Law enforcement has become a war between police and the American people

Who pulls a gun during a traffic stop for an expired tag? Our police do.

Police respond to protests in Ferguson, MO, in 2014.

This is the kind of thing I do these days:  This morning I sat down and watched some of the hearing by the House Administration Committee about the failures of the Capitol police during the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.  I thought to myself, well, I should keep abreast of what they’re doing to protect the Capitol from another attack. 

Reasonable thing to be looking into, right?  Everyone seems to agree that the response of the Capitol police to the riot on January 6 was inadequate, a failure.  Over 140 officers injured.  One killed.  Capitol breached.  Offices ransacked.  A total disaster.

Appearing before the committee (which was scattered here and there using Zoom) was Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton.  Distinguished looking guy.  Huge wall of law books behind him, lending him an extra official-seeming gravitas.  Big American flag hanging next to him.  Everyone on the committee treating him with great deference.  I looked him up.  He’s been the inspector general for the Capitol police since 2019.  He served in an “acting” capacity in 2018, and before that, he was Assistant Inspector General for Investigations since 2006.  Prior to working in those capacities, he served for 21 years in the Secret Service, including stints at the White House and the foreign missions branch.  During his time in the Secret Service, he was also a firearms instructor and a “Counter Assault Team” instructor.  A guy who knows his stuff when it comes to law enforcement, in other words.

So what did this distinguished gentleman do today?  Well, he told the congress of the United States that what the Capitol police were “ill prepared” and “did not act on intelligence,” and among the things they need in the future is an efficient bureaucracy that will “more clearly document channels for the distribution of intelligence up to the Chief of Police, down to line officers and across departmental entities."

And the solution to all of their problems, he said, was that the Capitol police force needs is to be more militarized than it already is.  Apparently, the biggest failure of the Capitol police was that their “Civil Disturbance Unit” only functioned on what he called an “ad hoc basis.”  Officers were assigned to it as needed.  Training was similarly “ad hoc.”  If the congress wants to improve the Capitol police for the future, they should invest in training.  “Training has got to be taken seriously, it can’t be an afterthought,” he said.  He told the congress that the Civil Disturbance Unit should be a “permanent stand-alone force,” and that they should adopt incentives to attract officers to what he called the “elite unit” that would be formed and “professionalized.”  He specifically mentioned enhanced pay, appearing to stop himself before he called it “combat pay.”

You know what this guy was talking about, right?  He wants the Capitol police to have its own full-time SWAT team.  He wants them to be trained and armed like the military-style police units we regularly see arrayed to counter street demonstrations against police violence.  He wants cops wearing bulletproof vests and combat helmets with face shields and arm and leg protections, cops with heavy shields and automatic weapons, ready to go to war the next time demonstrators show up at the Capitol.

Have a look at the photo at the top of this story.  It shows the way cops appeared in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, responding to demonstrations after police had shot Michael Brown in the street.  You will recall how that happened.  A Ferguson police officer observed Michael Brown and a friend walking down the middle of the street and ordered them to walk on the sidewalk.  When they refused to follow his order, the officer noticed a box of cigarillos that “matched” a box of cigarillos he had been told were recently stolen from a convenience store.  When the police officer attempted to arrest Michael Brown, there was a struggle.  The policeman’s weapon discharged, wounding Brown.  When Brown ran away, the officer pursued him, continuing to shoot at Brown.  He killed Michael Brown when the 18 year old turned and “charged” at him, according to the officer.  The officer was white.  Michael Brown was black. 

I used the photo from Ferguson because it shows the way police were dressed and armed in response to a demonstration by unarmed protesters against the police killing of Michael Brown.  Have a look at them.  There’s an armored personnel carrier in the street.  At least one sniper is atop the armored personnel carrier aiming his rifle into the crowd.  Those guys in camouflage pants and desert style boots carrying fully-automatic M-4 rifles aren’t combat troops in Iraq or Afghanistan.  They are civilian cops in Ferguson, Missouri. 

Here is another photo showing police officers advancing on a crowd during a demonstration by Black Lives Matter protesters.

See their military combat boots?  See their military-style wrap-around sunglasses, and their body armor and upper-arm armor?  See the M-4 rifle?  See the little tank-like armored remote-controlled robotic vehicle they’re using as protection?

See the brick apartment building in the background, and what appears to be a slant-roofed wood frame building that looks like it’s part of a restaurant?  They’re not going to war in Syria, or Iraq, or Afghanistan against foreign armies or terrorists.  Those cops are going to war in the good old U.S.A. against American citizens.

This is what the Inspector General of the Capitol police was calling for this morning at the hearing.  This is what he wants defending the Capitol:  heavily armed full-time “professionalized” Civil Disturbance Unit police officers who receive “enhanced” pay checks to motivate them to go into battle against American citizens.

All of the congressmen and women listening to him during the hearing, Republicans and Democrats alike, nodded along with his recommendations.  He was such an authoritative figure, so “professional,” so “experienced” with all of the years he spent in the Secret Service and his years as a “Counter Assault Instructor.”  The congressional committee will no doubt issue a report recommending that his advice be followed, and the congress will no doubt provide the money for all of the new gear to be bought, and they’ll bring in “professional” experts to “train” the Capitol police and arm them correctly.

And then the Capitol police will be just like the police department of Ferguson, Missouri, or Minneapolis, Minnesota, or New York City, or any of the other countless cities around the country that have supplied SWAT teams and “Counter Assault” teams and all of the rest of the military-style police units with military grade armored vehicles and military grade body armor and military grade firearms and military grade grenade launchers to shoot tear gas grenades and military grade combat helmets and military grade Oakley wrap-around sunglasses all of these fools think they need to wear to look all scary and macho because of course your M-4 rifle and your Glock 9 millimeter handgun and your M-79 grenade launcher and your sniper rifle and your armored personnel carrier aren’t going to work if you’re not outfitted in properly scary military grade Oakley sunglasses.  Everybody knows that.

This is where we are folks.  We have police officers who stop citizens for major crimes like having an expired license plate, or walking down the middle of the street and being suspected of stealing a box of  cigarillos, or using a counterfeit $20 bill to pay for some candy and a soft drink at a convenience store, who then proceed to kill these citizens they have stopped for committing those major offenses against law and order. 

We call these law enforcement officials police officers, but they are really soldiers in a huge nationwide army arrayed against the citizens who pay their salaries to “keep the peace,” who for some reason feel free to instead shoot them in the back or in the torso or in the face or kneel on their necks or use choke holds to squeeze the air out of them and stop their hearts and cause them to die or they beat them with clubs and fire rubber bullets and tear gas grenades at them and arrest them and throw them into the backs of trucks where they die or they arrest them and throw them into jail cells where they die or they beat the living shit out of them and then claim the accused stumbled and hit his face on the stairs.

But we know why they do it, don’t we?  They do it because they are “official” and “professional” and “trained” “officers” and the rest of us are their fucking enemy. They’re not there to “protect and serve.”  They’re there to go to war.  They dress like it, they carry weapons of war, they are trained for it, and they’re paid tax dollars to do it.  And when they don’t do it well enough, there are always new “experts” like the Inspector General of the Capitol police to come along and give testimony recommending that they be armed more and trained more and paid more and motivated more and professionalized more and militarized more because that’s our answer to everything isn’t it?  We don’t like the way people are driving around with expired license plates?  Well, goddamnit, send some heavily armed troops out there into the streets to pull them over and if they try to protest or fail to follow orders, then fucking pull out your gun and shoot them.

This representative of Washington D.C. officialdom in a suit sitting in front of a bunch of law books and a huge American flag testifying before the congress was a trainer of “counter assault teams” for the fucking Secret Service.  The cop in Minnesota who pulled her gun instead of her taser and shot Daunte Wright was a trainer for the Brooklyn Center police department in charge of teaching rookie cops how to go about the serious business of making traffic stops for expired tags.  That’s what she was doing when she shot and killed a man for having an expired license plate.

This is the America we’re living in, folks.  These are the people we’ve got policing our streets and keeping all those dangerous protesters at bay for us.  They’re doing it in our name.