Thursday, December 11, 2014
Police Brutality: Then and Now
Recently, the topic of Police Brutality has been examined in depth by the entirety of the American public. Following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, both killed by police, there have been many protests, both at the national and local level. In fact, many students at Los Altos High School participated in the March for Justice, a nationwide movement calling for racial equality within the judicial system and the reduction of police induced violence. Similar protests over the lack of indictment regarding the officer in Michael Brown's case have erupted in the Bay Area, most notably in and around Berkeley. It can be said without a doubt that the episodes of police brutality, especially during this past decade, leave a sad legacy for our children to learn from. Yet police brutality has not just suddenly awoken from dormancy. Rather, the use of the police to intimidate and enforce only a certain side of justice has existed in the United States for centuries. During and after the Great Depression, strikingly similar episodes of police action against peaceful strikers occurred. At the top of the list is the Republic Steel Massacre of 1937. After hundreds of steel workers and their families marched on Memorial Day around the Republic Steel Plant, police blocked their way. After the strikers refused to stop the march, the police opened fire on the crowd, killing 10. In an eerily similar ruling, none of the policemen were charged with a crime, and the official verdict read "justifiable homicide". Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
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Sam that last line is powerful! Very well written! The video you included with your post also talks about many of the issues that we have seen and talked about in the past few days, notably the Eric Garner case. In the RSP march, there was clear video evidence of abuse of police power. The same is true about the murder of Mr. Garner. Yet no police officer was ever punished back then and I think that the precedent set will follow through on the Garner/Brown/Grant cases, namely that the police basically have unjustified immunity from the law. I believe that a change in precedent is due, and that should happen as soon as possible.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post Sam. When reading it I immediately thought of the time when thousands of impoverished soldiers demanding their pay which they believed they had gained from the Hawley-Smoot tariff set up a Hooverville to intimidate congress. They called themselves Bonus Expeditionary force , however president Hoover tear gassed them out when they refused to leave. I just wanted to make a connection between the police brutality and this event, which severely degraded the waning public opinion of Hoover.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/peopleevents/pandeAMEX89.html
I just wanted to add on to Nathan's post and explain a little about what the Bonus Army really was. The Bonus Army was an assembly of 43,000 marchers who gathered in Washington D.C. in the spring and summer of 1932 to try and get money for their service in the army. This force was led by Walter W. Waters who was a former army sergeant.
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