Former police chief: Police have an “occupational force mentality”
As protests erupt over police killings of unarmed African-Americans, one former police chief is experiencing a painful case of déjà vu.
Norm Stamper’s concern about the abuse of power by law enforcement is rooted in personal experience: He resigned as Seattle’s police chief after the 1999 World Trade Organization talks in that city exploded into violent confrontations between police and protestors.
“I’ll take to my grave the way I handled that,” said Stamper, who served as a police officer in San Diego and Seattle for 34 years. He is the author of “Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing.”
In a telephone interview with McClatchy from his home in Washington state’s San Juan Islands, Stamper warned against what he sees as a shift by the nation’s law enforcement agencies from the “community policing” principles of cooperation and trust-building to an “occupational force mentality.”
The Justice Department report describes the Cleveland Police Department as something far closer to an occupying military force than a legitimate law enforcement agency.
In Sept., 2014 Indianapolis Police Chief Rick Hite admitted police are a paramilitary organization.
Q: You are one of the architects of the so-called community policing movement, which emphasizes building partnerships between law enforcement officials and citizens within a community. Does the apparent breakdown of trust between police and the public signal a failure of community policing?
A: Community policing has just completely evaporated. The drug war and the aftermath of 9/11 has taken the sails out of it. The federal government has not helped by providing military surplus (to police departments), which has effectively militarized law enforcement in this country.
The fundamental question we need to ask is, is it possible to be a civil-liberties honoring, community-oriented, humanistic police officer who can work with the community and forge these authentic partnerships where the decision making is truly joint, not unilateral, not arbitrary? Is it possible to do all of that and in the next breath respond to a barricaded suspect who is popping off rounds, to respond to a school shooting, to confront someone who may not know you at all but knows the uniform and decides, ‘I’m going to target you’? I maintain that it is, because I’ve had officers like that.
Q: Is training part of the problem?
A. There is a preoccupation with officer safety. We want our police to make it home at the end of every shift, but their purpose in life shouldn’t be self-preservation, as understandable as that may be. These officers were not drafted into police service. They elected to become cops, and in carrying out the police function, they need to understand they’ve been hired in part to take risks – wise, prudent risks – and to de-escalate situations and diffuse tension. But if their major goal at end of each shift is to make it home, then they really shouldn’t be cops.
There is much more emphasis on officer survival training today, more emphasis on weaponry and tactics at the expense of what I would call a more humanistic approach to policing, where you get by on your wits, your personal communication style, your sense of humor. Are you able to laugh at yourself, or are you taking yourself altogether too seriously? Are you coming across as an automaton, as a soldier?
I think there is more fear in policing today. It operates on a sublimated level. Police officers don’t really talk about fear. . . .
But if you have this occupational force mentality – and I’m afraid that has happened in many police departments – then you’re going to be perceived as a soldier, not a cop. You’re going to be seen as an enemy and you’re going to treat others as the enemy.
Q: What role does race play?
A: Any police officer who denies the existence of racism within the ranks is at best misinformed. That kind of ignorance needs to be replaced with real wisdom about historical racism within policing because there are generations of African-Americans in this country who have been oppressed or neglected by their police departments. Why would they have trust in their local beat cop unless that beat cop goes out of their way to build that trust? Racism is alive and well in American policing. . . .
Stamper also wrote a damning article titled: "Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street".
Below is an excerpt from the article:
"Too many police officers say there’s no racism. ‘We’re colorblind.’ Well, that in itself tells you there’s a problem. And yet you’ll have police officers saying, ‘I just enforce the law. If you break the law, I don’t care what color you are, you can be white, black or purple.’ I’ve heard it for 40-plus years. Well, it’s time for the institution to call (expletive) on that. It’s not honest. It’s not accurate.
The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders—a black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect the brotherhood—is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force—not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country.
Much of the problem is rooted in a rigid command-and-control hierarchy based on the military model. American police forces are beholden to archaic internal systems of authority whose rules emphasize bureaucratic regulations over conduct on the streets. An officer’s hair length, the shine on his shoes and the condition of his car are more important than whether he treats a burglary victim or a sex worker with dignity and respect. In the interest of “discipline,” too many police bosses treat their frontline officers as dependent children, which helps explain why many of them behave more like juvenile delinquents than mature, competent professionals. It also helps to explain why persistent, patterned misconduct, including racism, sexism, homophobia, brutality, perjury and corruption, do not go away, no matter how many blue-ribbon panels are commissioned or how much training is provided."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/12/08/249393_former-police-chief-too-much-fear.html?sp=/99/200/365/&rh=1
http://www.thenation.com/article/164501/paramilitary-policing-seattle-occupy-wall-street#
Orange County schools approves police force plan to spy on students:
Florida - According to both Orange County Public Schools and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office there has been no increase in violent crimes on school campuses. Officials said the schools just want more control when it comes to monitoring threats and handling investigations, rather than just having students arrested. “There are threats all the time and we need a greater level of intelligence gathering,” school board Chairman Bill Sublette said. “We need a greater ability to access local, state and federal databases, none of which we can do without our own police force.http://www.mynews13.com/content/news/cfnews13/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2014/12/9/orange_county_school.html