Are white cops black killers?

By Henry Seggerman

South Koreans read the headlines coming out of America, about its terrible race relations, and understandably wonder what’s going on. Are white cops murdering black people, or are they just responding to criminality? South Korean law offers no protection against widespread racial prejudice, but South Korean police are not killing racial minorities, so there are no obvious points of comparison. While it is true there are racist cops in American police departments, the problem is much more complicated. Rather than just revisiting details of controversial recent cases, let’s step back and outline a few larger factors underlying police killing of blacks in America.

Too many guns

For every 100 Americans, there are 113 guns ― many of them wartime assault weapons unsuitable for hunting or ordinary self-defense. That’s nearly double the number of guns for the next country on the list, Serbia, with 70 guns per 100. Anywhere US cops go, they may expect guns. Although a majority of Americans, and even a majority of rank-and-file members of the National Rifle Association, favor stricter gun control, most state and Federal elected officials and judges have sold out to the gun industry, and reject even minor regulation. In a bizarre twist, the US Congress recently even rejected a law to prevent suspected terrorists from buying guns.

Police with Army equipment

Bush and Cheney wasted $4 trillion in U.S. taxpayer money on their Iraq War. The “military-industrial complex” had not enjoyed wartime resupply peak demand for 45 years, so it got trillions (including Cheney’s company Halliburton). But when the U.S. retreated from its Iraq misadventure in 2011, it had to bring all that high-tech materiel home. An enormous amount of this bristling military hardware was given to local police departments, free of charge. As a result, police departments across the country are overstocked with heavy military hardware like Humvees, completely inappropriate for local needs. This hardware can certainly contribute to an invincible “Shock and Awe” atmosphere in local police departments, a “shoot first, ask questions later” attitude amongst cops on the street.

Cops-prosecutor links

It’s a fantasy to think prosecutors want to indict and seek convictions of American cops who kill blacks. Day in and day out, prosecutors rely on evidence provided by police detectives for their criminal cases. It’s just simple logic: a prosecutor who goes after a member of the police force jeopardizes his or her future cooperation from police detectives.

Wall of lies

When a cop shoots somebody, a highly defensive, often fraudulent, narrative is immediately devised which asserts the victim was charging at the cop, lunging for his gun, etc. Sometimes “throwdown” guns kept handy in police cars are placed in the victim’s hand. What follows next is known as the “Blue Wall of Silence:” every cop on the scene who saw what actually happened backs up the concocted narrative, and never deviates from it, even under oath. What’s amazing is that this despicable code has been adhered to even when there is video evidence showing the truth.

Cruel punishment

With so much pressure for convictions, cops, detectives and prosecutors often go into overdrive for confessions and convictions. A perfect example is the “Rough Ride”, a technique employed by police in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and other cities: the arrestee is handcuffed and thrown in the back of a van without a seatbelt, then driven around fast and violently. Many victims of this cruel, unconstitutional, practice have been paralyzed for life, and it probably was what killed Freddy Gray in Baltimore. And the CIA doesn’t have a monopoly on torture; Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge went to prison for 4 and half years after beating, electroshocking, and suffocating confessions out of 100 mostly black men. Even the FBI got in on the act; its Crime Laboratory “Hair Unit” was responsible for thousands of false convictions. Today, about 4% of America’s prison population is innocent, including Death Row inmates.

Racist effects

Blacks are killed as the US criminal justice system works relentlessly to keep this huge prison industry filled to capacity. Beginning in the 1980s, “Three Strikes Laws” were enacted by the U.S. government and most states, sentencing repeat felons to life terms. Around the same time, George Kelling and his collaborator James Wilson wrote the controversial “Broken Window Theory,” which essentially argued that zeroing in on miniscule problems in black neighborhoods would reduce more serious crimes. Kelling was appointed a consultant to police departments in Los Angeles, Boston, and New York, where Mayor Rudy Giuliani was launching a major war on crime, which in fact focused on public drinking, public urination, turnstile-jumping, graffiti, and “squeegee men.” Kelling’s work morphed into policies such as “Stop-and-Frisk,” “Safe Streets,” etc., in various US cities, which empowered cops to stop innocent pedestrians who “look suspicious.” A never-admitted-to quota system drove New York’s Stop-and-Frisk to an astonishing 700,000 stops in 2011. Due to racial profiling, the vast majority of these arrests were of blacks and Latinos, and 88 percent never led to any arrests.

Henry Seggerman is CIO of International Investment Advisers.