Serious Police Brutality in the U.S.

[Ampharos]

By no means am I aiming to bash cops, I just take issue with blatantly racist rhetoric.

I don't think all, or even most, cops are racist. But racist cops undoubtedly exist, are undoubtedly a problem, and undoubtedly indicate a larger structural/oversight issue within US law enforcement overall.

 

[Ununhexium]

given how many racist white cops have killed innocent black people i'm not entirely sure why you think this is so absurd?



nice.

White people are more likely to be killed by cops than black people. And of course some innocent black people have been killed by white cops, but that's the exception rather than the rule. Also, just because an innocent person with the same skin color as you was killed by a 1 in 100000 racist white cop doesn't give you free reign to kill cops trying to do their job. Also when an emergency dispatcher picks up the phone, they don't ask if you're black or white. Instead, they send a person to your location to help you.

Also I said "thug" because ANYBODY who kills an innocent police officer is a thug. I don't care if they're black, white, Hispanic, Arab, Indian, Asian, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Tao, or anything. Killing the people who put their lives on the line for you every day and voluntarily signed up to do this is absolutely fucking wrong.

I'm going to stop replying to this threat or even reading it because the blatant lack of disrespect of our protesters is absolutely fucking disgusting

 

[sunny004]

White people are more likely to be killed by cops than black people.

Wat
Where'd ya find that statistic, dude?

I feel that making blanket statements about ALL police officers is extremely unfair and unfounded. Calling all officers killers and racists is basically equivalent calling all Arab/Muslim people terrorists.

Now, before you grind your keyboards to dust in an angry rant reply, I will say that there is a problem with officer involved shootings. While many of you would like to believe that this is due to racist cops. I think the main problems are:

1) Societal differences involving financial/education differences between races

2) Overly aggressive officer training

#1 is fairly straightforward. Because black/Hispanic people are quite often not very educated (High school drop out/Didn't go to college) in proportion to other races, they are less likely to get a well paying job and often feel like they need to turn to crime to make ends meet. Because of this, an officer, black or white, is more likely to believe that a black/Hispanic person would/could commit a crime. I don't believe that this is "racist" per say because there are statistics to back it up. If you had two chemicals on a lab table and you knew one was statistically more volatile than the other, wouldn't you approach it with a bit more caution? Also, before you say "Risks like that are part of the job, don't be an officer if you're so concerned about your safety.", think of two things: 1) Don't you think that soldiers in the military place their safety above others? I'm pretty sure if they thought that someone walking down the street had a bomb they would work to take them out, and 2) You have no experience with the dangers that police officers experience daily. They don't have a fucking clue whether or not the person they just pulled over would rather shoot them then hand the officer their license.

This leads right into #2. I'm no expert on police officer training, but it seems to me like the departments have opted for a "shoot first, ask questions later" policy, instead of rigorous de-escalation training . This isn't exactly the fault of the officers themselves but more of the fault of the aggressive training officers receive. Also to the person who suggested abolishing police in favor of solely using social therapists: 1) Good luck finding someone to do that lol 2) Who's going to deal with all of the petty crimes (Burglary, shoplifting, driving-related offenses?) 3) If someone has already shot up a place, I think they're past the point of no return. They're well aware of the consequences of arrest.

So you may be asking: How then do we fix the problem? Simple: Focus on improving education and reducing crime overall via rehabilitation and not extreme punishment, and change officer training to focus more on crisis de-escalation and less on use of lethal force.

**Please treat me with respect as I am entitled to my opinion. Ask me any questions you may have. Thanks!**

 

[PDC]

Right so if there are gunshots at a BLM protest it's obviously racist white cops killing innocent black people and there's no chance some thug thought it was a good idea to kill the very people who would rush to their door if 911 was called

Right

when you have a mass protest going on a few days following the shooting of two black men, and then you in turn get shot at while peacefully protesting, obviously the first assumption is you are being targeted. also, could you for fucks sake stop pushing this nonsensical narrative that every BLM protester thinks all cops are terrible people? yes, they are frustrated with how law enforcement has been treating them, but that does not mean that they assume all cops are racist. the problem is just re-occurring to enough of an extent that it is completely reasonable for them to have second thoughts about their own safety when around a police officer.

And of course some innocent black people have been killed by white cops, but that's the exception rather than the rule. Also, just because an innocent person with the same skin color as you was killed by a 1 in 100000 racist white cop doesn't give you free reign to kill cops trying to do their job.

obviously it is an exception, but i think you're underrating the amount of shootings that occur / the incredibly lax response police unions and the judicial system has. also, if you noticed, the man who executed the dallas shooting was completely radical and not even part of the organization blm (in fact her was blacklisted from others i believe for being militant). completely outside of the mainstream movement.

jaja all cops are heros jaja any mention of there being an intrinsic flaw in how officers are being trained is anti-police jaja i love cops and if you tread on me i'll put lead in you haha!!!!

 

[sunny004]

.
jaja all cops are heros jaja any mention of there being an intrinsic flaw in how officers are being trained is anti-police jaja i love cops and if you tread on me i'll put lead in you haha!!!!

Can someone please answer what was going through this guys head when he/she used the term "jaja"

Like seriously wat

(Not criticizing this guys viewpoints btw

 

[citro]

Today, all charges were dropped against the police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered neck and spine injuries which lead to his DEATH while being restrained but not secured in the back of a van, going against a policy introduced for the police prior to the arrest, but apparently none of these officers were at fault, so obviously Freddie Gray broke his own neck, gave himself a head injury from a bolt in the van which matched a bruise on his head, fractured three vertebrae, and partially severed his spine from his neck on purpose, because seemingly there was no police negligence at all, even though the case was ruled a homicide by the medical inspection team, and that it was not an accident. So none of these things apparently happened or deserve to be followed up by punishment or accountability, which idk about you but that sends the message that Freddie Gray's life, as a black man, does not matter to the US justice system or to the Baltimore police force, and that's what BLM is about, because while yes, black people are killed by black people, and white people are killed by police, both of these events are punished by the state (even if the former is just to put more black people in prison).

 

[sunny004]

Honestly I think that the prosecution was just utter shit in this case. Literally wtf!

I feel that there was enough evidence to AT LEAST prove beyond a reasonable doubt that, at the very least, one or more of these officers were negligent, or if not that charged with mandslaughter or 2nd degree murder.

I have not read the case file so I'm not an expert on the details, but that's what I got out of it.

Like I said above, I think this is a failing of the police department that these officers weren't punished in any way.

 

[Outlaw]

It's okay, the police were just legally incompetent.

 

[Aldaron]

Myzozoa about your last post

I'm not sure what I can in response to you when you don't want to come out and say it :P

I'm a bit more of a radical, I prefer abolition of solitary confinement as an immediate step in a process of prison abolition that replaces the police with (unarmed) crisis interventionists trained in de-escalation techniques and familiarized with the community, expansions of medical and counseling services in place of prisons; in the place of a war on terror or war on drugs, wars on climate change and homelessness. People like a good war, I am told.

I see nothing wrong or radical with any of these. Well, let me restate...I see no problem with everything besides the replacing part. I don't think you can ever entirely replace one paradigm with another on a scale like this and expect something good. It's kind of like that issue in technology where a good idea comes too early...From what I've read about policing paradigms and effective justice enforcement, I see your suggestions as being feasible...just not right away and certainly not as "replacements", at least immediate replacements.

Everything you say after expansions of medical is reasonable but involves time, resources, and money. How would you propose we realistically get these? I emphasize realistically because one of the default answers to that is "raise taxes" or "reappropriate the budget" but both are so hard to effectively push through that...well I'm left wanting on feasibility honestly.

When I mentioned your position was theoretical, I meant in reference to what we have now.

I will repeat: the fact of the police is the worst thing about them, they already happened. There is no concept of police to be grappled with at all here. And so it is unsurprising that the police turn out to be unnecessary, for what we suppose the police are needed for, the ends they serve to instantiate, I claim that these ends are either, not good , or else, that the things the police actually do and have done turn out to not serve these ends. 'Safety' and 'security' are prominent terms within the american political lexicon's 'new speak', I maintain that our communities and particularly democracies need to be made safe from militarized police forces and secured against neocolonial violence, but when we talk about police bringing safety to communities it is clear that we should not confuse the safety the police provide with these types I just mentioned as preferable, and why would we value whatever the police does provide, if anything preferable, over these other securities?

This whole paragraph would, however, be called, well, "interesting" by those who are kind and some other words by others. Even if historical basis / context allows you to say this, I cannot imagine any majority of the population of the USA (left / middle / right whatever) would concur that the necessity of police to police for 'safety' and 'security' is not very important...

Is protecting the people from state sanctioned police important? Of course it is. It is the most important protection we need, if only for the extreme case of out of control police taking justice into their own hands (no comment here please lol). But why is it that just because we have to ensure the people are protected from the police that we cannot have the police also protect us?

You actually made like 8 other points but I feel responding to all of them will massively digress the topic

 

[TheValkyries]

It's okay, the police were just legally incompetent.

Except being incompetent enough to negligently murder someone is explicitly illegal you complete and utter jungle gym.

 

[Aldaron]

Actually on that, can someone refer me to the actual legal precedence for consequences for police incompetency resulting in brutal violence (death, beating to the point of permanent incapacitation)?

Explanation of the state / federal laws and how they're enacted on / enforced would be nice. I really have no idea how the US Government (or state governments if more appropriate) has dealt with cops that were incompetent on a fatal level.

Browsing news stories has led me to believe most of the cops during the recent black shootings have gotten off with slaps on wrists?

 

[Outlaw]

Except being incompetent enough to negligently murder someone is explicitly illegal you complete and utter jungle gym.

Yeah, I know, which makes it all the more absurd. (I probably hate the police just as much as you, buddy.)

 

[Chou Toshio]

Wat
Where'd ya find that statistic, dude?

I feel that making blanket statements about ALL police officers is extremely unfair and unfounded. Calling all officers killers and racists is basically equivalent calling all Arab/Muslim people terrorists.

Now, before you grind your keyboards to dust in an angry rant reply, I will say that there is a problem with officer involved shootings. While many of you would like to believe that this is due to racist cops. I think the main problems are:

1) Societal differences involving financial/education differences between races

2) Overly aggressive officer training

#1 is fairly straightforward. Because black/Hispanic people are quite often not very educated (High school drop out/Didn't go to college) in proportion to other races, they are less likely to get a well paying job and often feel like they need to turn to crime to make ends meet. Because of this, an officer, black or white, is more likely to believe that a black/Hispanic person would/could commit a crime. I don't believe that this is "racist" per say because there are statistics to back it up. If you had two chemicals on a lab table and you knew one was statistically more volatile than the other, wouldn't you approach it with a bit more caution? Also, before you say "Risks like that are part of the job, don't be an officer if you're so concerned about your safety.", think of two things: 1) Don't you think that soldiers in the military place their safety above others? I'm pretty sure if they thought that someone walking down the street had a bomb they would work to take them out, and 2) You have no experience with the dangers that police officers experience daily. They don't have a fucking clue whether or not the person they just pulled over would rather shoot them then hand the officer their license.

This leads right into #2. I'm no expert on police officer training, but it seems to me like the departments have opted for a "shoot first, ask questions later" policy, instead of rigorous de-escalation training . This isn't exactly the fault of the officers themselves but more of the fault of the aggressive training officers receive. Also to the person who suggested abolishing police in favor of solely using social therapists: 1) Good luck finding someone to do that lol 2) Who's going to deal with all of the petty crimes (Burglary, shoplifting, driving-related offenses?) 3) If someone has already shot up a place, I think they're past the point of no return. They're well aware of the consequences of arrest.

So you may be asking: How then do we fix the problem? Simple: Focus on improving education and reducing crime overall via rehabilitation and not extreme punishment, and change officer training to focus more on crisis de-escalation and less on use of lethal force.

**Please treat me with respect as I am entitled to my opinion. Ask me any questions you may have. Thanks!**

He's making a misleading true statement by not using the word "disproportionately".

Whites are more likely to be shot than blacks (and more whites are killed than blacks) because there are more white people.

Blacks are disproportionately killed more-- or, any given individual black man is more likely to be killed than any given individual white man.

 

[Trax]

He's making a misleading true statement by not using the word "disproportionately".

Whites are more likely to be shot than blacks (and more whites are killed than blacks) because there are more white people.

Blacks are disproportionately killed more-- or, any given individual black man is more likely to be killed than any given individual white man.

Both his and your statements are misleading true statements.

Statistically yes, any given black man is more likely to be killed by the police, however he's also more likely to have committed a crime -- meaning he's more likely to have a confrontational interaction with the police which unsurprisingly aligns with when the majority of people are shot by the police.

Looking at this as a portion of general population is as meaningless as raw numbers, because different population segments have different levels of interaction with the police.

 

[TheValkyries]

So the possibility of having committed a crime, no matter the severity, means any confrontation with a cop merits an automatic death sentence for whatever crime they committed? No judge no jury just dead on the spot?

Such confrontations as not wanting to be handcuffed for selling cigarettes or confrontations like running away unarmed or announcing for the safety of the officer that you have a weapon and then reaching for your wallet as instructed or maybe even holding your hands up laying on the ground instructing police that the autistic man next to you is not holding a weapon.

How dare they get uppity with those kind brave incorruptible police officers.

 

[Trax]

Let me know when you're quite done beating that defenceless strawman to death there, Valkyries.

Literally nothing I've posted would suggest to someone with even the most basic level of reading comprehension that the current levels of police brutality during arrests is acceptable.

 

[Myzozoa]

http://www.martyduren.com/2015/05/12/who-commits-more-crime-whites-or-blacks/

In the 2013 FBI statistics on arrest by race, we find two categories where Black are arrested more often than Whites: Murder and non negligent manslaughter, and robbery.

That’s it. In every other category including rape, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, violent and property crime, forgery, fraud, etc, more Whites are arrested. In some categories like sex offenses, DUIs, liquor law violations and drunkenness Whites are arrested at a greater rate than our percentage of the population.

This is where the misinformation happens. Some people see these numbers and say, “Look! Blacks commit more crime that Whites!” Or, in some cases, “Blacks commit a higher percentage of the crimes compared to the population as a whole!” Neither of these are necessarily true because the stats are for arrests not convictions! All we can say for sure from these stats is that Blacks are arrested at a higher rate, not overall, but as a percentage of the population.

A plausible reason the greater arrest rate among blacks are “stop and frisk” practices, and sweeps the lead to arrests of Black people on trumped up (or bogus) charges. Additionally in some predominantly Black, poor areas-like St. Louis County, MO-the legal system has been used as a means of funding city budgets.

Y’know, arrest people, fine them, and pay the mayor’s salary.

So it’s inaccurate to make definitive statements like “Blacks commit more crimes that Whites” from FBI or DOJ stats the evidence does not support the claim.

but thank you for your comment Trax

we all love hearing any wisdom you have to offer

i look forward to the day when you actually read anything and comprehend it

hear is something i found for you Aldaron

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/21/police-deadly-force-accountability/5697611/

also you still have to tell me what it is exactly that police protect "us" from, gl with that. i mean, i know im part of the 1% aristocracy, but im not sure you are so... yeah they protect me, but i can't speak to your situation, lol. kind of funny that you think they protect you from something lol, they protect my property from poor people mainly. i mean look at the laws, and then look at the police, then the laws. it is far from ideal, there is a lot missing. anyway, the police allege to protect me from my clients, i know that. it's part of the procedure at my work to call the sheriffs under certain circumstances.


anyway more broadly if a police kills someone it will be different every time, an investigation is probably opened, a cause of death is given by the necessary official who is usually familiar to the police department, and the officer begins filing incident reports and a process of interviews and maybe screenings, while being put on paid leave. these features are common to most incidents, but that is all that is common across most incidents tbh. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...conduct-investigations-and-a-possible-remedy/

finally this:

http://seansrussiablog.org/2013/05/11/us-prison-industrial-complex-versus-the-stalinist-gulag/

 

[Trax]

Myzozoa,

I've never said the majority of crime was committed by Blacks, I said that per capita more crime than average is committed by Blacks (and as such more likely that any given Black individual will be in a confrontation with the police), and the arrest numbers you've provided only align with that point.

If you compare the arrest numbers by race for 2011-2013 (which I doubt will have changed much to 2015) to the killed by police numbers by race provided here for 2015 from the Washington Post, the percentages of the overall are fairly close for Black people (around 25% of both).

The statistics of both sources are a bit tedious to compare, mostly because the Washington Post doesn't say whether they're putting Hispanics in the "White" or "Other or unknown" category however the fact they cite White Americans being 62% of the population indicates that they do not consider Hispanic people to be White (2010 census had the non-Hispanic White population at 63%) so presumably they're in the "Other or unknown" grouping, while the FBI groups them as "White".

 

[Myzozoa]

don't bold your per capita at me

lol help do i need to bold the part where it says

and i quote from my first post:

"This is where the misinformation happens. Some people see these numbers and say, “Look! Blacks commit more crime that Whites!” Or, in some cases, >>“Blacks commit a higher percentage of the crimes compared to the population as a whole!”<< Neither of these are necessarily true because the stats are for arrests not convictions! All we can say for sure from these stats is that Blacks are arrested at a higher rate, not overall, but as a percentage of the population.

A plausible reason the greater arrest rate among blacks are “stop and frisk” practices, and sweeps the lead to arrests of Black people on trumped up (or bogus) charges. Additionally in some predominantly Black, poor areas-like St. Louis County, MO-the legal system has been used as a means of funding city budgets.

Y’know, arrest people, fine them, and pay the mayor’s salary.

So it’s inaccurate to make definitive statements like “Blacks commit more crimes that Whites” from FBI or DOJ stats the evidence does not support the claim."

again there is no evidence that black people commit more crimes per capita, that is practically an unprovable claim anyway. they are arrested more often. which would also occur if white people were just getting cited less for the crimes they committed.


not sure what youre trying to say with youre comment about stats being tedious to compare, don't make statistical claims if the shit aint there idk what to you lol.

 

[Trax]

Actually, that information did exist for what the DOJ categorised as "crimes of violence" (those being robbery, rape, and the various types of assault) in the National Crime Victimization Survey until 2009 when the DOJ stopped publishing the perceived race of the offender (along with a whole lot of other things, people will see what they want to see in that) and in terms of percentages it aligned fairly closely with the arrest numbers for those offences.

From that point you'd have to prove that that whites commit a greater per capita share of other crimes to disprove the statement that blacks commit a higher percentage of crimes per capita.

Additionally, most of the plausible reasons you give have very little in the way of actual numbers -- many cities use the legal system to fund budgets (traffic fines are virtually everywhere), stop and frisk had a quite low arrest rate and no evidence the arrests weren't valid (not to say it wasn't bullshit, incidentally), and while the sweeps in Baltimore may have increased arrest numbers dubiously the ACLU complaint (filed in 2006) for these practices indicates that it was around 30% of those arrested.

Now the point I was actually making, which I'm not surprised has been avoided to beat strawmen to death was that if the 25% of people arrested are black and 25% of those killed by police are black then the police are not actively setting out to kill black people.

 

[Myzozoa]

itt trax does not know the difference between doing a crime and being arrested.

 

[Ampharos]

Quite a few people seem to incorrectly conflate "police brutality is an issue, and one that disproportionately affects people of color" with "police are literally hunting down and exterminating black people".

Cops can be assholes. In fact, a LOT of cops are assholes, and the behavior of some of the cops involved in high-profile brutality incidents over the past few years (see: George Zimmerman) would seem to confirm this. I would argue, however, that a major portion of the problem is subconscious, deep-seated prejudice that can be very difficult to shake. American society has been conditioned to view black people (especially black men) as short-tempered, prone to violence, and, dare I say, "dangerous". This, in turn, probably leads a lot of police officers to be more wary around and suspicious of that type of individual, whether consciously or otherwise. Of course, this leads to a lot of overreactive incidents of escalation, which in turn leads to black men becoming more wary around and mistrusting of cops out of fear for their own safety, which quickly cycles out of control.

That previous paragraph was kind of a trainwreck but the POINT is that ingrained prejudices lead to officers unconsciously reacting to situations involving people of color much differently than they would situations involving whites, regardless of their intent or conscious feelings about POC.

and for the record i'm not touching the "crimes committed by blacks" argument with a 10 foot pole, though i WILL point out the fact that systemic racism/classism in America combined with a pretty shitty prison system means that it's pretty impossible to analyze crime rates in a vacuum, also the same subconscious prejudices that affect cops will also leak into a jury

 

[Myzozoa]

no im not trying to kill this thread, so sorry

"This is the best essay I've read on this subject in quite some time. I can't excerpt without doing the piece a disservice, so read it all:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/black-lives-and-the-police/"

unlike the person in the quote, ill will be happy to excerpt it

see the always relevant but especially in this thread:

"The camera has accelerated the decriminalization of the black image in American culture. The black men about to lose their lives in these videos don’t seem like threats or members of a criminal class; and we have been looking at and listening to President Obama every day. The Willie Horton ad isn’t coming back and those who try to use the old racist slanders as political weapons only make themselves into caricatures. The racist is an unattractive figure in American culture, which is why people go to such lengths to achieve racist goals by stealth."

Or so we thought until 2016, and the real opportunity for white supremacists embodied in donald trump's campaign.

it can be understood why some people are easily able to quickly forget history. The source of this 'skill' is actually their privilege, accessed through the historical processes that consisted in the victimization of the people whose problems their perspective minimizes. their privilege is to be situated in some mystical 'now' where racism is, at the minimum, invisible to them. This leads them to assert that racism does not exist. This further allows them to seriously assert that, just as racism isn't a problem now, it really wasn't a real problem before either. It wasn't actually a problem 'then', where 'then' is whatever time or place is close enough that if they acknowledged racism there it would make them uncomfortable. They take up the historical narrative of innocence by denying all racism in their past and present environment and relegating racism to something that is 'over there'. Aldaron did this very very accidentally, with his comments that implied that the actuality/history of american police is separable from the reality of racism, when these things are actually existentially bound in material practices and processes that continue to this day and these historical facts are not really up for debate, every legal scholar, or at least judge, knows as such. we will continue to be reminded of the ways in which this situation, the existential bonds between police and racism, persists in new court cases as they emerge. just read them. each new case becomes a new avenue of rhetoric for a lawyer to try to play up in court.

if you just knew how much neo-cons admitted you wouldn't find this all so shocking wrt police. just read crazy things neo-cons have admitted to getting up to https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/09/edward-luttwak-machiavelli-of-maryland (very long, scary, and off topic but just read until you get bored and then search 'bush') i could also link you to absolutely crazy things said by elected israeli neo-cons about their plans for an apartheid regime. crazy shit gets pulled out here.

the reason cops dont ever get convicted is really obvious: precedent. it sounds really basic, there it is: every time a cop doesnt get convicted/charged/investigated it makes it more likely to happen again... habit, momentum <-these are we are dealing with in this situation, if you want to grapple with concepts.

and what about the model of white/male privilege as addiction? white/male people literally go around high on their privilege, thinking all sorts of crazy toxic shit like you would not believe, especially children, trust me i seen it.

so while some are so sure that what im asking for is too sudden, it is actually by people being so obnoxious about these (more than me even) things that gradual replacement would happen anyway. progress is made of tears, sweat, blood, anxiety, insomnia, and anger.

and so as you all can see my pride is still a massive character flaw, but what about other people's flaws, flaws they inherit through uncritical appropriation of historical practices?


i feel like i must be one of the young old people in the new nazi germany, who was abhorred but not too surprised by the rise of a genocidal regime. they accepted their powerlessness in a certain sense.

so while walrein says that cops arent intentionally 'hunting down' black people, i would argue that the intention of the institution of police in america's existence is to 'hunt down' black people. hence why i made sure to be clear at the beginning that the police don't protect us from crazy people with guns, they are the crazy people with guns. they are out of touch with reality. and even literate libertarians know this to be the case and often worry about the problem of policing with this understanding.

tl;dr if you really love democracy you know that implies a distrust of bureaucracy and a hatred for anything that sticks around too long without being critiqued

more of my thoughts, you know i have so many

 

[Myzozoa]

https://iwoc.noblogs.org/post/2016/...inated-prisoner-workstoppage-for-sept-9-2016/

http://theinfluence.org/a-call-to-a...see-the-largest-prison-strikes-in-us-history/

feel that triple post

issues that wont go away

"

Attica happened at a time when, like today, racial tensions and conflict between police and people of color and poor people were high. In 1971, the Civil Rights Movement and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were fresh in the public mind, and the government was systematically targeting and eliminating leaders of more militant groups like the Black Panthers.

Three months before the Attica Uprising, President Richard Nixon had declared his War on Drugs. The combined US state and federal prison population then hovered below 200,000 people.

Through the Reagan and Clinton years—which ramped up the drug war and introduced mandatory minimum sentencing—until today, that number ballooned to over 1.5 million. In total, over 2.2 million people now behind bars—in jail, prison,immigration detention, or youth detention—on any given day.

This makes the United States the world’s number one prison state and massively raises the stakes for organized resistance. Millions of people’s lives and freedom are on the line."


"
In a 1994 interview, former Nixon policy advisor John Ehrlichman outright admitted that the administration escalated the War on Drugs to destroy black communities and “hippies.”

At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

I must have looked shocked. Ehrlichman just shrugged. Then he looked at his watch, handed me a signed copy of his steamy spy novel, The Company, and led me to the door.

And just like that, millions of lives were wrecked.

"

 

[dice]

https://policy.m4bl.org/political-power/

for ppl itt who haven't read blm's general platform, plan, and demands