Retraining Police To Protect And Serve.

Following the most recent example of police brutality at a high school in South Carolina, it is abundantly clear that law enforcement agencies across the country must re-evaluate and re-educate their officers. Too often we’ve seen officers use excessive force to bully, bruise, wound and kill citizens without probable cause.

Far too often, we’ve seen police resort to lethal force against unarmed men, women and children.

In Cleveland, we saw a police officer shoot and kill a 12-year-old boy within 2 seconds of his arrival on the scene. The boy’s crime? He was playing with a toy gun. We saw cops shoot a young man in an Ohio Walmart for daring to hold a BB-gun he intended to buy. We saw a Texas highway patrol officer unnecessarily brutalize and arrest a young woman who was standing up for her rights after being stopped for failure to signal a lane change. She was arrested and ultimately killed just because the officer didn’t like her attitude.

We saw an officer stop an unarmed driver for a broken taillight then shoot him multiple times in the back as he tried to run from the scene. We’ve seen a video of an officer “ground and pound” a middle-aged woman on the shoulder of a freeway. And we’ve seen police shoot and kill unarmed citizens who were mentally ill without any attempt to use non-lethal force.

This phenomenon is not limited to any single region of the United States, nor any level of law enforcement. We’ve seen the same kind of brutality from small town cops, sheriffs and sheriff deputies, big city cops and state patrol officers. In addition, we’ve seen racial profiling by city police departments; from Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s gang in Maricopa County, Arizona; and from officers in the Border Patrol. Though they may or may not brutalize or kill the subjects of their harassment, at minimum they make the detainees’ lives unnecessarily difficult.

These same kinds of incidents don’t happen in other advanced nations. While officers in the US shoot people armed with clubs and knives, officers in the UK and Canada use night sticks and training to subdue similarly armed individuals. While officers in the US shoot and/or imprison the mentally ill, in other nations officers subdue them and get them help.

What is the answer?

Certainly not all of the law enforcement officers in the US are out-of-control bullies. But there are plenty. And, rather than try to eliminate the bad apples within their ranks, the good officers, their unions, the prosecutors, “law and order” politicians and uncaring citizens go out of their way to blindly protect them.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The chiefs of departments can change their hiring and training procedures. I once was witness to the inner workings of two city police departments separated only by a river. One department was awash in corruption and bullies. The other was virtually free of such problems. The difference? The first department focused on hiring the biggest and baddest candidates – candidates who had previously served in small town departments. Most of them had simply passed an 8-week training program consisting primarily of classroom work, military-style drilling and many hours on the shooting range. The chief of the second department chose, instead, candidates with college degrees and a philosophy of service.

Certainly, dash cams and body cams will help. But they are not the only answer. It’s time that all departments take a long, hard look at themselves – at their military-style weapons, uniforms, vehicles and protocols; at their military-style “I’ve got your back” attitudes; at their militaristic training; and at their hiring programs. They need to remember that they are not another arm of the military. And they need to reinstate the motto: “To serve and protect.”

If law enforcement officers want the public – especially minorities – to respect them, they’re going to have to earn that respect. Not just a few…but all of the officers.

The Reality Show I’d Pay To See.

I despise virtually all of the so-called “Reality” TV shows. But there is one show I’d love to see: “Sheriff Joe’s Prison Term In Tent City.”

For years, “America’s Toughest Sheriff” has, in reality, been America’s Most Corrupt Sheriff. He has ignored court orders and enforced laws as he sees fit. He has racially-profiled Latinos. He has failed to investigate hundreds of sexual assaults in Latino communities. He has ignored the dehumanizing and dangerous conditions at his Tent City. (You know, the tents in the desert where prisoners are warehoused without heat, air conditioning, toilets and running water.) He has profited from donations to his far right wing PAC. And he has cost the taxpayers of Maricopa County more than $145 million in legal costs and misspent funds.

Now, faced with a contempt of court hearing for willfully ignoring a judge’s orders, he has admitted to guilt in hopes that he will avoid the hearing and the potentially harsher penalties that could come with it.

Let’s hope the judge sees his plea for what it really is: An attempt to settle for a slap on the wrist and a stern warning. Let’s hope the judge sentences him to time in his own Tent City. And let’s hope the judge allows cameras in the prison so we can all watch his detention officers place the sheriff in a holding area with no shade from the sun as they have done to so many others; so we can watch him eat the same gruel he has forced on prisoners for years; so we can watch him stand in line for one of his own portable toilets; so we can watch him wrinkle his nose at the stench coming from the toilets and the dump next door.

Now that’s a “Reality” show I’d watch!

No One More Deserving Of Contempt.

On Thursday, January 15, a United States District Court Judge called for a contempt of court proceeding against Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed “nation’s toughest sheriff.” It’s a development for which I have only one question: What took so long?

The oh-so-tough Sheriff Joe has a long history of deeds that are deserving of contempt. The courts have found him guilty of racially-profiling Latinos, costing the county tens of millions in unnecessary court costs and court judgments. By my admittedly incomplete accounting, Arpaio has, thus far, cost Maricopa County taxpayers at least $81.125 million in legal fees and settlements. And that doesn’t even include the tens of millions of county funds he has misspent on a variety of law enforcement toys and other unapproved items.

In addition, Arpaio’s office failed to investigate sexual assaults in a predominantly Latino area of the county. He has profited from his own political action committee. And, according to the American Friends Service Committee, his Tent City jail, which was ballyhooed as a way to save the county money, costs more per prisoner than any other prison in the state. This despite the fact that it has no heat, no air conditioning and its only bathrooms are portable latrines located next to a dump. (Of course, that is a perfect image for a prison that has one of the highest recidivism rates in the nation. Like our trash, the prisoners are dumped in the desert, surrounded by razor wire, covered with fabric and largely forgotten.)

In reality, the terrorists housed in Gitmo have better facilities. Indeed, an Amnesty International report that found that Tent City is not an “adequate or humane alternative to housing inmates…”

Despite his excesses and failings, for unexplainable reasons Joe is still admired by those who would otherwise demand accountability and fiscal restraint from their elected officials. That’s because Joe is a master of fear-mongering. Over the years, he has scared enough Maricopa County residents into voting for him that he has been elected to six terms by portraying all Latinos as drug-running, human-trafficking, murdering criminals who have crossed our borders illegally and are taking our jobs. He has also successfully pandered to his right wing base by devoting time to try to prove that President Obama is not a US citizen.

So are these the reasons why Arpaio is now facing contempt charges? No, Joe is facing contempt for simply failing to follow court orders. In other words, the get-tough sheriff who claims to pursue any and all lawbreakers is himself accused of ignoring the legal system.

If there is any justice, the highly-contemptible Sheriff Joe will be found guilty and assigned to his own Tent City where he can enjoy the odors coming from its portable toilets, which are frankly less disagreeable than the stench of corruption coming from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and his political friends.

All Men Are Created Equal?

That’s what our Declaration of Independence stated. But it wasn’t true. In fact, African-Americans were considered three-fifths of a person and held in slavery for nearly a hundred years longer. Native Americans were slaughtered and herded onto reservations in order to steal their land. Chinese-Americans were virtually enslaved to build our railroads. And women were denied the right to vote for nearly 150 years.

Even today equality still does not exist.

People of color are many times more likely to live in poverty and to be imprisoned. Gay and lesbians are only now beginning to win equal rights to marry those they love. Women are paid less for doing the same work as men. And, according to some, the plight of the wealthy is even worse. They claim to be victims of their own success and good fortune – that they are victims of class warfare. Some have even likened their plight to the Jews prior to the Holocaust.

Hmmm….

The wealthiest one percent of our population owns an overwhelming percentage of the wealth in the US yet, thanks to loopholes, they pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes. They invest large portions of their wealth in offshore tax havens. They use their wealth to buy influence and access to government. They are even treated differently by our courts. The Supreme Court ruled that money equals free speech, so they can speak more loudly than anyone else. (In fact, the Koch brothers are now using their money to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.) And if they break the law, they are seldom punished.

You may remember the case of the Texas teen found to be suffering from “Affluenza.” Despite the fact that he killed four people as the result of drunk driving, he was “sentenced” to an exclusive, and expensive, rehab facility.

Now there is the case of a duPont heir who was given probation for raping his three-year-old daughter because the judge decided that he “wouldn’t do well in prison.” Wouldn’t do well? Who does? When have you ever heard of a case in which a court was concerned that a poor person might not do well in prison? Some celebrate Sheriff Joe’s “Tent City” which imprisons ordinary citizens in tents without heat or air conditioning; with no toilets or running water; with punishments of bread and water; with two vegetarian meals a day (Sheriff Joe recently decided that even his notorious green baloney sandwiches are too expensive and cutting into the profit margins of his wife’s food service business). Has any court ever voiced concern that a convicted felon might not do well there? No…more like HELL NO!

Prisoners in Tent City have died from the heat without repercussions to Sheriff Joe or the facility. Yet no court has worried that other prisoners in the facility “wouldn’t do well.” Such concern is only voiced for the very wealthy on the rare occasions their highly-paid attorneys fail to get them acquitted.

All men created equal? It was a nice sentiment by Jefferson and the Founding Fathers. But it’s still only a dream.

Illusion Of Justice.

Since the founding of our nation, Americans have always taken pride in our rule of law.  In civics class we learned that this was what distinguished our country from others; that it provided protection from unreasonable search and seizures; that it guaranteed us a quick and fair hearing before a jury of our peers; that it protected individuals from power grabs by government; and that it gave our citizens a non-violent way of settling conflicts. As our nation expanded westward, communities took pride in instituting the rule of law by hiring marshalls, creating courts, ending vigilantism and restricting the carrying of guns. Such things were considered the necessities of polite society.

Now we seem determined to return to the lawless days of the Wild West.

The National Rifle Association and the gun manufacturers it represents have written and pushed laws to encourage the carrying and the use of guns. It is now legal to carry guns in virtually every state. They have pushed for and passed the so-called Stand Your Ground laws that allowed George Zimmerman to go free after shooting a black teenager who was “armed” with a bag of Skittles and an angry white guy to get away with murder because he didn’t like a teen’s music. Most recently, a retired cop has invoked the Stand Your Ground defense after shooting a fellow movie-goer following an argument in which he claimed threatened after a bag of popcorn was thrown at him.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), aided by GOP legislators have written and passed laws requiring states to privatize prisons despite their increased costs. Our state legislators have passed laws requiring lengthy sentences for non-violent crimes. At the same time, our government continues to wage a war on drugs that has sentenced drug users to lengthy prison terms. The result is to turn prisoners into profits, proving that crime pays – for corporations.

ALEC and its GOP servants have passed anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 requiring local law enforcement to check papers in order to fill the private prison facilities with immigrants whose only crime was to cross an invisible border in search of work to support their families. Now the GOP-controlled House of Representatives is pushing to defund the department that defends immigrants from detention or deportation to further pack corporate-owned prisons.

Misinformed conservative voters elect people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio despite his many instances of using his position to racially profile individuals, to prioritize the arrest of hard-working immigrants while ignoring cases of violent crimes, and to use his office to harrass, intimidate, bully and incarcerate those who disagree with him. And Sheriff Joe is not alone. Each year, there are hundreds of cases from across the country in which law enforcement officers have abused their power. Unfortunately, most of these cases are never pursued because the victims are minorities and lack the video evidence and money to pursue justice.

In the US today, money is often the key predictor of sentencing. White color crimes, such as those committed by the mortgage lenders and hedge fund managers who crashed our economy in 2008, are seldom prosecuted. (Not a single person has been tried and convicted from one of the biggest thefts in world history.) When they are prosecuted, teams of high-priced lawyers are often able to get their clients acquitted. But poor people, especially minorities, can’t afford such representation. Usually, they’re appointed a public defender and offered a plea bargain. Is it any wonder, then, that minorities represent 60 percent of our prisoners, while accounting for only 30 percent of our population? And, according to a survey requested by Frontline, in the 20 states that have Stand Your Ground laws, whites are 354 percent more likely to be found justified in killing a black person than a white person who kills another white person.

With such statistics, it has become increasingly apparent that justice is becoming more of an illusion in the US than reality.

The Privatization Fraud.

For many years, the GOP has called for smaller government while, at the same time, extolling the virtues of privatization. GOP politicians have pushed for private schools through tax incentives and vouchers. In many states, they have turned the operation of prisons over to private, for-profit corporations. And thanks to the GOP, many of the operations once provided by military personnel are now provided by private contractors, such as Halliburton and Blackwater.

More recently, the GOP has pushed for privatizing Medicare through a voucher system and privatizing Social Security through private financial institutions.

The argument is that private companies can always perform tasks better and cheaper than public institutions. But before you jump on the privatization bandwagon, maybe you should ignore the rhetoric and look at studies which compare the costs and quality of services provided by private institutions with those provided by government.

Let’s begin by comparing charter schools with public schools. A 2009 report entitled Multiple Choice Charter School Performance in 16 States by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University found that only 17 percent of charter schools performed better than public schools while 47 percent performed at roughly the same level and 37 performed worse than public schools! This is in spite of the fact that charter schools often get to select students and usually provide few of the extra-curricular activities that public schools do.

As for prisons, a 2012 study by the Tucson Citizen found that private prisons cost the State of Arizona $3.5 million per year more than public prisons even though private prisons do not take high security prisoners or those with chronic illnesses. Ironically, the one exception is Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Tent City. Like the name suggests, Tent City is a series of canvas tents in the desert with no heat or air conditioning. The bathrooms are portable toilets. Prisoners are made to wear pink underwear. And prisoners are served two meals a day. One meal consists of milk, juice, porridge and a hard roll. The other consists of a green baloney sandwich. Yet, despite the primitive conditions, Tent City costs more per prisoner than any other jail or prison in Arizona. Worse, recidivism is 14 percent higher than the national average.

Sheriff Joe may be the self-proclaimed “nation’s toughest sheriff” and an extreme conservative, but he is a failure as a steward of taxpayers’ money.

Nevertheless, the biggest waste of money is the privatization of our military. During the early stages of the Afghan war and the Iraq war, the Department of Defense (DoD) awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton for everything from food service to transport and supply. In addition, the DoD handed out lucrative contracts for security services to Blackwater. The expectation was that privatizing such services would cost the US substantially less and allow the DoD to focus on military operations. But, after examining the DoD’s own documents, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) found that private contractor employees cost 2.94 times more than an average DoD employee performing the same job!

According to POGO, in 2010 the DoD spent $254 billion for contract employees compared to $108 billion for civilian personnel directly employed by the DoD and $150 billion for military personnel.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone. After all, the primary difference between a service provided by government and a service provided by a corporation is profit. The corporation must deliver profits in order to pay dividends to shareholders. And the corporate CEOs tend to pay themselves salaries that are many times those of government leaders. In most cases, the only way private corporations can compete with government is to reduce the scope and quality of service.

Imagine what will happen if they ever get their hooks into Medicare and Social Security!