[FRIAM] Thoughts on the Floyd protests

[Prof David West]

There is a large body of work — Police Studies, Ethnography of Policing, History of Policing — that could be very informative for this discussion. I am familiar only with the anthropological (ethnographic) studies. They are depressing reading.

Beginning with the era of prohibition there has been an increasingly insular culture of police. Insular because laws like prohibition and the war on drugs isolated the police by forcing them to enforce unpopular laws. The whole sixties thing with police as "pigs" exacerbated the sense of isolation and being under attack or at least siege.

The culture of US versus THEM is embedded so deep it is probably ineradicable, And THEM quickly became synonymous with SCUMBAG.

Much, if not most, of the * *_institutional_* * racism in policing derives from the laws that the police are expected to enforce. E.g. Biden's crime bill (that he is trying to run away from) or the laws that made powdered cocaine (favored by whites) of less consequence than crystalized (favored by blacks). If the consequences of breaking a law are disproportionate on the basis of race, then the resistance is magnified and the enforcement becomes more pronounced.

Then there was a whole lot of mutual peering into the abyss and the police adopted values and practices, like omerta, from the opposition.

One study of police culture focused on the sense of infallibility, and can do no wrong, that is endemic among police - tracing it to the revision of traffic laws over the past thirty decades as county and municipal governments became dependent on revenue from traffic fines. Police can lie, commit blatant perjury, in court, in traffic cases, and their testimony cannot be impugned. This is bad for the psyche, leads to megalomania.

[[An aside. There is a concerted effort to remove traffic laws from the criminal code entirely. As is currently the case with red light cameras, the "offense" is "fact" and any human involved is either "responsible" or "not." If "not" then you have to provide the human who is because the fact is undeniable. I wrote a lot of the code, in C, for the first generation of red-light cameras. Tested at the intersection of Snelling and University in St. Paul MN. Also for the first generation of speeding cameras. The accuracy of gen I was never less than +/- 15%. A friend that sill works for RedFlex says the lastest gen is accurate to =/- 5%, but you cannot confront your "accuser" even to look at the code or the calibration of the equipment because criminal law does not apply.]]

The ultimate cultural evolution was the militarization of the police beginning with the first SWAT teams and the current fad for armored personnel carriers.

"Qualified immunity" becomes the end game. You have a culture that believes it is always right, that everyone else in the world is their enemy, and anyone that breaks the law (except themselves who are above the law) is less than human.

Racist laws; classist legal system; paranoid, above the law, self-righteous enforcement body. Imagine the amazement that things are F#@$ed up.

I believe that "Reform" and "Defunding" are little more than placebos directed towards symptoms.

davew

On Thu, Jun 11, 2020, at 5:42 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> I wonder if the police in America is so aggressive because they operate in a hostile environment where everybody is allowed to carry a weapon (here in Europe it is forbidden). You know this Herbert Simon quote "Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves". If a police officer is in constant danger of being shot, then he will probably be much more stressed than one who is not constantly in life-threatening situations. Every home they check and every car they stop can be the last. Robert Sapolsky mentions in his books how people change under constant stress and how bad permanently elevated stress levels are.
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
> Date: 6/11/20 00:46 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Thoughts on the Floyd protests
> 
> In the 20 years I lived in Santa Fe, I had one interaction with a police officer when a likely drug addict tried to break into the house. When we got home, my large dog was teetering up in a window sill about ready to break through the window. I reported it to the police, even though I wasn’t even going to file a claim about it. What I got for my effort was a petulant, authoritarian young man that instructed me how I should contain my dog during his visit. (Dog was not being aggressive.) The officer was more threatening than the `criminal’. Piss off, officer. Oh, there was also the bikers that would ride into parking circle out where I lived in Arroyo Hondo, to party with the neighbor. They were loud and sometimes a little menacing. But it never would have occurred to me to call the police on them. That would just be antagonistic. 

> The so-called public support services of the city can be witnessed down at the public library. Every homeless person comes through the library sooner or later. They come for the shelter, and other amenities like the possibility of watching porn on the public computers. Most of them are mentally ill, and some of them can be dangerous when agitated. Usually it is the onsite security person that escorts the ill-behaving ones out, and library staff sometimes have to take on that risk too. It seems better to me to prevent, or at least treat that damage than having it compromise the usability of that public resource; it wastes taxpayer money. I remember a story of a young boy (~8) who was left at the library all day by his `parents’ and told not to move. He followed his instructions so closely that he would defecate on himself rather than risk a trip to the bathroom. This happened repeatedly. I find it unacceptable that the gentle souls that work in a library are used to mitigate these social problems. But people just throw up their hands and leave it the police to cart off people from time to time. It’s like delaying medical care and ending up in the emergency room instead: Too late to help, and damned expensive as well.

> Marcus

> 

> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com>
> *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> *Date: *Wednesday, June 10, 2020 at 2:58 PM
> *To: *"friam at redfish.com" <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] Thoughts on the Floyd protests

> 

> Glen -

> I know you weren't pulling our leg (or my finger).

> This was the post I was composing when the tone deaf joke formed and escaped:

> My "intellectual" interest is in how self-organizing principles and emergence operate in social contexts... on both sides of the debate here, as is being alluded to here already. When Law Enforcement gets significantly defunded, what fills the vacuum left by that? There are lots of *other* vacuums/rifts/holes being formed as our culture heaves and buckles a little under a series of shifts. I'm not sure what (if any) are root causes and what are just cascades and reactions. Globalism, NeoLiberalism, Authoritarinism, Fascism, Manic Hypercaptialism, Rapid Technological Change, Hyper Connectedness, Information Overload, etc.

> Many believe that shifting funding from law enforcement (which is by definition more reactionary than preventative?) to mental and social services which are intended to be more strongly pro-active in preventing the kinds of problems that the police often have to remediate down the road, is a net gain and possibly something that could be effected very quickly, even if positive results may lag in many cases. I don't know how well that works for/with hardened criminals who've already been taken from being under-nourished, under-respected, under-opportunitied youth through a series of trainings as a gang member first on the streets, and then inside prison for several stints, annealed and tempered by police, judges, prison-guards and one's fellow travelers to a strong core with a wicked-sharp edge. But maybe if her mother and younger siblings aren't struggling to keep groceries in the fridge and the fridge running then maybe she can mature into something a little kinder-gentler. Or maybe she already has, but it is hard to recognize when the only interface she has is a regular stop-and-frisking? I think we do see a record of mellowing among aging hard-cores who survive long enough to become elders in their communities?

> I think Jon?s suggestion that private security will fill the vacuum is also valid. More people will gate their communities and more gated communities will add uniformed patrols and more uniformed patrols will add lethal weapons and training. The next George Floyd might be your massage therapist who made the mistake of making house-calls to your gated community while black/brown/yellow/red/poor and the next Chauvin & Co will be guys who couldn't even get IN to the police academy but COULD buy mirror-shades, a loaded up batman utility belt, matching chromed .45s with shoulder holsters, an Armalite 15 and a riot-style shotgun (but not rubber nor armor-piercing rounds, those are for law-enforcement-only) to carry in their ominously painted and hopped up SUV with run flat tires, a push-bumper, blinky lights and a siren. And that tricked out rig, security "professional" included, will cost a fraction of what a *real* law enforcement officer would BECAUSE of the lack of oversight/training/benefits, etc. A new branch: UBERArmed?

> The above is mildy (but not entirely) the maunderings of a frustrated/unexpressed cyberpunk novelist (me)... but oddly not that far away in "some Adjacent Possible"? 

> Personally, I'm more interested in how to use this Svaha/Liminal moment to "Visualize World Peace"? And what is in *that* adjacent possible (ensemble)? There is value to a Red-Team/Blue-Team analysis in these situations, and I think *both* are necessary. Awfulizing isn't the only thing to be doing right now. Things are shifting, vacuums are created, playing-fields are being re-leveled... are there opportunities to "do the right thing", or is "the right thing" so subjective that we will simply "move the noise around"? I identify as a humanist... I don't even know if that means what it used to (to others) or if I'm in anything like a "silent majority" in that identification. Maybe the Anarchists and Libertarians and Radical Progressives and Radical Conservatives and ??? all think THEY are humanists. Or maybe it's a bad word to them? I certainly remember my self-righteous Catholic M-in-Law spitting the words "*Secular Humanist*" as if they were acid, leaving smoking, corroding spots everywhere they landed.

> - Steve

> 

> 

> On 6/10/20 11:17 AM, uǝlƃ  ☣ wrote:

>> We have evidence of it, here: 
>>  
>> Olympia police unions respond to photo of officer posing with armed men
>> https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article243401061.html
>>  
>> FWIW, I think our mayor is wrong. The 3% sign isn't the OK sign, regardless of whether any supremacists actually use the OK sign or not. But like any tone deaf marketing message, if the symbol you adopt is *thought* to be a racist symbol, then you should go ahead and change it. Just stop flying the confederate flag even if it's been on your state flag for your whole life ... just stop using the swastika even if you're (East) Indian or Native American.
>>  
>> But what does lend truth to the accusations leveled against the 3% is the lack of a public statement condemning Trump for violating the constitution in clearing St John's. If they exist to use their piddly little guns to protect us from the government, where were they then? Perhaps they are only interested in protecting a particular class of people? ... or only people with whom they agree politically?
>>  
>> As for the cop in the photo, she should at least be suspended for her stupid mistake. Don't pose with with a bunch of dudes standing in a parking lot with guns. That's simply a stupid thing for a cop (or any professional) to do. And if you must do it, take off your uniform first.
>>  
>>  
>> On 6/10/20 9:51 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> I think the point is that are already not accountable.   Protected by unions and colleagues who will look the other way, and a culture that accepts that certain people must consent to miserable lives. 
>>>  
>>>> On 6/10/20, 9:48 AM, "Friam on behalf of Prof David West" <friam-bounces at redfish.com on behalf of profwest at fastmail.fm> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.comonbehalfofprofwest@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>>>>  
>>>>     downside is the private militias that Jon mentioned. just like the military that replaces soldiers with private contractors - to whom are the latter accountable?
>>>> On 6/9/20 4:28 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
>>>>> 1. Will the efforts to defund the police eventually meet with efforts
>>>>> to build private militias? Will the future of policing in this country
>>>>> follow a path similar to the shift from public to private postal service?
>>>>> If so, what will accountability be?
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
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