[Peace-discuss] [Discuss] Non-interaction with Champaign police

[John W.]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 9:02 PM, Lynn Stuckey <lynn.stuckey at hotmail.com>wrote:



>   John W. wrote:
>
> Policing has changed dramatically over the past 50 years, and I don't think
> it's been for the best.
>
> Don't know if you've ever met Doug West, a gentlemen who used to attend a
> lot of the Champaign School Board meetings, but he says something very
> similar.  He talks often of how militarized the police (in general, not just
> in Champaign) have become in his lifetime (roughly 70-some years).
>


You mean Rev. Robert West?  If so, I know him, yes.

A great deal of the militarization is due to the Supreme Court's
increasingly expansive rulings on asset forfeiture.  Local police
departments get most of the money derived from the property (cars, boats,
cash, even houses) which they seize from people who are arrested (mostly but
not exclusively for drug crimes), so there is actually a financial incentive
for cops to make arrests and seize property.  They then spend the money on
higher tech weapons for their SWAT teams, etc.  This sort of drives the
policing philosophy.

Of course there are a number of other factors.  One is the fact that we've
become more of a car culture.  Cops now patrol more or less exclusively in
cars, whereas in the old days some of them used to walk a beat and get to
know the people on their beat.

America simply isn't the same kind of country it was in the 1950s.  Just as
the country doctor has given way to high-stakes medicine, so Officer
Friendly of yore has given way to the SWAT team and the riot squad.  Even
the method of responding to peaceful protest has changed quite a bit since
the 1960s, the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago to the contrary
notwithstanding.

African-Americans might counter, however, that things haven't changed all
that much for them.

I don't know what the police are like now in England, but in 1968 the vast
majority of the bobbies in London didn't carry firearms of any kind.  Of
course far fewer criminals have access to guns in the countries that have
banned them (which is just about all of the industrialized world except
America).  America is the most gun-crazy place on earth, I'd say.



> If you think of how many police departments operate, and how poorly the
> "wars" ('invasions" is a much better descriptor) in Iraq and Afghanistan are
> going, you probably won't be surprised to see that a large number of cops
> have prior military service.
>


No, not at all surprised.  And of course before Afghanistan and the two
Iraqs, there was the invasion of Viet Nam.



> Lynn
> ------------------------------
> Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:40:27 -0500
> From: jbw292002 at gmail.com
> To: ewj at pigs.ag
> CC: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; discuss at communitycourtwatch.org
> Subject: Re: [Discuss] [Peace-discuss] Non-interaction with Champaign
> police
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 12:27 AM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:
>
>
>
> There would not be much reason to go with a gun.
>
> Actually it is the lack of a participative social model that precipitated
> the Kiwane C. thing.
>
> Simply asking the kids what they were up to could have taken care of the
> whole matter.
>
> I think that city-fied folk like the rush of power they get by calling the
> cops on someone.
>
> Sort of like the little girls who used to run for the office to tattle
> every time there was a skirmish on the playground.
>
> Saying that they are afraid to intervene directly seems pretty flimsy to
> me.
>
>
> If we leave violence out of the equation, I quite agree.  There are
> certainly situations in which it's most appropriate to simply talk to one's
> neighbors first.  I've done that several times in my apartment building with
> regard to loud music.  No need to involve the cops unless the neighbor is
> uncooperative or belligerent.
>
> But it does take a modicum of courage.  And in the scenario I posited,
> where your neighbor's house is being burglarized by people you don't know
> (and who might be presumed to be armed), you call the cops.
>
> In the case of Kiwane, I have often wondered why the two police officers
> didn't simply walk up to the two boys and say, "Hey, what are you guys up
> to?"  Fifty years ago, and in a situation where race wasn't a factor, I
> think that's what probably would have happened.  Policing has changed
> dramatically over the past 50 years, and I don't think it's been for the
> best.
>
>
>
>
> On 7/19/2010 1:11 PM, John W. wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 11:41 PM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag <mailto:
> ewj at pigs.ag>> wrote:
>
>    The whole Society-by-Proxy thing rubs me the wrong way.
>
>    Doesn't it occur to anyone that it's pretty damn strange that the
>    police power
>    is invoked rather than the people in the society communicating
>    with each other?
>
>    That there is this knee-jerk response to call the cops rather than
>    manage the problem
>    directly and locally is incredibly strange to me.
>
>    But then again...uh...
>
>
>
>  Right you are, Wayne.  If we think our neighbor's house is being broken
> into, we should all just run over there with our Glocks and start blastin'
> away!
>
>
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