Create Strategies for Eliminating
Police Brutality
and
Police Killings
Notes from Meetings
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Strategies for Eliminating Police Brutality
and Police Killings Teleconference
Notes
August 21, 2016
Table of Contents
Reading Materials Discussed on the Call
Summary Institutional and Structural Racism and Classism
Police Brutality and Police Killings
CIT Trainings
Psychiatrizing Police, Psychiatrizing Society
21st Century Policing in Action
General Discussion on the Call
Platform Creation
Next Steps
Create Page on Website for Educational Resources.
Sharing Information Next Surviving Race Call Information
Next National Public Forum Call Information
Reading Materials Discussed on the Call
President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. 2015. Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
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We agreed that we needed to write a response to the report. Below is an early draft of that response and a platform that is being created. If you want to contribute to our efforts, please get involved, you can access our developing website here: http://survivingrace2014.wixsite.com/platformdevelopment/eliminating-police-brutality.
Summary
We believe people ought to have a voice in re-structuring the institution of public policing. We know it is impossible for those who have been killed and in some situations, for people who have been seriously injured by police, to participate in this process.
It is our assessment that at best, the Task Force report reflects a mainstream response and a mainstream analysis of what the problems are.
It is our position that the Task Force report is an attempt to make people feel better, like they can say, ‘Look we’re doing something’. However, the report does not address the main problems in policing in the 21st Century.
The avenues for next steps suggested by the report do not address the problems we see, or calm our concerns, for the future of policing.
It is our conclusion that the report is not going to help us in the long run—it is just a Band-Aid.
What we want an answer to is, ‘how does this report get to structural racism?’.
We do not find the report acknowledges racism and discrimination against people who have been psychiatrically labeled, as underlying roots of police brutality and police killings.
It is our position that until police forces unabashedly address institutional and structural racism and discrimination against people who are psychiatrized (by exposing the truth about psychiatry), in the day-to-day activities of police across this country, there will not be any reconciliation for lives lost to police violence thus far, and more lives will be taken in the continued brutal killings that will go unchecked, in the future.
It seems, no matter how obvious racism and discrimination are, racism and discrimination is never pinned on White leadership and/or the White power structure.
It was discussed on the call that when a Person of Color speaks out for themselves and says that the White power structure needs to take responsibility, a fraudulent idea of ‘reverse racism’ is used to divert attention from the problems of the White power structure.
The people on the call are from diverse backgrounds, and included non-People of Color. Those on the call agreed that it is important that White people hold White people accountable for racism.
We believe that White people taking responsibility for individual racism and structural racism is necessary to truly move forward.
There is bias built into our culture and it needs to be out-rooted.
We are asking for people to take responsibility for White racism in law and order.
Society seems to have little problem generalizing the actions of one to an entire group when the one who commits an unacceptable act is from an oppressed group. Structural racism, however, easily gets swept under the rug.
We are not sure if all non-People of Color will listen, but we are hoping to reach them. We want to be clear. Police brutality and killings are not just individual acts this is organized behavior.
Police brutality and killings of people with psychiatric histories remains a major problem that we need to address. But what do we do about it? We must create a platform, based on our perspectives. We can discuss it. No one has the answer to stop the police from brutalizing and killing us. If anyone does have it, please speak up, now!
We know there is structural racism and discrimination at the roots of the violence, brutality, and killings. We know structural racism is not going to be broken down over night. We have to take these steps. We have to not be polite and talk about these issues.
We have to be clear. Police brutality and killings is an injustice. Society needs to understand, that sometimes, when police come to arrest someone for a perceived involvement in a crime, they kill us. But for people whom are involved with the police not because of a criminal reason, but because they are there to ‘help’ us, they also kill us.
We cannot eradicate or eliminate racism overnight, or psychiatrization or psychiatry overnight. It’s structural racism. We have to chip at it. People want recommendations on what to do.
At any given moment, anyone’s loved one can be killed by police, or involuntarily institutionalized. Sometimes people may not be where you’re located and a national response is required.
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Institutional and Structural Racism and Classism
People on the call are appalled by the report which we see as dangerous to us, people who have psychiatric histories specifically, and broadly dangerous to people of Color, and people from other oppressed groups. The report contained language such as ‘community policing’ as if it were an ultimate solution. The use of this type of language glosses over the real issues of racism, with nice, comforting language, about how the police are treating people in communities.
It is our position that simply adding concepts of community policing into the operations of police departments will not deal with the real issues of racism.
There is also a concern that not addressing so-called ‘broken windows policing’ disproportionately effects People of Color, and we see this as a problem that goes unaddressed.
The language presented further problems. Using the term ‘guardian’ as opposed to ‘warrior’ (pp. 11, 15) is important, especially since there are so many people who, upon coming back from war, join law enforcement. However, the attempt to move imagery of a police officer toward someone who has a ‘guardian mindset” (pp. 11, 25, 85, and 89), creates a sentiment that their actions are ‘for our own good’ with a kind of veiled benevolence that hides the distrust in the decision-making rights of others.
This ‘guardian mindset’, in our estimation, will quickly lead to infantilization and thicken the patriarchy, a warped new extended version of authority, ‘police-officer-knows-best’. This guardian mindset that is being promoted, does not again, address root causes of conflicts, including race, class, and power.
Further, the Task Force prescribed that, “The vision of policing in the 21st century should be that of officers as guardians of human and constitutional rights” (p. 45). This causes fear for in people, for people who may be involved with the police in future scenarios.
We have a fundamental concern that there is not universal understanding of constitutional right, let alone human rights, by every police officer and that their guardian mindset will allow individual police officers to set limits on such rights, as a benevolent protector.
Policing Police
We are alarmed that there is no mandate from the Task Force for oversight of police institutions, outside of the police department, themselves.
It is clear to us that the police cannot even police themselves (think about the high rate of non-seatbelt-use compliance (President’s Task Force, 2015, p. 67). If we cannot trust police to obey the basic laws the average person is routinely charged with violating, how can we trust the police to do anything?
The police cannot police themselves. Minimally, there must be independent investigations of every alleged incident of police brutality, police killings, and what the report calls ‘police involved shootings’.
If Police can get away with killing us what makes anyone think they going to stop killing us? External consequences and sanctions, including holding people who are police to the same standards as every other person, must be put in place.
An independent oversight body is required. The police cannot police themselves and come up with policies. Any policies designed by police will based on the self-interest of the police. These policies are not what is best for communities. These policies are not going to protect any one, and they are not going to protect People of Color, at all.
An entirely independent oversight body over the police and developing the policies for how to respond to police violence is necessary. Until we address why this violence is occurring, the violence is going to continue, and racism is why there is violence.
Don’t be fooled. The police do not want to change. If DoJ makes them have accountability—then perhaps things will change. But now, when a police officer shoots somebody—has a rep—blatantly lies and says something occurred and it didn’t—or is involved in covering up what happened—there is no accountability. Accountability might mean that someone doesn’t just get suspended with pay, they get fired from the police force. Now, too often, if there is not ‘sufficient’ evidence, they walk and go back to their jobs.
How would it change, if a police officer was ordered to time for violence s/he committed against some. Might the next police pause and say, oh I might go to jail if I do this?
We ought to live in a society where police, police everybody the same, Once we come to that, that’s when as a society, we will get better. If not—if it is maintained as it exists now, where we police ‘these’ people this way, and other people, we look away.
We have to address racism but in that we have to say, no we’re going to treat everybody the same – it doesn’t matter a person’s color, disability, gender, and importantly by divide, bank account–we have to treat people all the same.
We also need to address the allegiance police have to each other.
Sometimes, police brutality and police killings is blind to race, in terms of Black officers killing Black people—as was said by one person on the call “because she didn’t see color, they see their blue brother”.
Police, sheriff’s departments, prosecutor, coroners, in the criminal justice system there is a structure a White Power Structure that exists over it all. This structure corrupts, it is racist, it is destroying people’s communities and ending people’s lives.
We need society to honestly look at itself and get people to put an end to these travesties.
Police are too busy militarizing themselves to adequately take stock of their actions. It is no coincidence police have military weapons. We are asking that society deal with the realities that policing varies based on the economics of a neighborhood. Would you see that up in a rich neighborhood? No it’s in the hood. Police (or the politicians who control them) wouldn’t think of militarizing police in a rich neighborhood – it wouldn’t happen.
We have to be honest. Police need to admit it’s by design. Until they want to change, they are not going to change . . . . The history is not hard to find. Police, policing themselves will ultimately create opportunities for more police violence, brutality, and killings.
Stop Psychiatric Profiling
There are multiple killings of people with psychiatric histories by police. They are not stopping killing us. They are, it feels to us, as if they are paying out millions of dollars all over the country to train people in ways to better ‘defend’ why they are killing us.
Psychiatric profiling is a reality that we are up against as a population of people. It was pointed out on the call, that all people ought to be familiar with the Baltimore Department of Report (https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/883366/download).
On page 81 the Department of Justice talks about psychiatric profiling.
We must eliminate psychiatric profiling, not justify and expand it.
Additionally, we have to stop people from using rhetoric of “dangerous mentally ill” when discussing people.
We need to be responding to people who use the possibility of a psychiatric history as part of national security issues/background checks/etc. People need to realize a national database of people who have been psychiatrized is what will stem from this rhetoric.
People everywhere are spewing this kind of discriminatory misinformation, and it is fueling society’s acceptance of police killing and brutalizing people with psychiatric histories.
People will speak out about all types of discrimination, but when it comes to ‘mental health’, it is as if anything that happens to us is somehow justifiable. Sentiments such as ‘those people need treatment, they need psychiatric drugs’ prevail and that’s not always—if even ever—what is needed. We have to spell these issues out in this platform, then, we can give it to them.
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Police Brutality and Police Killings
While the Task Force report addressed “use of force” (pp. 20 – 22), we did not feel that it did so in a significant way, and that police brutality and police killings ought to be the focus of concerns, with the goal of absolute elimination of these heinous actions. We did not find the report adequate, at all.
We need strong advocacy and activism from our community, of people who have psychiatric histories, People of Color, and people from other oppressed groups, in conjunction with other civil rights organizations directed to the government about police brutality and police killings of people who have psychiatric histories.
Where is the analysis of why police feel they have to do this? How do we create an opportunity for community involvement in teaching Police how to stop using force, excessive force, brutality, and ‘shoot to kill’ techniques? We deserve a better analysis of why Police feel they have to ‘shoot to kill’ for minor infractions.
There are an over-abundant amount of examples of over-reach of police force and police killings in this country. Statistically people with disabilities are over-represented. There was just had another killing (August 2016) in Fairfax, Virginia, of a man who was discharged from the hospital.
CIT Trainings
The Task Force, to us, in a positive light, addressed CIT. This is of concern. We point out, at the outset, a stark reminder for the validity of our concern: the sheriff who killed the person in Fairfax County, VA, mentioned above, was CIT-trained.
On the call, there was a tremendous amount of discussion about concerns raised by the promotion (even if only by mere inclusion) of CIT trainings. If this is the modality that is being utilized, police will have no other alternative messages about how to approach us when they are respond to calls that single us out as a group, such as ‘EDP’ or ‘emotionally disturbed person’ calls.
If CIT is all that police are trained in, CIT is all police will use to respond to us, so we will never be seen as survivors. People receiving psychiatric services (with or without full informed consent) will always be perceived by police in the manner that CIT conveys, often within a medical model, as even any discussion of wellness remains in a medical model on a continuum of illness to wellness.
If all police are taught that psychiatric institutionalization and drugging is what is required to fix the situations they are called to, traditional psychiatry is all they are going to think is necessary and we will be further subjugated to psychiatry. If all police think is we have to be locked up and drugged up, that is not going to be helpful in a situation that is perceived as, or treated as a ‘crisis’.
The CIT training does not solve problems of police brutality and killings of people who are psychiatrically assigned. In some ways, police make excuses for why they ‘accidentally’ kill people—and it is incredible that we as a civil society routinely accept these excuses.
There is a lopsided power structure that allows people in the role of police much greater latitude for endangering the lives of others than any other group. If a person who is a police officer claims that they are frightened, they can shoot, and the questions become, how much of non-cooperation with a police officer will justify the next police killing?
When people with psychiatric histories are training police to not be violent toward people whom they are trying to ‘help’, it might be valuable to also consider as trainers, persons who have been psychiatrically assigned who have not been involved with the law.
While we agree it is important for police to hear first hand from someone who has a psychiatric history who has been involved with the law, some on the call felt that if all police are exposed to in trainings are people with a psychiatric history who were involved in the law they may think that all people with psychiatric histories are or eventually become involved with the law.
Additionally, it is important that we underscore that regardless of involvement with the law, it is people with psychiatric histories are supposed to be doing the trainings—not providers. There are some places where it is happening this way – but the curriculum of CIT is the problem.
There was also discussion on the call about Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity and underscoring that it important for the average person to understand that people who blame their violence on a psychiatric label are not taking responsibility for their violence and many on the call had issue with this. It is a decision whether to be violent or not, and having a psychiatric label ought not work as an excuse to be violent.
Also, it seems a poor excuse that society needs trainings on ‘how not to freak the police out’—and it ought not be the roles of potential victim’s of police violence, to learn how to protect ourselves from police. This is not an exaggeration, as in some places they do train the average person of what to do if you get pulled over (take ID out, put it where it could be seen, etc.).
Additionally, concerning CIT and police actions toward people who are taken into physical custody—not criminal custody, but psychiatric custody—there is concern and confusion about why people are being double cuffed and tazed? Why are people being cuffed in the first place, if they are being ‘transported’ for ‘help’ and not ‘jailed’?
People in society need to realize that the experience of being institutionalized is the experience of becoming an inmate, but with no crime committed.
We need to hold more discussions amongst ourselves and we also need to create broader community-based discussions on, “What could be done to stop police from brutalizing and killing people who have any psychiatric assignment?”
We ought to consider having conversations with individuals who have trained police in CIT. We ought to find out from them, their perspective of what’s happening in the trainings, and to what degree they support the CIT training.
CIT training has been going on for a few years. Yet the intersection of racism and police is key and remains un-addressed. Until the police authentically address racism, there will remain People of Color that are stigmatized by police. We must also address psychiatric discrimination.
Unless we deal with race, we’re going to continue to have these issues. What the CIT trainings do is it increases violence toward people who have psychiatric histories, by increasing the police’s actions toward involving psychiatry. Do not be fooled. The police are listening for ‘mental health’ now because there are funding streams for them to do so.
The police are listening with their own agenda. The police agenda is real, and underlying much of it, is racism and classism.
Finally, there was a tremendous amount of discussion about the multitude of problems caused by NAMI being behind/coordinating, etc., many if not all of the CIT trainings. There was agreement that NAMI ought not be the authority for how to interact with someone who has a psychiatric history, that they are a front for the psychiatric industry, and a major part of the problem.
Psychiatrizing Police, Psychiatrizing Society
The Task Force report, in multiple places, further legitimized the field of psychiatry, both in terms of something supposedly valuable that can be used as a resource by communities in the forms of ‘mental health’ services/organizations, and to police, in terms of evaluation and “mental health checks” (p. 64).
The report makes it so that even the police cannot escape involvement with psychiatry—and that psychiatry will have oversight over their daily experiences, where at any point, their ‘mental health’ can be checked, and affect the continuation of their employment, literally to “determin the length of an officer’s career” (p. 7).
Further, psychiatrizing problematic policing is a problem. In other words, saying that the problems of some police brutality is because someone had some supposed psychiatric issue is not acceptable. By placing the responsibility for police brutality and police killings at the hands of people assigned a psychiatric disability. We have to make a collective effort to not have people who have a psychiatric history, as a vulnerable minority group, bare that responsibility all the time—it is just not legitimate.
Someone having a psychiatric history does not equal that someone has been or will be violent.
There are already measures of discrimination against people who have psychiatric histories built into police culture, such as ‘selective measures’ for entrance onto the force (read: psychiatric evaluations, which are largely fraudulent themselves) and screenings asking people if they have a psychiatric history that if responded to affirmatively, prevent people from joining a police force.
We also have to be honest as a society—and we do not feel that the Task Report did this well at all, that we have to take accountability for racism in the actual prison and legal systems. We have to start abolishing practices that leave us where we are today, with People of Color over-represented in the prison system. It is our position that when someone involved with the law falls back on a psychiatric history for that involvement, it compounds the oppression and removes the focus of racism and economic oppression as the roots of the problem.
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21st Century Policing in Action
One person on the call informally, shared experiences of participating in some of the community meetings being held in Columbia, South Carolina. Columbia is one of the pilot cities for these 21st Century Policing efforts. This was not a person who was, to the best of our knowledge, formally representing these efforts.
It was reported to us that there are steps to establish a citizen advisory board, but it does not have oversight of the police, nor subpoena power.
There are attempts to increase diversity, but it’s not clear of what ‘diversity’ means, as people are not ‘diversity’, organizations are diverse—there is a difference. We want to again caution the dangers of tokenism.
There is/or will be use of police body cameras.
There is online data made/or being made available concerning ‘officer-involved’ violence, stops, and other statistics.
There is/or will be police staff meetings open to the public.
There is a ‘crime and safety’ committee established/or being established between police and members of communities.
There are efforts to train police not to stop protests, but to allow them to occur.
Despite all of this, racism is not directly addressed. Racism needs to be brought up directly with the intersection of work of the police. It is our understanding that racism is not addressed openly.
It is our position that by not explicitly discussing race and racism, those in power allow for racism to continue to be a source of problems.
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General Discussion on the Teleconference
We need a platform that addresses our issues and that we can share with other groups, to better incorporate our issues, and not take the mainstream analysis on psychiatry, CIT, and other issues as they relate to people who have psychiatric histories.
There is ongoing concern about the Murphy bill and what happens if some version is passed through the Senate. We need to continue communicating with legislators. The platform could be used to educate legislators, community organizations, civil rights groups, and others about what we want.
We need a clear voice as to what we feel about police brutality and police killings toward people who have or are perceived to have psychiatric labels. People still feel like we are just invisible, including and especially People of Color, because those in power are not listening.
If a police officer is ‘fearful’ they have general authority to shoot us, dead. This needs to stop. It just doesn’t make any sense. The government is not listening to all of these community groups, we need to join with them, and we all need to be stronger in voicing our concerns. We need to be allowed, by the power structures, to be involved in this in a way that is critical toward the current systems, and let them know what they need to be changed—and then those in power need to act on our demands for authentic human and constitutional, and civil rights.
It is important to note that there are certain places, locally, where there are mechanisms for people to voice complaints, particularly in relation to the Baker Act in California, specific to the Veteran’s community and ‘patient Action Council’ where there is a mechanism to take complaints and have them addressed through a larger consortium.
Platform Creation
People can work on the platform for what we want to see changed.
We can then use the platform when we are in community meetings and councils, etc.. We need a voice.
We ought to also be reaching out to people and find out what they have to complain about.
Many of us have already endorsed a Vision for Black Lives and we encourage those who have not yet endorsed to do so, as an individual, and if in power, as an organization.
However, we want people to read the platform concerning the ‘mental health’ agenda carefully. We need to educate people who are in power to re-organize priorities and to support alternatives to traditional psychiatry/mental health organizations/agendas.
We need to incorporate the psychiatric survivor perspective into the Vision for Black Lives.
Part of the platform should respond to misconceptions about psychiatry and education about alternatives.
We should have a very clear response for police brutality and killings. Civil cases and individual settlements do not resolve, heal, or prevent systemic structural issues of racism or psychiatric profiling. When someone is just offered money it doesn’t fix problems.
Once we have a platform, we should start circulating it, asking to have it put on the agendas of meetings that we attend, hold meetings, specifically around our platform.
Next Steps
There are workgroups that have been established through these calls.
The training workgroup should think about creating materials for countering the CIT training.
Create Page on Website for Educational Resources.
The education on Black history is not hard to find. People need to know it.
Make educational resource list and make it available – people don’t know what to look for if they don’t know what to look for.
Examples for inclusion offered:
The Kerner Commission http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/the-kerner-commission-report
Autobiography of Malcolm X. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ows/seminars/aahistory/MalcolmX.pdf
If you have suggested resources, please send them to us and we will add them to the website page that is being developed.
Combatting NAMI.
There was a tremendous amount of discussion about the problems of NAMI involvement with the police and legislature. It was decided we need to dedicate an entire call to discussion about the many problems that NAMI creates.
Sharing Information
When people we know witness or are victims of shooting or brutality or against someone who is in our area, we ought to collect and coordinate news articles from that incident, share them with the larger Surviving Race Facebook group. We should become a mechanism for sharing information, asking people to re-post and call attention to news stories. We should also be coming up with responses to the media, and create oversight measures for us to respond to coverage. We need to show that we are paying attention to issues and responding to them and make it clear that we are not going to keep letting it happen.
We are becoming more cohesive as a group and starting to put together more about who the ‘we’ is in regard to any public statements we are making.
We urge people to get involved with us:
Facebook Group: Surviving Race: The Intersection of Injustice, Disability and Human Rights https://www.facebook.com/groups/364074427086419.
Developing Platform: http://survivingrace2014.wixsite.com/platformdevelopment
Next Surviving Race Call
Workgroup Meeting to Draft Response to 21st Century Policing Report and Draft Platform:
September 8, 2016
6:00PM – 8:00PM Eastern
Teleconference Number: (218) 339-7800
PIN: 510 4044#
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Next National Public Forum: Calling Out Racism, Misogyny, and Other Forms of Violence in Our Movements
September 18, 2016
3:00 PM – 5:00PM Eastern
Teleconference Number (218) 339-7800
PIN: 510 4044#
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Any additions/corrections to these notes, please let us know. Thank you!
We want to hear from you!