There is a video circulating online that purports to show Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, arresting a man for the "crime" of "disobeying a police officer".
I offer the following qualifiers.
I am not sure that the police officer in the above video recording is Darren Wilson.
[The Guardian has a story about the video clip and offers corroborating evidence which suggests that the police officer in the video clip is in fact Darren Wilson.]
Moreover, the video clip only shows several seconds of the encounter between the police officer and the man he would arrest.
Black folks in America have to learn survival skills in order to protect our lives in a society structured around maintaining white supremacy and white privilege. These lessons were taught on the slave plantations by both biological and fictive kin, and remain necessities in the post civil rights era as evidence by "the talk" given to black American youth about how to not have police kill you for the "crime" of being black, breathing, and nearby.
This is not an exclusive story of race in America: these are the life skills and sitting at the learning tree moments that all folks who suffer under Power must learn in all societies across time immemorial if they want to survive.
The ability to read cues of body language and speech are necessary abilities for living through an encounter across the color line with those who are empowered by the State--and society more generally--to visit violence and death upon those who are the Other.
As such, in American society black and brown folks know more about Whiteness and White folks than the latter generally know about themselves. When one is fighting from the bottom they generally have a much better and broader perspective about empirical reality than the person who is imposing power from the top.
To my eyes, there is something imposing, mean, and bullying about the police officer in the above video. His swagger is menacing. He walks like a man whose testosterone and testicles are swollen with the petty authority that comes with a gun and a uniform.
Alas, and in total, Wilson is a little man.
Am I crazy and/or delusional? Is this officer's habitus a good fit for the slave plantation or slave patrol, he gleefully singing the song "Run Nigger Run", what is a warning to black slaves and free people that they best obey white authority lest the whip or the lynching tree would be their reward?
6 comments:
Hard to tell if that's Wilson, but in any case it does provide evidence of the intentional practice of the Ferguson PD arresting blacks for reasons that police typically would not bother with. Many police officers avoid such petty arrests due to the paperwork involved, especially if the person the police encounters is not engaged in any outward illegal activity. And given the cost of processing, the police officer's time and the likely outcome of such cases, to prosecute these cases in court is just not worth the trouble.
The police officer in this video is acting in ways that suggest he knows its his job to get an arrest for any excuse he can gin up, even "disobeying a police officer." He also knows, as Wilson apparently did, that no action, not even murder, as was the case with Brown, would not be supported in pursuit of these fees, particularly against a black resident.
In Ferguson, apparently, the calculation is different. The city generates approximately 13% of its budget through such petty arrests and usurious fees and fines as a result. These arrests are a revenue stream, and wherein some courts would realize the costly calculation of it, Ferguson courts have apparently looked at the cost-benefit, and made the cost of these fines beneficial (hence the usurious fees and fines) and thus the arrests make sense from that standpoint.
The first remedy for this is obvious. In the last election, its estimated that 6% of eligible black voters voted in the election. The direction and policies of city departments are then made by people who want to ensure that the burden is not on them, and who better to put it on, than those who have chosen not to have a voice in government.
In this case, the man being harassed--I believe is white--but the broader point holds about his demeanor and thug cop persona.
From NBC news:
The family of Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager whose death at the hands of a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer touched off weeks of protests and international outcry, is criticizing the police department after a newspaper published video showing Officer Darren Wilson hours after he shot the 18-year-old.
"From the very beginning, the Ferguson Police Dept. has followed what is now seemingly standard operating procedure for police departments around the country: to vilify the victim and put the shooter on a pedestal," Brown’s family said Saturday in a statement released by their attorneys.
The statement referred to information leaked from law enforcement sources in the shooting’s aftermath that claimed Wilson was beaten and suffered injuries to his face. "From the video released today it would appear the initial descriptions of his injuries were exaggerated," the statement read.
This is a cover up done in plain sight. Any person of conscience should be disgusted.
There's no denying that there's something pathological among our police force. I think it was recently estimated that nation-wide, police have had to budget $3 billion a year in misconduct/wrongful death suits. $700 million of that was the NYPD alone. In fact, police departments are getting dumped by their liability insurers for being too big a risk.
In Florida, a grandmother called the police to help her give her grandson his medication (anti-psychotics, I would guess), which she had done several times before. Sometimes they'd have to take him to a local mental hospital for treatment. The cop comes alone, tazes the 24 year old, immediately drags him into the bathroom alone, and shoots him dead. Never calls for backup, never seems to think he needed help controlling the situation until he deemed murder necessary.
He was, of course, Black.
You can keep up to date on the story here: http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/Man-Shot-Killed-by-Gretna-Police-Officer-280660612.html
Lawlz. You people will kill more of your own then the police ever will. Get over it.
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