US News: Police Killings and CIA Torture

As usual I've been to busy to do much writing here, but I'd like to comment on a couple of US news stories that have gotten a lot of attention, not only in the US but worldwide. First off, there is the issue of killings of African-Americans by police and how the justice system has dealt with them. The Micheal Brown case probably got the most attention, but the Eric Garner, John Crawford, and Tamir Rice cases have also been widely reported and discussed. Let me first say that this issue is more complex than many on both sides make it out. I have considerable sympathy for most police officers, and I understand that it can be easy to overreact to perceived threats, sometimes with fatal consequences. When so many people have guns, of course it's easy for police to think that the slightest move by the suspect may be a prelude to them getting shot at. But of course this is a consequence of America's failure to do something about the ridiculous number of guns in the country, an aspect of this issue that gets far too little attention. Essentially, it is largely the fault of the NRA and the rest of the gun nuts that police work is so dangerous and officers feel they have to be ready to start shooting at any moment. In this sense, the police are not entirely to blame for the rash of police killings (for a summary of incidents where people, many of them minorities, were killed by police, see this article).

Even aside from the issue of guns, it is understandable that mistaken perceptions in a potentially dangerous situation can lead police to use excessive force. It is quite possible that Darren Wilson, for instance, really felt that he was in danger when he started shooting at Micheal Brown. It's even possible that he really believed that Brown was within striking distance of him and preparing to charge when he fired the last, fatal shots, as the human mind can play all sorts of tricks during such incidents, and afterwards as well through its tendency to unconsciously edit memories. But this doesn't mean he shouldn't have been indicted. After all, being indicted is not at all the same as being found guilty; it just means that there's enough evidence that a crime was committed to go to trial. The threshold for indictments is quite low, which is why grand juries will hand down indictments in the vast majority of cases - except, as it happens, where the possible crime was committed by a police officer. In this case, an unarmed man was shot, not once but many times, and was killed. No matter how threatened Warren may have felt, Brown was in fact quite far from him when the fatal shots were fired, and testimonies was conflicting as to the entire course of events. This alone should have been enough to warrant a trial to find out (as much as possible) what really happened. If, as seems probable, Wilson started shooting and kept shooting in a panicked overreaction to a perceived threat, he probably should have been found innocent of murder (though maybe not manslaughter), but at least he should have gone to trial. As an aside, I have to say that what sympathy I have for Warren is lessened by the fact that, as far as I am aware, he hasn't actually expressed any regret for killing Brown. Even if Brown acted aggressively toward him (and stole a few cigars) that hardly means he deserved to die, and in hindsight Wilson should at least acknowledge that he didn't need to shoot him that many times, especially given the distance between them at the end.

The Eric Garner case is even more straightforward. At most, Garner was resisting arrest; he was in no way threatening the officers, who outnumbered him anyway. The officer put him in a chokehold (though he claims it wasn’t a chokehold), and Garner suffocated. All of this was caught on video. Again, the officer probably had no intention of killing Garner, and so he probably could only be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. But at the very least, he should have gone to trial, especially since he can’t really claim that he had no idea that Garner was suffocating, since he repeatedly said “I can’t breathe”. Incidentally, despite what some commenters have claimed, being able to talk does not mean you can breathe. On the contrary, you can talk by squeezing air out of your lungs, but that doesn’t mean you are able to breathe in. As for Garner’s physique, of course that played a role in his death, but that doesn’t excuse the officer’s completely unnecessary use of deadly force.

Then there are John Crawford and Tamir Rice, one of whom was carrying a BB gun that was little more than a toy, and the other of whom was just carrying a toy gun. Neither of them was pointing it at the officers, who simply came up and shot them without even trying to talk to them. In Crawford’s case, he was just walking around the store talking on his phone when officers gunned him down, and the 12-year-old Rice was shot by police just seconds after they arrived at the park where he was playing. Both these cases were even more egregious than the Brown and Garner cases, and yet in Crawford’s case the police weren’t indicted, nor was the 911 caller whose false reporting of the situation led them to believe that they were about to encounter a threatening individual (not that that excuses their shooting first and asking questions later). Whether the officer who shot Rice (an officer who had been previously dismissed from another police force as unsuitable for the job) will be indicted remains to be seem, but we’ve already seen the Cleveland police have the gall to demand an apology from a Cleveland Rams player who wore a shirt demanding justice for Rice, when if anyone should be apologizing it should be them.

So how big a role did race play in this and the many other cases of black men killed by police in the past year? In most cases, probably not a conscious one. I don’t think most cops, white or not, are overt racists. But it is surely not a complete coincidence that this sort of thing happens to African-American males with far greater frequency than it does to whites. To a large extent, it is probably a matter of subconscious racial profiling, causing both 911 callers and police to treat black men as more threatening than anyone else doing the exact same thing (one black man was recently questioned briefly by a cop merely for taking a walk with his hands in his pockets on a cold day, and exchange that he recorded and posted online). On the other hand, white gun nuts can go wandering around Kroger armed with assault rifles, and they don’t get the reception John Crawford did for walking around Wal-Mart with a BB gun. Thinking about this issue, I recently recalled that when I was in college, I was pulled over several times for having one dim headlight on the old ’75 Chevy Nova I was driving. Note that the other worked perfectly, and the dim one was at least working, if not well. Every time, I was let off with a verbal warning. Looking back, I have to wonder if that would have been the case if I had been black or Hispanic.

In sum, while acknowledging that police have a difficult and dangerous job, we also have to acknowledge that they are often not held sufficiently accountable, even when they kill people, and that there are definitely disparities in how minorities, especially African-American men, are treated by law enforcement. There is no easy solution to this problem, but recognizing that there is a problem would be a good start.

Another major news story was the release of the executive summary of the Senate committee report on the use of torture by the CIA under the Bush administration. In a lot of ways the defenders of torture (or "enhanced interrogation") are quite similar to the defenders of the police in the incidents described above, in that they argue that the end justifies the means and that those responsible for defending Americans (or maintaining public order) should get extra leeway in their use of violence and other extreme measures. Former Vice President Dick Cheney went so far as to say he had "no problem" with the fact that up to 25% of the people the US tortured were later found not to have any involvement with terrorism as long as the torture accomplished its objectives. But in truth there is little evidence torture actually produced any useful intelligence. Almost all key intelligence obtained from captured individuals was not obtained through these methods. However, even if it had been effective, not only should we be appalled that the US tortured innocent people, we should even be appalled that "guilty" people were tortured. Use of torture is reprehensible even if it works and even if the tortured people really are enemies. Of course it's even more so when it is useless and many of those tortured are not even hostile. Certainly it's unlikely that Americans would so blase about if the victims had been American soldiers.

Despite the police killings and even the torture committed by the CIA, the US still has a better human rights record than places like China, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or nowadays even Thailand. But that isn't saying much. If it wants to be able to maintain the moral high ground against authoritarian regimes around the world, the US not only needs to address the problems with the police, but it needs to put safeguards in place against future attempts to use torture, and it needs to hold those who engaged in torture accountable, all the way up to Cheney and probably former President George W. Bush as well.

To end on a much more positive note, here are some links to news about recent discoveries on Mars:
http://news.yahoo.com/found-ancient-lake-mars-sign-143002982.html
http://news.yahoo.com/curiosity-rover-drills-mars-rock-finds-water-122321635.html
http://www.space.com/28019-mars-methane-disovery-curiosity-rover.html
http://www.space.com/28033-mars-life-building-blocks-curiosity-rover.html?cmpid=558746
http://www.cnet.com/news/curiosity-has-discovered-organic-matter-on-mars/#ftag=YHF65cbda0
And lest we forget, there's a lander on a comet as well, one that may wake up again and start sending us new information:
http://news.yahoo.com/european-comet-lander-may-wake-space-slumber-232545821.html
When things on Earth are looking bad, it's always nice to remember there's a big universe out there to explore.