The decision not to indict the cops who killed Breonna Taylor is clearly garbage. AND it is a really good example of how American policing has not only created a culture that encourages and reinforces individual racism, but also built systems that (1/14)
2. facilitate the imposition of racism on Black people *even without* individual racism. Now understand, I'm not trying to excuse the cops who did this or to say anything about them as people. But if we say that their culpability turns on whether they knocked and announced...
3. before going into her apartment, we're missing a big part of the thing: NO-KNOCK WARRANTS ARE AN ORDINARY PART OF MODERN LAW ENFORCEMENT; PRE-DAWN WARRANT EXECUTIONS ARE AN ORDINARY PART OF MODERN LAW ENFORCEMENT.
4. These things often result in injury, death, & trauma even when all the "rules" are followed. I'm thinking about this b/c of the response I've seen to the arrest last week in Hartford of Sydnee Ransom. A lot of folks are saying, "She brought this on herself with her behavior."
5. First of all, I don't think that's true - from what we know, she was told when she was stopped that her car was stolen, which she knew not to be true, and being surrounded by cops and cop cars behind a false allegation terrified her.
6. (If you can't understand how a Black woman would lose her shit with fear in that circumstance, you need to read the news more.) But there's a procedural question to consider here:
7. The car wasn't actually stolen - it was wanted by another town's police department as evidence in a crime. So it was placed on a list, which all the police departments have electronic access to, that flags license plates to be stopped.
8. It seems as though standard operating procedure is for the police to simply stop such a car wherever they find it, make whoever is in it get out, and impound the car. No one devising this procedure seems to have considered the human cost:
9. What if the person driving the car is not a suspect? What if they're just taking their kid home from school or going to the grocery store? That's what happened here, and if you read civil forfeiture cases, you'll see that it happens all the time:
10. one member of an extended family uses a car for some illicit activity and then the unwitting owner gets their car taken by the state. Even if we accept that the other department's need to take this car as evidence is valid, we should question the procedure.
11. Was there some reason why HPD had to take Ms. Ransom's car right then and there, on Blue Hills Ave., with her child present? Could they have at least let her drive home and dealt with everything there? When police procedures are designed entirely for the needs of police...
12. civilians suffer and the law doesn't know how to respond, because all the officers involved were doing what they were "supposed" to be doing. With an on-street impoundment, the result is needless conflict, an avoidable arrest, and trauma for a mother and her child.
13. With a pre-dawn raid or a no-knock warrant, the result is the killing of an innocent woman, and officers again deemed not responsible - b/c they were doing what they were trained to do. Punishment for individual officers has immediacy and satisfies our sense of justice, but
14. if the departments aren't held to account for procedures that prioritize police time and resources over civilian wellbeing, it won't stop.
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