Now I can see you looking at your screen wondering “what is this guy talking about”? Bare with me for a moment. Last week I was scrolling through memecenter (a fun memes page) getting a good laugh at all the silly things you can find there and then I stumble upon this:
*http://www.memecenter.com/fun/4227847/everything-is-better-in-east-germany
I can't corroborate the information in these pictures but the general idea it's very interesting: why would you shoot somebody eleven times, all in the chest, when you obviously have other options? The fact that you need to go all the way to Germany to find the second example (a positive one) is just a coincidence or could there be more to it? In Michael Brown case, officer Darren Wilson shoot twelve rounds at an unarmed 18 year old boy. He was not indicted, which tell us the Grand Jury thought this was, lets say, appropriate for the situation. Since there were a lot of dark zones in what happened, the government decided to purchase body cameras for law enforcement officers. They hope that filmed evidence will help in the future and will deter police from using excessive force.
The first week of December prove this measure to be insufficient without yet been tested. Officer Daniel Pantaleo was no indicted on Eric Garner homicide. In this case Garner was approach by the police for been, allegedly, selling loose cigarettes. After a short discussion, Pantaleo proceed to apply a chokehold to Mr Garner bringing him to the floor. Garner keep saying that he couldn't breath and that turned out to be truth, he died by neck compression according to city medical examiners. In simple words, it was an homicide. The whole thing was recorded by a friend of Garner. The video is available online, you can judge by yourself. The point is, the video didn't help, the violence was there, it didn't change anything on the aftermath.
I've heard “white privilege” and talks about a racist bias justice system. That all might be truth but lets go back to the memecenter image. Wilson shoot twelve rounds (one more than the officers in the first image). Wouldn't half of those rounds aim to the legs suffice to stop Brown (like they did in the second image)? Pantaleo took Garner to the ground after a couple of minutes discussion about selling or not some cigarettes, maybe a longer discussion and some patience could have avoid such a tragic outcome, right?
I'll point out the fact that poor neighborhoods have (or it seems to me) a high percentage of black inhabitants. If we accept that poverty have a direct relation with high crime rates, it seems only obvious to assume that black people encounters much more trouble with the authority than, lets say, the white inhabitants of a suburban neighborhood. Now two things, one: that doesn't explain the happy trigger way of acting displayed by the different police departments. You have to adapt to the different working environments as a law enforcer, but that “adapting” needs to be better than hug the withe, shoot the black. Two: that statement (black criminals, white angels) seems to be a little too easy to make, there's got to be more to it than just statistics.
Now, the CIA torture report. The Senate intelligence committee filed a report this week. It shows that the CIA was using medieval, disgusting, awful torture techniques in their interrogations across the globe. Things as rectal feeding, sleep deprivation and threats to the detainees relatives. The report also claims that 26 of the 119 detainees were wrongfully held. One of this wrongly accused died during the interrogation. CIA lied about this for a fair amount of time to everybody, even their director. Of course this caused a political storm with accusations flying towards Bush administration and others, but what really interest me is this: I just read that a poll from the Washington Post and ABC news shows that 59% of Americans think the CIA actions were justified 1. Richard B. Cheney went on NBC's “Meet the press” a couple of days ago and gave this definition of torture: “It’s what nineteen guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters did to three thousand Americans on 9/11” 2. In other words, torture is justified because it doesn't even compare to the pain the Americans experience and continue to experience after 9/11. Do you see now the link between police brutality and CIA torture already? No? Let me help you.
Black people live in poor neighborhoods for reasons far more complexes than just for the fact that they're black. Being poor or criminal is not a racial disease, is a social problem that has more to do with the rest of the society than with the poor people, regardless of the color of the skin. In the same way, being Arab or Muslim doesn't doom you to be terrorist. Growing in a part of the world where the borders, politics and society have been decided and continues to be decided by people that have little or nothing to do with your culture, may just influence you to take bad decisions. Making a social and political problem a pure religious problem is as stupid as making it a racial problem. Would a white person get shoot by the police as easily as a black, latino or asian one? Would torture be justified if the detainees were white americans or europeans? The issue is racial but is also ethical. Otherness might be the concept to explore.
It feels as in the U.S. there's a large number of reasons why killing somebody is alright and might even be a good thing. Shooting a boy who plays with a toy gun because you're scared is as bad as waterboarding a suspect in the name of usable information. Eliminating a threat without even trying to understand it's nature is wrong. Brown could have live and maybe be in jail now. Some of the information obtain through torture might have been obtain anyway through standard interrogation process, but how can we know now? There are many angles to these problems but one thing they share is that American culture doesn't seem to think life is important anymore. They seem to think that we can dispose of people in the name of a greater good, this be a safer city or a safer country. Not using your gun and been able to do your job without loosing you humanity should be the real acts of courage, not the opposite.
Again, I'm not American, maybe I'm very wrong about all this but you guys scare me, for the future, for the people, for what's right. I can't breath and I hope nobody is going to torture me because I say it.
2.http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/torture-dick-cheney-minute
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