“The Law” Is Not the Same for EVERYONE

I have been anxious and unsettled as I have watched the events surrounding the former president and his friends as they have come to the realization that they will have to answer for what they have allegedly done wrong.

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I have been in the process of trying to understand what “the law” is, what “law and order” really means, and in light of that, the definition of justice. I honestly do not understand how this nation or any nation, for example, can have a law or a constitution that allows a person who has been indicted for a number of offenses to run for any public office, especially the president of the United States. I am offended that he is being allowed …that “the law” is permitting him to run.

Every time I hear that the former president is leading in the polls to become the Republican nominee for president, I literally shudder.

When I compare the situation with the former president to situations involving other people who have done (or been indicted for) far less egregious offenses, my puzzlement – and perhaps a good amount of resentment – kicks in. I’ve been trying to understand what it is I want to say.

And I finally got it. I heard a quote by a man named Frank Wilhoit, who said, “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

Although the statement is apparently attributed to the wrong Frank Wilhoit (there was an elder Wilhoit, a politician, to whom the statement is frequently attributed but it was actually spoken by a younger man, a musician, whose name is also Frank Wilhoit. (https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservatives-frank-wilhoit.html) its power is the same. Justice under the law is not a given, notwithstanding this country’s claim to being “exceptional.”

When I heard those words, it was like the lights went on in my mind. I realized I had been trying to unpack what seems to be the norm in this country and perhaps globally. “The law,” is selectively obeyed and respected. The code of behavior and expectations set in place by the government is not intended to apply in the same way to “the least of these” as it applies to the wealthy or the privileged. Those who are not in high places or who have friends in high places operate under an entirely different legal system. There is no such thing as “equal protection under the law.”

We hear “law and order” when violence erupts after groups of people get fed up with being marginalized and ignored and oppressed by the government. What governments want those who are being oppressed or discriminated against is to be quiet and accept what it doles out.

During the Nixon administration, we heard the demand for “law and order” from the president and from his vice president, Spiro Agnew. Agnew, and many Americans, resented the anger expressed through violence in the streets of major cities in this country by Black people after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

Agnew responded with a caustic statement, “Why don’t impoverished white Americans riot? Could it be that they know they will not meet with sympathy, that collective white lawlessness will not be tolerated?”

He went on, “It is not the centuries of racism and deprivation that have built to an explosive crescendo but the fact that lawbreaking has become a socially acceptable and occasionally stylish form of dissent.” (“Spiro Agnew, the Forgotten Americans and the Rise of the New Right”. The Historian.)

What he did not say was that white-collar crime – the types of crimes he committed that eventually forced him out of office – was considered by those of his ilk to be a “stylish form of dissent.”

Agnew was stoking the embers of racism and white fear; that remark was directed toward angry Blacks who had converged on the streets and thus assuage the anxiety of white people, but the pushback against anyone who resorted to violence in order to be heard was met with the same insistence that there would be law and order. Anti-war demonstrators bore the brunt of police brutality and were arrested in large numbers because they dared challenge the legality of the participation of the United States in the Viet Nam War, and so did anyone that was fed up with systemic injustice.

Segregation laws were enforced. Lawless, extra-judicial acts of violence were permitted. Anti -LGBTQIA laws will be enforced. Book bans put in place by law will be enforced. The prohibition of AP African American history courses will be enforced. Gerrymandering will be allowed. Voting laws will be ignored. Anti-abortion laws will be enforced, which will undoubtedly result in suffering by women and, anxiety on the part of healthcare workers who will be afraid to perform necessary procedures o save the lives of women who are having problem pregnancies. Making those groups of people obey “the law” will be a primary concern of law enforcement, but wealthy white people who can purchase the freedom of accountability will be able to ignore the laws that will put others in jail.

Police can commit murder – i.e., they can shoot unarmed people and get away with it as long as they say “I was in fear for my life.” For them, only a very few are ever held accountable to the civic and moral law that says, “Thou shall not murder.”

Perhaps the pinnacle of the wrongness of a universal, equitable practice of law and order can be seen in our local, state, and federal governments. Powerful people are openly flouting “the law.” From the former president to members of his inner circle, “the law” has been ignored, and while there apparently are no laws requiring certain ethical behavior on the part of US Supreme Court justices, the fact that the powers that be seem willing to ignore the flagrant violations that have been reported on the part of some justices is appalling.

We, the people, are held to a standard of behavior that the wealthy and powerful feel free to ignore.

It is somewhat comforting that those who worked to overthrow this country have been held accountable. When people see people breaking laws, or when evidence keeps coming up that reveals lawbreaking, it causes real anger when those involved are given a pass and their actions are dismissed. It is good that some of those who participated in the coup attempt on January 6, 2021, have been arrested and sentenced. One needs only recall the anger that erupted in the streets of Los Angeles when the four white officers who were caught on tape beating Rodney King were acquitted, and the uprising that happened after the white officer who shot and killed Michael Brown was acquitted brought about the same kind of anger. It is one thing to think and believe that there is unequal treatment under “the law;” it is quite another thing to see it. The human psyche can only take so much before it breaks under the pressure of injustice.

It is troubling. Where does one find justice in this country and in this world if one does not have enough money to purchase it?

This is not a nation of laws. “Law and order” is a catchphrase that says to this culture, “We will stop those people ( Black, Brown, women, LGBTQIA,) who dare challenge the government through violence.

There is something very wrong with our government and the way “the law” is used, understood, and applied.

A candid observation

Thou Shalt Not Lie

The police officer in St. Louis involved in the scuffle in a city council meeting …did not tell the truth.

If I heard him correctly, Jeff Roorda, who is the business manager of the city’s police union, said that he was wearing his “I am Darren Wilson” bracelet because he had the right, citing the First Amendment.

There is nothing wrong with that. If had the chutzpah to wear that bracelet as he sat in the midst of a roomful of frustrated and angry African-Americans who went to the meeting to begin discussion on forming a citizen’s review board which would monitor police, then so be it. The First Amendment allows him to do that.

But here is where he stepped over the line. He said, ” “I have a right to freedom of speech, expression, just as violent protesters in Ferguson, who attempted to kill and maim police every night.” (http://kdvr.com/2015/01/29/ferguson-community-meeting-turns-to-scuffle-after-police-union-leader-tries-to-take-charge/)

That is not what the protesters did.

The few who were violent attempted to destroy property and they did, but it is not true that they tried to “kill and maim police every night.”

They protested. They walked. They shouted. They chanted. They did cry out: No justice, no peace! No racist police!” And there were some who chanted that they wanted to kill police. But that number was small.

Roorda misrepresented what the majority of the protesters were doing and saying

The protesters, in Ferguson and all over the country, are not anti-police. They are anti-bad-policing, and they are fed up with police being able to kill people and get away with it.

It is in the DNA of America that police have been able to brutalize, kill and destroy black people under the protection of the law. It really began after Reconstruction when white people had to find a way to get black people back on their farms and into their businesses to work. The labor of black people made this country, made the profits of the South and, in fact, of this nation.

Black people worked. White people and white businesses, reaped the results of their labor.

Black people were criminalized in order to justify them being thrown into situations where they would work for white people or corporations for years, unable to pay off their debt for the crimes they supposedly committed.

Under the convict-leasing system, black people could and would be arrested for the slightest thing – like not having a job, or walking outside too late at night…When they died, they were thrown into mass graves. If on their jobs they made the boss mad, they could be and were killed by those bosses and again, tossed into mass graves.

The bosses, the law enforcement people, didn’t have to worry about being arrested or sent to jail.

So, police culture as it is today has been stoked and practiced for a long time, and it is that culture that black people, and concerned people of all races, are objecting to.

Black police have beaten black people too.

Roorda has a right to wear his bracelet. He has a right to stand up for Darren Wilson.

But he is out of line for misrepresenting what these painful protests have been about.

He didn’t tell the truth. Black people were not trying to kill and maim police officers.

They were trying to make police and “the system” to hear them.

A candid observation …

Police Trained to Shoot to Kill

A friend of mine, who was a police officer for 30 years, weighed in on my despair of what is going on in Ferguson

“As soon as that officer got out of his car, he intended to shoot him (Brown),” my friend said. “When you pull the trigger, you are intending to kill the target.”

As I agonized over the fact that Mike Brown had been killed, even I knew that police shoot to kill. Years ago, as I studied journalism and our class visited a police department, I asked the question of why police didn’t just shoot a person’s knees. That way, I said, the perpetrator could be stopped in his/her tracks, right?

No, the police officer who was teaching the class said. “We shoot to kill.”

My ex-cop friend affirmed that answer. “The bullets police use are designed to spread; they bounce around when they hit you. They mushroom so they can do more damage.” (I had remarked on how a bullet that entered Mike Brown in the forehead had gone in his eye, moved around, come out of that eye, gone back in that eye, and then exited near his collar-bone, according to the New York Times. ) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/us/michael-brown-autopsy-shows-he-was-shot-at-least-6-times.html?_r=0) “Police use those and think they’re being more humane. Military bullets go through one person into the person who’s behind the person initially shot. The idea is to stop the threat; you need something that is going to kill, not just wound a person. You are trained to kill. When you would someone, you’ve actually missed them.”

That was and is a troubling thought. By Sunday, August 17, crowds in Ferguson had been out on the streets for several days, hours each day, marching, praying, shouting for justice in the death of Mike Brown. There had been violence after sun fell; local police, in full riot gear, used tear gas and pointed assault weapons at the already-troubled members of the community. Instead of quelling the violence, the police action only caused more agitation.

I was disturbed at what I was seeing. There was more and more talk about the militarization of police forces in the United States. The author of a book, The Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, said on a CNN interview: “Using tear gas is illegal.”

My head jerked; up to that point, I had been only half-listening to all the discussion about military weapons being used by the Ferguson Police Department; maybe I thought it was just hype, or maybe I was just weary of seeing people struggle against a system which had historically meant them no good…

But the statement about the tear gas got to me. I had seen the huge tank-looking trucks; I had seen police perched upon them; I had seen the smoke from the tear gas, and I had seen the police – lots of them – advancing toward the crowd with those guns drawn. It seemed like I was looking at a picture of a battle in Iran or Iraq or Gaza. But no, it was here, in the United States. I remembered seeing police with those guns cocked and ready to fire, moving menacingly toward the crowd; the image of the light coming from them had actually made me shake. (I am not sure if the light was a night-light or a laser which would allow a more accurate shooting). I heard people say how badly the tear gas burned their eyes, their throats. I heard people say that tear gas was dispersed in their back yards. The looters got gassed, but so did many innocent women and children. The thought had bothered me ..

So, when I heard author Radley Balko say that tear gas was illegal to use, my antennae went up. Why in the world are authorities letting police use tear gas if it’s illegal?

My cop friend tried to console me. “It’s the more humane of the gasses that are available,” he said. “In the military, there is a gas used that can cause a person to “crap their pants” immediately.”If you ban tear gas in riots, they could use another. There is sonic equipment available and it sends out sound waves that cause confusion and headaches. They use that over in Iraq.”

It was too much information, too much, too quickly, at a time when I was grappling with my outrage that such tactics had been used against the crowd. I had seen tear gas used plenty of times, going all the way back to the Detroit riots. I took its use for granted. But now I was hearing that it was illegal to use it in civil disturbances…and I was disturbed. My friend continued to talk.

“Having this stuff is one thing,” he said. “Knowing when and when not to use it is another thing.”

My friend, on a roll educating me, said that the militarization had been going on since the 1960’s. “Right after the Civil Rights movement ” he said, “weapons and equipment used in the Vietnam War started coming into our country and given to police departments.” Back then, the police used heavy-handed violence on students, primarily white, protesting against that war. A politician at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 observed that America was becoming a “police state.”

Now, local police departments are being supplied military equipment by the Pentagon. These are weapons and equipment used in the Iraq War.

“Police,” he said, “are training for another terrorist attack. SWAT teams train for “urban warfare.” They are trained to ‘be’ or act like the military,” he said.

“Police departments don’t know what they’re doing,” said the ex-cop. “They get these weapons and get a six-hour training. They always over-react because they don’t now how to deal with people.”

On the unrest in Ferguson, my friend said, “This is what I call a “police riot.” Any time a situation is escalated by one side, that side is responsible. The people in Ferguson were agitated, and the police reacted by shooting rubber bullets, using tear gas. The police caused the escalation.”

“The weapons being used haven’t help because they shouldn’t have been used in the first place. They responded to the people’s unrest with military weapons. It should never have been done.”

He encouraged me to be realistic. “All of this happened because of fear,” he said. “The way police operate now is based on fear of what has happened before. Police officers follow orders. They are a para-military organization. They follow orders and instructions. Who’s giving the orders? The chief. The elected officials. It all comes back to local politics.”

My friend paused, then added a sobering thought. “Fifty percent of the general population is mentally ill,” he said quietly. “I would bet that fifty percent of any police department is probably mentally ill, too.”

“The officer in the Ferguson case should go to prison…but my gut says he won’t. He would go to prison because under no circumstances should this shooting have happened this way. It shouldn’t have happened. I’ve seen it from the inside.”

Undoubtedly, another officer would disagree with my friend. Regardless of that , a couple of things really resonate: that the police shoot to kill …and that the police acted out of fear. That seemed clear to me; what I saw looked like an army confronting a mortal enemy, absolutely intending to kill them if it “became necessary” in their view.

The thing is, angry African-Americans are not an enemy. They are a people who have too often not experienced justice in the justice system, a people who have seen their children shot by police over and over, with little to none action taken against those officers. Too often, they have heard, the police were right, that the shooting was “justified.” Too often, as they have mourned the loss of their loved ones, they have also decried the lack of justice afforded them.

No, they were not “the enemy.” The police, however, seemed not to know that …or to care.

A candid observation …