DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Guns are going off
everywhere By Stephan Salisbury
Welcome to the abattoir - a nation where a
man can walk into a store and buy an assault
rifle, a shotgun, a couple of Glocks; where in the
comfort of his darkened living room, windows
blocked from the sunlight, he can rig a series of
bombs unperturbed and buy thousands of rounds of
ammo on the Internet; where a movie theater can
turn into a killing floor at the midnight hour.
We know about all of this. We know because
the weekend of July 20-22 became
all-Aurora-all-the-time, a round-the-clock
engorgement of TV news reports, replete with
massacre theme music, an endless loop of victims,
their loved ones, eyewitness accounts, cell-phone
video, police briefings, informal memorials, and
"healing," all washed down with a presidential
visit and hour upon hour of anchor and "expert"
speculation. We know this
because within a few days
a Google search for "Aurora movie shootings"
produced over 200 million hits referencing the
massacre that left 70-plus casualties, including
12 fatalities.
We know a lot less about
Anaheim and the killing of Manuel Angel Diaz, shot
in the back and in the head by that city's police
just a few short hours after the awful Aurora
murders.
But to the people living near La
Palma Avenue and North Anna Drive, the shooting of
Manuel Diaz was all too familiar: it was the
sixth, seventh, or eighth police shooting in
Anaheim, California, since the beginning of 2012.
(No one seems quite sure of the exact count,
though the Orange County District Attorney's
office claims six shootings, five fatalities.)
Diaz, 25, and as far as police are
concerned, a "documented gang member," was
unarmed. He was apparently running when he was
shot in the back and left to lie on the ground
bleeding to death as police moved witnesses away
from the scene. "He's alive, man, call a cop!" a
man shouted at the police. "Why would you guys
shoot him in the head?" a woman demanded.
"Get back," officers repeatedly said,
pushing mothers and youngsters away from the
scene, which they surrounded with yellow
crime-scene tape.
Neighborhood residents
gathered on lawns along the street, upset at what
had happened near their homes, upset at what has
been occurring repeatedly in Anaheim. Then,
police, seeking to disperse the crowd, began
firing what appeared to be rubber bullets and bean
bag rounds directly at those women and children,
among others. Screaming chaos ensued. A police dog
was unleashed and lunged for a toddler in a
stroller. A mother and father, seeking to protect
their child, were themselves attacked by the dog.
We know this because a local CBS
affiliate, KCAL, broadcast footage of the attack.
We know it because cell phone video, which police
at the scene sought to buy, according to KCAL,
showed it in all its stark and sudden brutality.
We know it also because neighbors immediately
began to organize. On Sunday they demonstrated at
police headquarters, demanding answers. "No
justice, no peace," they chanted.
Who
is being killed and in what numbers? This
is daily life in less suburban, less white
America. On Sunday, when the first of growing
daily protests took place, Anaheim police shot and
killed another man running away, Joel Mathew
Acevedo, 21. Acevedo was armed and opened fired,
police maintained - yet another suspected gang
member.
It is not hyperbole to say this is
virtually a daily routine in America. It's
considered so humdrum, so much background noise,
that it is rarely reported beyond local newscasts
and metro briefs. In the days bracketing the
Aurora massacre, San Francisco police shot and
killed mentally ill Pralith Pralourng; Tampa
police shot and killed Javon Neal, 16; an off-duty
cop shot Pierre Davis, 20, of Chicago; Miami-Dade
police shot and killed an unidentified "stalking
suspect"; an off-duty FBI agent shot an unnamed
man in Queens; Kansas City police shot and killed
58-year-old Danny L Walsh; Lynn police and a
Massachusetts state trooper shot and killed
Brandon Payne, 23, a father of three; Henderson
police shot and killed Andy Puente Soto, 42, out
in the desert wastes near Las Vegas.
These
are some of the anonymous dead. Their names are
occasionally afloat on seas of Internet data or in
local news reports. Many are young, even very
young; many are people of color; many are wanted
by the police for one thing or another; some are
crazy; some are armed; some, like Manuel Diaz, are
not.
In the end, though, we know
remarkably little about these victims of police
action. The FBI, which annually tracks every
two-bit break-in, car theft, and felony, keeps no
comprehensive records of incidents involving
police use of deadly force, nor are there
comprehensive national records that track what
police officers do with their guns. Because of
that we have no sense of whether such killings are
waxing or waning, whether different cities present
different threats, whether increased use of
private security guards poses a greater or lesser
danger to the public, whether neighborhood watch
groups are a blessing or a bane to their
neighborhoods. The Trayvon Martins of the world,
who could perhaps speak to that last point, are
mute.
The FBI's Uniform Crime Report does
include a more limited category of "Justifiable
Homicide by Weapon, Law Enforcement," defined as
"the killing of a felon by a law enforcement
officer in the line of duty." That figure has
hovered around 400 annually for the last several
years. (In 2010, it was 387, down from 414 in
2009; in 2006, it was 386.)
Would Manuel
Diaz fall into that category? Was he a felon? Can
running fit the bill for "justifiable homicide"?
The FBI does list all police officers killed while
on duty, whether they are gunned down deliberately
by violent suspects or hit accidentally by a car.
(In 2010, the FBI reported, 56 officers died
"feloniously," while 72 were killed
"accidentally.") But the Manuel Diazes of America
are not included in the FBI data sets.
Ramarley Graham, 18, followed and shot by
New York City police last February, is of little
interest to FBI statisticians. But the Graham
killing, which has resulted in manslaughter
charges against a member of the NYPD, stirred
numerous protests in that city. Luther Brown Jr,
killed by Stockton, California, police in April,
and James Rivera, killed by Stockton police two
years ago, stirred community protest as well.
Would their names make the FBI list of
"justifiable homicide"? Who makes that judgment
and on what basis?
The Department of
Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics has been
compiling data on deaths of suspects following
arrests, but the information covers just 40 states
and only includes arrest fatalities. From January
2003 through December 2009, bureau statistics show
4,813 deaths occurred during "an arrest or
restraint process." Of those, 61% (2,931) were
classified as homicides by law enforcement
personnel, 11% (541) as suicides, 11% (525) as due
to intoxication, 6% (272) as accidental injuries,
and 5% (244) were attributed to natural causes.
About 42% of the dead were white, 32% were black,
and 20% were Hispanic.
Total gun deaths
nationwide in 2010? 11,493, according to the
Centers for Disease Control.
Who is at
risk? The lack of authoritative and
comprehensive national data on police shootings
and the reluctance of local law enforcement
departments to release information on the use of
deadly force has sent researchers onto the
Internet searching for stories and anecdotal
evidence. Newspapers looking into the issue must
painstakingly gather information and documents
from multiple agencies and courts to determine who
is being killed and why. One major recent
independent effort by the Las Vegas Review-Journal
in 2011 - undertaken in the wake of community
protests over two police shootings in 2010 -
confirmed anecdotal evidence drawn from virtually
all major metropolitan areas. If you are a young
man, a person of color, and live in a poor urban
area, you are far more likely to become a victim
of police gunfire than if you are none of those
things.
The newspaper, which analyzed
court cases, police data, and other documents,
determined that there had been 378 victims of
police gunfire in the Las Vegas area since January
1990; 142 of the shootings were fatal. And deaths
from police gunfire, the paper found, had risen
from two in 1990 to 31 in 2010.
Over the
entire period of the study, the paper found that
"blacks, less than 10% of Clark County's
population, account for about 30% of Las Vegas
police shooting subjects. Moreover, 18% of blacks
shot at by police were unarmed."
A joint
study carried out by the Chicago Reporter and the
online news site Colorlines in 2007 determined
that "about 9,500 people nationally were killed by
police during the years 1980 to 2005 - an average
of nearly one fatal shooting per day."
African-Americans "were over-represented among
police shooting victims in every city"
investigated (the nation's 10 largest).
African-Americans would not be surprised
by this finding; nor would it come as a surprise
to Hispanics to learn that they are increasingly
at risk of police gunfire. Bureau of Justice
statistics show that 949 Hispanics suffered
arrest-related deaths from 2003 to 2009 (out of
the total of 4,813 such deaths noted above). The
numbers have bounced around over the years, but
are trending up from 109 in 2003 to 130 in 2009.
Certainly, the Latino community of Anaheim
is familiar with this territory. Orange County and
Anaheim authorities have promised investigations
of the two recent police shootings. The FBI is
reviewing the shootings and the US Attorney's
office has agreed to conduct an investigation at
the request of Anaheim's civilian authorities.
Those authorities - the mayor and five-member city
council - are all Anglo, while Hispanics
constitute about 52% of that city's 336,000
residents. There is no civilian complaint review
board in place to conduct any probe of police
actions, no independent group gathering
information over time. The family of Manuel Diaz
has filed a federal civil rights suit in the case
and called for community calm as protestors become
increasingly restive.
"There is a racial
and economic component to this shooting," said
Dana Douglas, a Diaz family attorney. "Police
don't roust white kids in affluent neighborhoods
who are just having a conversation. And those kids
have no reason to fear police. But young men with
brown skin in poor neighborhoods do. They are
targeted by police."
Post-9/11 money is
no help The last decade, of course, has
seen an enormous flow of federal counter-terrorism
money to local police and law enforcement
agencies. Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland
Security has allocated $30 to $40 billion to local
police for all manner of training programs and
equipment upgrades. Other federal funding has also
been freely dispensed.
Yet for all the
beefing up of post-9/11 visual surveillance,
communications, and Internet-monitoring
capabilities, for all the easing of laws governing
searches and wiretaps, law enforcement authorities
failed to pick up on the multiple weapons
purchases, the massive Internet ammo buys, and the
numerous package deliveries to the dark apartment
in the building on Paris Street where preparations
for the Aurora massacre took place for months.
Orange County, where Manuel Diaz lived,
now has a fleet of seven armored vehicles. SWAT
officers turn out in 30 to 40 pounds (13.6 to 18.1
kilograms) of gear, including ballistic helmets,
safety goggles, radio headsets with microphones,
bulletproof vests, flash bangs, smoke canisters,
and loads of ammunition. The Anaheim police and
other area departments are networked by countywide
Wi-Fi. They run their own intelligence collection
and dissemination center. They are linked to
surveillance helicopters.
The feds have
also anted up for extensive police training for
Anaheim officers. In fact, Anaheim and Orange
County have received about $100 million from the
federal government since 2002 to bring operations
up to twenty-first century speed in the age of
terror. Yet for all that money, training, and
equipment, police still managed to shoot and kill
a running unarmed man in the back, just as NYPD
officers shot unarmed Liberian-born Amadou Diallo
after chasing him up his Bronx apartment building
steps in February of 1999.
Diallo was
infamously shot 41 times after pulling his wallet
from his pocket, apparently to show
identification. Police thought it was a gun. The
shooting precipitated national protests and
acquittals in a subsequent trial of the police
officers involved. The year Diallo was killed was
also the year of the Columbine massacre, 20 miles
from Aurora. It seems like only last week.
Since that time the nation as a whole has
become poorer and less white, while police
departments everywhere are building up their
capabilities and firepower with 9/11-related
funding. Gun ownership of almost any sort has been
cemented into our American world as a
constitutional right and a partial ban on
purchases of assault weapons lapsed in 2004,
thanks to congressional inaction. This combination
of trends should make everyone uneasy.
Stephan Salisbury is cultural
writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and a
TomDispatch regular. His most recent book is
Mohamed's Ghosts: An American Story of Love and
Fear in the Homeland.
Note:
1. Bureau of Justice Statistics data
on the demographics of arrest-related deaths can
be found by clicking here.
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