Police State U.S.A: Can it be prevented?
By Ashahed M. Muhammad -Asst. Editor- | Last updated: Jun 6, 2012 - 9:23:58 AMPrinter Friendly Page
Increased
militarization of police and targeting of street organizations appears
imminent. Can the Black community do anything to halt crime?
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CHICAGO (FinalCall.com) - Just a few days after displaying a massive police presence to prevent those protesting against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Summit from getting out of hand, the Chicago Police Department appears poised to implement a severe crackdown after an embarrassing failure to maintain law and order among its residents.
Ten people were killed in shootings over the
Memorial Day holiday weekend with another 40 people wounded. With those
deaths, Chicago’s 2012 homicide number reached 200, representing a
nearly 50 percent increase over the same period a year ago.
At a May 29 press conference, Chicago Mayor
Rahm Emanuel, and Chicago Police Department Superintendent Garry
McCarthy announced a new Gang Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS). Supt.
McCarthy, who has been at the helm a little over a year, called it a
“comprehensive, top to bottom interlinking strategy” implemented within
the nation’s second largest police force.
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Armed and disenfranchised youth are targeted by many
cities to be engaged with military tactics, warn activists.
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The bloody Memorial Day weekend was the deadliest weekend since St. Patrick’s Day weekend in which a wave of shootings left 10 dead, at least 49 wounded. Supt. McCarthy said the department is looking at management of resources related to holiday schedules to see what role it may have played.
“Police officers are just like everybody else,
they want to go to barbecues and spend time with their families. The
problem is if you are a police officer, you don’t have that option
sometimes, so we have to ensure that we are managing our resources
properly and quite frankly in the past we haven’t done that sometimes
and ultimately, I’m accountable for making that happen,” said Supt.
McCarthy.
In a report titled “Street Gangs: The New
Urban Insurgency,” Dr. Max G. Manwaring, a professor of Military
Strategy in the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the U.S. Army War
College, drew parallels between “contemporary criminal street gangs” and
the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The violent, intimidating, and corrupting
activities of illegal internal and trans-national nonstate actors―such
as urban gangs―can abridge sovereign state powers and negate national
and regional security,” Dr. Manwaring wrote.
Supt. McCarthy said gangs splintering into
smaller factions are the primary cause of increased gang conflicts.
Chicago now has over 600 gang factions, he said. The new program would
involve increased intelligence gathering, updated gang membership
audits, monitoring of social media to obtain data regarding violent
incidents between gang members that could lead to possible retaliation.
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Video surveillance camera
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According to a February 2011 report from the American Civil Liberties Union, Chicago’s video surveillance camera program was considered a “pervasive and unregulated threat” to privacy. Security analysts say Chicago has one of the nation’s most “extensive and integrated” networks of government video surveillance programs perhaps only rivaled by the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.
Whenever there is an outbreak of shootings,
numerous factors are cited and immediately, the blame game begins.
Politicians blame the police, the police say they are outmanned, ill
equipped and in turn, blame the Black community accusing them of
allegedly adhering to a ‘no snitching’ law. One thing politicians, law
enforcement officials, and residents seem to all agree on is they
consider it almost an incontrovertible and irreversible fact that the
onset of warm weather in the city will bring escalating levels of crime.
The increased militarization of police
departments across the U.S. has been taking place for the past five
years and does not appear to be slowing down.
“Get ready for martial law,” said Pat Hill,
executive director of the African American Police League and a human
rights activist. “They’re not trying to find a solution, they want to
dictate,” she added.
A retired officer after over two decades of
service, Ms. Hill said community members, politicians and law
enforcement officials fail to get to the root of the issue, which is the
problem of violence has not been solved. The street level crimes being
witnessed in Chicago and many cities across America are products of the
“trickle-down theory” because globally, America solves its problems
using violence, through its weapons of war, she argued.
“This is a violent culture,” said Ms. Hill.
“Now you have very graphic examples of the philosophy, goals, and
objectives of this country. It’s international, it’s national, and it’s
local policies.”
Ms. Hill said the police lockdown during the
NATO Summit protests May 20 in Chicago was a dry run to see how much
people would put up with, and after the carefully managed media
campaign, the community is participating in ushering in a police state.
According to the 2011 National Gang Threat
Assessment report from the National Gang Intelligence Center in
Washington, D.C., there are over 1.4 million gang members nationwide
representing 33,278 gangs. The highest concentration being in the
upper-Midwest area and south-central Los Angeles. Among the chief
concerns of law enforcement are the threats posed by street
organizations obtaining powerful weapons, and juveniles starting early
in the commission of serious crimes.
“Gang members are acquiring high-powered,
military-style weapons and equipment which poses a significant threat
because of the potential to engage in lethal encounters with law
enforcement officers and civilians,” said the report. “Juvenile gang
members in some communities are hosting parties and organizing special
events which develop into opportunities for recruiting, drugs, sexual
exploitation, and criminal activity. Gangster rap gangs, often comprised
of juveniles, are forming and are being used to launder drug money
through seemingly legitimate businesses,” according to NGIC reporting.
While a heavy-handed crackdown appears to be
on the horizon, and with politicians and religious leaders at their
wits’ end, the question must be asked: Do residents really want their
neighborhoods locked down by more police and national guardsmen?
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Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Team trains in “Urban Warfare.” Photos: MGNOnline
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In the summer of 2010, Illinois State Representative LaShawn Ford, was one of the leading voices calling upon Governor Pat Quinn to bring in National Guard troops to bolster the presence of law enforcement in areas of the city hit hardest by crime. Rep. Ford’s 8th District encompasses parts of Chicago’s West Side, specifically, a notoriously violent neighborhood called Austin where gangs activity is high. He was not alone in his call. Other state representatives and community leaders joined the heated discussion, however, Gov. Quinn rejected the request.
Another troubling factor that greatly
complicates matters is the high level of police mistrust within Black
and Latino communities nationwide. The Washington, D.C.-based CATO
Institute’s National Police Misconduct Reporting Project (NPMRP) aims to
“determine the extent of police misconduct in the United States,
identify trends affecting police misconduct, and report on issues about
police misconduct in order to enhance public awareness on issues
regarding police misconduct in the U.S.”
Despite the fact that watchdog groups and
community activists are daily witnessing and documenting instances of
police misconduct, law enforcement officials are receiving more lethal
weapons, sweeping powers to conduct “no knock warrants” and racial
profiling appears at its highest levels.
Police function in a crime world and have no
ability to create solutions that might involve community activism,
economic issues and social problems, so more police, stricter
enforcement and greater power is not the answer, said Ms. Hill.
It is always narrowly labeled as a “gang
problem” when in fact, the situation is more complex. She compared it to
the circumstances producing child soldiers in Africa, in which
subcultures are set up in order to control their own economic systems,
and to survive. The same factors—poverty, homelessness, and lack of
adult supervision are present in Africa, as well as in the inner city,
and youth are alienated from society, even within their own Black
communities.
“They’re surviving,” said Ms. Hill. “We’re in denial about the different tiers that exist in terms of society in this country.”
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News Media Clip shows Black Youth engaging in a “Flash Mob” on a store owner in Philadelphia. Increased
surveillance and mounting inconveniencies caused by heightened security are precursors to a
police state, say activists.
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“I’m looking at this every day,” Ms. Hill continued. “These children are trying to get in where they fit in and creating their own methods of survival, and their standard is so different from what we think the standard should be in a so-called civilized society, but wait a minute—they aren’t a part of that society!”
For his part, Mayor Emanuel is taking aim at
area businesses, such as liquor stores, which in some cases become
“magnets for gun violence and narcotics dealing.” Seventy to 80 percent
of the city’s shootings and homicides are due to gang violence, he
noted.
“I do not want kids in the city of Chicago
walking by liquor stores or walking in liquor stores as if it is a
convenience store,” said Mayor Emanuel. “Businesses serve as anchors in
their communities, but some serve as conduits for criminal activity, and
those are the businesses that we are targeting,” said Mayor Emanuel.
Mayor Emanuel said while the May 29 press
conference was mainly to discuss the law enforcement solutions to the
gang violence problem, he acknowledged that there are other issues that
need to be addressed.
“There’s a set of economic issues that we’re
not talking about, there’s a set of cultural issues that we are not
talking about,” said Mayor Emanuel flanked by prominent Chicago area
Black religious leaders and aldermen. “We have more jobs than there are
people to fill them, why? Because we have a skills deficit.”
Despite those announcements, critics say Mayor
Emanuel and Supt. McCarthy’s press conferences and press releases are
not going to solve the problem that exists.
“They are carrying out the agenda for their
belief systems. They are doing the job of the power structure. They are
the establishment,” said Ms. Hill. “Emanuel is a Zionist. McCarthy is a
White male Irish Catholic, and none of that has anything to do with us,
and as the Zionist who is in charge of this city, he is going to wield
the kind of power that he needs to wield to carry out the agenda of
Zionists.”
She added that White male Irish Catholics
dominate the major police forces of America, and they are going to
continue to function in the enforcement role they have historically
held.
“These senseless killings and shootings,” said
community activist Wallace “Gator” Bradley, “Rahm Emanuel is
responsible for the proliferation of the killings and shootings in this
city, and I say this because it is on his watch. If (shootings) were
going down, he would take the credit. Well, own up to the
responsibility.”
Mr. Bradley said he has repeatedly offered
solutions by writing and emailing Mayor Emanuel since he assumed the
office. Two prominent and legendary street organization guides—El Rukn
leader Jeff Fort, and Gangster Disciple leader Larry Hoover—are the keys
to stopping the killing, he said. Both are currently imprisoned at the
United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence,
Colorado probably for the rest of their lives, but if allowed to speak
publicly through the media to those that are in communication with those
out in the streets, they could make a difference, he said.
“I’m an ex-felon with a pardon. There’s no
better resume and I have a solution and a plan that can work,” he said.
Mr. Bradley makes no secret about his past as a high-ranking member of
the Gangers Disciples giving him credibility in that realm. Now, he has a
long record spanning decades within the community working amongst
political, community and street organization leaders to establish peace.
Mr. Bradley says there are many street organization leaders who abide
by a code and are against senseless killing and shootings. He says Supt.
McCarthy and Mayor Emanuel issuing blanket condemnations of “gangs”
make things worse because they are “giving cover to the renegades that
are doing the shooting and killing.”
“The (street organization) leaders that are
against senseless shootings and killings are voices have to be heard so
that you can see that there are a bunch of renegades and we are all in
the community and even though we don’t speak for each other our voices
are coming together to eradicate those bad seeds,” said Mr. Bradley.
Mr. Bradley said he would gather community
leaders, along with the children of Mr. Fort and Mr. Hoover to appeal to
the streets to establish peace by demanding an end to shootings, raping
of women, abuse of children, disrespect, and robbing of elders.
On the East Coast, Abdul Hafeez Muhammad, New
York representative of the Nation of Islam, led a rally June 2 in Mount
Vernon, New York, as a call to action. In his thoughts were three young
men killed in Mount Vernon some months ago in retaliation for previous
killings. There are also innocent people being killed and wounded in
turf wars as rival cliques battle to gain control of the narcotics
trade. The dangerous yet lucrative illegal activities are “cause agents”
for conflict.
While the community should be outraged and
diligent in identifying injustice and misdeeds by law enforcement like
in the case of Trayvon Martin in Florida, Ramarley Graham and Sean Bell,
both in New York, and Oscar Grant III in the Bay Area, Black on Black
killing must end and the community and its leaders must speak out, he
said.
“We’ve become so desensitized that even when
we do speak up, it’s very little, and the leaders who do try to do
something—it’s like a cat meowing at a lion,” said Mr. Muhammad.
“This rally is about how we are killing each
other with gunshot wounds, how we are stabbing one another,” said Mr.
Muhammad adding that present for the rally were a group of mothers who
lost children to gun violence. Mr. Muhammad said during a previous visit
to Muhammad Mosque No. 7, many of the mothers told him they had been
threatened by some of the street organizations, or cliques in the area.
“We are going to stem the tide, get the blood
off of our hands, and offer our program and position,” said Mr.
Muhammad. “They can’t say that they haven’t been warned. They can’t say
that they haven’t been given a way out, and they can’t say that we have
not tried to come in and do something about it.”
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