By: Jenny Manrique / Ethnic Media Services
In secret Facebook groups, retired and active San Jose, California, police officers shared racist views about African-Americans and Muslims. Comments such as: "Black lives don't matter" and "hijabs should be used as nooses," were part of posts in a group called 10-7ODSJ, a reference to the "off-duty" police code, which was terminated at the end of June.
The episode exposed something that those protesting in the streets against structural racism, like the 35,000-strong police force itself, 83% of them white and 80% men, can agree on: race supremacy is something that has permeated the exercise of law and order.
It's not just that the racism is longstanding and consistent, it's the fact that it's embedded in an institution that has the legal authority to kill, to strip you of your freedom," said Raj Jayadev, co-founder of the community media outlet Silicon Valley De-Bug, in San Jose, during a press conference organized by Ethnic Media Services via Zoom.
These are the same officers assigned to monitor protests, the ones who control the public discussion about law and order in many cities ? these are the officers we can't hold accountable because they are protected in their unions' arbitration system," he added.
Since the arrival of Donald Trump to the presidency the discussion has been polarized between support for police forces or chaos in the streets, agitated by the idea that there is an increase in crime and violence if there is no strong hand from law and order.
Repeated images across the country show brutal police actions against peaceful protesters, mostly African Americans and Latinos, who are being tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets on the grounds that they are "threatening thugs. Mayors have responded by imposing curfews that limit the right to protest. And white supremacist groups have increased their presence inside and outside these law enforcement structures.
There is a false assumption that ?safety? equals ?law and order? It is a Trumpist premise created to increase community policing and incarceration ? one crime committed by a black man is sensationalized and is of more concern than the thousands of arrests and abuses by police violence," Jayadev said.
Misperception about crime
The numbers contradict the supposed increase in crime. In San Jose, according to the same police data, in the last year property crime rates plummeted by more than 22%, and violent crime dropped by 28%. The rate of deaths caused by active officers, on the other hand, increased.
One way to hold the government accountable is to ask them for the data, because there's 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 Liberty and National 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 many more homicides in the 1990s and since then they have gone down. The violence now is nothing compared to what we saw in the civil unrest of the 1960s and 1970s," he added. In contrast, the authorities are not aggressive in investigating crimes against indigenous, black and brown communities, but are pursuing them as criminal suspects," he said.
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 also been unwilling to address it.
The FBI does not track these groups but some of these subjects feed the terrorism watch list. But white supremacist violence falls below priorities like domestic, international and even ecological terrorism. When it is labeled a hate crime, it is relegated as a non-priority investigative topic.
At best, far-right violence is ignored, and at worst instigated, by government officials, including the U.S. president," German noted. In the protests, the government has used the figure of outside agitators, anarchists and anti-fascists to deflect attention from the fact that there are legitimate concerns expressed by community members. When they say they are 'intruders' it allows for more aggression from the police and supremacists?
Compounding structural racism is the fact that law enforcement agencies attract certain types of ideologies and are composed of a predominantly white and male force. Aggressive police officers are rewarded with jobs in high crime areas and are often extolled as the protectors of social order and the status quo.
Police departments don't look like the communities they are 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 if 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, and the code of silence is a relevant piece of this," he added. Some police departments have made an effort to recruit officers in non-white communities, but that hasn't had an impact on reducing violence in those neighborhoods because those officers are not allowed to rise through the ranks to make decisions.
Police arrest and suffocate a man in Rochester (NY, Daniel Prude) with a plastic bag, then report that he died of an overdose. He kills a woman in her home and then brings her boyfriend to testify against her claiming she was engaged in criminal activity. Police officers are corrupt, they kill, they lie and they go unpunished," Johnson-Speight said indignantly.
She acknowledges 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 wasn't using drugs or alcohol. There are a lot of African-American young men doing wonderful things so the question is not what's 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 activist mother says that episodes like the death of George Floyd, which sparked a worldwide outcry, 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.
Defunding the police and diminishing their role in society, especially in mental health cases, is the only real solution to the problem," he added. No one is safe until we (African-Americans) are safe," he concluded.
