Policing and OWS: A Think Tank Discussion

The clearing of Occupations in New York and around the country has presented challenges to and new possibilities for the Occupy Wall Street movement. A particularly creative group, which I joined and have described here, The Think Tank, is creatively responding to the challenge. They continue to hold sessions in Zuccotti, as they are also moving to other city locations. The summary here prepared by Aaron Bornstein of a session he facilitated in the Park on November 20, 2011, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm, reveals the power of the actions. I received the report from Bornstein as an email to people working in the group. I publish it with his permission. -Jeff

Topic: “Policing and the movement: How to engage, whether to engage,and whether it’s a distraction”
facilitator: aaron

This was a really spirited discussion of what police are doing, what they should be doing, and whether we are distracting ourselves by focusing too much on them. Participants seemed to have broad consensus on maintaining nonviolence, but standing our ground in the face of police aggressiveness, even if it meant they would use force on us. Multiple participants pointed to the immense value of widespread cameras and recordings, in both preventing police violence and transmitting images of it to the world. Participants seemed split on the question of whether the attention given to police aggression was distracting from the movement’s goals. Some thought it was an unfortunate focus, some thought it was part of the problem we were fighting.

One exchange in particular sticks out in my mind. Over the course of the discussion, several participants had suggested that police officers were just trying to do a job, and thus couldn’t shoulder the entire blame for their actions. When Richard got on stack, he delivered a rather passionate excoriation of this suggestion, and then took it further by posing the question of who exactly it is that takes that kind of job, which — please correct me if I’m wrong, Richard –
I took as a suggestion (which seems to be borne out by experience) that police tend to be individuals who are prone to this sort of violence. Captain Lewis was sitting right there, in full uniform as he usually is, and I have to say the tension was pretty palpable.

Lewis then delivered a direct response in which he said Richard was essentially right. He said that departments assess recruits using the MMPI (Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory), which, among other things, quantifies the emotional sensitivity of individual officers before they undergo training. He said that departments exclude the more sensitive recruits. They do this because they feel that the six months of training would be lost money when those sensitive officers encounter the stresses and gore that are necessarily part of the job, and quit or get depressed. Thus, the ones who you keep will skew towards the less sensitive — more brutal — end of the scale.

He proposed that one specific action we could all take, and one he takes himself, would be to point out to the mayors and representatives who control PD policies that taking the less-sensitive officers is actually *more* of a financial drain, since it often leads to multimillion dollar liability lawsuits (we’re starting to see these lawsuits come out of Occupy, and my suspicion is many more are on the way).

Soon after, Richard asked Captain Lewis if he believed this was a factor in racial profiling and abuse. He responded yes.

Yes, I have that all recorded.

I’m going to editorialize a bit here:

I think this “revelation” about police selection is not at all surprising to anyone on this list, but to hear a police captain flat out admit it, with no hesitation, is pretty powerful. This sort of exchange, among a group of people who probably don’t normally cross paths, but who came together here, in this space, in Occupy, in Think Tank, and who had a frank and respectful and mutually beneficial discussion about a Deeply Important and powerful topic… well, I think this is what we’re here for. It’s certainly what I’m here for.

Thank you all for continuing to provide these powerful experiences.