First person and then some: police violence

Waikiki, Rochester, Memphis

Uh. Sick to my stomach. Cops look like they just beat the crap out of an old man for having a broomstick. I live in a residential neighborhood in Waikiki near the Ala Wai Canal. There is a lot of mental illness that manifests a block over from us, there are regular people who make a ruckus sometimes. They are hurting badly and need help, but not a particular harm during the day (though at night sometimes things heat up and get crazy and sometimes violent).

I was sitting in my home office studio, which has high frosted jalousie windows. I’m on the ninth floor. I get sound, but can’t see. Normally, if someone is acting out on that block I hear it. The first thing I heard was a single police siren, and when I came out, there were already five other police cars that must have gotten there first. #6 must not have gotten the message to be quiet. There was no disturbance or any untoward sounds before I heard that sixth police car arrive, and since it was the next block over, I went out to the open air passage to the elevator that overlooks that block. I didn’t have my camera and did not think to take photos until too late.

8 cops were milling around. One was wiping what looked like disinfectant wipes on one of his shins. Another cleaned something that I could not see off the back of another cop, as in it looked like they were cleaning nothing, just wiping away some invisible something.

Then two more cops arrived, driving the wrong way up the one way in military grade ATV’s, which at least for regular people, are illegal to drive on roads. They are meant to patrol the beaches and parks: I guess the police decided that 8 cops were not enough to contain a bloody-faced and handcuffed old man sitting quietly with his head down and rocking back and forth, which I see as a clear sign of one traumatized and powerless. Might need two military grade ATVs to drive up on the sidewalk he was sitting next to? That made ten cops dealing with a single injured and handcuffed old man who was doing nothing but rocking back and forth as he sat on the grass between the sidewalk and the gutter.

Nah, they came for the show.

I know firsthand that this is a perc of the job, perverse entertainment with nothing to do with anyone’s safety or protections. How? Well, let me tell you! (please listen to the song if you want to learn something about me!)

Another cop took a broom or mop handle from the sidewalk, placed it up against the back of the police car and started taking pictures of it. Saturdays are curbside trash pickup days, and a lot of times poorer people scavenge through stuff and can be seen carrying their hauls. My guess is that the guy needed a mop handle for something and must have been walking with it. Police saw a guy with a mop and interpreted it as a deadly weapon, or wanted to have some cop-fun.

Back to the sidewalk and the ten cops. A cop pulled the old man’s face up from his fugue state to talk to him, and I saw then that it looked like the whole right side of his face from eye to jaw was bloody and bashed. Finally, about ten minutes after the single police siren, an ambulance came, turning off its siren before reaching the side street. Why that? They disinfected the old man’s face, but the cops would not take him for treatment. After they cleaned him up, paramedics left him and the cops moved him to the back seat of a cop car to take him to the station I guess.

So, I have to put the pieces together here: as I said, the neighborhood was quiet until the arrival of the sixth cop car, so I did not see how the guy got his face bashed in, but it was obviously from the cops or why would they be disinfecting each other? Will check the police blotter tomorrow and see what I can find out.

… 5 hours later

Ok, so let’s complicate things a bit. When I found the arrest record from yesterday, it reported the arrest as being for PROTECTIVE ORDER VIO, BURGLARY, CRIM CONTMP CRT.

I still do not see the point of calling in 10 cops *after* he was beaten, subdued, and cuffed. Or why the bashing of the face was called for. Interesting thing is that we divide the worthy from the unworthy, and the arrest allegations tend to do that, turn this guy from a victim to a perp. I wonder if finding out more changes the dude’s worthiness of having his face bashed in? The reason I ask, is because in the song linked above, in those events, for years I was convinced I deserved to be tortured unconscious because I had gotten real (real real) high, broke a car mirror, and walked into a family’s unlocked door to keep from freezing. These are exactly the sorts of conjuncture: mental illness or breakdowns, sometimes drug induced, combined with police.

I am fortunate actually, a beneficiary of white privilege in that I am alive while a Black man, Daniel Prude, who had a similar psychotic break to what I had, in the same city (Rochester, NY) with the same police force (Rochester Police Department) forty years later, was killed as a beast.

I am not so quick to buy the story the cops tell with that arrest or to divide those worthy of being tortured, battered, and killed by the institutionalized state violence because I know this: The police actively look for opportunities to do these things and they take pleasure in them when they are doing it. Seen it with torture first person. What did their battery, suffocation, or torture achieve? Who was served and protected? In my case and Daniel Prude’s, no one, so I would be careful to judge the Waikiki arrestee as deserving what he got as necessary for the protection of someone. And if they need to protect someone from burglary and TRO, does that make police violence ok? Check the song out, K?

…And now, Tyre Nichols in Memphis.

With their 1-dimensional thinking, the q-foxanonetwork is all over this, not able to comprehend two things happening at once. Police violence is police violence no matter who does it. The vast majority of it is undertaken by white police, but Black cops are cops and are bootcamped into understanding their predilection toward aggression and violence — something more related to gender norms, even for so-called lady cops (Lindy anyone?) as some misplaced idea that beating and killing is not only fun, it is an heroic act of protecting a society that poses as democratic while leaning hard into fascism.

And in fact, I was surprised last night when I did my usual troll through msnbc.fox.cnn that they were all three actually giving heavy coverage to this murder when Fox left the other murders virtually untouched. The other two networks were also quick and thorough in their violence porn, as was the Memphis police dpt in releasing the footage. When it has been white cops, the release is haggled over, the police unions come in to defend the murders, the police department hems and haws, and Fox runs nothing. In this case it was just plastered on repeat over all three networks. Unedited bodycam footage.

Completely oblivious — or not — to the feeding of the racist stereotype that shows one of its consequences when you google image search for suspects (wanted) and find the disproportionate presence of BIPoC.