nz police - mia
Whig's post about our boys and girls in blue has reminded me of quite a disturbing thing that happened to someone dear to me earlier this week.
Scenario:
Basically this guy is nearly pension age and was doing a spot of voluntary work, helping Tag Off, which is an organisation that paints over graffiti and sometimes the volunteers are helped by young offenders on community service. On this occasion Mr D was on his own though, painting something over at about 8pm at night. It was still light, so he thought, hey no problem.
But then some kid (or "young punk" in the parlance of Mr D's generation) came up and dissed ma' man (in the parlance of said younger person) for taking down his mate's tag. Mr D responded by saying that they hadn't asked permission to paint the wall, so he was painting it over and proceeded to return to his painting (no doubt totally unlike the scene in The Karate Kid).
Then a few minutes later Mr D was interrupted again, by someone yelling out hey. He turned around, as you do, and was snapped by this young dude on his cellphone, who then turned tail. Mr D gave chase. But thinking you are still 21 doesn't cut much ice when you are actually in your 60s and he soon fell behind and gave up.
It's a strangely, vaguely, intimidating thing to have happen - it's just someone taking your picture, but it's also someone saying "i know who you are and you're on my list".
Contact with the police about this has been nonsensical. Mr D has been told that they will send a car around if he can tell them where the teens are. Of course he can't. Basically they're not interested. In a way, what could the cops do really? But you'd think they might offer a bit more reassurance.
But there's more.
Tag Off has had a long association with the local community constable, so I asked if Mr D had got in touch with him. No point, apparently, he's been taken off community constable duty for six months. Guess what he's doing instead? No prizes, it's too easy.
Until I was at university I'd never really been in trouble with the cops. Sure I'd been to a couple of those big "out of control" teen parties on the Shore (funny how they weren't out of control until the cops arrived) but that was about it. Most of my interaction with the police since has been in a civil disobedience situation, and I've met the good (a few) and the bad.
I know that the police have a job to do in terms of upholding fair and just laws and I respect that - I have a problem with that job when I feel that they are effectively using their power to protect an unfair system, or just because they like to, or to make me conform with their moral code.
In my mind community constables should be The Absolute Last Officers taken off and put on other duties. Community constables keep the communication lines open, they solve problems at lower levels, they keep in touch with what is happening. For that community to be left without this person, this valuable link, for six months is just shameful.
The Whig is right - we don't need more police, we just need them deployed in the real places where actual crime is happening or starting, not peering out at the world through a speed camera.
3 comments:
'we don't need more police, we just need them deployed in the real places where actual crime is happening'
What is 'actual crime'? The police and other state forces protect property rights, which means they are just as likely to turn up on an SFWU picket line, a Maori land occupation, or a anti-war sit-in as at a burgled house.
There are arguments that the left can reform the police, so that they do the burglaries but not the picket lines - witness the 'research' of comrade Cathy Casey, unpaid advisor to the state on humanitarian methods of strikebreaking and freelance speaker at cop conventions - but these arguments founder on rocks with inscriptions like 'Chile 1973'.
Of course at the moment most Kiwis, white middle class Kiwis especially, have a certain amount of faith in the police, and in the absence of any alternative will turn to them in certain situations. Of course some cops are thoroughly nice blokes and blokesses. But the buggers will be on the wrong side of that picket line whenever things hot up, and the fewer the better I say.
If the left has a presence in a community with a policing problem, then it should avoid lobbying the cops to adopt the 'right' tactics, but instead point out that they are part of the problem, not the solution, and advocate community self-policing. This is what we (the Anti Imperialist Coalition) tried to do in the Sandringham/Mt Roskill area in 2001, after S 11 triggered a wave of attacks on the migrant community.
We had a meeting with the local community to set up local patrols, and though the initiative didn't get off the ground some good contacts were made which wouldn't have been made if (say) we'd advocated calling the cops.
The model of community self-policing could take off in other contexts. Imagine if a socialist group had been on hand in Waitara, after the killing of Stephen Wallace, and turned the widespread hatred of the racist local police force into coherent proposals for a community self-defence force. Once you've marginalised the cops with an intitiative like that, it makes their job a lot harder when they come in to break up the picket or occupation...
Cheers
Scott
Scott: How do you stop your "community self-defence force" from at best, being taken over by the kind of people who are on a power trip and want to push people around and at worst, turning into an extortion racket?
The Sunday Times had a story at the weekend about cops pulling people out of bars to see if they are drunk. Sounds like another good way to alienate people. Are there any mainstream politians who think it would be a good idea to direct our police force to concentrate on victimfull crime?
'How do you stop your "community self-defence force" from at best, being taken over by the kind of people who are on a power trip and want to push people around and at worst, turning into an extortion racket?'
By placing it under the democratic control of the community.
Democracy has never been perfect, and I think politics and committees will always attract power-trippers and bores, but a force which is created by a community to solve its real problems and is subject to mass participation and regulation is preferable to a police force which is seen even in parts of NZ (did anyone see the demonstration in Tuhoe country yesterday?) as an alien occupying force.
Of course, a community defence group operating to stop tagging in Remuera is likely to have a rather different political complexion. As a failed tagger in the far-off days of my youth I'm not about to advocate initiatives like that. I'm talking about groups which are based in what sociologists delicately call 'lower socio-economic zones': ie, in the working class.
Self-defence groups and militia represent a serious challenge to the authority of the state, and are not about to stop popping all over conservative old NZ at present, though as I said you could make a good case in Waitara or on Stoddard Road after S 11.
But in several countries overseas we can see mass working class and peasant militia which come out of the same tradition as the Paris Communards and the Red Guard in 1917. Last year a militia set up by tin miners stormed the capital of Bolivia, split the state forces, and succeeded in driving the country's right-wing President from power. In Venezuela thousands of 'Bolivarian circles' have been organised in the barrios of the big cities to guard against attempts by the US-backed right-wing opposition to take power.
As a socialist I'd rather present organisations like this as models for a popular democratic security force, rather than make recommendations for the reform of a fundamentally unreformable institution. I'm aware that many will regard talk of community defence forces in NZ in 2004 as 'unrealistic', but talk of leftists creating a kinder gentler police force through lobbying is even more unrealistic.
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