Water and Weapons
Along with 11.5 million other people, I watch NCIS. I have mourned the loss of favorite characters and grown old with Jethro Gibbs. I joined the 8.4 million people who welcomed the new NCIS: Hawai’i. In a world of too much violence and uncertainty, I take pleasure in the predictable crime solving exploits of the show and its multiple spin offs. Still, it came as a bit of shock to hear a character hovering over multiple real time video screens say, “ShotSpotter” had just alerted them of gun fire in a neighborhood.
I am keenly aware of the role of the media in shaping public opinion. The core of agenda setting theory is that while the media doesn’t tell us what to think, it does tell us what to think about. Researchers have explored the role of TV dramas in creating and reinforcing ideologies. A study by Color of Change looked specifically at the world of crime dramas and concluded:
“The crime genre glorifies, justifies and normalizes the systematic violence and injustice meted out by police, making heroes out of police and prosecutors who engage in abuse, particularly against people of color.”
Commenting in the Guardian, Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, said “the consequences of these inaccurate portrayals “create a culture and system where people think the justice system is fair and is working… That goes against the data and the realities on the ground…These shows, for years, have been perpetuating myths about how the system works. And those myths educate people who serve on our juries.”
Even knowing this, I was shocked to hear a specific surveillance product casually referred to as part of the crime solving tool kit. Many of us in Detroit have been concerned about the installation of ShotSpotter. Over the last year I have written about the dangers of this system. ShotSpotter places microphones in neighborhoods. These microphones are supposed to pick up the sound of gunfire and pinpoint an address for police to respond. The Detroit Police Department tried to get an additional $7 million to expand the program and faced criticism from activists. The technology has not proven effective and can be the basis for sending heavily armed police into neighborhoods. Everyone knows squads of armed police in our neighborhoods often result in disaster or death.
Thinking about this, I came across an article by Alec Karakatsanis published by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project in late July. Karakatsanis documents the vast amounts of money local police are spending in public relations campaigns. He looks at “media” budgets that support full time public relations specialists who track public opinion, intervene with families of police violence, control initial media reactions and provide video services to establish a coherent narrative from police footage, showing the police as justified in using force.
He calls this coordinated effort Copaganda and outlines three main implications. First “it narrows our understanding of safety. Police get us to focus on crimes committed by the poorest, most vulnerable people in our society and not on bigger threats to our safety caused by people with wealth and power.
Second, it manufactures “crime surges. For example, if you watch the news, you’ve probably been bombarded with stories about the rise of retail theft. Yet the actual data shows there has been no significant increase. Instead, corporate retailers, police, and PR firms fabricated talking points and fed them to the media.
And third, it manipulates our “understanding of what solutions actually work to make us safer. A primary goal of copaganda is to convince the public to spend even more money on police and prisons.”
He concludes by saying, “If police and prisons made us safe, we would have the safest society in world history–but the opposite is true. There is no link between more cops and decreased crime, even of the type that the police report. Instead, addressing the root causes of interpersonal harm like safe housing, health care, treatment, nutrition, pollution, and early-childhood education is the most effective way to enhance public safety. And addressing root causes of violence also prevents the other harms that flow from inequality, including millions of avoidable deaths.”
Such clear thinking is essential. Since the widespread uprising after the murder of George Floyd, police, and the corporate powers they protect have been engaged in a campaign to control our sense of reality. Those of us committed to abolishing the police state and the violence inherent in it, need to develop creative, thoughtful ways to help people understand where our real safety lies.