement community to recognize the challenges of reshaping policing.

In fact, I just did a radio interview in which the host, politely, asked me how I respond to the accusation that I'm anti-cop. I wish I had this document at hand when answering. In fact, this kind of response can make the officers safer as well as protecting us and our civil liberties.

John T Williams - Deaf First Nations Woodcarver Killed by Police (from 2010)

This story was just brought to my attention in the comment from "Mel" in my previous post.

In 2010, John T. Williams, a Native Alaskan woodcarver, was walking down the street holding a 3-inch folding knife and a piece of wood.

Officer Ian Birk approached him from behind, firearm drawn, and ordered Williams to drop the knife.  Williams kept walking, so Birk shot him in the back four times. Backup arrived, and then they approached the body and cuffed him. As near as I can tell, no first aid was applied. Video is below.

Birk was not charged.

After an inquest into the Seattle police shooting last month, four of eight jurors said they believed Officer Ian Birk thought Williams posed a threat during the Aug. 30 incident. Three couldn't determine whether he did. Only one juror believed Williams actually posed a threat.

Witnesses to the shooting testified that Williams -- a heavy drinker who had mental health problems, according to family members -- wasn't threatening the officer and that Birk may have fired in haste. Birk, however, maintained that he feared for his life and had to shoot Williams. 

When you watch the video, it will be hard for me to understand how an armed officer approaching a slowly walking man in his 50s from behind could justify being afraid. But this is the pattern. No one can prove whether or not the man was afraid (although "reasonably" afraid is, as I understand it, the legal standard).

Here's why this case matters especially to me. Williams was deaf in one ear. He was, according to a family member, wearing earbuds at the time as well. He couldn't hear Birk. And because he couldn't hear, he was killed, and the killer escaped without criminal charge.

The police review board did find the killing unjustified, Birk resigned, and the city settled a lawsuit for 1.5 million dollars.

This is the cult of compliance. This is the "be normal" or die mentality, which demands that each of us comply in a "normal" way or be deemed a threat. Mostly the cops get away with it. Sometimes they are held accountable. Rarely they are charged with criminal conduct.

It happened last week in Bessemer, AL. It's going to happen next week too, somewhere.

Sunday Roundup - Police Violence, Gender Norming, Dissertations

It's been a busy week of writing and I hope you are enjoying this holiday weekend.

Most of the week was spent on the cult of compliance and police violence. I started with a piece on CNN on 4 police killings of people with mental health issues. I argued that we need to think about psychiatric disability - disability comes with protections and the need for accommodation - rather than illness. As usual, I added some blog followups.

I also wrote a post about four stories of police violence for "Living while Black." Black men attacked for sitting, not walking, raising hands, and keeping hands in pockets. One of the story also involves autism. Thank you to everyone who read it here or one of the sites on which I shared it.

I published an essay called "Save the Dissertation" (it saved me) on Chronicle Vitae, with a followup on the blog. There's a lot of talk in Higher Ed about reshaping graduate education, and no doubt a lot of reform is needed. But for me, the dissertation process, in all its turmoil, is how we become scholars. If we want to come up with new ways to do this, that's fine. We don't, however, get to test it out on grad students. Senior scholars at R1 schools - you go first. Then apply for grants, sabbaticals, chairs, etc. with the results and let us know what happens. 

I had two essays. The fun one was on Huffington Post and was about my approach to "parenting against the grain."  My daughter got an Avengers backpack. Some boys doubted it was hers. I also wrote a blog about my son and gender norming, and the complexities there (due to Down syndrome).

I also published a book review. It's got 2 errors I'm trying to have fixed. Overall, publishing blogs on HuffPo has been fun, but I'm not sure I get a lot more out of it than writing here. More on that next week.

#CultofCompliance - Living while Black

Here are four stories literally just from last night (they happened at different times, but made news yesterday). They illustrate the way racism enables and is enabled by the cult of compliance. The cult provides an intersectional lens in which race and class dominate the middle, with disability not far behind. When these categories overlap in a single individual, trouble beckons.

Incident 1: Sitting while black in a public space. 

The African-American man was sitting outside a store, waiting for his kids to get out of school. The store clerk got nervous - a black man sitting! For ten minutes! - so he called the police. When the police arrived, they demanded his ID. He didn't comply:

The man in the video tells the officer he was sitting in front of the store for 10 minutes as he waited for his kids to get out of school, and that the area is public and he had a right to sit there.
“The problem was —” the female officer begins.
“The problem is I’m black,” the man fires back. “It really is, because I’m not sitting there with a group of people. I’m sitting there by myself. By myself, not causing a problem.”
Eventually a second male officer approaches the man in the video and attempts to restrain him.
“I’ve got to go get my kids,” the man tells the second officer, pulling his arm away. “Please don’t touch me.”
“You’re going to go to jail then,” the second officer says.
“I’m not doing anything wrong,” the man replies.
At this point, both officers grab the man.
“Come on brother,” the man says, “This is assault.”
“I’m not your brother,” the second officer replies. “Put your hands behind your back otherwise it’s going to get ugly.”
Eventually the officers start to cuff the man and he drops his cellphone and the video goes black.
“I haven’t done anything wrong!” we hear the man yell. “Can somebody help me? That’s my kids, right there! My kids are right there!”
“Put your hands behind your back!” the male officer screams.

Then they tased him.

UPDATES (8/29/14) - More on the Chris Lollie story from the City Pages in the Twin Cities. Charges has been dropped. Police defended their actions. Lollie is filing a complaint and considering a lawsuit. Lawyers weigh in. MY QUESTION - Who called it in at the bank. Do you use that bank? Can you talk to the manager?

Incident 2: Hands in pockets while black and autistic

This was from three years ago, but I just heard about the story yesterday when the judge dismissed the lawsuit. A boy was in his yard when the cops pulled up.

According to Yearby, her son was standing in front of their apartment on Southampton Road minding his own business when two officers on patrol approached him and questioned him. The officers later said they thought he looked suspicious.
"I ran outside and the police pushed me back and I asked him, 'what was going on?' and [the officer] was like 'I asked your son to take his hands out of his pockets,'" recalled Vicky Yearby.
Yearby said she and a neighbor told the officers her son was mentally disabled but they ignored them and continued to yell at Isaac Yearby and frighten him.
Video captured from the Taser camera shows Yearby removed his hands from his pockets then flailed his arms. Seconds later the Taser fired and he fell to the ground. The lawsuit claimed the fall caused Isaac Yearby to suffer seizures which continued periodically.

And of course, there's no accountability.

College Park Police Chief Ron Fears declined an interview but city spokesman Gerald Walker issued a statement which reads, "The City of College Park's Police Department respects the rights of all citizens and visitors, and pledges to maintain a safe community."
It goes on, "[t]he situation in 2011 with Mr. Yearby was unfortunate; however, Judge Marvin Shoob's summary exonerated our officers and their actions. The College Park Police Department continues to protect and serve, and hopes for the best for everyone involved in this case."

This is not what protecting and serving looks like.

Incident 3 (from Digby and Rawstory): Not Walking While Black 

There was a foot chase and the man, an African American named Gregory Towns, was exhausted, but caught. He wouldn't walk, so they started tasing him, driving him with electric shocks as if he were an animal. He died.

But Police Benevolent Association lawyers representing Weems continued to insist that the officer’s actions did not cause Towns to die.
Attorney Dale Preiser issued a statement saying that the “use of drive stun to gain compliance is permitted under federal and Georgia law

Read that again. Under federal and Georgia law, it's fine to use a taser to "gain compliance."

Incident 4 - Not Resisting While Black

Stop Trying to Take My Gun!" The cop shouted this as he was attacking a black man with his hands up.

Cameras have lately been touted as a major solution to police brutality. And they are definitely a HUGE help. What's interesting to me, and upsetting, is the way that police are beginning to game their speech so that they'll have an excuse for the camera.

As we've seen in the Michael Brown case, "he was reaching for my gun" is the excuse that police use when they shoot someone unarmed. Here's a case where the video catches the whole thing.

All the criminal charges against Marcus Jeter have been dismissed, and two Bloomfield police officers have been indicted for falsifying reports, and one of them, for assault.
A third pleaded guilty early on to tampering. It's all thanks to those dashcam tapes. It's the video that prosecutors say they never saw when the pursued criminal charges against 30 year-old Marcus Jeter . In the video, his hands were in the air. He was charged with eluding police, resisting arrest and assault. One officer in the video can be seen throwing repeated punches.

His hands are in the air, because he's a black man, and he knows that if he looks  threatening, he can be shot with impunity.

The video, starting around 2:30, is terrible. Listen to the cop screaming, "Stop Resisting! Stop Resisting! Why are you trying to touch my fucking gun! Get off my gun!"

They are faking resistance for the camera.

Good news: The cops have been charged. There may be justice in this case.
Bad news: How many other people have gone to jail while the cops screamed, "Stop resisting!" to an unarmed man with his hands up. They are learning to play for their cameras. 

Here's one final link. This is a white man in Florida. His son, who is autistic, was pulled over and the father drove to help, but the cops didn't want his help. This is their command training - a civilian interfering is a threat to their command presence, so they don't allow it. The man calmly asserts his rights, he tells the officers that the boy is autistic. If you watch the video, you can see them look at the camera being held by the son, move to block a little. They grab him, throw him to the ground, tase him, and shout, "GET ON THE GROUND! STOP RESISTING." That, they hope, will provide them with the excuse they need.

Of course they charged him with resisting arrest.

The Cult of Compliance provides our intersectional lens. We know these cases are wrong. We know about them because of video, because of disability, because of luck. Most of the victims are people of color. Most of the victims never get any publicity.

Here's one vital lesson for white folks like me. When Michael Brown was killed, a lot of white people, mostly but not exclusively conservatives, said, "He should have just complied when the police told him to get out of the road." Maybe. Maybe it would have saved him. But as we can see here, there is no correct behavior that will protect a black man from police brutality. All behaviors - standing, sitting, walking, not walking, showing your hands, hands in your pockets - are suspect.

The "Pencil Test" For Folks in a Wheelchair

The apartheid government of South Africa had a problem (well, it had a lot of them, but bear with me). It wanted to discriminate by race, but how does one deal with mixed-race people? It came up with the infamous "pencil test," in which a pencil is pushed through a person's hair, and how easily it emerges determines the classification. The pencil test is penetrative, with overtones of the state's control over black bodies medically, sexually, and in so many other ways. For me, it's always been a symbol of the whole evil apartheid construct.

It's been on my mind lately because of a broad discussion about disability and fakery. How disabled must a person be to qualify as "disabled" under the law? Being disabled comes with certain civil rights protections. Being disabled to a certain degree entitles one to a check from Social Security every month. Being disabled, as Justin Bieber knows, can enable one to skip lines at Disneyworld (instead of linking to Gawker or TMZ, why not read the great Emily Ladau on Bieber). Being disabled, in the eyes of the abled world anyway, comes with advantages (great parking!), sympathy (oh, your son is cute), and money.

This is, of course, nonsense and tracks to the ways that other privileged groups envy the perceived benefits of those who experience discrimination. In the disability world, this often tracks to "how disabled are you really?"

We saw it recently with George Takei's ill-conceived posting of a picture showing a woman standing on her wheelchair to get down a bottle of alcohol in the grocery store. The caption, "There's been a miracle in the alcohol isle," suggested that this woman wasn't /really/ that disabled if she could stand on the wheelchair to get some booze. Disability advocates protested and Takei initially told them to lighten up, which is the first response of so many comedians when called on humor that replicates stereotypes. I was first alerted to it by a friend who can walk about 100 feet before using her wheelchair, and she told me that she lives in fear of being accused of faking and having to defend her disabled state.

There were a /lot/ of articles about the meme and Takei. I thought this one from Scott Jordan Harris at Slate was especially good when he offered an alaternative read of the scene. He wrote:

"Someone with the Twitter handle @Andy00778. wrote that the picture shows how “much fraud there is today,” adding “Hope insurance company see it!”

The picture does not show fraud. What it shows is a disabled person using a tool—her wheelchair—to live independently. If any judgement is to be made about the photo at all, it should be celebrated for showing that independence."

Eventually, Takei apologized, at length and sincerely, and the story faded.

I'm writing about this because a 2008 story just made its way to my feeds. I've been working hard on the issue of disability and police violence, but I don't claim to have a master database or anything like a total set of examples. In 2008, my son was one and I was just beginning to apply my training as an academic to disability issues. I wasn't even on Facebook yet.

Here's the story and the post. In it, a cop doesn't believe that someone arrested on a traffic violation is /really/ disabled, so he decides to conduct his own test, dumping him on the floor (and breaking some ribs). This is the extreme case, but it's the same as the Takei meme in its origins (eventually there was an apology and probably a lawsuit).
Our language and our actions around disability and fraud matter. They ripple through the culture, shaping behaviors and ideas beyond. Language - comedy memes - have power. 

Post by Florida Cop Watch.

The Cult of Compliance - #Ferguson and the Department of Justice

My first piece for Al Jazeera America is a big one: The Cult of Compliance.

As regular readers know, I have been talking this for a long time and thinking about police violence in various ways for even longer. I used the phrase for the first time on this post from August 17, 2013. The post cites Digby and Bruce Schneier, two great writers on different aspects of privacy and civil liberty, but emerged from my frustration  I was frustrated by my inability to land the story with a major publication. I wrote:

I've been trying to write about non-compliance and police violence to no avail, so far. I'm not sure what's not catching editors' eyes about my various essays (and soon I'll just start posting them here), as I think there's a very big story happening before us, but we get distracted by tasers, by drones, by tanks, by SWAT, by racial profiling, by guns, by all the VERY REAL and very troubling symptoms of deep problems in American police culture. I call it the Cult of Compliance, in which police demand instant compliance or feel free (and unaccountable) to respond with force.

Little did I know that it would take another year and police takeover of Ferguson, MO, to get the story out there. I hope the piece does it justice and that it influences the discourse. I think it's so important to acknowledge the specifics of each case - racism, sexism, ableism, classism, whatever factors create a violent incident - but also to see the patterns. 

Here's some of the thinking behind the "cult" language. I could have said a culture of compliance, or a culture that doesn't accept non-compliance, or any number of other ways of framing the problem. Cult, though, implies an unthinking adherence to an idea, principle, group, prophet or deity that you must venerate at all costs. To me, in our police culture but also our American culture more broadly, we venerate compliance.  It's not just the police to blame, but all of us who accept the "he/she didn't comply" rationale in any given case. 

Here are some of the stories I didn't reference in the "AJAM" article.

The stories include a boy attacked for a "dehumanizing stare." I wrote about a mentally ill man shot at in Times Square because he was endangering himself by running in traffic. Later, the police charged him as responsible for the people the police themselves shot.  Then there was Jonathan Ferrell who was hurt in a car crash and ran towards police looking for help, addled from the crash. They said stop. He didn't, so they shot and killed him.

In Connecticut, a deaf boy was escaping from abusive custody. Police crept up behind him and tased him, not even risking non-compliance. He sued and that's the last I've been able to find about the story.

Schools, like the one in CT, are a major site for the cult of compliance. Here's a boy with Down syndrome dragged across the floor for being "defiant." I haven't even written about the horrors of the Judge Rothenberg Center and their electric shocks for non-compliant kids with autism, though it's been sitting in my draft folder for months.

Andy Lopez - murdered while holding a toy gun.

Gilberto Powell, a man with Down syndrome, given "multiple commands" and then beaten when he didn't comply.

A couple of college girls buying bottled water in Virginia. The cops thought it was beer and, without ID, charged. The girls panicked. Later, a spokesman said, "This whole unfortunate incident could have been avoided had the occupants complied with law enforcement requests."

An Arab man with intellectual disabilities daring to ride a bicycle.

There are so many more, and I'm not even attempting to document all incidents that might fit. That's not the goal of the blog. Policestateusa.com, for example, documents more. 

My goal is to provide the conceptual links that pull these incidents together. We can only treat the problem when we identify it and call it out. The solution - laws, regulations, and trainings that do not focus on one class of people or another, but that offer simple rules: 

1. Non-compliance does not justify violence. 

2. Inconvenience or impatience does not justify violence.

3. All use of all types of weapons or hands constitutes violence.

4. In a few well-defined circumstances, non-compliance may justify a citation, a ticket, a warning, even an arrest. But it does not justify violence.

As I discuss in the Al-Jazeera piece, the Department of Justice is now looking into police culture with the broadest scope in decades. We need to watch this and make sure that they reach conclusions and make recommendations that will treat the disease, that will fight the cult of compliance, not just work on symptoms.

TASERs in Toronto

Everybody pay attention to these next two sentences, ok?

If your police force is shooting too many people, TASERs are not the solution. The solution is not to shoot people except in dire circumstances.

Thank you for paying attention.

Last week, a major report came out in Toronto as a result of the death of Sammy Yatim. There are 84 recommendations and you can read them all here. Among them is the following, as covered by the press:

The report urges a pilot project to study whether first responders – the front-line officers most likely to encounter people in crisis – should have tasers, which advocates say allow police to gain control of difficult situations without drawing their guns. Currently, only Toronto Police supervisors and tactical officers carry the devices.

However, in treading cautiously on the issue, Mr. Iacobucci recommended that officers who use tasers also be issued monitoring technology such as body-worn cameras. He also urged Toronto Police to advocate for studies on the medical effects of tasers, which detractors warn can be unsafe in certain circumstances, and help create a national database on their use.

There's a lot of good things in the report. The "zero death" goal is excellent, as that, indeed, should be the goal of our police forces.

And TASERs are fine as a tool for the police. U.S. experience shows, though, that when you give cops TASERs, they use them all the time. If you make the ubiquitous in Canada, unless you also build rigorous guidelines and prosecute those who break the guidelines, they will become the low-stakes default, as if shooting something with 40,000 volts of screaming agony isn't serious.

Good luck Canada. I hope you handle this better than we have.

Cult of Compliance - Arizona State Cops vs Ersula Ore

At the end of May, a black female professor named Ersula Ore at Arizona State University was walking across the street when she was arrested for jaywalking. By report, people cross at that site regularly to avoid construction and it is reasonably suspicious that a black woman was the person singled out by police.

She has been charged with a felony for kicking at him after she was flung to the ground. Police reviewed the file and said they did nothing wrong. There is a move-on petition (I have signed it). Here's a local article on the story as the case is being re-reviewed in the wake of viral social media response. Then Huffington Post and CNN. There's lots more.

I argue that along with race, which is central to the case I believe, we've got an example of the cult of compliance. We have made it possible to criminalize non-compliance. If you don't obey police, they can physically hurt you, and if you defend yourself, you get charged with attacking the police. This happens all the time across America, especially to non-white people, but we rarely hear about it. The stories that make the news often involve disability, as the disability functions to absolve the victim of police violence, or at least complicate the narrative. In this case, we hear about the story because it involves a professor the means to leverage social media outrage, to speak for herself, and because professor does still command some respect in American discourse. An average black woman harassed by police is not news, and the new would not cover it.

We also only hear about it because someone called 911 on the COP who was being too aggressive. I'm grateful to that person.

Here's the video. There's also dash-cam video now if you follow that link.

This is the cult of compliance. If she just complies, gives her ID, is nicely respectful, she probably just gets a citation. Stand up for your rights, even as a professor on your own campus, and this is what happens.

As always, we can do better.

Police Brutality, Warrior Cops and Disability - Why is this happening and what do we do?

Yesterday's piece in The Atlantic has a quite excellent comment section (in general, Atlantic readers' comments are polite and smart, if still sometimes easily led to the hostility that happens online everywhere).

Here are three followup points (I know this is long, but bear with me).

1. Why/how are these incidents happening now?

2. How much risk do we, as a society, ask our police to take on? What are the trade-offs? (h/t Schneier)

3. What about accountability and lawsuits?

1. One early comment linked the problem that Lawrence and I wrote about to the "rise of the warrior cop," a phrase coined by Radley Balko in a must-read book. His figures and basic argument is unimpeachable: The rise is happening, it's dangerous, SWAT is wildly overused (both links to Balko), and it's a societal problem.

I'm not sure, though, that it's specifically the problem leading to the violence against people with disabilities. I responded to the comment:

I think about this all the time. Are these trends part of the post-9/11 change that Balko so ably documents, or do we just have better technology for locating, recording, and nationalizing these incidents? I genuinely do not know the answer.

From another reader, I received this very smart response:

Were I interested in crafting a thesis on a broader issue perhaps driving that change, I might focus on how violence is folded into a community. Certainly in this country we have a history of violence in the name of preserving community, the KKK being a quite visible example. Now we've arrived at a place where government functions have been formally decontextualized from the historically standard "community," and law enforcement along with them. LEOs therefore no longer act so much as members of the community as neutral agents representing the monolith of the law - but they're only people, and furthermore they're people who have to navigate communities in the midst of a century (so far) of contentious social navigation, as our entire society translates from one of assimilation to one possessing a much more complex matrix of identity. Add to that cocktail ubiquitous camera ownership, and it's easy to contrast what we believe police should be with what they're used to doing.

Read that again. I don't know that I agree totally, but read it again as it's complex and interesting.

I've been arguing about "the what" - the cult of compliance - as a way to coordinate diverse acts of compliance-veneration across the country and beyond the arena of law enforcement.

This comment offers a thought on "the how" - why is this happening and why is this happening more now.

This is why I engage in my comments, to get smarter. To learn to see things new way.

2. Another set of comments both on the article and elsewhere focus on the police and the hazardous nature of their job. They have the right to demand respect, they have the obligation to treat every contact as a potential maniac (note the disability word there) about to go crazy (again) and attack them, and we have the obligation to obey.

It's true that we ask police to do a very difficult job and we need to afford them considerable latitude in how they do it. And we do - they have all kinds of powers that most of us don't have, including laws that make it illegal to "resist or obstruct" them. In exchange for these powers, we have to ask them to accept risk. Bruce Schneier wrote about this last year.

We're afraid of risk. It's a normal part of life, but we're increasingly unwilling to accept it at any level. So we turn to technology to protect us. The problem is that technological security measures aren't free. They cost money, of course, but they cost other things as well. They often don't provide the security they advertise, and -- paradoxically -- they often increase risk somewhere else. This problem is particularly stark when the risk involves another person: crime, terrorism, and so on. While technology has made us much safer against natural risks like accidents and disease, it works less well against man-made risks.

Three examples:

We have allowed the police to turn themselves into a paramilitary organization. They deploy SWAT teams multiple times a day, almost always in nondangerous situations. They tase people at minimal provocation, often when it's not warranted. Unprovoked shootings are on the rise. One result of these measures is that honest mistakes -- a wrong address on a warrant, a misunderstanding -- result in the terrorizing of innocent people, and more death in what were once nonviolent confrontations with police.

He goes on to talk about zero-tolerance in schools, the money fighting terrorism, and so forth. Read the essay.

The question we have to weigh is how much risk should police take on versus how many innocent but potentially non-compliant people getting hurt or even killed? More risk and more patience in dealing with complex scenarios saves civilian lives. Less risk and the tase-first attitude kills more suspects, some of whom will be innocent, others of whom will be guilty only of minor infractions that do not justify the application of force. Schneier finishes:

We need to relearn how to recognize the trade-offs that come from risk management, especially risk from our fellow human beings. We need to relearn how to accept risk, and even embrace it, as essential to human progress and our free society. The more we expect technology to protect us from people in the same way it protects us from nature, the more we will sacrifice the very values of our society in futile attempts to achieve this security.

3. Then there are just bad cops.

There are abusers in the police, some intentionally, some reflexively. All organizations have bad people; bad people in the police carry firearms and have widespread protections against accountability. Civil lawsuits have to be a part of the remedy, as they allow for discovery, which can untangle the obfuscatory nature of departmental CYA policies. But really, departments and their supervising bodies need to hold their own accountable in ALL CASES.

Disability gives us a wedge here. I wrote about Antonio Martinez, the Latino man with Down syndrome who was attacked by police who mistook him for a different (and foot taller) Latino man. I have always read this as a case of racial profiling gone wrong, but only thanks to Martinez' disability did it make news. I can't prove this, of course.

I wrote about accountability here, in the wake of the Ethan Saylor discussion last fall. On Martinez:

Strip away the explanation of disability and reconsider each incident. After the Martinez beating, the San Diego Sheriff’s department admitted their mistake. Spokesperson Jan Caldwell said, “It was a dark night. There was a non-compliant person that was hiding his face and hiding his hands. It’s clear in the light of day that this man had a disability, but the deputy at the time didn’t know that.” Blaine Young, the president of the board of commissioners in Frederick County, Maryland, similarly blames non-compliance for Saylor’s death. Young said, “If people get in trouble and would just do what the officers say, we wouldn’t have any incidents.”

According to Caldwell, if you don’t have a disability, but are walking down the street on a chilly night, wearing a hoodie and hiding your hands, any amount of non-compliance merits a truncheon to the head and pepper spray in the eyes. According to Young, it is Saylor’s fault for not listening that led to his death over the price of a movie ticket. 

A man without Down syndrome who died in custody for not having a movie ticket doesn't generate national news. A Latino beaten by police in San Diego doesn't generate national news.  It's reading these explanations by Caldwell and Young, along with so many others, that pushed me to talk about the cult of compliance as a generalized societal problem. The cases involve disability deserve attention for their own merits, but let them also serve as a canary in the coal mine. Our civil liberties really are under attack.

There are remedies:

We can start pushing the pendulum back toward a more free society. We can balance our safety and our civil liberties against the safety of our first responders.

First, police must stop thinking of their tasers, pepper spray, and truncheons as a first-resort solution. Deploying a weapon, any weapon, must require a potentially dangerous situation.

Second, we must push for increased emphasis on non-violent training programs for those who are sworn to protect and serve. Police need more training in defusing situations by communicating and by staying calm, not by shooting 40,000 volts through the body or launching pepper spray into the eyes.

Finally, accountability must be part of equation. This is not just an abstract problem. Robert Ethan Saylor is dead. The men who killed him went back to work after their boss said they did nothing wrong. There must be consequences for people who choose force instead of patience.

There really must be consequences for people who choose force instead of patience.  

Police Violence and Disability

I co-write a new piece just published by The Atlantic on police violence and disability. My co-author is Lawrence Carter-Long, communications director for the National Council on Disability. I'm really honored to have worked with him and hope that more collaborations with the NCD follow.

There's nothing surprising in this piece for readers of this blog, but for new people, I've been writing about Ethan Saylor for well over a year now, on the blog, in The Nation, for CNN, and beyond. My points are always these:

1) What happened to Ethan was wrong and was correctable with better training or, frankly, just a little common sense and patience.
2) Due to the nature of disability, it could happen to you or your loved ones too, even if you are not presently disabled.
3) Such incidents reflect a much bigger cultural problem - a focus on compliance over all other principles, including civil liberties. I call it the "Cult of Compliance." This link is to one definition page but if you search the tag compliance, you'll see lots more.

Please read the piece. Comment there or here (here if you want me to see it). I'm thrilled there was a Senate hearing, but we need to do much more.

Cult of Compliance - Albuquerque Cops Shoot Mentally Ill Homeless Man

This is my 200th post on the blog. It's not a happy one.

As long-time readers know, my work on the Ethan Saylor case led me to coin the phrase the "cult of compliance." This phrase allows me to link diverse moments in which authority figures respond to non-compliance with egregious acts of violence and place them against the backdrop of normalized veneration of compliance in our culture.

Flash-bang grenade at Abq park

We only get the stories that make the news, often when a person with disability (which excuses the non-compliance in our eyes) gets hurt. These events are serious, often tragic, and deserve media attention, but the bigger picture of the non-news matters just as much, because recognizing the disease, over the symptom, is critical to effect change. Individual authority figures, whether police officers or principals, need to be held accountable for their actions, but we also need the broader context to understand why the stories keep occurring. Hence, the cult of compliance.


In Albuquerque, New Mexico, police shot and killed a mentally-ill homeless man named James Boyd. Here's the story:

A week ago, APD officers found a 38-year-old man camping in the foothills. A man in mental crisis, he first threatened officers. Then he agreed to surrender, gathered his things and began to walk towards officers as instructed.
That’s when an officer shouts “Do it!” and officers targeted him with a flash-bang grenade normally used in SWAT assaults. He drops his things, steps back from the blast and pulls out two small knives he previously put away at officers’ request.
Then he turns away and they open fire with live rounds and a police dog. He later died.

So the man complies, they throw a grenade, he panics and reaches for knives, but is retreating. Again, he is retreating (follow the link and you can watch the video. I choose not to re-post it here).

We have videos like this because of lapel cameras and car cameras. A fair criticism of the concept of the cult of compliance is that it's nothing new, that it's not linked to the militarization of police or any other cultural shift - it's the way human nature mixes with authority - only now we have video to prove it.  I think technology has played a role in raising awareness about this kind of abuse, and surely specific populations have long been subjected to mandatory compliance. African-Americans call it "the talk," a conversation in which they tell their children to obey police instantly and completely in order to keep them from being shot.

I think the cult of compliance is spreading, not retreating, not even in the face of greater access to police video and the near-universal presence of cell-phone cameras in most situations. And maybe as it becomes a white suburban problem, white suburban Americans will take notice and push to effect change that can help protect those minority families and people with disabilities (my specific topic) that are so endangered by the cult.

But not so far in Albuquerque. ProgressNow reports that the Albuquerque police have, since 2010, shot more people than the NYPD, despite the relative size differential between the two cities. The DOJ is investigating.

Meanwhile, the local police chief has ruled on the killing. "Justified."

Deaf Boy Tasered - Police Violence and Disability continued

For the past year, I have been writing about a persistent pattern of police violence against people with disabilities. I have been particularly focused on the Ethan Saylor case, of course.

But the stories proliferate, with a new one almost every week. On Monday, I argued that you can read both the Times Square police shooting and the Ferrell case through the lens of police not knowing/caring how to respond to people acting "differently." The racial reading is of course front and center for that second case, of course, but seen through the lens of trying to explain how Ferrell is acting, temporarily disability following an accident makes sense.

Alas, the stories proliferate, many of them following the general pattern of the cult of compliance. Digby, who is one of the leaders on this topic, brought this story to my attention.

A deaf boy was escaping abuse and ran away from a school. The police found him, approached, then tasered him when he didn't respond. Here's the key paragraph -

Police arrived at the construction site after dark. Knowing the boy was deaf, they allegedly made no effort to warn or communicate with him, but Tasered him from behind. As A.M. writhed on the ground from the “burns, paralysis and pain” caused by the Taser barbs, the two police officers rushed him and placed him in handcuffs.

There's a lawsuit, some money will change hands, and in no way will the cult of compliance be threatened.

It's worth thinking through this scene from the perspective of the police officer.  It's dark. He knows the boy is deaf so can't be verbally controlled. At that point he just decides to solve the problem with a quick jolt of 40,000 volts. Does he talk about it with his partner first? I suppose they are worried he'll run away again (a reasonable guess given the awful situation).

We need to assert our right NOT to be tasered just because the police want us to comply. It's crazy that we have to even argue for this.

Violence in America - A historical look

A friend and historian asked me, in the wake of yesterday's post, to think about the ways that compliance might track against overall reduction in crime in the last few decades. This is important. Ray Kelly defended stop and frisk by saying it's lowered crime rates. TASER notes the 110,000+ lives saved thanks to their products. These arguments are complicated - exactly how many people should TASER CEWs (conducted electrical weapons) save in order to justify each death? How much do we need crime to go down to justify racial profiling and the abandonment of our Fourth Amendment rights?

Two articles on crime over time caught my eye of late, both from Talking Points Memo.

The first, "Humility and History," makes the argument that it is very hard to track causality while living in a moment of change, but that this is part of the role of the history. It's a particularly good piece for people looking for ways that liberal learning matters.

Marshall, the writer, then follows up with "Was Lead the Killer?", which looks at the decline in lead poisoning and violent crime. He considers a number of possible reasons for the decline in crime, then concludes:

Lead on the other hand has two big evidentiary chains behind it. One is the abundant evidence that lead poisoning early causes decreased IQs, diminished impulse control and various sorts of sociopathic behavior. It seems to take the ‘natural’ aggressive impulses of young men and put them into overdrive. Second is the very granular correlation between rising and falling rates of lead poisoning and rates of violent crime - offset by about 23 years. This doesn’t seem to apply just broadly in the USA but in other countries and even state by state in the USA.

That’s serious evidentiary backing. And I’d call it a solid theory. I just don’t believe it’s case closed. I think we need more research and also we’ll need to see what happens over the next ten to twenty years. More candidly, I think there’s part of me - perhaps the historian part of me - that’s inherently resistant to such monocausal explanations. But that may be bias more than clear thinking.

So that’s where I come down on this. Lead’s the only theory with solid evidentiary backing. But I don’t think it’s case closed.

I really like the "inherently resistant to such monocausal explanations" phrase, as I think that's exactly how historians ought to operate - open to understanding causality, resistant to single explanations (see 10,000 pieces on the "Fall of Rome" for another good case).

To me, I'm increasingly convinced by the argument that police have always acted this way (the cult of compliance) but are now being recorded by camera-phones and car-cameras (which police shout NOT be able to turn off), so have to make up explanations for their brutality. Hence, we end up with "non-compliance" as the catch-all. I am also increasingly convince that there has been a fundamental shift in police culture, the "Rise of the Warrior Cop," in a society increasingly tolerant of violating civil liberties in the name of security. This places the change into the post-9/11 change in American culture.

I am aware that these two explanations may lightly contradict each other. At the moment, I'm comfortable with that.

The Discourse of Police Brutality - 14-year-old attacked for a "dehumanizing stare."

In a few weeks (date not yet set), I will be publishing an essay on police brutality and disability. As a result of my work on this (really upsetting) topic, I've been tracking the ways that police explain their actions. The use of language, even more than the specifics of any given case, shows the way that the police understand their own actions.

This is very much a thought in progress, and I'd like to hear your refinements, counter-arguments, and general reactions. 

Case #1

Last December, a young man named Antonio Martinez left his house to go to his family's bakery. His sister always tells him to dress warmly, so he pulled on a hoodie and covered his head. There were two San Diego County Sheriff's deputies in the area who spotted him and decided that he looked suspicious. They told him to stop, be he ignored him. Antonio was then pepper-sprayed, hit with a baton, and knocked to the ground. The deputies handcuffed him and put him their car.

 The deputies were in the area looking for a domestic violence suspect described as a 5’11” Latino male. Antonio is a 4’11” Latino male.  I read this as a clear-cut case of walking-while-Hispanic, but in this case, there’s an additional key detail; Antonio Martinez has Down syndrome.  Sheriff's spokesperson Jan Caldwell said, “It was a dark night. There was a non-compliant person that was hiding his face and hiding his hands. It's clear in the light of day that this man had a disability, but the deputy at the time didn't know that.”

 Case #2

Last Thursday, a 14-year-old boy named Tremaine McMillan was playing on the beach with some friends and his puppy. Police decided his behavior was unacceptable, challenged him verbally, and told him to show them where his mother was. Assuming everything the police say is true, he clenched his fist, gave them a "dehumanizing stare," then turned to walk (toward his mother, says Tremaine). The police tackled him and pinned him to the ground. You can follow the links for cell phone footage and more comments.

I want to focus on the police explanation, here: "Miami-Dade Police Detective Alvaro Zabaleta justified the use of force, saying McMillan was exhibiting threatening “body language,” which includes “clenched fists.”. . . "Of course we have to neutralize the threat in front of us,” said Zabaleta.  “And when you have somebody that is being resistant, somebody that is pulling away from you, somebody that’s clenching their fist, somebody that’s flaring their arms, that’s the immediate threat.” The accounts vary slightly, but in all cases it's clear that the police feel justified tackling someone who is not acting violently, but who is showing angry body language. And then they charged him with resisting arrest.

Thoughts:

When we read Tremaine's story, one could argue that he should have complied faster, more politely, and otherwise engage in blaming him for his predicament. But when we put Tremaine's story against Antonio Martinez, from Miami to San Diego, I think in just these two examples the pattern is revealed: when police speak to you, especially if you have brown skin, you have to submit instantly, without hesitation. Otherwise, the police will feel justified in getting physical.

Only Martinez' disability saved him from being charged. As far as I know, the deputy responsible was never suspended.

So there are two issues here: One, the specific concern of how disabled people interact with police (which is my main topic that I focus on), but there's a broader issue too. Cases like Martinez' reveal the widespread pattern of police responded with "non-lethal" violence the instant their authority is questioned in any way.

And I say "non-lethal," in scare quotes, because Ethan Saylor is dead and we still want justice.