Mundane Evils
As protests mount in streets, people across the country are engaging in unprecedented efforts to rethink what it means to create safe communities. At the same time, the ordinary machines of governing continue to function, moving from the mundane to outright evil.
It is no secret that a crisis is seen by some as an opportunity to make money and choices that would otherwise provoke public outcry and resistance. During the Detroit Bankruptcy, for example, we saw the rapid whitening of downtown Detroit, mass evictions, and wholesale transfer of public properties into private hands. Much of this happened behind closed doors as people struggled with evictions, water shut-offs, school closures, and excessive property taxes.
Today, as people are demanding the defunding and demilitarization of police, the public bodies most directly related to providing oversight in Detroit are proving how out of touch they are with the city, and how much they are governed by the desire to protect corporate power.
This week both the Police Commission and the committee responsible for public health and safety of the City Council responded to initiatives in ways that should encourage all of us to boot most of these folks out of office.
The current Police Commission was introduced by Mayor Coleman Young in 1974 as an early effort to provide civilian oversight to police abuse. That responsibility has been reaffirmed through various Charter revisions. But over the years, the Commission has become a rubber stamp for police initiatives and has engaged in shady dealings, violating the Open Meetings Act and having one of its own members, Willie Burton, handcuffed and removed during a meeting, because of his efforts to encourage citizen input on the discussion of police use of facial recognition technologies.
This week Mr. Burton tried to get the Commission to acknowledge the growing national effort to demilitarize local police. His efforts provoked laughter from some fellow commissioners. Burton had also called for eliminating the use of tear gas and flash bang grenades. The police have been widely criticized for use of excessive force during the most recent protests.
Also this week the Public Health and Safety Standing Committee met to once again consider the plan offered by President Pro Tem Mary Sheffield to make police purchasing of surveillance technologies transparent. The committee chair, Scot Benson and members Janee Ayers and Roy McCalister have blocked this effort for nearly a year.
The three are not only on the wrong side of history, they are endangering the citizens they are supposed to serve. All three uphold the perspective that police make us safe. As the three continued to dither, finding ways to slow down the simple effort to allow public discussion before the city spends any more money on surveillance technologies, it seems they had no understanding of the shift taking place in the country.
They do not seem to realize that thousands upon thousands of people see the lie and know that police do not make us safe.
They do not seem to realize that thousands upon thousands of people know it is not justifiable to spend millions for policing and almost nothing on health care, recreation, economic development, housing, and quality of life programs.
This moment is revealing more than a broken police system. It is demonstrating that our most ordinary means of governing are in the hands of people whose interests are not to serve the people or provide leadership toward a more humane future. It is definitely time to shake things up.