By: Jenny Manrique / Ethnic Media Services
In secret Facebook groups, retired and active officers of the San Jose, California Police shared racist views about African Americans and Muslims. Comments such as: "Black lives don't matter" and "Hijabs should be used as ropes" were part of the posts of a group called 10-7ODSJ, a reference to the "off-duty" police code, which was dropped at the end of June.
The episode laid bare something on which those protesting on the streets against structural racism, such as the same 35,000-strong police force, the 83% of which are white and the 80% of which are male, can agree: race supremacy is something that has permeated the exercise of law and order.
"It's not just that racism is longstanding and consistent, it's the fact that it's embedded in an institution that has the legal authority to kill, to take away your freedom," Raj Jayadev, co-founder of Silicon Valley De-Bug community media in San Jose, said during a news conference organized by Ethnic Media Services via Zoom.
"It's the same officials assigned to monitor the protests, the ones who control the public discussion about law and order in many cities... it's the officials we can't hold accountable because they are protected in their union's arbitration system," he added.
Since Donald Trump became president, the discussion has been polarized between support for the police and chaos in the streets, agitated by the idea that there is an increase in crime and violence if law and order is not dealt with strongly.
Repeated images across the country show the brutal actions of the police against peaceful protesters, mostly African Americans and Latinos, who are shot with tear gas and rubber bullets on the grounds that "they are threatening thugs. Mayors have responded by imposing curfews, which limit the right to protest. And white supremacist groups have increased their presence inside and outside these structures of law.
"There is a false presumption that 'security' is equivalent to 'law and order'. It's a trumped-up premise created to increase community surveillance and incarceration... a crime committed by a black man is sensational and worries more than the thousands of arrests and abuses by police violence," said Jayadev.
Misperception of crime
The numbers contradict the alleged rise in crime. In San José, according to data from the same police force, in the last year the rates of crimes against property plummeted by more than 22%, and violent crimes decreased by 28%. In contrast, the death rate caused by active officers increased.
"One way to hold the government accountable is to ask for the data, because there is a perception that crime is on the rise and that's not true," said Michael German, a member of the Brennan Center for Justice's Freedom and Homeland Security program who in the 1990s worked as an undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and infiltrated white supremacist and far-right groups.
"There were a lot more murders in the '90s and they've gone down since then. The violence today is nothing compared to what was seen in the civil unrest of the 1960s and 1970s," he added. "In contrast, the authorities are not aggressive in investigating crimes against Native American, black and brown communities, but are pursuing them as suspects in crimes.
According to German, despite the fact that between 2006 and 2015, the FBI recognized that white supremacist violence was a significant problem many years after the Ku Klux Klan made headlines for its violence against blacks, the federal government never made this work a priority and state and local governments have not been willing to address it either.
The FBI does not track these groups, but some of these subjects feed into the terrorism watch list. But the violence of white supremacists falls below priorities such as domestic, international and even environmental terrorism. When it is categorized as a hate crime, it is relegated as a non-priority investigative issue.
"Right-wing violence is at best ignored and at worst instigated by government officials, including the president of the United States," German said. "In the protests, the government has used the figure of outside agitators, anarchists and anti-fascists to divert attention from legitimate concerns expressed by community members. When they say they are "outsiders" it allows for more aggression from the police and supremacists.
The fact that law enforcement agencies attract certain types of ideologies and are composed of a predominantly white and male force complicates structural racism. Aggressive police officers are rewarded with jobs in high crime areas and are often hailed as protectors of social order and the status quo.
"Police departments don't look like the communities they're supposed to protect," said Dorothy Johnson-Speight, founder and national executive director of Mothers in Charge, a grassroots organization that brings together mothers affected by racist violence. In 2001, her 24-year-old son, a college graduate, was shot seven times in a dispute over a parking space.
"And even though they recruit more Black officers, they are oppressed by the system. Their lives are at risk or in danger if they take a stand against racism, the code of silence is a relevant piece of that," he added. Some police departments have made an effort to recruit officers in communities of races other than white, but that has not had an impact on decreasing violence in those neighborhoods because those officers are not allowed to rise in the ranks to make decisions.
"Police arrest and suffocate a man in Rochester (NY, Daniel Prude) with a plastic bag, and then the report says he died of an overdose. He kills a woman in her home and then brings her boyfriend to testify against her that she was engaged in criminal activity. Police officers are corrupt, they kill, they lie and they go unpunished," Johnson-Speight said indignantly.
She recognizes that every time she talks about her son's murder, she has to defend who he was as a black man. "Because he wasn't a criminal or a gang member. He didn't use drugs or alcohol. There are a lot of young African-American men doing wonderful things so the question is not what is wrong with them but what happened to them... What we are as people, you have no idea if you haven't walked in our shoes.
The mother activist says that episodes like George Floyd's death, which aroused worldwide condemnation, have made more people understand these difficulties and how wrong the system is, and that those who are not part of the solution are part of the problem.
"Disbursing the police and diminishing their role in society, especially in cases related to mental health, is the only real solution to the problem," he added. "No one is safe until (African Americans) are safe," he concluded.
