Do Not Resist': A chilling look at the normalization of warrior cops

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Hendricks Dewayne <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: October 1, 2016 at 10:59:20 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] 'Do Not Resist': A chilling look at the normalization of warrior cops
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> ‘Do Not Resist': A chilling look at the normalization of warrior cops
> By Radley Balko
> Sep 30 2016
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/09/30/do-not-resist-a-chilling-look-at-the-normalization-of-warrior-cops/>
>
> The haunting thing about the new policing documentary “Do Not Resist” is what it doesn’t show. There are no images of 
> cops beating people. No viral videos of horrifying shootings. Sure, there are scenes from the Ferguson protests in 
> which riot cops deploy tear gas. But there’s no blood, no Tasings, no death. Yet when it was over, I had to force 
> myself to exhale.
>
> What makes this movie so powerful is its terrifying portrayal of the mundanities of modern policing. I watched the 
> movie weeks ago, but there are scenes that still flicker in my head. We all remember the clashes between police and 
> protesters in Ferguson. We’ve seen the photos. We saw the anger and the animus exchanged across the protest lines. 
> What we didn’t see were the hours and hours before and after those moments. We didn’t see the MRAPs and other armored 
> vehicles roll in, one at a time, slowly transforming an American town into a war zone. We didn’t hear the clomp of 
> combat boots on asphalt in the quiet hours of the early morning, interrupted only by fuzzy dispatches over police 
> radio.
>
> It’s one thing to show an MRAP — a vehicle built for war, and for a very specific purpose in a very specific type of 
> war — being misused after a small-town police agency obtained it from the Defense Department. “Do Not Resist” takes 
> you to the base where those vehicles are stored. A camera trained on the window captures hundreds of MRAPs — rows and 
> rows and rows of them — scrolling by, all destined for a police agency somewhere in America. Meanwhile, an Army 
> specialist explains how the troops who use the vehicles get hours and hours of training before they’re entrusted to 
> drive the trucks on a battlefield. The Pentagon then gives the trucks to police agencies to use on U.S. streets with 
> no accompanying training at all. Sometimes, the specialist says, a police agency will find a body part in one of the 
> trucks. They try to avoid that. But after all, these are machines of war.
>
> The film crew then takes a ride with a small-town sheriff as he drives his hulking new MRAP through business 
> districts and quiet neighborhoods — that is, once he figures out how to operate it. The most disturbing thing about 
> this scene isn’t the truck itself, or the striking images of the truck in the town, or even the sheriff’s statement 
> that it will probably mostly be used for drug raids. The most disturbing thing is that it simply doesn’t occur to the 
> sheriff that the footage might be disturbing. He has no problem letting a film crew show this massive contraption 
> built to withstand roadside bombs in a military convoy lumbering through his small town, because the notion that 
> military vehicles aren’t appropriate for domestic policing is foreign to him.
>
> Then there’s the drug raid. It’s one thing to read about a “dynamic entry” drug raid in which the police mistakenly 
> or intentionally kill someone, or in which someone mistakenly or intentionally kills a police officer. It’s awful and 
> tragic and unnecessary. “Do Not Resist” doesn’t show one of those. It instead shows the sort of drug raid that’s far 
> more common. The movie depicts the raid from the beginning, as the officers from the Richland County Sheriff’s 
> Department tactical team are meeting to discuss strategy. Some are wearing T-shirts with the tactical team’s logo. 
> It’s a human skull imposed over two crossed AR-15s.
>
> There are no children at the residence, the lead officer assures his colleagues. (There were.) There would be a 
> significant quantity of illegal drugs at the house, another says. (There weren’t.) The tactical team then proceeds to 
> raid the home of a black family in Richland County. Most officers storm the front door with their guns while one 
> shatters some side windows as a distraction. Minutes go by. The officers’ body language eventually shows signs of 
> frustration as their search for contraband continues to come up empty. Finally, someone finds a book bag with traces 
> of marijuana at the bottom — not enough to smoke, much less sell. They arrest a young black man with long braids for 
> possession.
>
> “I never one time said you’re a bad person,” the lead officer tells his arrestee, with an odd cordiality. “I just 
> have a job to do, and you happen to be in the middle of it.”
>
> The officer also seems to know that the man is a student at a local technical college. He’s working toward a degree 
> in construction. The man also runs a landscaping company to help pay for his education. The man later tells the 
> officer that he was on his way to pick up some lawnmowers that morning. Knowing that he’s about to be arrested, he 
> asks the officer if he could tell his employee that he was arrested and won’t be able to pick up the lawnmowers. He 
> then gives the officer $876 in cash and asks it to give it to his employee to go pick up the mowers, along with a 
> weed-eater.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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