"I Opened the Door and They're Pointing Rifles at Me."
So related a thirteen year old girl, one of the speakers at this year's Urban Shield protest in Oakland, California, describing an encounter with a local SWAT team.
Urban Shield, sponsored by the Alameda County Sheriff (Oakland is within Alameda County), is an annual police convention and tradeshow, glorifying the militarization of police and violence. It's an excuse for wanna bes to cosplay "Special Forces" for a couple days, taking part in military-style "exercises" throughout the area. Participants include local police departments such as San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, and units from around the country.
To get a sense of the spirit of things at Urban Shield, here's a very popular t-shirt at this year's trade show. You can see weaponized vehicles, equipment and t-shirts from last year's show here.
Last year, a combination of protests and other pressure forced Urban Shield to move this year's activities out of Oakland, where it had been held for a number of years at the Marriot Covention Center. This year it moved out to suburbia, to Pleasanton, CA, at the County Fairgrounds.
Nonetheless, some two hundred people still gathered at 14th & Oak in Oakland, just outside one of the Alameda County Sheriff's offices, announcing that Urban Shield was still not welcome in Oakland, nor anywhere in Alameda County and neither should it exist at all. The effort was organized by the Stop Urban Shield Coalition, with Critical Resistance, AROC, War Resisters League, Code Pink and other local organizations as members.
Last year, and in years previous, the police made their presence more than visible at the protests with - guess what? - militarized formations of police surrounding the protests on all sides. This year, for whatever reason, there was no visible police presence at all, just a couple of Sheriff's Deputies on the steps of the Sheriff's office. Organizers took charge of routing traffic and, unlike what Urban Shield's philosophy would like you to believe, not a single terrorist or criminal act was committed, unless you count feeding people after the speeches were over.
Here's how the protest came down, beginning with a march from Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland to the Sheriff's office - in tweets, tweetpics and tweet videos. There's a short video of the girl speaking about her SWAT raid experience in the mix. Below all the tweets you can read a letter to Berkeley and Oakland demanding that they withdraw from participating in next year's Urban Shield exercises.
Marching From Oscar Grant Plaza in Downtown Oakland to the Rally Outside the Sheriff's Building
Music and Theater Before the Rally
A 13 Year Old Describes a SWAT Raid...
"As soon as I hit the door, I opened it, and they started screaming at me, tell me to put my hands up. Pointing rifles at me. And I look around, and it seemed like a movie. I couldn't believe it."
And Other Speeches.
We Have Nothing to Lose But Our Chains.
Stopping Urban Shield completely is hard. For one, the Federal government supports it with grants from Homeland Security. One approach is to get local governments to stop participating, or at least stop their police departments from participating until the nature of the beast is changed.
Here is a letter addressed to the Berkeley City Council (a very similar one was sent to the Oakland City Council) by the Oakland Privacy Working Group, suggesting this approach:
To Mayor Tom Bates and the Berkeley City Council
From the Oakland Privacy Working Group Regarding
Urban Shield and Police Militarization
American law enforcement uses lethal force against a citizen every eight hours, killing on average 3.2 people a day in 2015. In July, at least 121 citizens were reported as killed by police, putting us on pace to reach 1,100 by years end. These facts are relevant because the Berkeley Police Department will again participate in Urban Shield in September.
We ask that BPD refrain from participation in Urban Shield this year (and beyond), or alternatively, that the city and BPD require that de-escalation and negotiation techniques are emphasized over assault practice drills as a condition of BPD's participation.
It's often said in sports that practice makes perfect, and first-responder training is likely no different from athletic endeavors in this regard. We find this concerning, because BPD will be practicing at Urban Shield how to aggressively take down people, but not how to diffuse tense situations. The police/citizen interactions in the Black Lives Matter protests of December, 2014 support the growing demand that de-escalation be at the forefront of any training protocol for law enforcement.
According to a Police Executive Research Forum survey, the typical police cadet receives 58 hours of training on how to use a gun, 49 hours of defensive training to protect themselves, and 8 hours on de-escalation techniques (see The New York Times story "Police Start to Reconsider Long-Standing Rules on Using Force," 5/5/15).
There is a telling quote in that article from Dallas Police Chief David O. Brown: "Sometimes it seems like our young officers want to get into an athletic event with people they want to arrest. They have a "don't retreat" mentality. They feel like they're warriors and they can't back down when someone is running from them, no matter how minor the underlying crime is."
And warrior mentality is what Urban Shield is selling. From "assassination" game scenarios with Israeli Special Forces, other 2014 scenarios included "assault on hijacked truck," "assault on Amtrak train," "vehicle takedown with ambush," and "BART Transbay tube assault." Lacking are events that emphasize how to calm down situations so that any use of force is unnecessary. The vendor trade show only enhances the "shiny gadget" mentality of getting new souped-up military grade weapons to carry out assault maneuvers. Urban Shield awards top performers for SWAT, fire, explosive ordinance disposal, and maritime exercises. This reflects the organization's priorities, and these priorities are not de-escalation skills.
And as UC Berkeley sociologist Nick Adams, releasing a study last year on police escalation, wrote "Everything starts to turn bad when you see a police officer come out of an SUV and he's carrying an AR-15." His study found that protests tend to turn violent when officers use aggressive tactics such as approaching demonstrators in riot gear or lining up in military formations, things existing Urban Shield exercises promote.
The recent hearings by the Berkeley Police Review Commission and preparations for a lawsuit by 14 community members against the City of Berkeley for BPD's handling of the December protests indicate a clear need for improved and respectful policing and community relations, and that unlawful use of force against citizens must not be tolerated. De-escalation and de-militarization keeps everyone safer, including the officer. If BPD won't be learning techniques at Urban Shield to help achieve these community goals, our taxpayer dollars should not fund their participation at this event.
