Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?

Summary, part 2

Police Violence

For African American families who have lost a loved one to police violence, the stages of grief are almost nonexistent. It is difficult to grieve peacefully since Black victims are often negatively warped in the media (p. 14): “To eclipse the officer’s guilt, the victims are ‘ni**erized’ in public” (p. 14). It works as a way to justify their deaths or allow others to ignore them (p. 77).

Fear is ingrained in America. Fear of Black bodies whether they are adults or children. That fear is justified by things such as the “war on drugs,” which is rooted in Anti-Blackness, and labels Black people as a threat. While the focus has often been on violence towards Black cisgender men, that violence reaches many others in the Black community. Black women, while are still killed in custody and during traffic stops, are more likely to be sexually assaulted by police than to be killed by them.  

The New Jim Crow

#McKinney 

This hashtag was made in response to the violent assault of 14-year-old Dajerria Becton by a police officer in McKinney, TX. Becton and other Black youth went to a neighborhood pool and the police were called because of their presence. Becton was then assaulted by the police as they removed the kids. The removal of Becton and Black youth from the pool reflected Jim Crow era policing of spaces and access based on race. The excessive force used against Becton also showed “Every day police officers sexually harass, tase and assault young Black girls” (p. 65).

Violence Against Pregnant Women

Police violence against pregnant women is not limited to physical brutality. In precincts and jails, pregnant women are put through inhumane practices such as shackling or the denial of food, clothing, and medical care. In many states, if a pregnant woman commits any of those inhumane practices on herself that is considered to be child endangerment, child abuse, or fetal homicide. 

Sandra Amezquita   

Amezquita was assaulted and arrested for trying to stop police from harassing her 17-year old son, who was arrested for robbery a year before. Amezquita was five months pregnant when police threw her down, belly first. An officer straddled her, putting pressure on her as he handcuffed her hands behind her back.  

Jessica Venegas 

Venegas was six and a half weeks pregnant when arrested for possession of 300 bags of heroin belonging to her dealer. She spent a night in the precinct where she became sick and asked to be taken to a hospital. During Venegas’s hospital experience, she was shackled throughout her time there except when she had to have an emergency c-section (just her hand remained cuffed to the bed). Her baby was placed in foster care and Venegas eventually gained custody of her baby but had to jump through many hoops to do that. 

Tina Tinen

Tina Tinen was 41 years old when she entered Rikers Island pregnant. Tinen had an ectopic pregnancy previously and was not given medical care or a test to see if her current pregnancy was ectopic. Tinen began to physically struggle, bleeding and cramping, only able to get medical attention when other inmates insisted. The medical care she received was inadequate and included no follow-up care. Luckily Tinen gave birth to a healthy baby later on. 

Black Women’s Experiences of Driving While Black 

Driving while Black, or “DWB,” is the racial profiling of Black motor vehicle drivers by police.

Sandra Bland  

Sandra Bland was a 28-year-old Black woman from Naperville, IL. She was arrested in Prairie View, TX on July 10th, 2015. Videos show Bland was assaulted by the officer during the traffic stop, being slammed to the ground. Bland was later found in her cell, allegedly having taken her own life. Bland was known to talk about police brutality publicly and it’s possible she could have been punished for speaking out. Her case brought more attention to police brutality against Black women, resulting in the hashtag #SayHerName. 

Bland’s traffic stop is an example of “driving while Black” (p. 64). Traffic stops analyzed by race and gender shows that both women and men have identical patterns of stops by race. In some places, Black women are stopped even more than Black men. 

Mae Jemison

Mae Jemison is the first Black female astronaut. She, too, experienced a violent and humiliating traffic stop. She was forced to walk barefoot to the squad car. Regardless of her national acclaim, her race and gender defined her experience with police. 

Sandra Antor 

Antor is a 26-year-old Black nursing student from Miami, FL. She was driving to North Carolina from Miami when she was stopped by police. She was forced out of the car, slammed to the ground, and handcuffed by police. Antor did survive this police encounter and essatyist Ritchie provides a statement she made: 

When asked during an interview what she believed Beckwith was thinking when he was hitting her, Antor immediately responded, “Damn Black bitch.” She went on to say: “He was pissed ... Who the hell do I think I am? Don’t I know where I am? This is his neck of the woods,” adopting a white Southern accent for the last sentence. “That is how I interpret it.” (p. 64)   

The Broader Context of Police Attacks on Black Women  

Police encounters with Black women exist in a historical context framed by slavery and Jim Crow. These attitudes that have brewed over hundreds of years have justified the inhumane treatment of Black women. 

Sandra Bland’s death was among many common occurrences. In the same month of Bland’s death, five other Black women died in police custody. Their deaths all occurred because of policing practices: Racial profiling, policing of poverty, police responses to mental illness, and “domestic violence that frame Black women as deserving of punishment rather than protection, of neglect rather than nurturing” (p. 62). 

Because of recurring movements, the invisibility of women, trans and queer people, and people of color’s experiences with policing are becoming more clear. Say Her Name has been a rallying cry on t-shirts, memes, and art exhibits, displaying women killed by police. 

When talking about racial profiling it has to include how it affects women. Discussing and addressing police violence must also include sexual assault by police, violence against pregnant and parenting women, policing of prostitution, responses to domestic violence, and routine violence/violation towards transgender and gender-nonconforming people such as gender searches.  All of these experiences need to be included in the radical reimagination of public safety. 

Violence at the Border

“Within the past generation, the border has become a killing field” (p. 52)

There has never been a moment in the history of the US where people of color were treated as full human beings with human rights in the legal system. This is proven through the process of dehumanization created by revisionist history used in the U.S education system and media. An example is the lynching of Mexicans from the 1840s to the 1920s, which has gone unknown in our collective history. That type of violence towards Mexicans has not been exclusive to immigration-related matters and includes, in part, the following:  

• The Eastside high school walkouts where 10,000 students who demanded bilingual education and an end to punitive punishment were met with brutal LAPD violence. 

• The Puerto Rican community in 1966 Chicago rioted against the murder of Aracelis Cruz.  

Various parts of the Latino diaspora across the country participated in social movements against state violence domestically and internationally, for example, The National Chicano Moratorium protested against the Vietnam War.

State-sponsored violence towards immigrants and migrants is not accurately reported leaving fatalities by border patrol out of statistics. The FBI’s annual list of Justifiable Homicides is collected from US law enforcement agencies that willingly mention incidents. The list also excludes homicides by Border patrol. 

Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez

An egregious recent case of police violence against a migrant is that of 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who was shot 10 times in 2012 while on the Mexican side of the border, by two Border Patrol officers on the U.S. side. At the time, the Border Patrol issued a statement saying that one of its agents had “discharged his service firearm” after people suspected of smuggling had ignored commands to stop throwing rocks, but the Border Patrol did not specify whether it was specifically accusing Elena Rodriguez of smuggling or of throwing rocks himself (p. 48).

Racial Profiling

The U.S. Department of Justice created new racial profiling guidelines that formally banned racial profiling in the U.S. but still left loopholes for discrimination. Racial profiling was not banned in the border region, however, which includes 100 miles of land from the actual border. The Department of Homeland Security can continue to racially profile under reasons for national security. Simultaneously, raids across the country are conducted (not confined to borders or ports of entry) and are not addressed by the Department of Justice.  

Beyond the border in cities, street harassment or stop-and-frisk is the norm. Border patrol uses racial profiling to harass or target people based on how Brown people are racialized: “Immigration enforcement, in effect, amounts to modern-day Indian removal” (p. 52).

State-sanctioned Torture

In addition to the U.S. blurring the lines of torture and interrogation, the United Nations’s committee also found human rights violations in immigration detention facilities and prison’s use of solitary confinement (including in juvenile detention centers), police violence, and other forms of torture. Even with ridicule on a global scale, the U.S. still uses torture overseas and implores allies to administer it. 

Solutions and Black-Brown-Indigenous Unity 

“They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.” –Popol Vuh

State violence is a crisis for Black people in the US as Rodriguez states. He asks that those who understand the experience of state violence offer “critical support” to Black communities as well as their communities by speaking about this violence. There are coalitions among Black, Brown, and Indigenous groups since they all deal with state violence. The media needs to be confronted in its role in state violence and who it elevates or doesn’t.