“You know the score. You’re not cop, you’re little people”

by Scott Creighton, little people

In the wake of the two Grand Jury decisions not to indict the officers involved in the wrongful deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, we should ask ourselves what this bodes for our “shining city on the hill” and what it means to be cop or little people in the eyes of the new world order.

The other day Barack Obama, in reaction to the Mike Brown Grand Jury decision, announced a couple of executive actions he intends to push forward with the stated objective of “building trust” between police departments and the communities they serve.

Mainly a two-fold plan, Obama’s efforts will include setting up a massive slush-fund to the tune of 260 million dollars which will be used to buy body cameras for 50,000 cops and to establish local committees of police officials and civic leaders who will essentially help the cops repress the huddled masses (it’s debatable as too whether these “leaders” will be snitching on local activists and serving as controlled opposition assets in the future)

Meanwhile, Obama refuses to stop the federal program which is funneling military equipment to these same police departments at an alarming rate.

“The president also asked lawmakers to fund body-worn cameras and other community policing initiatives at a three-year cost of $263 million. Of that amount, $75 million would be used to buy as many as 50,000 of the cameras, which record police actions.” WSJ

For those of you who haven’t already done it, the math on that body cam portion of this deal works out to about $1,500 per camera. You can buy the upscale version with night vision for $475 and a cheaper one for $200. God only knows the discount you get when you purchase 50,000 of the things. But there is the price tag, $1,500 a pop.

For those who think this is going to improve policing practices, having a body camera attached to the officer, I got news for you: Eric Garner.

Garner’s death was recorded and the video shown on national television. What happened? He was choked out, without ever trying to injure an officer, for selling “loosies” on the street, with a choke hold that is banned by that police department. He had his head shoved into the pavement while begging officers telling them he couldn’t breathe. He laid there dying on a sidewalk as cops milled about him doing nothing for him. Those were the last minutes of a father of 6. And for what?

It was all on video, all there for everyone to see. And what happened? Nothing.

So was Miriam Carey’s untimely demise for that matter. What happened there?I mean aside from the media lying about what happened and trying to make her out to be some kind of lunatic?

Hell, congress gave her killers a 5 minute standing ovation after videos of rogue cops firing at her car with her child in the back seat were all over the internet and the news. They were firing at her, as she fled, down a busy Washington D.C. street in the middle of the day in contradiction to at least two of their standard operating procedures involving the use of deadly force.

She died, unarmed, for supposedly making a wrong turn onto White House property and pushing through Secret Service when they tried to prevent her from leaving the grounds. In fact, all that talk about them using the barricades around congress to keep her out was incorrect. They used those to try to keep her from leaving the area, not getting into it. Look it up.

There was video of that. What happened?

The case involving the wrongful death of Oscar Grant was one of the few cases where at least a little justice was handed down to an officer who needlessly shot and killed someone and it was caught on video. In the end that cop did just two years and is now on probation. He, like Darren Wilson, tried to claim Oscar was reaching into his pants when he fired his gun. He also tried to claim he thought he was holding his taser rather than his gun. Two years. Well, the shooting took place on Jan. 30, 2010 and the cop was released on May 3, 2011. That’s two cop years I guess.

I guess the point here is, if you think these cameras are going to force officers to behave in more civilized ways toward the general population, think again. It’s just not true.

In fact, it may make them behave worse.

There are several police departments now run in the model of the NYPD where officers are forced by upper management to basically harass citizens everyday with programs like Gestapoesque Stop and Frisk. Officers are required to write a certain amount of citations on a daily basis and told they have to shake down any group of young minority or working poor people gathered in a group larger than one person walking down the street. Quality of life crimes like hopping a turn-style in a subway and panhandling are also expected to be vigorously pursued by the beat cops.

In many cases though, the cops on the street will let things slide, walk past a group of young men the officer knows or fail to detain a homeless person for begging. Right now it’s up to the officer to decide what he feels like reporting or not.

However, with these cameras, upper management will be able to see which groups or which homeless people the officer decides not to engage and can then use that information against said officer.

In short, if the leadership of any department or precinct demands Nazi-like behavior from their officers on the beat, these cameras will have the exact opposite effect of what we want and need.

Here’s another little tip for you: who else wears body cams?

Soldiers use body cams. Specifically, Special Ops soldiers wear them while engaged in occupation actions in hazardous enemy areas.

It makes command easier, so they wear them. It also allows the soldiers to be in direct contact with a data base and via facial recognition software programs, they can not only record and track various individuals, but can be alerted by the operations base if someone they happen to pass or are in contact with is wanted by them for questioning or dangerous.

If you don’t think that is also a driving motivation behind putting these cameras on local cops, you’re wrong. Period.

So in fact, the $75 million of that proposal isn’t to demilitarize the police departments at all. It’s actually another step toward militarizing them.

Never let a good crisis go to waste, right?

As far as that task force Obama is setting up, the one charged with trying to make the citizens “feel” more trusting of the police departments, just take a look at who Obama put in charge of it. He’s not just an advocate of the growing police state, he’s one of it’s earliest architects.

“If the president’s idea of reforming policing practices includes mass false arrests, brutality, and the eviscerating of civil rights, then Ramsey’s his man. That’s Charles Ramsey’s legacy in D.C.,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), speaking of the ex-D.C. chief and current Philadelphia Police Commissioner. “Obama should immediately rescind his appointment of Commissioner Ramsey, who is a mass violator of civil rights and civil liberties.”

“… Chief Ramsey is among the least capable people of changing the reality of, or even meaningfully altering, militarized policing in America. He was among those who implemented it.” AlterNet

The Eric Garner Grand Jury decision being released today just furthers my suspicions that this was all carefully timed not only to take place right after the mid-term elections, but at just the right time to push Obama’s reactionary fix to the crisis before us.

Lots of well meaning people, people with good reason, will be out protesting these recent decisions today and for the rest of the week.

Unfortunately for them, what they don’t understand is they are doing exactly what is expected and desired by the very system they are protesting.

And that is too say nothing of how various assets of the Mockingbird system will use these protests to incite racial hatred in the coming days.

When I step and look at how this is playing out, it’s remarkable to me how well structured it all is.

Yes, the protests will be rife with agent provocateurs who will always seem to be right there in front of a CNN camera when it’s time to do something that makes the protesters look like terrorists.

And yes, police response will similarly be out of sync with the level of discord taking place at any given time.

Obama will get the tax money he wants for his task force, body cams and micro-loan type local committees of Vichy community “leaders” ready willing and able to be the next Al Sharpton (look up his undercover work with the FBI for a reference)

All that is true. But what else is happening?

As I have stated many times in the past, you can’t neoliberalize a nation without developing a police state to support it. The masses don’t want these polices as they are extremely detrimental to their lives in many ways.

And the message has to be out there that these forces are beyond reproach, untouchable no matter what they do. The little people must be made aware of that simple fact. And that is what they are doing.

It would have been very easy to simply prosecute Darren Wilson. All the evidence suggested he should be. But they didn’t and in fact, they went way out of their way not to.

They also took the unusual step to release the evidence presented to the Grand Jury knowing full well, it did not in any reasonable way, suggest he shouldn’t be indicted. Several leading conservative as well as liberal writers and former legal experts agreed with that conclusion and went public saying so.

So why?

Is it because Holder and Obama just love Darren Wilson to death? Is it because they feel nothing when a young black man is killed wrongfully on the street by an overreacting white cop?

No. Don’t be silly.

Is it because they want to defend every cop no matter what because cops always get a bad rap?

No.

They made the choice to do it because they need to bring this process of closing our once open society further along and these incidents, though not designed, were certainly just what the doctor ordered in terms of sealing the deal on this aspect of the neoliberalization of America.

One cannot imagine while being honest with themselves that the course of events weren’t manipulated to this end. Garner was killed in July and Brown in Aug. The decision in the Brown case came out last week, Obama makes the announcement of his plans as protests begin to subside and immediately after his announcement, the Garner case decision is announced promising to reignite unrest, inflaming the crisis.

Ultimately when you have a police state established to defend a morally bankrupt system, you have to make sure that the people know it’s there. They have to know they don’t matter in the eyes of the law. They have to know the enforcers are not going to be held to account for the crimes they commit against the communities they police. The people have to know that because that knowledge is as powerful a tool as the repressive police tactics themselves.

In that regard it’s kind of like the drones buzzing over head in Pakistan as a constant reminder that if they get out of line, they can and will be wiped off the face of the earth.

Terror has a calming effect I suppose.

All of the various agendas they have attached to these incidents aside, I think this is the larger message intended for us too glean here in the shining city on the hill.

CHANGE is coming and there is nothing you can do to stop it. That’s the message. “You know the score. You’re not cop, you’re little people” and we all know what happens to little people, don’t we?

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