The Blue Wall or Shield, and Iraqi War Dead

#William Finnegan, "The Blue Wall," The New Yorker, August 3 & 9, 2020. 

"Law enforcement kills more than a thousand Americans a year. Many are unarmed, and the disproportionate number are African Americans. Very few of the officials face serious, if any, consequences, and much of that impunity is owed to the power of police unions." "In their territorial 'safe zone,' police unions can offer their members extraordinary protections."

"In the city's large, and largely segregated, Black community, police brutality had been a first-order for decades." "By the end of the sixties, a racialized law-and-order ideology had emerged as a sort of unexamined American consensus, and it has basically prevailed since then, providing the political context in which police unions thrive." "White cops, Black and brown suspects; that remains the dominant paradigm."

"But, statistically, law enforcement does not make a list of the ten most dangerous jobs in America." "Studies of patrol officers service calls have shown that less than five per cent are related to violent crimes." "Pro-police analysts always talk about the 'bad apples'; it's only a few cops who misbehave -- ten per cent, tops. But the problem is that the other ninety per cent inevitably know about their misconduct, and thus are made compliant." Ben Breecoto, a sociologist at Rhode Island College, says: 'These organizations function as lobbies both to resist accountability legislation, and shield implicated officers,' he writes. It is a relic of mid-century policing, "when cops were always right and usually white, and could take a free hand in Black and brown neighborhoods."

#Bill Fletcher Jr., "No!, The Nation, November 2-9, 2020.

"Much of white organized labor took pride in building this exclusionary state, and now finds it difficult, if not impossible, to come to terms with its role in racist oppression and imperial expansion." "Also, unions are understandably afraid that the expulsion of police from organized labor could expose themselves to a right-wing assault on public sector collective bargaining."

"But racial injustice is not just about the extinguishing of Black lives; it is also about segregated housing, poor health care, exclusion from skilled employment, and an education that prepares particular racial minorities only for prisons and menial work."

#Kim Kelly, "Yes!" The Nation, November 2-9, 2020.

"You'll never see cops join a picket line; instead, they're the force that the bosses call to break the strike." "Report after report reveals the proliferation of white supremacists and far-right rhetoric within the ranks of law enforcement." "We cannot stand by and watch as our so-called union of brothers continue to brutalize and extinguish working-class lives with impunity." "It is imperative that labor unions address and eradicate the poison from rank-and-file members up to the highest levels of leadership."

"In 2016, nearly 40 percent of union members voted for Donald Trump, including over 50 percent of white male members, but the problem is not a new one."

#Iraq War Deaths

The last complete census in Iraq, conducted in 1997, found 4,050 million households in Iraq, a figure used by Opinion Research Business (ORB) in face-to-face interviews with 2,414 adults. The interviews revealed that 20% of the people had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes. ORB concluded that approximately 1.03 million had died as a result of the war. The margin of error was 1.7%, giving a range of 946,258 to 1.12 million.

A 2015 report by Physicians for Social Responsibility found that the 'Lancet' medical journal, in reports conducted in 2004 and 2006, estimated that 600,000 Iraqis were killed in the first 40 months of the war, along with 54,000 non-violent, but still war-related deaths. Salon carries the death toll to the present.

ADDENDUMS:

*Chris Chistie has called the Trump lawyers a "national embarrassment." 

*Trump's "Platinum Plan" for African Americans is only two pages long. Biden's "Lift Every Voice" plan is much more comprehensive.

*Trump reinstated the federal death  penalty. There are 55 death row prisoners, and 25 are African Americans.

Law Enforcement Deficiencies

 #The current controversy over reining in law enforcement for its excessive use of force; its law-and-order-breaking tendencies; and the special privileges it enjoys in the judicial system, the reforms that have been offered face the considerable risk of being defeated by the Blue Shield, the Blue Wall, or any of the other names used to describe an organization in which law enforcement officers won't speak ill of their misbehaving fellow officers, or jeopardize them in any way.

One of the remedies proposed is to diversify police forces. Whether the officers be African American, Hispanic, Asian American, or Native American, they are constrained by the Blue Shield, as are white officers. A second contention is that most of the officers are good, and any problems of misconduct are caused by a relatively small number of "bad apples." There is little evidence of instances in which the so-called "good apples" have intervened to stop serious misconduct from taking place. 

Following are a few instances to illustrate how common it is for the officers present to either participate in the use of excessive force, or fail to stop it: 1.) Officers from three police agencies participated in the beating of Rodney King, and none tried to stop the beating. 2.) Several New York City police officers were constraining Eric Garner while he was being choked to death. 3.) While a hovering helicopter video-taped the action, seven Orange County, California sheriffs' deputies beat a dehorsed rider. 4.) None of the other officers present stopped George Floyd from being pressed to death by a knee to his neck -- although one officer did suggest that Floyd could be held in a more comfortable position.

Police officers in a number of jurisdiction have contracts which: 1.) Permit indicted officers to testify before grand juries; and 2.) Require charged officers to be furnished with a written description of the charges against them. These and other privileges of police officers ae not given to ordinary citizens.

There is a Supreme Court decision that forbids officers from shooing at fleeing suspects unless there is credible evidence of loss of life to others caught in a danger zone. There are frequent instances of fleeing suspects being shot at when they were not visibly holding a firearm. In New Mexico, at least two state police officers were firing at a fleeing car in which they knew there were several children inside.

There have been other instances in which police officers have shown confidence that the Blue Shield will protect them. When Walter Davis was fatally shot in the back in Charlottesville, South Carolina, the shooting officer took the part of the Taser they had struggled over, and walked over to place it near Davis's body. The shooting officer had confidence that the other police officer who had arrived would not report this act of "planting" incriminating evidence. When Baltimore police planted illicit drugs to entrap a suspect, at least seven other officers knew of the action and did not report it.

"Reaching for" is a widely used gambit to justify a shooting. Standing alone it is too vague a rationale to justify a shooting. The often used assumption is that the detained person might be reaching for a weapon; however, she/he might be reaching for a requested document.

When a law enforcement officer testifies in a court trial of a fellow officer, lying is  so common that there is even a word for it. The word is "testilying" and it circulates even in law enforcement circles.

Lastly, grand juries rarely indict law enforcement officers, and juries in court trials even more rarely convict these indicted officers. Instead of charging first or second degree murder, prosecutors often use manslaughter as the maximum charge in order to increase the chance of getting a conviction.