The predictable start of vigilantism: Reverse Course on Police Militarization or Reap the Whirlwind

By Dave Lindorff

Let me make it clear from the outset of this article: I’m against violence and killing, and I’m certainly no advocate of killing police officers.

But having said that, it must be stated that the combination of a national gun culture that makes obtaining guns and deadly bullets as easy as buying a newspaper, combined with the increasing availability of videocam evidence of infuriating police murders of innocent, unarmed people, including kids, is a recipe for the kind of vigilantism that we just witnessed in New York City, where a Baltimore man, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, took it upon himself to wreak what he considered deserved vengeance on the NYPD by randomly selecting and assassinating two New York cops sitting in their squad car.

Random acts of retributive violence like this are only to be expected when you have police treating the public -- and especially certain segments of the public, notably people of color -- like presumptive criminals or a people under occupation.

This is not a question of right or wrong. Hell, the two policemen killed by Brinsley, ironically a Chinese and a Latino cop, had nothing to do with the killing of Eric Garner, a black man, by white police officer Daniel Pantaleo. It’s simply a reality: If the growing murderousness and thuggishness of (especially white) police behavior towards people of color, and towards the public in general, continues in this country, it is totally predictable that such acts of vengeance or vigilantism will increase, perhaps even becoming more focused to target the actual perpetrators of unjustified homicides, such as the recent killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Garner in New York and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, should their uniformed killers be given a free pass by prosecutors.

We all know why Darrin Wilson, the Ferguson cop who killed the unarmed 19-year-old Brown with shots to the head when he clearly posed no threat to the officer, has left the department. This was not a decision based upon concerns about community relations; if he had tried to remain a police officer in Ferguson, Wilson would have had to work every day wearing full body armor, and backed by an armed escort.

There may be some hotheads who would argue that having police think twice about the potential consequences of killing unarmed suspects and people being arrested for minor offenses like the late Garner, who was simply selling single cigarettes on the street of his neighborhood, trying to feed his family when he was killed by an illegal police choke-hold, would be all to the good. But the end result of having citizens killing police in retaliation for police killing people would be a state of open war in inner cities, a war which would just result in more killing of innocents...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2599