Previously posted on the Young People For Blog.
The hokey pokey is what its all about, right? Wrong, at least not anymore. Police brutality and the use of excessive force on students are taking the lead. Have parents stopped singing the age-old tune, have teachers stopped using the activity in class, have wedding DJs stopped playing the tune at every wedding, have we forgotten that we live in a free country where really the hokey pokey should be what its all about? My horror began when I heard of a student at UCLA being tasered for refusing to show his ID. It was an obvious case of racial profiling and the police actions were beyond appalling. As much as I couldn’t believe it I said to myself this is just a single incident.
My near disbelief was discontinued when there was an event on my own campus shortly after the UCLA incident. An openly racist speaker, who is known for inciting violent protest, came to speak on immigration and his minuteman program. There was a large presence of protestors, who took up more of the room than the people actually coming to listen. The protestors non-violently stood, shouted, and held signs. The protestors erupted when the speaker decided to make a racial slur about “work and soap.” Still non-violent the protestors were forced to leave the room under the guise that the event was being completely shutdown. This caused much turmoil as protestors argued with the police as to why not everyone had to leave. The police resorted to forcibly arresting protestors as they attempted to leave. Regardless of the editing and title of this video the police brutality is obvious and unnecessary. Do you need to wrench a person’s arm to put handcuffs on? Do you need to put a student in a chokehold because they refuse to leave?
Now we see yet another example, I am sure this is being posted and written about all over the place. Just this week a UF student was grabbed up by police after asking John Kerry a question, which John Kerry said he would like to answer. It was too late and the student was forced to the ground in the back of the room and tased. Granted the student began resisting arrest and caused the police some difficulty in making his arrest, but why was there any need to arrest? The taser is supposedly used for defensive purposes. I am not sure what danger the police felt as there were seven officers assisting in taking him down. Later Senator Kerry condemned the brutal arrest.
This brings me to question how the “servers and protectors” of the people, the police, are trained and chosen. Are they taught to over-step their bounds and use excessive force if they think it will be fun? Are they taught to not allow anyone to question authority, especially when it comes to our government? Are they trained to direct hate towards anyone that may cause a disturbance? We have truly entered a difficult time and the one thing that keeps playing through my head is the NWA song popularly covered by Rage Against the Machine and scenes from the ending of V for Vendetta. Something needs to happen, something will happen, Facebook already has a group working to raise awareness about the increase in police brutality on college campuses. What is happening to our judicial system? What kind of training do those who would “serve and protect” receive at a Police Academy?
It all comes down to the abuse of power. The theory that power corrupts seems to need no more evidence. Give someone a badge and a gun and they will use them as the their ultimate authority. We need only look back to the Abu Ghraib scandal, however an even more calculated experiment of the 70’s provides us all the answers we seek. In 1971 Stanford Professor Zimbardo conducted an experiment in the basement of the psychology building. 12 students were chosen as prisoners and 12 students were chosen as guards. They were given instructions to fill the roles of prisoner and guard in the experiment setting. Little did Zimbardo know that he had given the guards all the power they needed. The use of this false power by the ‘guards’ led to psychological breakdowns, prison rebellions, harsh penalties, and what could be named cruel and unusual punishment. The experiment that was setup to take a number of weeks was aborted after just two. (Power corrupts our human minds, will we ever be able to handle “serving and protecting” without the abuse of power?