Guarding Against the Guardians: Seeking Sanctuary From Civil Servants

Summary

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So in this context, after another unconcealable incident of police iron-fist and deadly force in the Black community and other communities of color, it goes like this. First, there is the unavoidable shock, shared grief, righteous anger and outcry against the brutal injustice of it all, and a call for accountability and justice from the family and community. Then, there comes the problematic press conferences, a media "descent" into the community, seeking persons and pockets of empathy and understanding for the hard and dangerous work officers do protecting us from the thieves, thugs and barbarians constantly "culled" from among us.

There is also the watchful and worried waiting of the community with an understandable mixture of instructive memory, continuing hope and ongoing apprehension of the outcome. And finally, it comes: a "discovery" after due deliberation that in spite of how things looked in the heavy heat and deep hurt of the moment, and in spite of eye-witness verification and video evidence,, prior patterns of "engagement", histories of officer violence and a gross and growing tally of unarmed casualties, all was done according to policy, if not procedure and the officers are hereby exonerated and returned to the community to repeat the offenses.

if we want to break this cycle of police killing, constant grieving and an increasing sense of inevitability and impotence in the face of officially-sanctioned deadly force, then, we must as Malcolm reminds us, think clearly, critically and with a deep and defiant commitment to self-determinatioa The death of each of the men and those in every city must be understood in the context of a country which is profoundly racist in spite of its self-medication on post-racial myths. The nation-wide killing with savage and excessive force against persons of color, especially Black men, is not simply the result of rogue cops who come to the community to brutalize and kill. Nor is it simply a problem of a "contagious fire" mentality that makes several policemen fire 47 or more bullets at a Black target after they hear or see a fellow officer fire. After all, even if there is "contagious" fire in the communities of color, it is clearly "quarantined" in White ones.

The regularity of these killings in our community and our seemingly inability to do anything effective or lasting about them can over a period of time, dispirit, dull and defeat us. [...] to misread the real roots and widespread character of the concepts, attitudes, policies and procedures which undergird and inform police practice can lead to a communal sense of impotence, fatalistic assumptions about the power and permanence of the system as it is, and the emergence of groups and conversations organized around indicting the community as complicit in its own abuse by the police.\n

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Guarding Against the Guardians: Seeking Sanctuary From Civil Servants

The fourth police killing in four months in Inglewood brings to mind a series of sobering thoughts about the state of things concerning what is strangely, yet commonly, called "police/community relations", but seems so often about ongoing police violence, a kind of continuous reckless and often depraved disregard for the life, rights and rea...

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