By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Good news! Crime in New York City is way down.
But wait! Maybe not. The statistics have been fiddled with. Meaning: crimes are going unreported. It seems that the police in many precincts are refusing to accept complaints. They won’t automatically file reports that someone’s wallet has been filched or that a car window has been smashed.
So New Yorkers are learning to adapt. They’ve stopped reporting the petty crimes that will go unnoted (except by the worldly wise victim) if unrecorded. Result: police statistics in the Big Apple have become unreliable, but the police look good. Their jobs are safe.
Making Crime Disappear
Under-recording happens all the time in many countries. South Asian women who are raped know better than to go to the police, who don’t take violence against women seriously. The blame-the-victim syndrome is alive and well in India and Pakistan. Other crimes also go “unreported,” unless a little financial encouragement is forthcoming. So far I haven’t heard of such instances in the U.S. But if the official stats are corrupted these days, can bribery be far behind?
I used to be so naive! When I first joined the Foreign Service, I’d tell people who were coming to the U.S. that they should ask a policeman for directions if they got lost in some unfamiliar big city. “You can trust the police in America.” I actually said that. And I believed it. Today I’d tell my Muslim or non-White contacts to use the gps function on their cell phones—and not just because the technology is now available.
White-Washing
Yes, I was brought up to think of the police as friends. Many times over the years, on foot and from my car, I’ve asked for directions and got the help I needed from a cheerful and accommodating man with a badge. I’ve also received many well-deserved tickets for driving too fast, although I’ve usually been able to talk down the offending speed, to protect my auto insurance rate.
I’m white, you see, and I’ve got very blue eyes. I’ve never had to worry about anti-DWB (driving while Black) operations on the New Jersey turnpike. And no one’s going to haul me in for being an illegal (i.e. undocumented Mexican) in Arizona. But I’m a card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U., which defends the victims of unlawful arrest. I’m not oblivious.
Sadism Rules
Moreover, gradually, I began to register a certain commonplace use of excessive violence in apprehending those who’d violated the law in the U.S. There was the dreadful Rodney King case, which happened when I was working in Pakistan. That was a hard one to explain.
Nor, it seemed, was it only on TV police dramas that arrestees were thrown violently against cars or walls for frisking. The humiliations of shackled shambling and bright orange prison garb also seemed to indicate something deeply wrong with law enforcement in the U.S. Increasingly, or so it appeared, the agents of the law indulged themselves in brutal, sadistic embellishments to coercive necessity—and this abuse of power seemed to have become routine most everywhere in the U.S. The word systemic came to mind.
Is this what today's police academies in the U.S. were teaching the recruits to a law enforcement career?
Normalizing Torture
Then came the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, for whom I am happy to say I did not vote. He allowed torture to be legalized and normalized. First, there was the Abu Graib cover up, to say nothing of some deaths under torture in Afghanistan. By that time, fortunately, I was no longer responsible for explaining U.S. policy to the foreign press. Happily for me, I did not have to whitewash the abuses at the purpose-built prison at Guantanamo—and all along, as we Americans who treasured America’s reputation for advancing civil liberties gradually came to know, victims were being “renditioned” to black holes in compliant countries to be broken in body and spirit with the connivance of shadowy U.S. figures. The ticking time bomb justified all, we were told.
Even today there are Americans who defend these atrocities and who also support policies of indefinite detention, punishment without trial and the suspension of habeas corpus in cases involving accusations of “terrorism.” Barack Obama, for whom I did vote, seems disinclined to prosecute the torturers and equally reluctant to restore historic civil liberties. If I was alienated before, I am more so now. I could never be a spokesperson for U.S. anti-terrorism policy today.
Police Occupation
Flash forward to America under economic stress. Whatever one’s judgement of the goals or efficacy of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, and I admit to having been largely sympathetic, it’s hard not to be shocked by the uniforms and tactics of the agents of municipal roll back. As a memory refresher, I suggest you picture today’s American policeman geared up for a riot. He’s a black-clad spawn of Darth Varder advancing in shield-fronted phalanx, hooded, bullet-proofed, and bristling with riot gear—batons, canisters, firearms. Then picture the objects of riot police action: an unarmed miscellany of the dedicated, the deluded and the deprived, armed only with signs and sass.
Which, might I ask, poses the greater threat to our safety?