The end of the criminal legal reform era

 Just how big an industry is the tax farming business now? 

Across the United States, court debt has ballooned as states have turned to court costs, fines, and fees as revenue streams. A recent report by watchdog group Fines and Fees Justice Center found that court debt in the U.S. now totals at least a staggering $27.6 billion. That figure is a low estimate, the group noted in the report, because it relied on incomplete data collected from only 25 states.

To handle the collection of that debt, states and municipalities — as well as the Internal Revenue Service — are increasingly turning to private firms, which in some states can add up to 40 percent surcharges onto the fees. In aggregate, that can translate into billions of dollars of payouts for the debt collectors.

Those of us old enough to remember the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri will recall the central role that municipal fines and fees played in the system of predatory racism against which the people there rose up.  And here we are a thousand years, and several cycles of murderous police actions and uprisings later and still very little has fundamentally changed. 

In New Orleans, one could argue there has been some progress. But what's happened has been slow and slight. A 2020 law re-directs court fee  revenues away from control of the judges who impose them but does not abolish them altogether.  The City Council appeared to at least try and defy that law when it resolved to return the fees collected but I don't think we've been updated on how that's worked out.  As of this April, a series of lawsuits have resulted in a system whereby Orleans Criminal Court judges promise a kinder, gentler bail regime. 

A joint order from the judges in February formalized new bail rules that paved the way for the settlement. The agreement comes after drawn out wrangling over how judges in New Orleans can impose bail or fines and fees on thousands of defendants each year, the vast majority of them poor.

Under the new order, defendants must have an attorney when their bail is set. The judges also promise to inquire into defendants' ability to pay, to consider alternatives to cash bail and to explain their reasoning when they do keep defendants behind bars.

We'll see how that goes.  Last week, the City Attorney announced a mass dismissal of some 385,000 cases of municipal violations which should reduce the likelihood you will be ensnared by an attachment from some unpaid traffic fine from 10 years ago. That's all good news. But it's minimal compared to what is needed here and in every city where billions of dollars worth of bounties are still hanging over the heads of highly vulnerable people. 

Meanwhile the time for further progress is running short.  Local media is already daily beating the drums of crime wave panic and the tide is beginning to turn toward reaction. (In fact, here is WDSU specifically blaming lax collection of court fees.) Our newly elected "reformist" DA is already breaking his promise not to try children as adults. Major candidates jumping into the marquee race in this fall's municipal elections are already taking up demagogic "tough on crime" rhetoric in their initial messaging.  All of this is only going to get worse as that election approaches.  Afterwards, this group of politicians will go back to work with a new mandate to "get tough" and new rules that will allow them to do just that.  

Mr. Biden emphasized that state and local officials in areas experiencing surges in gun violence can use $350 billion in Covid-19 relief funding to hire more law-enforcement personnel, even if it raises the total number beyond its pre-pandemic level.

The window of opportunity to make real and lasting change is always so short. And when it shuts it can stay that way for a long time. Business as usual, on the other hand can last... well that's why they call it business as usual.

Gonna keep unlearning the lesson

Ferguson was what? Two years ago now?  In addition to just the plain ugliness of racist police violence, the two "lessons" we were supposed to have learned from the matter were these.

First, government services in cities and towns across the country are so reliant on municipal violations fees that they create perverse incentives for law enforcement to systematically shake people down. So far our learning this "lesson" has produces one hilarious John Oliver bit and zero actual progress.

Secondly, we were supposed to have learned that a militarized police force has no place in a functioning democracy.  How'd we do on that account?

Displays of military-style equipment like armored cars, assault-style weapons, gas masks, riot shields, and ear-splitting sirens called LRADs — all of which have been deployed in the past few days during protests about Sterling’s killing in Baton Rouge — are some of the very practices the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services criticized in its definitive report analyzing what went wrong in Ferguson.

“You would think Baton Rouge would watch Ferguson and learn a lesson. Apparently they didn’t,” said Peter B. Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University who’s studied police militarization for the past 25 years. A former probation officer, Kraska has worked with over 70 police departments on training and reforms.

So we're pretty slow to learn. Maybe in the coming years, you know with fresh leadership after the presidential election, we'll move away from this kind of  thinking that.... oh wait. 

Unique... but not really

We've mentioned this before but every time it comes up, it's worth contemplating how truly stupid this is.

Louisiana funds its public defenders in a way that no other state in the country does. The bulk of the public defenders funding comes from court fees assessed on defendants when they plead guilty or lose a case.

Most of these fees come from people admitting to traffic violations. And far fewer traffic tickets are being written in Louisiana than just a few years ago.

Local law enforcement is also steering more people toward community service and drug rehabilitation programs, instead of going through the court system. Orleans Public Defender Derwyn Bunton said he supports these diversion programs, but it means less money for his office.

Fewer traffic violations. Small time drug offenses being steered away from the punitive criminal track.  These are desirable outcomes. They shouldn't doom the system.

Also, it may be a unique way for a state to fund its public defenders' offices. But similar perverse incentives show up in criminal justice throughout the country.  It was one of the key issues leading to the unrest in Ferguson, MO and, in turn, the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

As the report noted, from 2012 to 2014 African Americans accounted for “85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations, and 93 percent of arrests made by FPD officers, despite comprising only 67 percent of Ferguson’s population.” Tickets mean money for the city — in 2013, municipal court fines were Ferguson’s second highest source, the bulk of which were leveled against African Americans.

“Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the City’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs,” the report stated. “This emphasis on revenue has compromised the institutional character of Ferguson’s police department, contributing to a pattern of unconstitutional policing, and has also shaped its municipal court, leading to procedures that raise due process concerns and inflict unnecessary harm on members of the Ferguson community.”

So.. not optimal there, or here, or in a lot of places, actually.  So, in a very narrow Louisiana specific sense, some offices have a budget problem. But, in a wider sense, the whole system has a moral corruption problem.

Threat level up

New York Times: They Helped Make Twitter Matter in Ferguson Protests 

A year ago, these three activists were ordinary Americans: a teacher, a school administrator and a temporary government employee. Like many others, they found a voice on social media to comment on the news, describe their personal experiences and relate the everyday struggles of blacks in America.

As their social media following soared during the Ferguson protests, so did their belief in the power of Twitter to dispute official statements that did not ring true. Eventually, they used Twitter and Tumblr to fund and mobilize protests and make demands on police departments and government officials. Their high-profile status also made some of them targets of intelligence monitoring and threats.

Attached to that article is a video where,

Johnetta Elzie, DeRay Mckesson and Zellie Imani read their tweets from the past year and discuss how social media boiled after the fatal shooting by a police officer of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., turning the nation’s attention to race and police conduct, and in the process changing their lives.

On Monday, Elzie and Mckesson, along with several other prominent civil rights leaders were arrested in St. Louis during a protest marking the anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson Missouri last year.  A week prior to this, we learned that the two had been marked by a cybersecurity contractor as "threat actors"

The report identifies DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, two prominent Black Lives Matter organizers who took part in the Baltimore protests, as "threat actors" for whom "immediate response is recommended." It describes McKesson and Elzie as "high" severity, "physical," and "#mostwanted" threats and notes both have a "massive following" on social media. It says that ZeroFox was engaged in "continuous monitoring" of their social media accounts and specifies their geographical locations at the time of the report. The report does not suggest that the pair were suspected of criminal activity but were "main coordinators of the protests."

Yikes. The NYT story where Mckesson and Elzie  read their tweets also describes their lives before the Brown incident and how they came to be subsequently honored as "threat influencers" by cyberspooks like ZeroFox.

But on Aug. 8, 2014, the day before Mr. Brown was killed, Ms. Elzie was 25 and living in St. Louis. She had just finished a job as a phone interviewer for the United States Department of Agriculture and was considering going back to school. She had a community of friends and maybe 2,000 Twitter followers, and used social media to comment on topics like makeup, movies and sports.

On the day Mr. Brown died, Ms. Elzie drove to Ferguson and started tweeting and posting photographs and videos to social media. She has not stopped. A year later, she has more than 57,000 followers on Twitter. She is now an organizing member of the group WeTheProtesters.org, along with Mr. Mckesson.

Mr. Mckesson, 30, monitored Twitter during the first few days of last August’s protests from his home in Minneapolis, where he worked as a school administrator and had 1,000 or so Twitter followers. But after watching protesters in Ferguson clash with a militarized police force, he packed his car and tweeted, “En route to Ferguson.” In the months since, Mr. Mckesson has become a full-time protester and organizer, and a go-to source for reporters covering protests around the country. He has 200,000 Twitter followers.

While few of us in New Orleans can relate to the experience of being marked as "threat actors," some of us have been referred to on occasion as "dangerous people from the internet."  What many of us can relate to is the experience of organizing a broad online support community in the wake of a national tragedy.

After the flood that followed Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, the internet became a vital connection among dispersed New Orleanians, former New Orleanians, friends of the city and of the Gulf Coast region. A surge of new blogs erupted and, combined with those that were already online, a community of bloggers with a shared interest in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast developed. In the summer of 2006, after the success of the first Geek Dinner, and to mark the anniversary of the flood, the newly formed NOLA Bloggers organized the first Rising Tide Conference, taking their shared interest in technology, the internet and social media and turning advocacy for the city into action.

Which is one of many reasons we're proud to welcome Deray Mckesson to speak at the tenth Rising Tide conference this year. The kind of grass roots organizing through social media Mckesson has excelled in really exemplifies the spirit of what brought Rising Tide together in the first place. At least that's what we've been writing on the website all these years.

Leveraging the power of bloggers and new media, the Rising Tide Conference is a launch pad for organization and action. Our day-long program of speakers and presentations is tailored to inform, entertain, enrage and inspire.

We come together to dispel myths, promote facts, highlight progress and regress, discuss recovery ideas, and promote sound policies at all levels. We aim to be a "real life" demonstration of internet activism as we continue to recover from a massive failure of government on all levels.

Giving a platform to "threat influencers" since 2006. Maybe should add some language in there about that too. 

Rising Tide X is August 29, 2015 at Xavier University. Check out the rest of the website for details about the extensive program. You can go for free this year but please register here. If you'd like to help defray the cost of production or order swag, there's a separate GoFundMe page here. 

Turns out that Ferguson is in fact an Amercian city

If its police force is any indication, anyway.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Justice Department investigation will allege sweeping patterns of discrimination within the Ferguson, Missouri, police department and at the municipal jail and court, a law enforcement official familiar with the report said Tuesday.

The report, which could be released as soon as Wednesday, will charge that police disproportionately use excessive force against blacks and that black drivers are stopped and searched far more often than white motorists, even though they're less likely to be carrying contraband.

The Justice Department also found that blacks were 68 percent less likely than others to have their cases dismissed by a municipal court judge, and that from April to September of last year, 95 percent of people kept at the city jail for more than two days were black, according to the official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak on the record before the report is made public.

So, it's pretty much what we thought. The police are aggressive, violent, and racist. If you live in the U.S. you will already be familiar with this.

So what are we doing about it?  Oh, what you might think.  We've come up with an expensive but techy-sounding solution that will allow some contractor to make a little money.  If you live in the U.S. you will already be familiar with that as well.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Taser International, the stun-gun maker emerging as a leading supplier of body cameras for police, has cultivated financial ties to police chiefs whose departments have bought the recording devices, raising a host of conflict-of-interest questions.

A review of records and interviews by The Associated Press show Taser is covering airfare and hotel stays for police chiefs who speak at promotional conferences. It is also hiring recently retired chiefs as consultants, sometimes just months after their cities signed contracts with Taser.

 Just remember, Taser International is schmoozing police chiefs for your safety, citizen.

This is who they are

Mentioned this last week but let me pull this Jarvis DeBerry quote again. It captures perfectly what conservatives (I include President Obama among them, btw) are all about.

Leading America requires declaring its goodness. And not just that. Leading America requires declaring that America always has been good, that it always has treasured the law. Never mind that the law failed to prohibit the destruction of one people or the enslavement of another.

Any serious examination of our problems constitutes a failure. No one is accountable. Nothing ever gets resolved and there is never any actual justice because, "The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome," and that's all anyone ever need know.

"Shoot 'em"

The Downtown Development District's conversion of Gallier Hall into...a Pink Floyd show... but with less drugs... and at Epcot Center, probably... really does draw out the most lovely sorts of "art patrons."

New Orleans police separated the protesters from the LUNA Fete spectators, some of whom were upset by the disruption and yelled back. "Shoot 'em!" one woman shouted.

United States of nostalgia

This is from a Jarvis DeBerry column last week.  He's writing about his disappointment in the President's remarks about Ferguson.  But really this is a lament about the dumb nature of the job of being President.

"First and foremost," the president said, "we are a nation built on the rule of law."
 
You could make a stronger case that this nation was built on stolen land; that it was built with stolen labor; that the descendants of those who had their labor stolen are yet struggling to have their humanity recognized.

You could, but the president of the United States cannot.  Leading America requires declaring its goodness. And not just that. Leading America requires declaring that America always has been good, that it always has treasured the law. Never mind that the law failed to prohibit the destruction of one people or the enslavement of another.

DeBerry's thoughts echo those of Ta-Nehisi Coates who wrote this in The Atlantic.

In the case of Michael Brown, this is more disappointing than enraging. The genre of Obama race speeches has always been bounded by the job he was hired to do. Specifically, Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America. More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people. But black people, the community to which both Michael Brown and Barack Obama belong, have the distinct fortune of having survived in significant numbers. For a creedal country like America, this poses a problem—in nearly every major American city one can find a population of people whose very existence, whose very history, whose very traditions, are an assault upon this country's nationalist instincts. Black people are the chastener of their own country. Their experience says to America, "You wear the mask."

In 2008, Barack Obama's task was to capture the presidency of a country which historically has despised the community from which he hails. This was no mean feat. But more importantly, it was not unprecedented. And just as Léon Blum's prime ministership did not lead to a post-anti-Semitic France, Barack Obama's presidency should never have been expected to lead to a post-racist America. As it happens, there is nothing about a congenitally racist country that necessarily prevents an individual leader hailing from the pariah class. The office does not care where the leader originates, so long as the leader ultimately speaks for the state. On Monday night, watching Obama both be black and speak for the state was torturous. One got the sense of a man fatigued by people demanding he say something both eminently profound and only partially true. This must be tiring.

It is beyond reasonable expectation that the President would speak "for the state" and also speak truthfully.  It is beyond reasonable expectation that the President would tell us anything other than a comforting lie.

Why don't we expect better of our leaders? It's not a new question.  In his new book (which I've been talking a lot about, I know), Rick Perlstein looks at the last time Americans seriously asked it of themselves. The Invisible Bridge covers the mid-70s period dominated by Watergate and the gradual rise of Ronald Reagan from fringe nut to Presidential contender.

Among Perlstein's more intriguing themes is the country's yearning for nostalgia as a means of escape from the difficult questions of the day.  When confronted with harsh questions about corruption and injustice in American life, the public gravitates toward the most comforting lie.  In Perlstein's telling, voters seek a kind of comfort... a belief in their essential goodness.. first from Jimmy Carter but later in more colorful, heroic fashion from Reagan.  

Here is an interview with Perlstein conducted by Thomas Frank where they talk a little bit about this.  It's difficult to read this book and not find multiple parallels between that time and ours both in the political and popular cultures.  Here's a passage where they talk about pop culture retro fetishes.

Well. So the culture of nostalgia in the ’70s — I mean, everything from “Happy Days” going on the air in 1975 to Bette Midler having a huge hit with the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B,” to all these restaurants like the Ground Round and Shakey’s that kind of promise this 19th century kind of…

Yes. The vogue for the 1890s—what was up with that?

…vaudeville experience. Yeah. Or “The Sting” which is about the 30s but has music from the 1890s. And then, the signal example being “American Graffiti,” which literally, the tagline of the movie was: “Where were you in ’62?” And invites people to kind of imaginatively place themselves before the 60s happens. Which was part of the huge appeal of the POWs. This idea that they had somehow skipped the 60s. And they are these perfect innocents. So, yeah, they were like these Rip Van Winkles. They devote a whole hour of the “Today Show” to explaining to the POWs what had happened in their absence. But we’re the POWs. We want to be them. We want to miss the 60s.

Now, where the disaster rhetoric and the nostalgia rhetoric come together most profoundly is something around which I organized an entire chapter which is this fascinating movie which actually did better box office than “Gone With the Wind” — “The Exorcist.”

What year was that?

’74, January of ’74, in which people are waiting in lines around the block in the middle of this really vicious winter in New York. You have this symbol of our perfect innocence, our daughters, our young daughters, who are basically possessed by demons, which of course was happening all the time. This was the winter of Patty Hearst.

And to make a long story short, the plot of the movie is that science and modernity avails us nothing to fight these demons. If you remember, there’s this kind of faithless priest who is a psychologist, and the mom takes the daughter to all these doctors who have all these fancy machines and they’re not able to do anything. And finally what restores her to sanity is this ancient orthodox priest, this medieval rite. The exorcism. And then the last scene is really striking, because you have the mom, who I’ve heard is based on Shirley MacLaine, who is this kind of liberated, pants-wearing Hollywood liberal actress. And her daughter, in the last reel when she’s exorcized, she hugs the priest who has found his faith again, the young priest, and mother and daughter are wearing outfits that make them look like Jackie Kennedy in 1962.

Again the throwback.

The throwback. So again, you have the disaster being redeemed by the nostalgia. Which is Ronald Reagan.

Anyway I don't want to reproduce the whole thing here but there is this last exchange which really brings the whole thing home.

Is anyone nostalgic for the ’70s?

I am. And for the following reason: If you read my preface, I explain that Americans at the level of popular culture, at the level of grassroots politics, were thinking very hard about what it would mean to have a country they didn’t believe was God’s chosen nation. What would it mean to not be the world’s policeman? What would it mean to conserve our resources? What would it mean to not treat our presidents as if they were kings? That was happening! And the tragedy of Ronald Reagan most profoundly wasn’t policy — although that was tragic enough — but it was robbing America of that conversation. Every time a politician stands before a microphone and utters this useless, pathetic cliche that America is the greatest country ever to exist, he’s basically wiping away the possibility that we can really think critically about our problems and our prospects. And to me, that’s tragic.

As long as we're willing to accept the comforting lie, as long as we believe that, as Deberry puts it, "leading America requires declaring that America always has been good, that it always has treasured the law," our political apparatus is never going to allow us to think critically about our problems.

Are there no workhouses?

The NFL is giving back and paying it forward and.. well, pressing the homeless into unpaid labor is what they are doing in Tampa.

TAMPA — Before every Tampa Bay Buccaneers home game, dozens of men gather in the yard at New Beginnings of Tampa, one of the city's largest homeless programs.

The men — many of them recovering alcoholics and drug addicts — are about to work a concessions stand behind Raymond James Stadium's iconic pirate ship, serving beer and food to football fans. First, a supervisor for New Beginnings tries to pump them up.

"Thank God we have these events," he tells them. "They bring in the prime finances."

But not for the workers. They leave the game sweat-soaked and as penniless as they arrived. The money for their labor goes to New Beginnings. The men receive only shelter and food.

I suppose, as long as the slave laborers do not engage in any symbolic protesting of police brutality, no one will call on the NFL to act, though. 

Barber shop talk

Not sure why it's any worse that one policeman in Missouri gets to walk because he was afraid of  "magic negroes" than it was that a whole conspiracy of of police got to walk because NOLA.com allows anonymous comments but that did happen.

For whatever reason, though, the kids in New Orleans would prefer to go to trendy copycat protests rather than worry about what goes on in the city where they actually live.  At least today we learned that  the US Justice Department said something about it.

Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Collery wrote in the government’s brief that Perricone’s anonymity in the comments should be relevant on appeal, “as it ensured that his position as an (assistant U.S. attorney) would not cause his comments to exert an undue influence on potential jurors.” It’s “highly doubtful,” Collery contended, that any jurors “were exposed to and remembered Perricone’s postings, which were indistinguishable from the comments of others.”

“Even before the Internet age, people were exposed to chatter about high-profile criminal cases as they went about daily life,” she wrote. “Moreover, an anonymous comment on the Internet carries no more weight than the opinion of the garrulous customer in the adjacent barber’s chair, which is to say, next to none.”

The Justice Department complained that Engelhardt overreached in his attempts to get to the bottom of the online commenting, saying prosecutors eventually were relegated to serving as “the court’s investigatory adjunct” as defense attorneys sat “sidelined entirely.”

“Because (Engelhardt) attempted to act simultaneously as a neutral arbiter of defendants’ new trial motion and as an independent investigator of government misconduct, an objective observer might reasonably question (his) impartiality,” Collery wrote. “It is questionable whether a district court should ever undertake an independent investigation of federal prosecutors.”

Being terrible

CNN are masters of it.

But the worst component of CNN’s Ferguson coverage—which no video or still can adequately capture—is the fact that, for much of the night, what viewers saw were Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo bantering with each other and other on-scene anchors. This was CNN: Anchors interviewing their colleagues, rather than anyone around them. Amidst a crowd resisting the profound injustice of Michael Brown’s death, you were watching television personalities talking to themselves.

Gawker does a good job with the style problem there.  But the substance was even worse.

Lemon then asked multiple times how (Jesse) Jackson could "make excuses" for looters in Ferguson.

"I don't want to speak for you, that you're making excuses for the bad doers," the CNN host said. "So what do you want to leave with people? What is your message going forward?"

"I am not making excuses going forward. I'm giving an analysis that compounded injustice leads to anarchy and justice leads to peace," Jackson answered. "I am fundamentally an advocate of non-violence but I understand how pain plays out when it's compounded, and it is a long train of abuses."

Lemon then suggested that the violence in Ferguson was a change from peaceful protests in the 60s.
"Reverend, part of your legacy is that you marched with Dr. King peacefully, non-violent protests," he said. "What has changed in our culture and our society that people result -- resort to things that played out here last night in Ferguson?"

"You do know that when Dr. King was alive we had the Watts riots and the Newark riots and the Detroit riots and Chicago," Jackson responded, adding that "police action triggered those riots."

"Blacks are ten times more likely to be arrested. That matters. And for juries to look in the face of killed young blacks and say that jury was justified in letting them go through, that's a bitter pill to swallow," Jackson added.

Don Lemon's nominal job is to inform people about the events CNN is filming.  Ideally, this would mean it's his job to tell us relevant facts about the social, political, and historical context in which these events are occurring.  But this would also require him to know at least one goddamned thing first.

But, in reality, Lemon's job isn't to inform so much as it is to comfort.  He's not really there to tell us anything. He's there to say stupid things that validate the ignorance of the know-nothings in the audience. This way they feel better about themselves.  Reward the stupidity long enough to keep them watching through the next Cialis commercial.  That's all this is for.

Language of the unheard

MLK

I'm absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

A grand jury isn't going to return an indictment if you don't set out to prosecute anyone.  And it's clear from this the county never intended to prosecute this cop.

And to them, it's a pretty simple calculation. You can either prosecute the cop and seek some sort of official justice; whatever that might have ended up being. Or you can not do anything and then use people's anger over it to justify your inaction after the fact. The second option is more destructive but also obviously easier and represents a clear choice of status quo over justice.

Who riots and why

What Billmon said. 

Normalizing the police riot

At the end of this column, Pierce gets at what the pre-Wilson indictment/non indictment freak out is really all about. It's a doubling down on the police militarization stance.

The Guard is a military organization, as many Guardsmen who served under the unsteady command of C-Plus Augustus in Iraq can tell you. Their weaponry and their training are all military. In some cases, such as a response to a natural disaster, this plain fact is evinced simply by the Guard's military efficiency. In this case, however, it will be evinced by bayonets and tanks. And the examples cited occurred when the Guard was called in to face a situation that already had begun. In this case, Nixon has called in the Guard before anything has happened. So, Chief, the response is already "militarized." Multiply that.

If Wilson gets no-billed, there will be a reaction, and all of it will not occur in Missouri. I don't think I'm out of line when I wonder whether or not said reaction will be used as a test case for how much official violence the general public will tolerate to be kept safe from Unruly Others in the street. I do not think I want to know the answer to that.

Not only are they preparing to forcefully put down any civil disobedience, they are begging for the opportunity to do it.  It's nice that we've spent the last few months having a sad about the fact that we police the streets with army men now. But that doesn't magically make the army men go away. 

They want to keep their army stuff. And the best way to keep your army stuff is to demonstrate that you need to use it.  Which is why they're all geared up right now.  Just hoping something happens... or planning to make something happen.

"Is this America"?

Pretty much the dumbest question anyone can ask about Ferguson. If you don't recognize what's going on there as fundamentally American, you haven't been paying attention.

It does matter what toys the cops get to play with, but the context for their behavior matters more. That’s what it’s worth noting that Ferguson’s police force is almost entirely white, in a city that’s 60 percent black. The same applies to the town’s mayor, city council, and school board. And then there’s the fact that the city itself, as it exists today, was dramatically shaped by the racist housing discrimination practice known as “redlining.” The city’s very geography is the product of racist public policy and business practices.

None of which makes Ferguson unique. Coates begins “The Case for Reparations” with a story of one man’s experience with redlining in Chicago—just one more example out of millions.
Nor is this the first time that America’s long history of racial oppression has set the stage for confrontations with the police. The 1967 Kerner Commission, established by President Johnson to explore the root causes behind the race riots of the 1960s, placed America’s racial caste system at the center of their analysis. When historian Blair L.M. Kelley writes that “Ferguson is America,” she’s not wrong.

And like Ferguson, America is a place stricken with far more than just police militarization. If we’re going to even begin to ameliorate this country’s root-deep racial inequities, we need to do more than relieve the police of their grenade launchers. We need to remedy centuries of malicious practices that have etched themselves into the topography of this nation.

See also:

The outpouring of anger on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, over the fatal police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown is partly a reaction to a long history of marginalization experienced by African-Americans, a process exacerbated by gentrification, argue experts. It should be no surprise, they say, that the latest racial flashpoint is not in the inner-city but in the modern suburb.

Ferguson is an outer suburb of St. Louis, the 16th fastest gentrifying city in the U.S., according to Census data. Not unrelatedly, a 2011 study by Brown University showed that the St. Louis metropolitan area was the 19th most segregated city in the U.S.

The social and economic inequality in the St. Louis area, which is divided along racial lines, is a microcosm of a problem playing out across the U.S.: Wealthier, typically white residents move into a previously economically disadvantaged neighborhood in the city, pricing out black families and displacing them to suburban outskirts, according to a recent Brookings report.

In 2008, the population of poor people in suburbs across the nation grew twice as fast as in city centers, the report said. By 2008, U.S. suburbs were home to the largest share of the nation’s poor.

"As simple as training your dog"

Here are cops in Ferguson, MO tonight threatening to shoot people for filming them.



Here is the result of a second autopsy on Michael Brown's body.  The independent examiner determined the unarmed boy was shot 6 times.

One of the bullets entered the top of Mr. Brown’s skull, suggesting his head was bent forward when it struck him and caused a fatal injury, according to Dr. Michael M. Baden, the former chief medical examiner for the City of New York, who flew to Missouri on Sunday at the family’s request to conduct the separate autopsy. It was likely the last of bullets to hit him, he said.

Mr. Brown, 18, was also shot four times in the right arm, he said, adding that all the bullets were fired into his front.

It's disappointing that this is still going on after a full week.  Obviously the decision to impose a curfew hasn't helped matters. The police description of events is suspicious.  The "premeditated coordinated instigators" line sounds dubious as do the multiple references to "Molotov cocktails" which one always hears knocked about in these situations. 

And even if you believe the police version of these events, they haven't exactly reacted to that in a smart way.  For example, if you really think a crowd is armed with fire bombs, launching tear gas canisters at them (which spark on impact) is probably a bad idea.  As I'm typing this, CNN is reporting that the National Guard has been called in.  That probably won't go well.. although it also can't go much worse. Or maybe it can.

The 131st Bomb Wing is a unit of the Missouri Air National Guard, stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base, Knob Noster, Missouri. If activated to federal service, the wing is gained by the United States Air Force Global Strike Command. It is an associate unit of the active-duty 509th Bomb Wing, which falls under the Eighth Air Force.

The 131st Bomb Wing is the only Air National Guard wing to fly the B-2 Spirit, as well as the only nuclear-capable Air National Guard bomb wing.

Ok but we still can be pretty secure in our belief that this won't end with the nuking of St. Louis.  This is not to say it ends well, though.



By November, Republican congressional candidates will celebrate police "heroes" and realize a fundraising windfall from it. Already the foundations for that are being laid.

ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- Frustrated with the national coverage of protests surrounding the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teen who was fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, a few dozen people showed up in downtown St. Louis on Sunday afternoon to show solidarity with the officer who killed the 18-year-old.

Since officer Darren Wilson shot Brown on Aug. 9, there have been nightly protests in Ferguson. But the counterprotesters said they wanted the country to know that not everyone supported the Ferguson demonstrations, and wanted Wilson and his family to know that there were people who backed them.

The protesters gathered outside KSDK-TV, a local station that they said has been biased in its coverage of the controversy.

Beyond that, the most likely result is something like what we always see after such shocks: Limited to zero police accountability combined with a general acceptance that strong-arm tactics are a thing people can expect to see in the future.  Or as the pro-police demonstrators put it,  we're being trained to put up with it.

"They're going to keep pushing the envelope," he said of demonstrators who've gotten violent during protests in Ferguson. "There's no reason to stop. ... It's as simple as training your dog. If you don't tell them stop biting, guess what, he's going to continue to bite."

Nobody got shot in the head

Menckles and I went down to see the National Moment of Silence vigil in Lafayette Square. Pat was there. So were a few other people I recognized and talked with a bit. The Advocate was there. I didn't talk to them. There were probably between 250 and 350 people there once the crowd filled in.



Mostly it was just people milling about with their hands in their pockets (or taking pictures of one another.) The organizing group wanted people to sign in and give them contact information but that didn't strike me as the best idea.



There were a few minutes of speechifying. Then someone read off some names of "victims of police brutality" and then there was a... well... a moment of silence.

During the moment of silence, attendees were encouraged to raise their hands the way people have been doing in Ferguson. But, as you can see from this picture, they all looked like they were at a Christian rock show. It was pretty cheesy.



After the moment of silence the crowd broke up. A portion of them broke into a march and weaved their way downtown. 





I saw later that they went inside the 8th District Police Station and hollered.  We had already ditched and were having dinner at Lucky Rooster while this was happening but, thanks to the internet (and in particular thanks to Twitter user @Small_affair who gets around to these sorts of events pretty often) I was able to locate some video footage.



This kind of made me feel bad for the poor cops who had to sit behind the desk and listen since they were just.. you know.. at work and had nothing to do with any of this but whatever.  Looks like they were in good humor anyway.

@KNationStB @julesbentley NOPD stood behind desk; gray-haired officer gave thumbs up to peaceful drmonstrators pic.twitter.com/pMm9JdzJUR
— small_affair  (@small_affair) August 15, 2014

Anyway, I got pictures of the part I saw and put them on the internet since that is what one does. 

It's times like these when it's good to remember just what a valuable luxury the ability to do that is.

But I’m not quite sure that without the neutral side of the Internet—the livestreams whose “packets” were fast as commercial, corporate and moneyed speech that travels on our networks, Twitter feeds which are not determined by an opaque corporate algorithms but my own choices,—we’d be having this conversation.

So, I hope that in the coming days, there will be a lot written about race in America, about militarization of police departments, lack of living wage jobs in large geographic swaths of the country.

But keep in mind, Ferguson is also a net neutrality issue. It’s also an algorithmic filtering issue. How the internet is run, governed and filtered is a human rights issue.

Peace gas

Tear gas is technically a no no... if you're at war.

Despite its ubiquity across the globe and in United States, tear gas is a chemical agent banned in warfare per the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, which set forth agreements signed by nearly every nation in the world — including the United States. The catch, however, is that while it’s illegal in war, it’s legal in domestic riot control. That means Turkey got to use it on its protesters last year. That meant Bahrain got to the do the same. And now, in Ferguson, cops are likewise blasting residents protesting the police for the killing of an unarmed teen named Michael Brown.

It's one of our most peaceful chemical weapons. 

Where do they get those wonderful toys?

Here's a video stream of police breaking up an apparently peaceful protest in Ferguson, MO with tear gas and rubber bullets tonight. 



A few hours before this action, two reporters from national outlets were roughed up and arrested at a McDonald's in Ferguson for taking pictures of the police.

Note: Everyone is well within their rights to photograph or film police.

And who can blame them for wanting to? Cops these days are flashing some pretty sweet swag. They're practically begging to have their highly dramatic pictures made.

Police departments all over America are armed to the teeth with advanced military equipment as well as imbued with an increasingly militarized sense of mission.

What would it take to dial back such excessive police measures? The obvious place to start would be ending the federal grants that encourage police forces to acquire gear that is more appropriate for the battlefield. Beyond that, it is crucial to change the culture of militarization in American law enforcement.

Consider today's police recruitment videos (widely available on YouTube), which often feature cops rappelling from helicopters, shooting big guns, kicking down doors and tackling suspects. Such campaigns embody an American policing culture that has become too isolated, confrontational and militaristic, and they tend to attract recruits for the wrong reasons.

If you browse online police discussion boards, or chat with younger cops today, you will often encounter some version of the phrase, "Whatever I need to do to get home safe." It is a sentiment that suggests that every interaction with a citizen may be the officer's last. Nor does it help when political leaders lend support to this militaristic self-image, as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did in 2011 by declaring, "I have my own army in the NYPD—the seventh largest army in the world."

Unfortunately local political leaders revel in these images.   Here is a famous photograph of a former New Orleans Mayor and Chief of Police brandishing weapons acquired for NOPD via one of the federal programs outlined in that WSJ article.



Public officials often score political points comparing the law enforcement situation in New Orleans to a "war zone."  A few years ago State Rep. Austin Badon told a public forum he wanted to see NOPD "kicking in at least four doors a day."

Media personality Norman Robinson recently advocated "stop and frisk" in response to a shooting on Bourbon Street. The Louisiana State Police, in town in response to that same incident, stopped and assaulted local musician Shamarr Allen.  John Georges's newspaper thanked them for their service.

On Monday a New Orleans Police officer shot a 26 year old man in the head during a traffic stop but did not report the shooting. 

At a hastily called news conference Wednesday evening, Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas described the matter as an embarrassing oversight. He said police had prepared a news release on the incident Monday, and, for some reason, did not send it out.

“I personally authorized a press release,” Serpas said. “Clearly it fell through the cracks.”

“I’m very disappointed and angry,” he added. “We normally put this information out right away.”

The NOPD has been dogged for years by questions about the possible overuse of deadly force by some officers and its failure to fully investigate some of those incidents. The federal consent decree the department signed with the Justice Department in 2012, which mandates a series of reforms, had its roots in a series of poorly investigated shootings and beatings by police in the days after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

On Thursday NOPD are expected to evict a homeless encampment from under the Calliope Street overpass. Thursday night they will conduct another of their signature traffic checkpoints.

The New Orleans Police Department’s Traffic Division will conduct a sobriety checkpoint, in Orleans Parish, on Thursday August 14, 2014, beginning at approximately 9:00 P.M. and will conclude at approximately 5:00 A.M.  Motorists will experience minimal delays and should have the proper documentation available if requested, i.e., proof of insurance, driver’s license, etc.

If there happen to be any shootings during the traffic enforcement operation, let's hope someone remembers to write them down.

Be safe.

No fly zone

Rumors about people "shooting at helicopters" will be familiar to New Orleanians.... and other connoisseurs of official bullshit, of course. 

It’s not unusual for local police departments to request flight restrictions over potentially dangerous zones, and it’s typically done to clear airspace for police helicopter operations. The Ferguson restriction, however, may make it more difficult for news media to get aerial footage of the town as the Brown story continues to develop.

Anyway, you can go watch the news from Ferguson happen on CNN... well okay not much of it there. Try another cable news channel..  Alright well you can look at Twitter. 

But for some context, here is an ACLU report on the militarization of local police forces. 

Also Matt Taibbi's new book is pretty on the mark.

Taibbi's core hypothesis is that, just like the widening wealth-gap, America has a terrible problem with a widening justice gap. Since the Clinton years, the American state has treated poverty as a crime, turning the receipt of state aid into a basis for the most invasive intrusions into your personal life, for a never-ending round of barked accusations and cruel threats to your freedom, your family, and your future. Meanwhile, Eric Holder's "Collateral Consequences" doctrine -- conceived under Clinton, revised under GWB, and perfected under Obama -- tells federal prosecutors to punish big companies carefully, even for the worst crimes imaginable, in order to protect the innocents who work for those companies and rely on them.

The net effect is a society where HSBC can be found guilty of laundering billions for brutal Mexican drug-cartels who torture and murder with impunity, pay a fine equal to a few weeks' profit, and partially defer bonuses for a few of its executives. But on the same day, across America, poor and mostly brown people are locked into inhumane prisons for selling a joint or two of the weed those cartels control.