black lives matter – The Little boys in Blue

Article 4: Notes on a Story

27 Sep 202121 Nov 2021 Devon Thames

**When it comes to policing, the devil is always in the details, and where the truth inevitably waits**.

ON MAY 25^th, San Jose, California became the setting of the 15^th US mass shooting in 2021 where nine men were killed in the Valley Transit headquarters located in northern District Victor, after the shooter, Sam Cassidy, set his home ablaze in the central southern policing district of Lincoln. Mass shootings are quickly becoming the crop circles of our time—in which we wonder when and where—not if—and by whom they will occur. Within hours of the act, the FBI, ATF, and local police put a mic’d podium on the world’s stage—a concrete divider centered along a main street amongst the maelstrom, their suits certifying the dire moment.

Then. A sexagenarian, blonde woman slowly creeped out amongst the forest of men, adjusted her sheriffs’ uniform (gold stars and all), and took over the grand stage. I turned off my computer. Nine people had died and I wanted to feel the moment, but to those in the know, bad cops become gnarly distractions to such tragedies, or such tragedies serve as timely mischaracterizations for bad cops.

The six-time elected sheriff of Santa Clara County, Laurie Smith, has been the center of campaign contributions controversies (in which the undersheriff and a captain have been indicted by the Santa Clara District Attorney, but Smith has not), alleged past sexual harassment allegations and under her watch, a mentally ill homeless man was beaten to death in 2015 by three deputies who are now serving fifteen years to life prison sentences each—in addition to behind the scenes shenanigans better saved for another article.

She’s appeared on the Investigation Discovery Channel’s See No Evil and Web of Lies, where department heads are typically not interviewed to rehash investigations they did not conduct—the self-interposed Smith had sincerely become too much for me. A woman known to show one face to the world—and another to her department walls, I feared her public lack of humility would turn this moment farcical.

Smith is a Michigander from the Mitten, a republican, and after years of questionable transgressions—both morally and monetarily—she is yet again the focus of polemically laced calls by officials for her resignation over county jail conditions.

Ultimately, Smith’s failures are the fault of those who continue to vote her into power cycle after election cycle. Hers’ is a political position and as constituents, we don’t seek ethical leadership—come election time, we want to be “mind f*cked”.

After ten years of studying police behavior, I’ve learned to keep officers like Smith in perspective, necessary when in possession of a queasy stomach. While Smith is not an officer I’ve researched, she is evidence of the involuted and not so black and white makeup of law enforcement the country is now daring to simplify and solve. I’ve met a lot of bad cops. Nothing about police officers is straightforward or categorical.

I too once believed in the ataraxia inducing sales pitch of the ‘good cop/bad cop’ myth, growing up around a police department, the good cop was every cop I knew, but in hindsight, there were signs. Perhaps I had been too advantageous to realize that officers like Smith were complicated, therefore convoluting the profession.

The past year has been a looking glass into this uncategorical institution where we watched former Minneapolis police officer—and lynch by cop murder defendant—Derek Chauvin, meet an all too rare judgement where for centuries, white men had been acquitted by predominately white juries for similar crimes.

Even as George Floyd’s slow death played on loop, we learned how defensible cops were as Floyd was continuously (and still in social media today) put in the defendant’s chair—while Chauvin’s previous conduct, which includes, but is not limited to the beating and choking a teen boy—somehow seemed not so bad. The sympathizers of Chauvin and his gang of four highlight the realization, that to some in society, an officer’s crimes will always be deflected by the shiny badge—relying on a dire reality: look deep into their eyes and you’ll see the soul of every American cop.

While weaponizing public trust is nothing novel for police, blunt double standards and the inability to envision or comprehend a higher quality of policing in this country has been our handicap. Floyd’s death moved the goal post to end the nucleus of police misconduct: qualified immunity—but the conservative parties’ involvement (who’s made Back the Blue a party trope) has made the remedy just about as cloudy as the problem. Who knew things would get complicated on January 6th?

We saw an act of terror on the nation’s capital, as footage of uniformed police were seen beaten by crowds containing white supremacist, as well as current and former military and police such as Karol Chwiesiuk and Alan Hostetter, marching united under the MAGA umbrella—striking blows with polls fastened to blue lives flags. Outsiders were front seat for this unforeseen domestic squabble: Blue Lives mattered until right wing politicians perceived the actions of the capital police—defending the capitol against their mobbing constituents—as an act of (police) biting the hand that kept them feed. Yet the recent talks of police reform show republicans can’t relinquish dreams of a racially oppressive vestige—indemnity free policing from days gone past.

On MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber, Marq Claxton, who is the director for the Black Law Enforcement Alliance, had a disassembling thought on the phrase. “Blues lives are Smurfs. It’s never been about police lives or that blue rhetoric, and the blue wave really. It’s all about something other than respecting the law and order and sanctity of life, etc.” The former NYPD detective continued, “what this has been all about, and continues to be about, is a political movement trying to pull in as many of these so-called blue-collar workers—in spite of, and this is what amazes me about police—they tend to rally around these blue lines nonsense things, in spite of what we’re seeing here [the testimony of capitol police], where often times these same people who are promoters of everything blue, have turned their backs on you.”

Discombobulated yet? Police are without definition in a current time where some department heads seek to shed the very roots of white supremacy it once sprung from. They’re like the hive mind alien, Unity, from Rick and Morty or a profession filled subterraneously with those who read to many Judge Dredd comic books in their youth—but for now, there is no clear comprehension of policing amongst the malleable public and those whose vision and scrutiny derive from personal encounters or regular consumptions of COPS, Live PD and PAW Patrol as the litmus test for how things should have ended. I get annoyed when people think it’s that simple.

April 20th of this year marked the tense delivery of the Chauvin verdict and the police shooting of a 16-year-old girl in an Ohio suburb.

I imagined the protesters, war torn from a year of constant battle cries, grabbing signs from their closets. It was the first time the impulsive marching felt vacuous and risked devaluing the movement of justice without a review of the facts. Studying San Jose police calls made body camera footage immediately released to the country by the Columbus Police Department seem more quizzical, than anger provoking. My disdain was suspended by the question of what and why?

What did the dispatcher tell the responding officers? Had there been prior contacts at this home or with the phone number 911 had been contacted from by Ma’Khia? What information had been relayed to the responding officers? Were officers told it was a group home? Based on the information—or lack thereof—should the officers have 87’d (aka: met) at a location a distance from the scene and strategized before engaging?

Was the shooting officer, Nick Reardon, and his department members equipped with less lethals? And what of a subduing Taser? Would Bryant’s fast movements preceding the arrival of the first officer had prevented the prongs of the Taser from contacting her skin? What if her clothing had been too thick? Would the surge of adrenaline or possible undisclosed narcotics in her system prevent a fast enough effect of the Taser to stop her from stabbing the woman in pink? And at that point, how many punctures would Bryant had achieved? And why do we see a grown man kicking the first subject Bryant rushed to the ground.

Her sudden charging towards the officer and the two perceived victims provoked the officer to pick the life of one black woman over another. The shooting is now a part of a DOJ investigation.

This is a far cry from video released this past summer of Ronald Greene who was savagely beaten and murdered in 2019 by Louisiana State Troopers—ego bruised by a man who dare lead them on a chase probably dangerous enough to terminate. He was tased, beaten, choked and dragged face down across concrete by an officer who would later brag about the attack. Then delivered to a hospital handcuffed and dead, where medical staff had been told he’d died in a crash. The district attorney belying the facts of his death.

What I would say to those who wish to see an amalgation of Bryant’s death with that of the murder of Greene is this: If you can’t instruct an officer how to better handle a situation, then you can’t instruct. And as much as some officers would like to be viewed as super human, they in fact are not. They don’t host police academies at Hogwarts School of wizardry—no wave of some magic police baton can make for a petrificus totalus.

To be clear, sloppy policing by sloppy officers is what leads to the death or maiming of citizens lacking due process.

With that said, Ma’Khia Bryant was a child of the state who left the world judged by a system that had long failed her.

The general consensus is to spend brain power and town hall discussions theologizing officers like those I’ve researched—those who braggadociously label themselves as Waste Management for the city of San Jose. As well as Derek Chauvin or the mistress of Santa Clara County herself, Sheriff Smith, and every other cop across this country—when perhaps police misconduct can be whittled down to a simpler reality: bad people treat people badly.

Blue walls. The Force. All terminology I’ve grown to hate, but if the blue wall is your cup tea, then let me introduce you to some of the bricks.

Misconduct: The Jon Koenig Way

Leveraging power over of others (and sparsely unchecked thanks to qualified immunity) by way of a superior authority can appeal to those unable to achieve such validity in a normal life—as so I’ve learned, can be the dangerous sell of a career in law enforcement.

Researching a police department—unfiltered—is like entering the jungle where humanity is altered—hunting, mating and socializing tactics feel transmuted due to conditions of the “brotherhood”, where officer conduct is typically contrived, banal and non-divergent out of survival amongst their fellow blue. I’ve spent time with officers who’ve made my skin crawl, and a small few who were genuinely good guys—but I certainly left a little bit of myself behind while covering this story. Importuned and determined to finish a cultured journalism degree—I was educated on police statistics instead of stereotypes, an overview on what domestic violence is when your partner is a cop and sexual assault culture—eventually making me the target of threats from the San Jose Police.

These words are anxiety laced as I now understand the blue wall and mortar holding it impenetrable. But here are the facts:

My research into police calls began in July 2009, and concluded on schedule in December 2019 just as the first officer who kicked off this story, sergeant Lyle Jackson, who was 13 years into his tenor with the department when he first approached me—was concluding his career with the department.

I knew from my first outing with Jackson, that there was a story. It is impossible to report on every officer and every department in the country, so I chose the statistically route. A sample group of officers then grew out of whom ever wandered out of the woods and into the circumstances, throwing his badge into the pot—and with every addition the story branched further. It’s been a cathartic racing of the clock as I am legally tied to SJPD for 2 more years and 10 months, Dua Lipa’s We’re Good playing as I send each chapter out for edit. As a journalist, the biggest lesson I’ve learned out of this is to trust the process. It is through officers like Jonathan Koenig, one of six officers being profiled, that I became educated on how bad cops not only thrive, but survive in US police departments. I was a neophyte penning a compendium love letter of sorts to the evils of law enforcement. And one pivotal rule of journalism is to know your subject.

The sample group is composed of 135 San Jose Police Officers. However, two more SJPD officers were added in 2020, and another two were added back to the list after previously having been disqualified (Officer Blanky Cruz and Sandra Sandez, who’d perished from brain cancer in 2018, making her the only dead officer on the roster).

Thirty-one of the officers have retired and two have been fired. Fifteen left voluntarily—and of those, two have returned. Eighteen are women. Sixty-six of the officers (including Alan Coker, Justin Horn, and Billy Wolf) are white or of European descent. Twenty (included officers Jonathan Koenig and Larry Situ) are Asian. Thirty-eight officers (including Mike Ceballos and Jose Martinez) are Hispanic. Eight officers (including sergeants Ray Vaughn Jr. and Lyle Jackson) are black. At least three are open members of LGBTQ+ community.

At least nineteen officers have either shot someone or have been accused of excessive force. Two have been arrested (for neither of the previous offenses mentioned). Twelve come from previous departments. Three are former dispatchers. Eleven have confirmed military backgrounds. One is a former elementary school teacher while another 2 officers teach at local junior colleges. Twenty-nine have four-year degrees, while one has a juris doctorate. Five of the officers were known to me personally before the start of this story.

I’ve witnessed shocking things and have been impelled into acts I will never let happen again. I’ve actually been asked by a sergeant why I didn’t tell an officer NO!

The caveat is overtime, ‘Were not all that bad’ stops being thrown at you like a sitcom tagline once officers know you’ve seen too much—a blue curtain drops in its place.

Police continue to be a darker conundrum armed with artillery, monopolization of safety, and the weaponization of gaslighting. The devil you know. Publicly lauded as societies sanitation while void of dignification. Poster boy heroes with their fright night tactics, somehow fails to retain a classification other than necessary.

Four days a week, SJPD officers drive upwards of an hour to avoid, in plain clothes, the citizens they serve, protect, harass, and occasionally kill in uniform—to park their car in a lot and cross a two-lane road into a brick-and-mortar department, where for 10 hours a day, they can live an alternate existence from their normal daily lives—either for good or bad. I have plenty of battle scars from my time studying the department but as a journalist, it was never the plan for these marks of war to stay in my custody.

The lowest badge numbers in this study (at the time of this publication) started with the SJPD in 2013. Bad cops are leaving but statistically, plenty more are arriving to take their place. And while studying police behavior and habits won’t stop more imbibed into a profession fit for the outliers, it will help gain better protection from the entire herd, Sheriff Smith and those alike.

This article ends with officer Eddie Chan, badge #3735. A problem cop who joined my study in 2013. Whose buffoonery earlier this year landed him an internal affairs quarry and a spot on the eleven o’clock news in a video where, while swinging a police baton to a Mortal Kombat theme in his sergeants uniform, managed to degrade his embattled profession while simultaneously aggreging Asian stereotypes at a time of already elevated racial tension in the Asian community. This is an officer SJPD has worn the behavior of proudly. Chan will be covered in a future blog post.

One of these Things is Not Like the Other

20 Apr 202120 Apr 2021 Devon Thames

During two of the most crucial times in Asian and Black American history, the roads to equality may never have been more divided. (photo source: The New Topic, PBS)

There is no more of a direct way to start this piece except to say that violence against Asians needs to end.

I’m learning to listen as the Asian community grows more outspoken of its silent plight. An increasing amount of random racist attacks against some of the most vulnerable elders in the community has made me contemplate why this fight feels so familiar, yet…unique. I won’t pretend I know their struggle or that the uphill climb is one we as African Americans have already trekked. A disproportionate number of blacks being hunted by police cultivated much of last year’s dialogue, but in the backdrop, the world was also learning about the expensive myth called the “yellow peril”—leading to the attacks and killings of those in our Asian communities. So much so that we are now recounting how many were struck with every “Kung Flu” or “Chinese Virus” epithets cavalierly uttered, in part, thanks to Donald Trump.

A total of 241 African Americans were shot by police in 2020—while the AAPI community reported a 149% increase in hate crimes. The racial plight of these two minority groups had not been conflated and it seemed obvious why. The day following the shooting spree that resulted in the death of eight people (including six Asian women), an Instagram commenter aired his frustration at the lack of a similar visible outcry matching that of George Floyd’s murder last year. Why weren’t people marching angrily in the streets, having deeper conversations on all medias, breaking windows and setting the world on fire?

My response: the active, slow or accelerated extermination of any group targeted for their nationality (or religion)—out of the stinging act of oppression is always horrible. But the experiences of the hate in the Asian community and of that in the black community is not one in the same. And I told the commenter—he shouldn’t want it to be. A common trope seen in the past weeks as actors like Olivia Munn and Daniel Day Kim addressed in interviews: this is the BLM movement for the Asian community. The Black Lives Matter movement and the AAPI movement are both fighting oppressive racism—but that’s about the point commonality stops.

During an interview with Monthanus Ratanapakdee, the daughter of Vicha Ratanapakdee—an 84-year-old Asian man who was randomly attacked in San Francisco—she and her husband, Eric Lawson, sat with Nightline to discuss his later passing from the injuries he sustained. My own feelings of sadness for her father’s experience were abruptly thwarted when Lawson—who did not appear to be Asian—looked at the camera and demanded that black people needed to talk to their own—because his father-in-law’s attacker had been black. And yes, that ignorant statement was offensive.

I’m an African American woman and I don’t associate with anyone who would commit any such violence towards anyone for any reason. There is not one black person in my vicinity that needs a talking too. And there came the epiphany: there is no one group the Asian community and its allies can decry. A pickle the Black Lives Matter movement does not quite face.

Police departments were the primary object of the 2020 BLM protest. A distinct history of the brutal oppression from the moment Africans were brought to America as slaves. Floyd’s murderers were all former cops which means they were formerly employed by an organization whose original function was to capture (and at times kill black slaves). As allies to the BLM movement, we spent the summer attempting to shake the white supremacy out of an institution who’s had racism running through its veins for nearly two centuries.

We needed higher regulations for police officers and politicians to be instinctually competent enough to see the conduct of policing—and to put themselves in the shoes of average citizens instead of fully armed officers who commonly claimed they killed because they “feared for their lives”. How infuriating would it be to hear the Atlanta shooter claim he shot those eight people because in the course of getting a massage, he thought the masseuse was reaching for a gun when she was reaching for lotion. And how angry would anyone feel if they knew his viable defense was “he feared for his life”.

I am somewhat aware of the relationship between the Asian community and police, but there is something far more nefarious and disunited cornering the Asian community. As addressed in an article by University of Colorado Boulder professor Jennifer Ho, titled White Supremacy is the root of all race-related violence in the US, this is a white supremacy issue—even when the violence is carried out by the black and the brown. You don’t have to be white in order to do something in the faith and name of white dominance.

It’s so easy to start comparing battle wounds of the respective cultures, but that involves attempts to downplay the hardship of one versus the other—and it’s not productive in this battle. The AAPI movement needs to be its own battle for equality that we fight together with the Asian community.

The anxiety felt by Asians, both in this country and Canada is palpable—not only being consumed by one’s own safety but of the safety of their loved ones. I too have grandparents whom I worry about the welfare of when I’m not with them—so I get the fear. I’ve also had to file a restraining order against an armed and active police officer, who had plenty of armed an active colleagues resolute in reminding me that if I scream, no one will believe me. Basically—I get the terror.

Mr. Lawson’s misguided request had actually been on my mind long before his families’ loss. 2020 had left me more discombobulated than ever regarding the lingering support for Trump. Not just for his failures in the handling of COVID and every other initiative bungled, but for his racial rhetoric—particularly in the rare moments I encountered a minority voter. Living in California, most of these encounters were left to social media where one day last fall, I found myself in a verbal tussle with an Asian Trump supporter. When asked why she would stand for a man who clearly thinks so little of her community that he’s willing to put a target on her back, her reply had been that Trump was not talking about her. When I decided to turn Trump’s rhetoric on her, her argument eventually rescinded. Perhaps Mr. Lawson should have a conversation with her.

Asians represented 31% of the Trump vote in November 2020 (and 12% of the black vote)—slightly higher and sans the virus vitriol in 2016. To some, this may have been an act of simulating rather than solidarity. Had Trump’s one attempt at squashing anti-Asian rhetoric not tested so poorly with his mostly white audiences, an emphatical and consistent stance to protect the Asian community from backlash could have saved those falling to the other race reckoning happening in our country. When a former QAnon supporter had been asked by CNN what would have steered her from falling down the disinformation rabbit hole, she replied that a staunch denouncement by Trump would have stopped her from following the platform.

Whether Trump should be the subject of a major lawsuit by the AAPI community or if we are just merely the long haulers of his four-year hate train, the Asian community deserves to know the root causes of these elevated hate crimes.

Every time a new attack is publicized, my first question (after the nature of the attack and the welfare of the victim) is why the person did it? It’s a loaded question but it concerns me that this isn’t questioned by the media (and possibly law enforcement) fast enough, and that advocates are not dwelling more on it—the identifiable pattern.

When two elderly people were attacked in March in downtown Oakland by a homeless male, these details were glossed over during an interview with the attacker’s public defender. He indicated his clients need for a psyche evaluation because the man appeared mentally ill. This was a secondary question to the reporters more pressing query of how the lawyer felt about representing the defendant when he, the lawyer, was in fact Asian.

Intrinsically, I always look for the existing pattern—but stop short of creating one when there may, in fact, be none. My frustration with every nonsensical attack is my commiseration with Mr. Lawson. There is no point to any of this. But just as actor Daniel Dae Kim retorted, it is clearly not just a singular race supremacy issue but mental and possible environmentally grown hate. I think the AAPI community is acting logically by proactively stepping up, and not stepping back, their fight.

I don’t feel, see or believe that there is some profound sector of the black community that hates Asians but if we’ve learned anything from the demographics of Trump supporters, ignorance and racism comes in all sexes and from all origins. Still, it is incredibly hard to see these attacks manifest.

I live in the state most populated by the AAPI community and have certainly grown up in ear shot of racist utterances—but I’ve also grown up understanding the common sense of treating people as you wish to be treated. As I write this, fully vaccinated—I reflect on the singular incident in this past year when I’d received a vile reaction for sneezing in public. It was from an older Asian woman—who jerked away from me with a glare. I remember physically visiting an Asian professor of mine who swore people missed his class out of laziness to prove to him I had contracted laryngitis, causing him to scowl from me with an accusation that it might be Sars. A reminder, I’m African American!

It has been easiest to not have a categorical opinion of the Asian community, and that for me is the best resolve. I have dealt with racism and some of that has been from Asian individuals. I hadn’t realized how color blind I had been until it recently occurred to me while in the process of working on my first book. That while my rapist was not of Asian descent, every other incident of assault or sexual objectification I have been subject to has been by Asian (non-Indian) or bi-racial Asian men. The realization doesn’t draw me to hate or aggression—but cognizance. While I do not have Asian kin nor are any of my close friends Asian, I do work and live alongside great people, some of who are this targeted race.

It brings to thought that the issues are not cookie cutter but what is currently happening to the Asian community is out of bounds. An alarming amount of these attacks have been committed by black men and though astounding, I can relegate that these are individuals who do not grasp or see the hypocrisy in their racial intolerance rather it be out of mental instability or otherwise.

The Asian community has shown up tenfold for the Black Lives Matter movement, and the rest of the country should do the same in return. For myself—I will pledge to stay vocal when prejudice is in my vicinity during any act of hate. For we have faced similar acts of historical massacres, racially discriminative laws, and hate crimes without adjudication. So where will we march for the AAPI community? Who are we marching to? Are we screaming to the heavens?

While I look forward to the apprehension of every perpetrator committing hate crimes against Asians, the swift arrest and charges leaves me heart sick and fatigued for the road ahead of the black community. That homeless man who was arrested for attacking two elderly Asian people in Oakland will be prosecuted. Robert Aaron Long, the Atlanta shooter will never see the light of day again. While the AAPI community is calling for the recognition of hate crimes in these cases, we are crossing all extremities hoping a Minneapolis Police officer will see a prison cell for murdering a black man over a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. We don’t have time to protest the lack of a hate crime charge against Derek Chauvin, we were too busy protesting for him to be apprehended from his living room couch. This is the pickle of the situation dominating the lives of the black community—that we can stop seeing police officers get the treatment once afforded to the killers of Emmitt Till. This is why one thing is not like the other.

And just as with the recent killing of Daunte Wright, I think it is important that charges stay within the imperfect system of laws and prerequisites we require for such charges to be applied. I do fear that through this, some will be pushing a square hate crime peg into a first-degree murder hole if the required evidence isn’t there. This could prove to be a double-edged sword—in any case—and in any society where prosecutors follow public pressure, and not the law, to administer justice. Profound emotions of injustice should create more just laws, not pressure induced charges.

Though I do believe Trump and his (in)ability to understand such complex tropes as the Kung Flu “Gina” virus will pass in the heap of Alt-right conservative history, he has certainly lent vocal freedom to those who harbored such closeted prejudice as if it has been a continuous four-year celebration of Festivus. A line from a skit of The Chappelle show called “Clayton Bigsby, The World’s only Black White Supremacist”, has echoed in my head from the beginning of Trump’s presidential campaign: “If you got hate in your heart, let it out”—a mocking dig at the core of white supremacy. Well Trump has certainly become an idol in the eyes of hate.

I pledge to do what I’ve always done during the commission of a crime, intervene and aid as I would hope others would do for me.

With that said, I wish the utmost safety and support to the Asian community worldwide. The AAPI community has the right to a reckoning all their own.

Article 2: Spare the Rod, Spoil the Cop

27 Dec 202020 Feb 2021 Devon Thames

“When it comes to institutional or systemic racism, it’s there and it stays there because someone, somewhere, is benefiting from it.” -Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex, per the Queen’s Common Wealth Trust

A mural featuring George Floyd temporally displayed in downtown San Jose, California.

Ten weeks ago, one of Breonna Taylor’s killers, Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly of the Louisville Metro Police Department, sat across from Michael Strahan on Good Morning America. The fraught and feeble—yet morally bankrupt cop suffering from little more than privilege managed to tell a murder story full of inconsistencies, befoul George Floyd’s memory, and when prompted—issued hope that Taylor’s mother will find a way to bare the consequence Taylor ultimately brought upon herself. In 10 minutes, despite being party to a sloppy and negligent police raid that ended the life of one and terrorized another, Mattingly managed to depict himself as the damsel.

Race had never been a factor to Mattingly who lives in a world different than you and me—where racial profiling is criminal profiling, murder isn’t really murder, rape is just cop sex, and illegal search warrants aren’t a desecration of one’s constitutional rights.

Go back seven months to the Friday afternoon of May 29th, where a scene—first seeded on the 101 freeway–soon settled on the normally uneventful grounds of the San Jose city hall, in middle California. A war zone pitting the San Jose Police METRO (SWAT) unit against incensed protestors. Profane shouts and water bottles crossed paths—midair—with amplified police commands and airborne cans of tear gas. Unlike our social justice neighbors to the north (Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco) this scene was uncommon. The burning of the lachrymator as it filled the air—then our eyes and lungs—of protestors, on-lookers and journalist, became as seditious as the modern day lynchings of our time. 2020 has become yet another milestone for racial inequality where the streets again speak for themselves—the same streets inspiring a 17-year-old white Trump supporter and cop enthusiast to pick a Milwaukee suburb as an ideal hunting ground. Those aghast by the destruction, looting, and violence would be wise to consider: Would the level of anger & violence be so high if the bar for police conduct weren’t so low?

Earlier this year, a light—however dim, had been shone on the police. Stripped bare—the so called “blue lives” were paraded about the country’s town square while the Black Lives Matter movement trailed it with a ringing bell, shouting SHAME! SHAME! At least for a time.

The CATALYST: the peremptory homicide of George Perry Floyd Jr., a 46-year-old black man—strangled to death as four Minneapolis police officers circled him like a pack of wolves mid-lunch. One threatening anyone with the audacity to intervene…and the alpha male on his neck. Then came the shooting of Kenosha, Milwaukee’s Jacob Blake on August 23rd–by an officer with the fear capacity of 6-year-old girl (and a disregard for the concept of de-escalation) only furthered the disillusionment of the police race relations. Both scenes were a true testament to the founding function of our police. It brings us back to the days when officers blended in with smiling white onlookers while black men and women were captured and hung from trees like ornaments. The uniform worn by their attackers–makes them the byproduct of this lands racial epidemia, perhaps Floyd and Blake are the Strange Fruit Billie Holiday once sung of too.

Those unable to grasp the horrors of being black in the Jim Crow era, are insensible and unbothered by the residuum of it today. The decedents of the 1700’s slave patrols—those tasked with capturing, punishing, and re-implementing oppression on to those whom they felt lacked recognizable humanity—singled out, hunted, restrained, therefore robbing their detainees of control over their physical safety. The reintroduction to the origins of policing times itself congruently with our president’s introduction into the philosophy of 1960’s segregationist Governor George C. Wallace, this mystery era when America was supposedly at its greatest.

As a San Jose State University journalism student researching policing practices, I’ve seen the salivating eyes of officers relishing inconspicuous moments where they know their conduct will either go unnoticed or disbelieved. I too have been harassed and dehumanized. I too have felt the fear they impose, particularly when being black.

But before I’d conflated the race history of law enforcement with today, I find it interesting to note that my earliest police harassment often drew me to the convictions of Mary Turner—a young black woman who resided in Brooks County, Georgia in 1918–found herself decrying the lawlessness of whites and authority in her rural town when a tirade of lynchings had occurred in the search for a white farmer’s murderer. I understood her need to follow common sense over conformity despite knowing her voice would mean little more than a death sentence. One day after her husband had been one of 16 men falsely lynched for the crime, Turner was kidnapped and tied by her ankles to a tree to be set ablaze. A member of that mob took a knife to her pregnant stomach, cutting an 8-month fetus from her and stomping it to death when it fell to the ground before barraging her body with bullets. She was left hung from the tree to send a message.

Interacting with police forced me to explore my relationship with fear. Director Steve McQueen–a black brit, told the Hollywood Reporter in 2018 something of a mantra: “Sometimes you are constrained by fear. I always try to make fear my friend, because I know fears’ coming. I say ‘hey fear, how you doin’—therefore you just bring it on.” Perhaps a sit down with tea may be the first step to confronting these blue boogeymen in dark corners.

Floyd’s murder had sparked a chemical response from police institutions across state lines—initiating what I like to call Operation Gaslight. First, a well calculated move to temporally halt a retort of BLUE LIVES MATTER by cleverly utilizing the public spotlight. Rebuking the abhorrent conduct of officers Derek Chauvin and his three partners, officers Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane, debulking them like a cancer from the institution. Some falling to a knee as they claim to be the 99%, the words BLACK Lives Matter pained through gritting teeth—while patiently waiting for Floyd’s death and subsequently inarguable anger to dissipate like a morning fog. But ingrained habits die hard.

Spare the Rod, Spoil the Cop (Part 3/4)

27 Dec 2020 Devon Thames

The REPUDIATION OF RACE: Modern day policing descended from the 1760’s initiation of the slave patrol—their fundamental function was to keep black slaves oppressed and in their place through apprehension, discipline and terrorization. To work on a slave patrol was considered a civic duty, much as policing is today. Slavery may have taken a bow to the 13^th amendment, but remnants of the institution are still allowed to persevere. African Americans are still disproportionately targeted more so than other races.

Surely there is still an advantage to race supremacy in police culture. Much like the recent incidents in Minnesota and South Carolina, news surfaced in June by The Medium, (a watchdog group) of retired and current San Jose Police officers utilizing a Facebook page to air racist comments towards Muslims and Blacks, those they viewed as the noxious variety. California is among 14 states identified by the FBI where officers have been observed actively participating in white supremacy groups. A disconcerting sort of Blue Nationalism where those inclined are cops first—and husbands, daughters, parents—or any other societal member—thereafter.

In 2016, white officers represented nearly 72% of law enforcement (and in 2019, 43% of the San Jose police), and though their numbers are declining, they’re still the largest racial group represented in policing. While that percentage may have altered, policing is still a white, male sport—and perhaps even more so a state of mind. Chauvin was white —and without rank, but years of experience, he dominated the scene of Floyd’s murder. (If slave patrollers failed in the slave duties, they faced retribution, something to consider when judging the actions of the other three officers.) But do non-white officers, through indoctrination, develop white cop state of mind. Decades post the civil war, a minimal amount of blacks were permitted to join exclusively white police departments because they were thought to control blacks better, but were not readily allowed to arrest whites. Police departments of today may be the greatest connection to the heinous traditions of the Jim Crow era—and may be the reason so much of the privileged cheer them on.

DEFUNDING THE POLICE is a logical aspiration—meant not to be the first but final step of resounding change for all. In 2019, the city of San Jose made the better part of its annual public safety budget (45%) rain on the police department’s luxury brick and mortar. Most cities budgets pay a hefty hostage fee too but I remember hearing a rumor back 2008—during the national recession—that while the bureaucratic department members were taking pay cuts and furloughs, our police union had negotiated pay raises. The concept of taking one for the team doesn’t apply when you’re a cop. This situation would lead to a huge pension battle between the department and our then mayor, Chuck Reed. It looked like the most calculated revolt of all time. Eligible officers rushed to retirement while others took up offers at neighboring departments eager to pick up the scraps. Officers saw demotions, recruitment declined and there had even been an allegation claiming an officer instructed a class of recruits to apply someplace else after finishing the academy.

Most importantly, morale declined. The attenuated department showed a decrease in response to calls, accenting their despair by mobilizing personalized RV campers in the department lots, claiming officers were so overworked, they used the convenience of an oversized, empty lot to sleep in their personal pricey RV’s. While pensions improved, salaries rose and city/department negotiations restored the quality of blue lives, the pricey mobile living facilities once meant to capture the attention of bleeding-heart citizens are still there.

But! I hear the reasons to defund and raise you some examples. In researching police calls conducted by the San Jose Police, calls involving a mentally ill subject became as cringe worthy as taking motor oil for a cold. On February 11, 2015, a distraught 23-year-old man choose the SJPD as his method of suicide, calling them to his home with the fabricated story of an intruder. It’s hard to contend that police can be more than a Jack Kavorkian invention to end life—despite CIT training, and I think law enforcement would agree, as long as the admission did not mean turning away extra government change.

I’ve watched San Jose Police Officer Chris Jolliff wrestle a clearly mentally ill, transient woman to the ground in handcuffs. I once called in a scene where a homeless man walked into a church and punched a man, unprovoked, sitting calmly next to him. Watching Officer David Sanchez (former SJPD) do what he was trained to do—as he pinned the disheveled, and clearly mentally ill man to the back of his car—felt sorely counterproductive. They needed help these officers were incapable of giving them—and death is not a remedy. Could a common-sense plan to reallocate funds by 2015 prevented Officer Wakana Okuma from shooting a bipolar 19-year-old wielding a painted drill in front of her father’s home? A number of these shooting end up in million-dollar settlements—monetary doses that could have served a prophylactic plan rather than an appraisal estimate on a person’s life. But even with recent changes implemented by departments across the country (San Jose included), the solution may continue to be a near miss—none of those dead should have met a cop that day.

AND THEN THERE’S THE KICKING AND SCREAMING. By law, cops can’t strike—but they can mobilize and delay, consequently monopolize public safety—a common practice synonymous with the Blue Flu, a concept very easily applied when the general public doesn’t know, understand, or care how you do your job. Delay of call response is a claim attributed to high call volume—and a low number of available officers. However, in San Jose, it’s never been uncommon to see too many officers at one incident, making some calls or debrief meetings look more like a holiday party. Call response for us is still an issue despite SJPD’s influx in hiring numbers. I recall one sunny afternoon, when a call went out over my radio while studying inside a coffee shop. One of the two officers dispatched (we’ll call him Officer Cano) sat feet away from me on the other side of glass. I watched him sip coffee for 18 minutes with a woman before he finally departed for the call. The reality is that delays happen because they’re permitted to, and it happens a lot, for both valid—and not so valid reasons.

San Jose is one of many corrupt police departments across the country—something I was warned about by a career journalist and those familiar with the department while attending university. Now being able to confirm it, I’m left to ask: Is that a bad thing—particularly to those governing the department? I’m sure members of the POA and those flipping burgers over a grill at officer hosted bar-b-ques I once had the pleasure of attending as a youth would say no—perhaps preferring to give “corrupt” a more inoffensive label. Maybe “pride”—and self-perseverance, the selling points drawing recruits through the door.

Chris Jolliff and David Sanchez are two very different officers, who conducted themselves contrastively (I’ve observed both and interviewed one). To generalize the quality of both—only to list them in the default category of ‘good cops’, would be a degradation to one, by the other—especially when not keen to their entire histories. Outside of this moment of clarity, the analysis of all departments and all officers cannot be ubiquitous but the expectations of them can be—and still a uniform remedy is called for.

Spare the Rod, Spoil the Cop (4/4)

27 Dec 2020 Devon Thames

San Jose Police officers Eliseo Malvido and Jonathan Koenig during an arrest in July, 2015.

Among the SOLUTIONS? If a national or local data base is implemented, this will just result in fewer sustained complaints being issued by internal affairs divisions—either out of fear for the reputation of the department or of the officer himself. The percentage of believed allegations against police officers are already disturbing low—2% of 887 allegations against SJPD were sustained in 2019, 5% of 770 in 2018, 10% of 697 in 2017—disturbing particularly if the public saw the level of evidence towards an officer’s guilt that is ignored. The disturbing part—in my opinion—is the cognizance officers have of their system. A department of officers will gossip about the latest cop to get a slap, and a group discussion of how better not to get caught and suffer a similar fate. Though sustainments are knowingly rare, no officer wants to be that cop that got sustained that year.

In San Jose, the Independent Police Auditor cannot override the final decision of Internal Affairs, though they claim they can run their disagreement to the mayor and the city manager (both of whom have no police experience) like quarreling children running to a teacher.

I’ve had an officer sustained and it is a bittersweet point of recognition in police misconduct. And what anyone from lawyers and judges, to community activist will tell you is that it is a ‘unicorn moment’ and unjustly rare. Reprimands are based on a preponderance of evidence (not beyond a reasonable doubt) and so much more. A sustainment has to be convenient, unavoidable, and uncostly to the department. As a city, we long for a community board void of political oversight and enough fire power to issue the stern judgement a conflict-ridden Internal Affairs cannot. Where conflict of interest isn’t a factor in the review of an officer’s conduct.

IN CONCLUSION, we live in a country that has abolished slavery, struck down segregation, given women the right to vote and (reluctantly) the right to choose—we are a country as slow to embrace common sense as we are to progression.

The first step is acknowledgement that we don’t know the ratio of bad cops to good cops (I oppose categorical titles in policing but I’ll address that in another blog post). There are far more bad cops than the law enforcement community would grant you to believe (ahem-gaslighting). I have learned after ten years of research that when I encounter a new officer, I need to be cautious—but fair.

Accountability implies the existence of integrity, and is a word police need NOT be bothered with. The supreme court and law makers need to be bombarded with the term police liability—and end Qualified Immunity. The medical industry has had its own ethical issues but doctors are held to the highest of standards and tend to make every professional decision as if their life depends on it—and it’s because their license most certainly does. The prestigiousness of the medical community is contingent on their ability to do a job few others are trained to accomplish. Nobody flies a flag for them when they leave instruments inside a body or argues that the bar for a doctor’s expectations should be lowered so we don’t discourage people from the profession. Doctors are praised for their ability to do a hard job right! So when it comes to police, a lowered bar will attract the less desirables (aka, liabilities). A place where departments— not tax payers—foot violation settlements. There is a world where police are capable of much more.

What I wish the public would do is educate themselves more about the actual practice of policing. I studied the SJPD for ten years because I loved the research, despite dealing with intimidation and some extremely dangerous officers. The police calls, the interviewing of officers, the explanation of the job through their eyes—all rare and enriching beyond reason. I appreciated learning how useless a criminal justice degree was or the proper procedure for off-duty officers to get out of traffic citations. Even when it came to the point of death threats from the department, it allowed me to see the true face of policing. I wish people would take the time to understand policing and understand it is not a field of nobility but of unprecedented moral turpitude—perhaps it takes a criminal to catch a criminal. I just wish this was admitted.

And lastly, bad cops are not the only problem. Judges, district attorneys, attorney generals (like Kentucky’s Daniel Cameron), the city attorneys who represent them, and unbothered city officials harbor in the back pockets of the police, ready to aid. It is the collective malfeasance that permits such misconduct, and if I had the ear of law enforcement, I’d urge those to embrace the retribution uproar as a road to constructive reform.

But in the process of doing this, one must realize the great injustice we impose upon police officers in our great nation. One never volunteers for discipline but cries out for it through conduct. The liability of police officers and departments needs to be higher. Too many allow ignorance to fill a void common sense leaves behind and those who know don’t want it to change—for the privilege of unlawfulness is too enticing. Limits need to set, laws of conduct established, consequences made clear, and an uncompromised ear needs to listen!

I would like to thank those who have risked their lives (the six-year-olds, the soccer moms, the college students, etc.), who lawfully protested and raised a voice this year in tribute to the unintentional Americans who lost theirs. From the slave ships, the nooses hung from fruit trees, to the Breanna Taylor’s and George Floyd’s. There will be more Strange Fruit to come.

Misconduct: The Jon Koenig Way

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