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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Why Are Americans Killing More Cops?

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Ted Rall

“Tough on Crime” Sentencing Laws Come Home to Roost

It sounds like the plot of the dystopian movie “Robocop”: policemen are getting shot like they’re going out of style.

Violent crime in general is decreasing. But more cops are being killed in the line of duty. According to the FBI, 72 police officers died under fire in 2011. That’s up 25 percent from 2010 and up 75 percent from 2008.

“The 2011 deaths were the first time that more officers were killed by suspects than car accidents, according to data compiled by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The number was the highest in nearly two decades, excluding those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995,” reports The New York Times.

According to a study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, “In many cases the officers were trying to arrest or stop a suspect who had previously been arrested for a violent crime.”

Why this spike in cop killing?

Experts blame a variety of factors for the carnage: the economic depression, low manpower due to budget cuts, policies that assign more cops to the most dangerous neighborhoods, and more aggressive patrolling of those areas, including “stop and frisk” stops of people the police deem suspicious. Maybe.

I think something else is missing in analyses of cop shootings: the motivation of the shooter.

Corporate media outlets cite the shooters’ prior records in order to imply: once a violent felon, always a violent felon. Sometimes that’s true. But not always. There’s more to it than that. Like law-abiding citizens, criminals employ rational decision-making strategies.

Harsh sentencing laws are killing police officers.

Imagine that you’re on parole in California, one of 24 states with “three strikes” sentencing laws. Let’s say you have two prior felony convictions. It doesn’t take much. One California man earned a “strike” for “violent assault”; he landed 25 years to life for stealing pizza from some kids. In Texas, a handyman who refused to refund $120.75 for a shoddy air conditioning repair landed his third strike; the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his sentence to life in prison with possible parole. And you can get two (or more) strikes from one criminal incident.

So imagine yourself in this situation:

Maybe you’ve got drugs in your automobile. Or you’re clean, but you’re not sure about what your passengers might be carrying. (In a car, one person’s contraband is everyone’s.) When you see flashing lights in your rearview mirror, you must choose:

Pull over and cooperate, knowing that you’ll get life behind bars?

Or do you take a terrible chance, shooting the officer and making a run for it? Harsh mandatory sentencing laws like “three strikes” make killing a cop a free gamble. Who knows? You might escape. If you get caught, the sentence will be no worse than if you’d done the right thing.

A joint study by the Long Beach Police Department and California State University—Long Beach found that “in the Los Angeles area (where there is a higher concentration of repeat offenders and three-strikes prosecution has been more actively pursued), there is a notable increase in…resisting and assaulting officers, and a significant increase (113% between 1996 and 2001) in two- and three-strikes crimes with a police officer victim.” A 2002 study by the National Institute of Justice found that three-strike laws “increase police murders by more than 40 percent.”

Another factor that authorities and “tough on crime” politicians fail to consider is how the increased militarization of civilian police forces dehumanizes them in the eyes of the public. Police outfitted in riot gear respond to peaceful protests attended by families with swinging batons and pepper spray. Traffic cops dress like they’re patrolling the Sunni Triangle rather than the suburbs, scowling at the taxpayers who pay their salaries as they sweat under their Kevlar vests.

When Princess Diana died, millions of Americans wept. Be honest. How do you feel when you hear that a cop has been shot to death? Odds are that you feel nothing at all.

During the first few years of the occupation, British officials ordered their forces to assume a less aggressive posture toward Iraqi civilians than their American counterparts. The Brits went light on the helmets and body armor, wearing uniforms that made them seem more like, well, policemen. Many eschewed sunglasses.

British casualty rates fell. Looking human, it turns out, is safer than protecting yourself. The thing is, killing is hard. The more human you appear, the more relatable you are, the harder it becomes, the guiltier your killer feels. Which presumably makes them less likely to kill again. (To make killing easier for its soldiers, the U.S. military deliberately reduces the available resolution on night-vision goggles, scrambling the appearance of the enemy to make him look alien.)

The more aggressive our policemen act, the more they look like military occupation troops than civilian peace officers, the easier it is for a gunman pull the trigger.

Remember this article the next time you get pulled over. Ask yourself: how do I feel? Odds are, the answer will involve a mixture of fear and contempt. Then imagine what you’d do if you were one arrest away from life in prison—and you had a gun.

(Ted Rall’s next book is “The Book of Obama: How We Went From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt,” out May 22. His website is tedrall.com.)

Kickstarter Update: $3000 Down, $37000 To Go

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Ted Rall

I’m about to go add some more rewards to future donors, so if you’ve been holding out, here are some chances to land some serious goodies. It’s going well, but I’m beginning to get nervous about the pace. Every bit counts, so don’t hold back if you think donating $5 or $10 is lame. It’s not.

Only in the New York Times

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Ted Rall

…would Brzezinski be called a leftie.

Here’s my letter to the editor of the New York Times Book Review:

To the Editor:

Jonathan Freedland’s comparative review of books by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Kagan is a perfect illustration of the relentless drive by corporate media outlets to push the ideological 50-yard line of politics to the right.

“As you’d expect,” Freedland writes, “there are big differences between the two.” (Setting the tone of this supposed smackdown is this sub-headline: “Brzezinski from the left and Kagan from the right agree that America should remain dominant.)

As you’d expect? Not if “you” is anyone who knows who these men are.

No doubt, Kagan represents the right.

But Brzezinski a leftist? It depends on what the meaning of “left” is, but by any objective contemporary or current standard, the policies he has promoted for four decades place him squarely in the mainstream, of the Republican Party.

Though once a proponent of détente with the former USSR, by the time he came to power as Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor Brzezinski had become a hawk. He initiated the huge defense build-up that continued under Reagan, planned the failed 1980 attempt to rescue the U.S. embassy hostages in Iran, and advocated U.S. arming and financing of radical Islamists in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan—the so-called “Afghan Trap” that would draw the Russians into their own Vietnam-like quagmire. Today we are living with the consequences of Brzezinski’s reckless policies—which liberals protested at the time.

Brzezinski went on to work for Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He officially endorsed Bush. In 1990 Time magazine described him as “a hardliner.” More recently, he backed the U.S. intervention in Libya, which American leftists opposed.

Freedland writes: “And yet the great surprise is how much they [Brzezinski and Kagan] agree with each other, especially on what matters.”

Considering that both men are and have long been men of the right in the standard neoconservative mold, the only surprise is that the editors of the Book Review thought their readers were unaware of recent history. On the other hand, no real leftist writer has appeared in your pages in ages. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that they exist?

Kickstarter Update

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Ted Rall

It’s a nice start: $2,508 raised so far. However, it’s not that long before the end of this campaign. Unless more contributions, especially some big ones, start rolling in, it’s not going to make it.

Therefore I’m adding additional incentive levels, including some really tasty ones. For example, I am seriously considering making the original artwork for my controversial “terror widows” and Pat Tillman cartoons among the rewards at the upper levels.

If you’re considering supporting the campaign, bear in mind that you don’t get charged at all unless I make the total $40,000 goal, and that the collapse of traditional print media enterprises means that the only way unusual and risky projects like this book about what a revolution would look like here can get done is with support of individual readers.

Thanks to all those who have donated.

And if you can’t donate, please tweet/Facebook/LinkedIn/Pinterest, etc.

Cartoon Auction Redux

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Ted Rall

After a hiatus I brought my cartoon auctions back last week. The winner paid $126, and will get to choose the topic of a cartoon. Not only that, he keeps the original artwork and has the right to reprint it online or in print in the publication of his choice.

Bidding was pretty active, so I thought I’d give everyone another chance.

This Is What Co-option Looks Like

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Ted Rall

This video was shot at Occupy the East End’s General Assembly in Sag Harbor, New York eight days ago. I have been active in many causes since I was a kid, but never have I witnessed such a brazen example of co-option.

PRESS RELEASE: Occupy the East End Rejects MoveOn.org Takeover Attempt

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Ted Rall

Please disseminate to everyone in and interested in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thank you.

APRIL 8, 2012—FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OCCUPY THE EAST END TO MOVEON.ORG:

WE WILL NOT BE HIJACKED!

We had been silent. We had hoped that the organizations that are attempting to co-opt and dilute the Occupy Wall Street movement would stop. The Occupy movements across the country are fighting for better lives of the 99% of Americans who work for a living. We had hoped that these interlopers would recognize that what they are doing is wrong.

But they have not done the right thing. Now it’s time to speak out and fight back.

A Democratic Party-affiliated organization, MoveOn.org, is actively attempting to hijack the Occupy Wall Street movement. This brazen co-option attempt began by mimicking the Occupy movement’s terminology and rhetoric, not to embrace it, but to channel our movement’s energies toward backing Democratic candidates and policies. MoveOn says: “MoveOn stands in solidarity with the brave protesters at Occupy Wall Street, but we’re not Occupy Wall Street and we’re not trying to become Occupy Wall Street.” If that’s true, why are they posting articles with titles like “Which Corporations Occupy Congress?” and sponsoring events with titles like “We Are The 99%?” This is “Astroturfing”* at its worst. MoveOn is creating confusion on purpose.

Ground Zero in MoveOn’s takeover attempt of Occupy is focused on the eastern end of Long Island in New York. Occupy the East End represents the OWS movement in the Hamptons and Shelter Island, which happen to be the most popular summer playground for the 1%.

Its most recent attempt to co-opt our movement is by scheduling a “99% Spring Training” by a MoveOn front group called “99% Spring” on April 15, 2012 at the same location and time where Occupy the East End has been holding its General Assemblies since the group formed in October of 2011. Occupy the East End delivered an unprecedented unanimous block—every OEE member at the GA issued a personal block—to a MoveOn representative who “asked” OEE to participate—after MoveOn had scheduled the event. The MoveOn rep refused to change the date or time and informed OEE that “you will be taken over [by MoveOn] whether you like it or not.”

We cannot be bought! We will not be co-opted!

Moveon.org is a political lobbying organization that routinely backs Democratic candidates and was originally funded by the billionaire George Soros. MoveOn.org is considered the “lead lobbying group” for Obama’s reelection campaign, and has overt ties to various Wall Street entities.

Occupy the East End is in no way affiliated with MoveOn.org, nor does it wish to become so. The attempt to take over OEE is a hostile takeover attempt to capitalize on the Occupy movement as a whole. Occupy Wall Street and Occupy the East End as a movement rejects the political system as a broken structure that needs to be overhauled from the bottom up.

Call To ACTION

Occupy the East End urgently requests the support of all Occupations and occupiers to rebuff this attempt to CO-OPT OUR movement. All Occupiers are asked to join us at the Windmill on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor, NY on April 15, 2012 at 12:30 pm to make your voice heard at the General Assembly of the REAL Occupy movement!

*Astroturfing: The creation of lobbying groups that appear to be separate from corporate interests, but that are actually funded by them. As opposed to “grassroots” political activism.

Here’s a Bill to Kill:

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jenmatsui

With SOPA and its evil twin PIPA dead in the water (or so it would seem) Congress is again using its powers of necromancy to unleash yet another internet killing bill.  If you thought government overreach at the behest of the corporations it serves had surpassed China and Iran in terms of surveillance, censorship and a downright contempt for freedom of speech and privacy, think again.  Just don’t put those thoughts in an e-mail, blog post or comment, Facebook update or Tweet because:

Why go to all the expense and bother of wiretapping your own citizens when you can enlist Google, Twitter or even You Tube to inform Stasi-like on users and account holders?  And what better way than enlist the expertise of private sector cyber sleuths to monitor your ‘like’  of Cats on Roombas videos (gateway viewing for al-Qaeda beheading videos) and/or intercept your ‘sexts’ and “modify those communications” (to stop terrorists from breeding?).  All the steps necessary, in other words, to pre-emptively thwart an adulterous, self-harming, Jihadist school shooter with outstanding parking tickets and Hezbollah connections, who “hates rainy days” (code phrase for “America”) from flying a hijacked airliner into the executive bathrooms of Goldman Sachs and/or downloading unauthorized episodes of Dexter from pirate sites originating in Estonia.  Or to be more specific, they want to take down Wikileaks and ‘Anonymous’ with the cooperation of companies who already profile your pathetic existence for advertisers hawking dubious boner boosters.

If, like most Americans, you think that a bill with disturbing, far reaching consequences for anyone with an internet connection isn’t going to effect your online activities, (“The government is welcome to peruse my Pinterest album of motivational throw pillows – it’s not like they are going to find anything incriminating there”) you might want to consider a recent SCOTUS ruling allowing invasive strip searches for “felonies” ranging from a broken muffler to multiple child murder.  Even if your private parts don’t perform double duty as handy conveyances for Molotov cocktails or portable meth labs, humiliation, as applied by the web masters of slut shaming sites like ‘The Dirty’ is now government policy.  Think about that the next time you want to say, board an aircraft, or more criminally, ‘occupy’ a patch of Wall Street pavement.  Unless you are willing, of course, to conduct your life along the lines of a lobotomized, chemically castrated member of a purity cult under house arrest.  In other words, like a real American.

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