[Peace-discuss] Ricky Baldwin's article in Z Magazine

[Ricky Baldwin]

Thanks for mentioning this, Dave.  

I shouldn't get too much credit, though.  As it turns
out, there's a mistake in the very first two words of
the article.  It's a guy named Lonnie Fourman who was
involved in the incident described.  Gregory Brown was
another victim of police power - he was beaten to
death in Champaign.

There's just no such thing as too much fact-checking.

Ricky

--- David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Z Magazine Online
> 
> Printer Friendly Version
> 
> October 2005 Volume 18 Number 10
> 
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>    
> Oversight
> 
> Who’s Policing The Police?
> 
> By Ricky Baldwin
> 
> back
> 
> 
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Gregory Brown was alone in his house in Urbana
> Illinois one evening in 2002 when he noticed a
> sudden
> flurry of police activity outside. He went out with
> his camcorder and proceeded to record the police
> actions from his porch. Officers promptly yelled at
> Brown to stop, at which point he ran back inside his
> house. The police gave chase, broke down his door,
> and
> hauled Brown away in handcuffs. Later they obtained
> a
> warrant, confiscated the videotape, and released
> Brown.  
> 
> Urbana does not seem to have a bigger problem with
> police misconduct than other cities. There are
> reports
> of other cases similar to Brown’s, however, with at
> least one violent arrest in 2000, in which police
> broke a man’s neck by putting a knee in his back and
> pulling back on his head, resulting in the city
> paying
> $373,000. Now Urbana is considering an option that
> growing numbers of cities, large and small, are
> trying: an independent civilian police review board.
> In preparation for legislating such a board, a
> handful
> of Urbana residents, including the recently elected
> mayor, are planning to attend the 2005 conference of
> the National Association for Civilian Oversight of
> Law
> Enforcement (NACOLE) in Miami this October 23-26.  
> 
> The Need For Oversight  
> 
> Several high-profile cases of abuse of unarmed
> civilians in the 1990s—among them Rodney King’s
> videotaped beating by a group of Los Angeles police
> officers, the shooting of black and Latino
> basketball
> players by New Jersey state troopers, and Amadou
> Diallo’s fatal shooting by New York City police
> officers—drew the national spotlight. But these
> incidents were just the tip of the iceberg, even
> before the post-9/11 attacks on civil rights, as
> advocates of civilian oversight have known for some
> time.  
> 
> A recent Amnesty International report documents
> widespread human rights violations by police across
> the U.S. The report details:  
> 
> several instances of unarmed civilians shot to death
> reaching for a wallet or cell phone  
> two men killed by multiple gunshots in the back
> during
> drug raids in which no drugs were found  
> police dogs ordered to maul people who were
> unconscious or otherwise non-threatening   
> several instances of people dying of “positional
> asphyxia” after police “hogtied” them, knelt on
> them,
> or forced their faces into the ground, sometimes
> also
> using pepper spray or electro-shock 
> on them  
> an unarmed “squeegee man” shot in the chest by an
> off-duty police officer after the man attempted to
> wash the officer’s car windshield  
> All of the instances listed above occurred in a
> one-year period. In most of these cases, officers
> involved received minor discipline or none at all.  
> 
> Abuse by law enforcement officers in the U.S. is,
> according to the international human rights monitor
> Human Rights Watch, “one of the most serious and
> divisive human rights violations in the country.”
> The
> group says abuse is persistent and nationwide,
> existing in both rural and urban communities, and is
> committed by all levels of law enforcement.  
> 
> “Police have engaged in unjustified shootings,
> severe
> beatings, fatal chokings, and unnecessarily rough
> treatment,” says a 1998 Human Rights Watch report.
> While “the proportion of repeatedly abusive officers
> on any force is generally small,” responsible
> authorities “often fail to act decisively to
> restrain
> or penalize such acts.”  
> 
> 
> Part of this problem, say observers, is a result of
> “modernization” of police methods far outstripping
> police accountability. Police departments these days
> operate with increased budgets, more advanced
> weapons,
> and the same old responses to officer misconduct—or
> lack thereof.  
> 
> But the movement for civilian oversight continues to
> grow. Once “dismissed as radical and dangerous by
> virtually everyone outside the civil rights and
> civil
> liberties communities,” says professor Samuel Walker
> of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the idea has
> taken off in recent years.  
> 
> A Growing Movement  
> 
> Often it takes a particularly shocking incident to
> mobilize a community to demand oversight, but not
> always. Advocates of civilian oversight say it’s a
> good idea for any community to have an objective
> means
> of keeping a watch on law enforcement. “This is
> basic
> democratic stuff, Civics 101,” says Sue Quinn, past
> president of NACOLE.  
> 
> The first civilian oversight board in the U.S. dates
> back to 1969 in Kansas City, but the first oversight
> board to have “full independent authority to
> investigate complaints” was probably the Berkeley,
> California Civilian Police Review Board in 1973. By
> 1975 there were at least seven civilian boards in
> the
> U.S. officially overseeing police departments in
> various ways. One by one cities around the country
> began experimenting, forming new boards for review
> or
> oversight at the rate of about one new board every
> nine to ten months right through the mid-1980s. The
> movement suddenly mushroomed just a couple of years
> before the Rodney King incident in 1991.  
> 
> That ugly incident, and the outrage that accompanied
> it, did not reform the police, but it gave the
> civilian oversight movement a boost by dramatizing
> the
> problem, says Walker. The rate of new oversight
> boards
> doubled, then tripled. By 1995 there were more than
> 65
> U.S. cities with some form of civilian oversight. By
> 2000 that number had topped 100.  
> 
> Resources for activists have expanded, too,
> particularly with the Internet. The Police
> Assessment
> Resource Center, NACOLE, and Walker’s
> policeaccountability.org offer a wealth of practical
> information. Networking, too, provides education and
> guidance to activists, new and old.  
> 
> Today every English-speaking country and several
> others have civilian oversight boards.  
> 
> No Easy Solution  
> 
> This is not to say that civilian oversight is an
> exact
> science. Quinn says there are many different forms
> of
> civilian oversight of police agencies, and no single
> model that fits every community. Each model has its
> strengths and weaknesses, evaluated in Quinn’s “The
> Varieties of Oversight” on NACOLE’s web- site, a
> clearinghouse for grassroots advocates. But, Quinn
> says, there are three basic mistakes to avoid: (1)
> failure to be adequately inform- ed and prepared,
> (2)
> over-identification with the community, and (3)
> over-identification with the police.  
> 
> There are other difficulties. The initial stage of
> gathering information and educating the public can
> be
> daunting, she says, and burnout is common. The
> process
> is long and often community members become
> frustrated
> and give up. Neutrality and independence, essential
> to
> the effectiveness of any oversight body, are also
> fragile. Cooptation by the police is not unusual.   
> 
> In addition, critics of civilian oversight have
> argued
> that many such boards do not have sufficient powers
> to
> conduct full, independent investigations and so are
> ineffective. Opponents ranging from left political
> activists to police officers have lodged this
> criticism, which advocates admit applies to some,
> but
> not all civilian oversight.  
> 
> 
> Experts recommend two models of oversight to avoid
> such tooth- lessness: (1) independent civilian
> review
> boards (as in Minneapolis and Iowa City) with
> subpoena
> powers; (2) the power and budget to hire an
> independent investigator if necessary, and
> independent
> auditors with similar powers (as in San Jose). The
> civilian review board model has the added benefit of
> involving people in the process, roughly analogous
> to
> the jury model for criminal trials.  
> 
> Effectiveness is difficult to measure, say
> advocates.
> But in Iowa City, for example, witnesses who are
> reluctant to talk to police continue to come forward
> with testimony for the city’s Police Citizens Review
> Board, now in its eighth year. The number of
> complaints has dropped significantly, board members
> believe police behavior has improved, and the
> community remains supportive.  
> 
> Advocates in other communities can still expect
> opposition, says Quinn, especially from law
> enforcement officials and their political
> supporters,
> but they should not assume that all police officers
> oppose them. Quinn, a retired probation officer,
> says
> people get involved in oversight for various
> reasons.
> Many of them are former employees of law enforcement
> or probation, who see the need for oversight
> firsthand. In fact, law enforcement officials who
> are
> supportive, or at least open-minded, can be
> invaluable
> in establishing civilian oversight.  
> 
> Still, as Walker has noted, civilian oversight is no
> panacea. The arduous tasks of education and
> organization—and what Quinn calls “respectful
> vigilance,” modeling what communities expect from
> the
> police—is enough to keep activists busy for years at
> a
> time. But the problem of police misconduct is not
> going away.  
> 
> Where the movement goes from here is a good
> question,
> says Quinn, perhaps for activists at the upcoming
> Miami conference.   
> 
> 
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ricky Baldwin is involved in community activism on
> police issues.   
>   
>  
>  
> 
> 
> 
> 	
> 		
> __________________________________ 
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