Cop pepper-spraying protesters is symbol for arrogant police culture

By David McElroy · November 21, 2011

You’ve probably seen this picture or seen video of the same scene. Campus police at the University of California at Davis blasted pepper spray at peaceful student protesters Friday. Many people are outraged. Many are calling for the firing of the officers. I’d like to step back and take a broader perspective with three points.

First, this incident proves again that photography matters. In many places, police arrest people for taking pictures of them doing their jobs. In some places, it’s even specifically against the law. The attempts of police, politicians and prosecutors in some places to stop photography of them are wrong, whether it’s through arrests or intimidation.

If the pictures and video from the UC-Davis incident didn’t exist, this would be a non-story. We wouldn’t be talking about the issue. It would be almost as though it didn’t happen. This is why it’s important to strongly press the case that photography is not a crime. (You’ll find plenty of stories at that site of police and other public officials attempting to stop photography that they don’t like.)

Second, these sorts of incidents — and far worse — go on almost every day, but we don’t know about them because there is such a strong “support the police” culture in this country. The people who are experiencing oppression, threats and intimidation from police are mostly those who are powerless to do anything about it. They tend to be poor, black, brown or undereducated. They tend to be people who either don’t know their rights or know they won’t be believed if they complain.

In this case, a bunch of middle-class white college kids were targeted — with plenty of evidence. If we wouldn’t be talking about this incident without photos and video, imagine how much worse it would be if you were a poor urban black male and it’s your word against a police officer’s. You wouldn’t stand a chance and you’d know that. Is it any wonder so many of them are scared of police?

Third, this isn’t a problem of “a few bad eggs.” This is the modern police culture. This is the way they’re trained. There have always been some people attracted to law enforcement because they have the kind of attitude that lends itself to believing, “I have a gun and a badge, so you will obey me,” but the culture makes it very clear that a large proportion of police believe they’re above the law — and that they should be allowed to do pretty much anything they believe is right. Many of them believe that people’s rights are irrelevant, and they’re willing to lie to make it appear they’re following the law. These people are just as evil as the criminals they supposedly oppose.

Since the incident Friday, many are calling for the firing of police Lt. John Pike, the officer in the photo above. You can sign a petition here or see a Facebook group about it here. And the university has suspended a couple of the officers while the case is being investigated, although police were still defending what they did.

I certainly don’t have a problem with firing the officers who did it, because it can at least send a message to the others on the job. Maybe. If it’s like most such incidents, the officers would be rehired by other departments immediately. The police culture protects its own — because they don’t believe they’re doing anything wrong.

And that’s the key. Firing a few officers here or there isn’t going to change things. It’s a systemic problem. Police have to learn that they’re not above the law. They have to learn that they’re going to be consistently punished if they lie or abuse people’s rights. They have to know that complaints against them are going to be taken seriously, not ignored by people more concerned with the appearance of “procedure” than with justice.

The police culture has to change. I don’t know how to do that, because I think the lousy attitudes ultimately come from the public. The vast majority of the public seems to vaguely believe that police should be supported in almost all situations. Especially in you’re in a Republican district, the safest thing you can say is that you support police and want to spend even more money on law enforcement — for higher salaries and new toys for them to “play” with.

I’m not in a lot of danger from police, because I’m a white middle-class guy, but even I get nervous with them these days. A friend of mine made the same point to me over the weekend. Until most people demand accountability and courtesy from some of the thugs who we’re giving guns and badges to, this behavior isn’t going to stop. It won’t affect those of us in our nice, safe, comfortable suburbs, but don’t be surprised when crime gets even worse as more people in minority communities turn against police.

I’m glad to see the outrage against what these thugs did Friday to some white middle-class students. I’d just like to see the same level of outrage when the victims are poor blacks or Hispanics.

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I’m in the McDonald’s near my house, sitting near the play area. There’s one little girl — maybe 5 years old — who’s here with her father. He’s about my age, so he’s older than the typical father of a 5-year-old. Even though she’s the only kid here, the girl is giggling and having fun by herself. She periodically cries out, “Daddy, look!” And then she shows off something she thinks is impressive. Then, just a moment ago, she called out very sweetly, “Daddy?” He patiently said, “Yes, sweetheart.” And then she said, “Daddy, I love you so much!” And then she went back to playing as her father looked on with happiness and love.

When I first discovered the idea of unschooling, it was so radical that I had trouble finding people who even knew what it was. Today, the idea is mainstream enough that major media outlets sometimes cover the topic in a favorable way. The Sunday newspaper supplement called Parade had a strongly favorable article about unschooling a couple of weeks ago which explained what it is and how it’s different from homeschooling. It’s less structured. There’s no curriculum. There’s plenty of flexibility. And there are no tests and grades. (Most people today are shocked to learn that testing and grading didn’t exist in schools through history until the last couple hundred years.) If you want your children to think for themselves instead of following the herd mentality that pervades every school I’ve been part of, you owe it to yourself — and to your kids — to consider taking control of your children’s development back from governments. Just because you and I survived institutional schools doesn’t mean it’s the wisest choice. Start by reading the Parade article. It might open your eyes.

In the Birmingham suburb of Hueytown, the Golden Gophers of Hueytown High School had just defeated the Eufala Tigers in the second round of the state playoffs Friday night. It’s not a game that will mean a lot to anybody outside those two communities, but it meant everything to the players and coaches involved. After the game, Hueytown defensive coordinator Trent Campbell was celebrating with his victorious players when he noticed Eufala offensive lineman Dallas Ingram distraught and alone. Campbell left his players to console the distraught Ingram and photographer Dennis Victory caught photos of the pair together. “My reaction was to go see about him, because I’ll see my guys on Sunday and next week and the rest of their high school careers, but that’s a young man we watched on film for a week and studied and he’s a fantastic player,” Campbell said later. “And it wasn’t too long ago when I played my last high school football game and I know what that feeling is and you sort of never forget that. I went to tell him what a great player I thought he was and what a great game I thought they played and I wish nobody had to lose that night because it was an incredible game.” This is what sports at the high school level should be about. Winning is great and winning is fun. But humanity and decency last longer.

I have changed radically about some things over the years, but probably none of those changes have been as great as the ways that I feel about people who are viewed as evil or criminal. When I was young, I was eager to see criminals or foreign political enemies killed. Today, I don’t view such people though rose-colored glasses and I don’t view them as blameless folks who are going to turn their lives around if we just think happy thoughts. But I can’t celebrate the death of anybody, even if he might deserve it in some ways of thinking about it. Even if it’s sometimes necessary to kill someone — and those cases are often debatable — I regret the death of someone who will now never have a chance to discover love and change his life. There are some evil people in this world, but I can’t celebrate their deaths.

There was a time when I was idealistic enough to believe that if a writer expressed his thoughts clearly and simply enough, any bright and honest person would understand his point. I know better now. We all bring so many unconscious assumptions to the things we read that we often see what we expect to see instead of what the writer intended. This is incredibly frustrating to me as a writer, but I’m trying more and more to just say what I need to say — as clearly as I know how — and then ignore the inevitable responses which show that others perceived something which was not intended. I have to write for those who “get” where I’m coming from, not for those who see my words through personal filters that change my meaning. I hope my intentions are clear to you and I hope what I write can be useful to you, but if not, maybe my work just isn’t right for you. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

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