Law Enforcement, Race and the Gun Culture – Part VII

This is the eighth post in this series, if you count the Discussion post. I recommend that you read or re-read the earlier posts.

Part I is here, Part II is here, Part III is here, the Discussion is here, Part IV is here, Part V is here and Part VI is here.

In the third part of this series I wrote:

I will come back to this in another context, but for now allow me to express my disappointment that our President, in his sixth State of the Union address did not speak about this subject. It is one of the few areas where he might be able to find common ground with Republicans.

I urge the reader to return to Part III and read the relevant portion.

I cannot resist noting that in raising this issue, I did so well before the New York Times picked it up. But since they finally did, allow me to refer my readers to the Times article entitled “Unlikely Cause Unites the Left and the Right: Justice Reform” and their editorial entitled “A Judge’s Idea for Grand Jury Reform.”

Even the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which has been the frequent target of liberal ire has joined in calling for reform.

I quote from their website: 

The United States currently incarcerates 1 in nearly 100 American adults. America’s incarceration addiction grew during the late 1980s and early 1990s as state and local governments passed “tough-on-crime” legislation. For example, California’s “three strikes” law called for mandatory sentencing of repeat offenders, and New York adopted the “Broken Windows” strategy that called for the arrest and prosecution of all crimes large and small.

I do need to interject at this point that the “Broken Windows” strategy, which is a cornerstone of the NYC policing strategy of Police Commissioner William Bratton, is one that I support, even though that was a factor in the untimely death of Eric Garner, but a minor violation should not bring about an arrest. A citation, like a traffic ticket, is the proper approach, and certainly, even in the absence of proper identification, the violence by the police can never be justified, particularly in dealing with what should be no more than a misdemeanor.

ALEC sets forth as its solution:

Research and practice over the past two decades by stakeholders across various jurisdictions shows that there are better ways to protect our communities than mass incarceration. States still need to be tough on crime, but in ways that emphasize personal responsibility, promote rehabilitation and treatment, and allow for the provision of victim restitution where applicable. Community supervision programs and strategies that serve as alternatives to incarceration can effectively hold offenders accountable while providing them with an opportunity to get back on their feet. These policies are proven to reduce the rate at which offenders return behind bars, in turn cutting the crime rate, protecting our communities, and achieving the best public safety return per taxpayer dollar.

ALEC members have approved model policies that help maintain public safety and reduce criminal justice spending:

▪                Recidivism Reduction Act

▪                Swift and Certain Sanctions Act

▪                Community Corrections Performance Incentive Act

▪                Community Corrections Performance Measurement Act

▪                Earned Compliance Credit Act

▪                Justice Safety Valve

We tend to assume that overcrowding and abuse of inmates in our prisons is likely to be most prevalent in jurisdictions that are illiberal. But, regretfully that is not the case.

The Bloomberg Administration managed to get a consistently favorable press. But now that it has been replaced, its atrocities are coming to light. The New York Times reports that at Riker’s Island under the Bloomberg Administration:

...brutality spiked … An influx of inmates with mental illnesses, a breakdown in discipline and a lack of interest by top officials in the Bloomberg administration all culminated in the crisis facing Rikers today. The rise in brutality by guards has been particularly stark. During Mr. Bloomberg’s last term in office, use of force by officers against inmates jumped by 90 percent.

ALEC reports that:

California’s prison population is one of the largest in the country.

leading to:

...a three-judge court rul(ing) that California must reduce its prison population by approximately 40,000 in two years

and at a cost of $9.3 billion and a cost per inmate: of $45,006

According to the Huffington Post: 

Since 1980, higher education spending has decreased by 13 percent in inflation adjusted dollars, whereas spending on California's prisons and associated correctional programs has skyrocketed by 436 percent. The state now shells out more money from its general fund for the prison system than the higher education system... 

Fifty-five percent of the growth of corrections spending is the result of the state simply putting more people in jail. Over the past three decades, the number of inmates in California facilities has increased eight times faster than the size of the overall population. 

The report notes that, while the average salaries for employees of the state's world-renowned higher education system have stagnated or even dropped with regard to inflation, prison guards have seen sustained salary increases. Correctional officers in California typically make somewhere between 50 and 90 percent more than comparable jobs in the rest of the country.

In Colorado:

Twelve of Colorado’s 21 facilities had inmate population above design capacity in 2011.

In Massachusetts:

The total custody overcrowding rate for DOC facilities as of June 25, 2012 was 146%. The overcrowding rate for medium security facilities was 155%.  

In my home state of New Jersey the Dept. of Corrections has an:

Annual budget: $1,000,000,000. 

Average annual cost per inmate: $34,600

And this is while our bridges are falling down and our roads are crumbling.

But the human costs are even greater, not only for the incarcerated but for their families and particularly their children. According to the Urban Institute: 

More than half of the 1.4 million adults incarcerated in state and federal prisons are parents of minor children. The vast majority of incarcerated parents are male (93%) and are held in state prisons (89%). Among the men held in state prison, 55 percent report having minor children. Among the women, who account for 6 percent of the state prison population, 65 percent report having minor children. Over half (58%) of the minor children of incarcerated parents are less than 10 years old.

Great distances typically separate children from their incarcerated parents. Women are housed in prisons an average of 160 miles from their children, while men are an average distance of 100 miles away. These distances serve as a barrier to prison visits by family members. More than half of incarcerated parents report never receiving a personal visit from their children  Contact in the form of phone calls and letters often proves problematic as well. The number of calls or letters per prisoner is typically limited by corrections policy. The high cost of collect phone calls, reflecting surcharges imposed by telephone companies or the departments themselves, can make this form of contact quite expensive. Despite these barriers, nearly 60 percent of mothers and
 40 percent of fathers report having weekly contact with their children while incarcerated. 

See here. 

For which credit goes to the inmates and their families, not to our policies.

As pointed out above, keeping in touch by phone is made almost impossible. The New York Times reports: 

For most people, talking on the phone is cheap. But for many families with a loved one behind bars, astronomical phone bills mean they have to choose between covering their living expenses and staying in touch.

The problem is that prisons and jails give companies like the industry leader, Global Tel Link, monopoly contracts in exchange for a share of the proceeds...

Global Tel Link, for example, charges $9.50 to make a $50 deposit, and $5 to issue a refund when someone is released from prison or jail. It’s hard to understand why Global Tel Link’s fees are so high, given that the company has 57 percent of the state prison market and its smaller competitors charge far lower fees.

The good news is that the Federal Communications Commission has new rules that will cap the cost of interstate calls at 21 to 25 cents a minute starting on Feb. 11. The F.C.C. also proposed to limit the account fees, but a federal court suspended that proposal after the phone companies sued.

So we can see that there is money to be made from the families of those incarcerated. Of course they want more in prisons.

But even beyond that we have had a trend toward privatizing prisons. The ACLU reports: 

Private prison companies, however, essentially admit that their business model depends on locking up more and more people... ” As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates, holding ever more people in its prisons and jails, and generating massive profits. 

And while supporters of private prisons tout the idea that governments can save money through privatization, the evidence that private prisons save taxpayer money is mixed at best – in fact, private prisons may in some instances cost more than governmental ones. Private prisons have also been linked to numerous cases of violence and atrocious conditions. 

Isn't it time we did something about it? And what better time than when the Right is for reform.

Why are we not seeing action at least on this front?

Comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office.

Law Enforcement, Race and the Gun Culture – II

This is the second in this series. I recommend that you read or re-read Part I, which you can find here.

When we look at the killing of Eric Garner in New York resulting from a chokehold, and of Michael Brown of a gun shot in Missouri, what I find disturbing is that most have an opinion, often broken down by race, but no one seems to actually know what happened. Both cases were presented to Grand Juries, and in neither case was there an indictment.

In both cases the prosecutors told the public that they should respect the verdict of the Grand Jury. What they did not tell the public, and neither did the media, is that Grand Juries are rubber stamps for whatever the D.A. wants, or as is explained by the website of the law firm of Solomon L. Wisenberg:

As a practical matter, a federal grand jury will almost always return an indictment presented to it by a prosecutor. This is the basis for Judge Sol Wachtler's famous saying that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to 'indict a ham sandwich.'

While this quote refers to federal grand juries, it is equally true, if not more so, when it comes to local grand juries. The Grand Jury is not supposed to determine guilt or innocence of the accused; it is only supposed to determine if there is probable cause for the charge. It is for a “petty jury” to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused.

Thus when the Grand Juries failed to indict in either of these cases, it meant only on thing, I.e. that the prosecutor did not want an indictment. The presentation to a Grand Jury was for show only. The prosecutor had already decided that he not want a jury trial. Thus this farce simply prevented the public from ever hearing all the evidence both against the officers and in their defense.

___________________________________________________________

In my last post on this subject I concluded:

“This was not the last time I discovered that police officers are not always paragons of virtue. More next time!”

I learned much more about how our law enforcement agencies often function much later, and it was summed up in an exchange of Letters to the Editor that I had while living in Montclair, NJ, in 1997. A letter from one, Frank Trico appeared in the local Newspaper, The Montclair Times, and I reproduce it below: 

For those who may have difficulty reading the clipping I set forth a transcript of the letter here:

3/6/97

Montclair Police Deserve Support

Editor, The Times

I have owned and operated a small business in Montclair for the last 20 years. Recently, I have had the pleasure of working with the very fine people of the Montclair Police Department on several projects.

What has impressed me the most is their total attitude of professionalism and commitment to community. From the top man down to the newest recruit, these are people who greet you with courtesy, respect and a smile and never forget to say ‘thank you”. These are people who know how to work with people.

It is easy to forget that police officers are just plain folk, who sometimes wake up with head colds or back problems or that their cars didn’t start or they just might be having a bad day. Police officers put their lives on the line each day. Imagine what it must be like to walk up to a car and not now how the driver of that car is going to react.

I think if we all tried to understand the difficult situations our police face on a daily basis, we might all benefit. Start by saying “Good morning” to a local beat cop or calling him or her by name. Or you might try being polite next time you’re stopped for going a little too fast on Upper Mountain Avenue. Get to know them; they really are here to help you.

Some time ago I read a letter to the editor by a woman who claimed to be more afraid of the Montclair police than she would be of a group of young men.

My grandmother would always say, “You never have anything to fear from the police, that is unless you are doing something wrong!”

FRANK TIRICO

Montclair

My response tells of my experiences and I reproduce it below:

For those who may have difficulty reading the clipping I set forth a transcript of the letter here:

4/10/97

Innocent At Risk

Editor, The Times:

The “Montclair Police Deserve Support” letter, which appeared in your March 6 issue, demands response. While I agree with the positive comments about the Montclair police, the last paragraph, “You never have anything to fear unless you have done something wrong “ is a naïve and dangerous fiction.

Unfortunately, many law enforcement officers do not believe it to be their function to enforce the law. They often decide on guilt and manufacture evidence to insure conviction or administer their own “justice”.

Some 40 years ago, the assistant US attorney, whose office I was assigned to, obtained an indictment on the basis of an officer’s testimony that he had seen a drug transaction under a street corner lamp, and saw another through the window of a bar. Before the trial, we visited the scene and found no street light on the corner and the bar window had a curtain. We dismissed the indictment.

Such outrages were not then general knowledge, but since the Rodney King incident, since the recent killing through a stranglehold by a New York City police officer, angered because a football had accidently hit his car; since officers admitted to the Mollen Commission that they perjure themselves to assure convictions, and commit other criminal acts; since one police officer after being convicted of brutality, theft, drug dealing and perjury, explained he did not feel he had anything to fear from the law because, after all, he was the law; since those cases have surfaced, the belief that the innocent need have no fear from law enforcement officers leaves the innocent at risk.

EMIL SCHELLER

Montclair

I can’t add very much. My letter tells the story.

But for those who might say that was almost 20 years ago, I can only set forth the oft repeated saying: “The more things change, the more they are the same.”

See the New York Times on January 15, 2015 from which I quote:

In researching the case, a lawyer for Mr. Herring, Debora Silberman of Brooklyn Defender Services, found others that mirrored it, involving the same group of police officers. In the other cases, defendants also said the guns were planted, with the police saying that officers saw the suspects storing the guns in plastic bags or handkerchiefs. 

 After the arrests, more similarities arose: The use of confidential informers was suddenly mentioned months into the proceedings, and the informers were never produced in court even after judges’ and lawyers’ requests. Judges had called some of the police version of events “incredible,” and the accounts “extremely evasive.”

Or the New York Times of December 11, 2014:

There were other similarities: Each gun was found in a plastic bag or a handkerchief, with no traces of the suspect’s fingerprints. Prosecutors and the police did not mention a confidential informer until months after the arrests. None of the informers have come forward, even when defense lawyers and judges have requested they appear in court. 

 Taken individually, the cases seem to be routine examples of differences between the police account of an arrest and that of the person arrested. But taken together, the cases — along with other gun arrests made in the precinct by these officers — suggest a pattern of questionable police conduct and tactics… 

 Mr. Hooper spent a year in jail awaiting trial, eventually pleading guilty and agreeing to a sentence of time served after the judge in his case called the police version of events “incredible… 

 In that case, a federal judge said she believed that the “officers perjured themselves.”

More next time!

Comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office.

Law Enforcement, Race and the Gun Culture - I

It is time to take a break from the discussion of Israel and to turn to other pressing issues. I intend to return to the subject of Israel, if for no other reason, to give Albert Nekimken an opportunity to complete his rebuttals. But now onto other issues!

There have been many unfortunate deaths in the United States lately.

“Each year, nearly 900,000 Americans die prematurely from the five leading causes of death – yet 20% to 40 % of the deaths from each cause could be prevented according to the CDC. Allow me to stress that these are pre-mature deaths, and at least 20% of those, or 20,000, and possibly as many as 40%, or 40,000, of those are preventable. More than 39,000 people died by suicide in the United States in 2011, more than twice as many who died as a result of homicide, (17,000). See here. How many die at the hands of police officers is difficult to determine.

As these figures show, homicide is far down on the scale among the causes of death. Yet our fear of homicide and our fascination with it is insatiable. Murder mysteries are a genre that has, always had, and continues to have endless fascination for us.

It apparently matters how and why we die.

The idea that we could be in danger from the police, the very people we depend on to protect us, is unacceptable and horrendous. Is it something we need to worry about? Do African Americans need to fear the police more than other races?

These questions have been forcefully brought into our consciousness by the police killings of Eric Garner in New York resulting from a chokehold, and of Michael Brown in Missouri, by the use of a gun that has led to demonstrations, which have become an increasing source of friction, and to some extent a political football.

Fox News ran a clip, widely viewed on YouTube, where the demonstrators appeared to chant: “we won't stop, we can't stop, so kill a cop", when they actually chanted: "we won't stop, we can't stop, 'til killer cops, are in cell blocks,"

This was quickly picked up by many in the press, particularly on the Right, and even a faux apology by Fox (See here) that it was all a mistake, when in fact the recording had been doctored, (See here) did not catch up even with the so-called liberal media. Thus Nicholas Kristof writing in the New York Times, after Fox had already disavowed the video, stated: “Some extremist protesters turned to the slogan ‘arms up, shoot back,’ or to chants of ‘What do we want? Dead cops.’ That was inexcusable”, showing how even well intentioned media get taken in.

But in all this heat has anybody checked the facts?

CNN had a very interesting analysis from which I quote:

Syndicated columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote this week that young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than young white men. Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly had a much different take on his show Monday night, offering that more whites are killed by police than blacks.

In 2012, 123 African-Americans were shot dead by police. There are currently more than 43 million blacks living in the U.S.A.," O'Reilly said on his program.

"Same year, 326 whites were killed by police bullets. Those are the latest stats available.

 Two dramatically different statistics -- and they could both be right. 

But CNN didn’t bother to do the arithmetic. I did!

I focused on the O’Reilly figures. He gives the number of “blacks” in the total population but doesn’t give us a figure for the number of “Whites” in the total population. According to the Census Bureau the figures are about 198 million “Whites” in the US to about 42 million “Blacks”. That is a ratio of about 4.74 or about 5 times as many “Whites” as “Blacks”.  The killed by police ratio according to O’Reilly is 2.65 as many Whites as Blacks, so that using O’Reilly’s own figures, Blacks are killed by police as a ratio of their presence in the population at a far higher rate than Whites.

Of course, O’Reilly could have argued that this is because Blacks are more crime prone, or more given to resisting arrest, but he didn’t. His own figures seem to show that police are much more likely to kill a Black person than a White person by far.

CNN goes into a lengthy discussion as to why Kristof and O’Reilly came up with such different figures, but they miss the point. O’Reilly’s own figures show a huge discrepancy between the rate at which police kill between the races.

Does that mean that the police like killing Blacks or that Blacks are more violent and more crime prone? That there is more crime in Black communities than in White ones, there can be no doubt.

But I think the problem may lie more in police perception, than in any reality.

The North Jersey media published an interesting article entitled "Something good coming out of Ferguson" from which I quote:

Several months ago, I was struck by another incident, this one in Columbia, S.C. A young black man was pulled over by a white officer. In complying, the young man pulled into a gas station and got out of his car. He learned he was stopped for a "possible seat belt infraction."

The officer asks for the driver’s license and car registration. The driver opens the car door and reaches in to get his wallet from the front seat. As he does that, the officer starts screaming at him to get out of the car, to put his hands up, to get down on the ground. And while yelling, in an almost hysterical tone, he starts shooting at the man.  

The young man was shocked. He yelled, "You told me to get my wallet. I was just getting my wallet. Why are you shooting at me?"

Then a touch of humanity entered the conversation. The officer said, quietly and with some concern, "Were you hit?" The young man said, also quietly, "Yes, I think I feel blood running down my leg," or something to that effect.

The officer kept his gun aimed at the man, but called for help.

It’s easy to brand this cop as a violent man, intent on creating a situation in which it would be reasonable to shoot a young black man.

However, what became clear to me in watching the video was that the cop was terrified. You could hear it in his voice. You could see it in the way he moved, the way he held the gun, the way he shouted at the man.

Returning to the CNN article, CNN reports

That reality, (unreliable statistics) in part a result of weak local reporting and national data gathering efforts on police homicides, has long frustrated researchers and analysts who say they need to know more about those shootings…

 The problem, experts say, is that the United States doesn't collect accurate statistics and verify nearly enough information to show definitive trends in police shootings.

 There isn't a mandatory reporting. It is a self-reporting. Almost on the honor system," Sunny Hostin, a CNN legal analyst, said on CNN's "The Situation Room" on Tuesday.

 Although the FBI does have some statistics, most people know that those statistics can't even be counted upon, because they are self-reported," Hostin said. "So my suggestion has been all along that we need mandatory reporting from our law enforcement agencies around the country and I think that the number of officer shootings involving young black males is actually much higher than is even self-reported. That's something that needs to be part of the conversation.

 "We've been trying for years, but nobody wanted to fund it and the (police) departments didn't want it. They were concerned with their image and liability. They don't want to bother with it.''

But it may be that we have become too obsessed by the race issue. It is real, and much of what is happening in this country is dictated by race, but there is an even more fundamental problem.

CNN has an interesting commentary on the broader aspect. Again allow me to quote from its web site.

The difference in the number of killings in the U.S. and the rest of the world is startling. While police in other major countries typically kill a few people every year, the numbers here are enormous….
 How many people are shot by police every year? Nobody seems to know the exact number (something that is itself disturbing -- no official government agency tracks the full data for the entire country)
 On average, at least one person is killed by a cop every day in the U.S. In contrast, not a single one was killed in Britain last year, where police fired their guns a grand total of three times, according to The Economist. In 2011, when the FBI reported 404 justifiable law enforcement homicides in the U.S., police killed six people in Australia, two in England, six in Germany.

Whether one is of white, black, brown, or of yellow complexion, these are very disturbing facts and figures.

I have long been disturbed by the behavior of some who wear the police uniform and a badge and carry a gun. I am of white or rather pink complexion, but I have had my own experiences.

I will always remember when as a teen, (or maybe it was in my early twenties) I was in the resort town of Greenwoodlake, NY, a summer vacation community straddling New York and NJ, but with the town itself in NY. I had gone into town to buy something and had parked my car legally. When I came back I found that my car was wedged between two cars so that there was very little maneuvering space for me to get out. Backing up to the maximum possible, I touched the bumper of the car behind me, and then started to move out of the space, when a police officer accosted me and accused me of trying to leave the scene of an accident. I tried to explain that I had barely touched the bumper of the car behind me and that there was no damage, where upon the officer, who appeared to also be in his early twenties, suggested that I should put up my fists, and we would duke it out. I declined, and the officer relented. But it left a lasting impression on me, that, particularly in small towns, the kids that get a uniform, a badge and a gun, may be no different from the local hoodlum, without one.

This was not the last time I discovered that police officers are not always paragons of virtue.

More next time!

Comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office.