Beyond brutality - scholars say repeated beatings born in hate and police culture

Roberto Rodriguez

After an 80-mile chase, the blows to

the body began almost immediately.

The Riverside, CA, sheriffs repeatedly

beat a defenseless Mexican citizen

on the side of a freeway in Los Angeles

County. The blows continued even after

the man was down. Then, the same officer

turned his riot stick on a woman passenger.

She was dragged from the truck.

Another deputy joined in. She

was then lifted by the hair, her

face bashed against the hood

of the truck -- and then

slammed to the ground.

A few yards away, a deputy

pummeled three Mexican citizens,

then rammed one of

them headfirst into the

shoulder of the road.

All this was caught live on videotape in

broad daylight by a television news crew

hovering in a helicopter.

The sheriff's department, reacting to

public pressure, placed two of the deputies

caught in the act on administrative leave, with

pay.

The culprit in the incident, police officials

say, is the "high-speed pursuit syndrome."

`Nonsense'

"Nonsense," says Gloria Romero,

psychology professor at California State

University, Los Angeles. By blaming the

incident on adrenaline, "It becomes a sociobiological

explanation. I don't buy it. The

officers are trained," says Romero. "There's no

reason to believe that every pursuit leads to

abuse."

Romero, who is the former chair of the

Hispanic advisory council to the Los Angeles

Police Commission and a co-founder of the

Coalition for (L.A.) Sheriff's Accountability,

says she believes the explanation for the abuse

is "attitude."

"The issue is one of attitude, not

adrenaline." Excessive use of force is not

legally sanctioned anywhere, says Romero. "It

is not tolerated. That's why we have training."

Brutality, says Romero, occurs when an

officer believes the "suspect" has defied an

officer and the combination of anger and

attitude result in abuse.

Sanctioning From the Top

But what allows the officer to violate the

law is a sanctioning from the top; police

continue to believe it's acceptable to engage in

brutality, Romero says.

To end police abuse, she says, there has

to be a clear message from the top: "If you

beat somebody, you go to jail."

However, police organizations still wink

at brutality. "We allow officers to be above

the law," says Romero.

She feels anti-immigrant hysteria has given

these officers the go-ahead to beat on Mexican

citizens. "The officers reduced

the Mexican citizens to `illegals.'"

Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a psychiatrist on

the faculty of Harvard Medical School,

notes that police brutality is undeniably

a weapon used primarily against Black

and brown people and people on the

low end of the economic scale. "They

[law enforcement officers] do this because

they know they can get away with

it."

Anger and Bigotry

He believes officers engage in brutality

because of a combination of anger and bigotry.

Additionally, officers also tend not to

discriminate between poor and middle-class

people of color. "Your degrees may not

protect you from bigotry."

Part of the reason officers tend to abuse

people of color is because they believe that

minority men are a threat, says Poussaint.

"They [officers] have the

attitude that `I have to blow them away before

they blow me away.'"

Because of this "fear factor," when

officers shoot someone who puts a hand in

their jacket, the courts are often sympathetic,

he says.

"In the Riverside case, it is clear that the

officers were not in fear for their lives," says

Poussaint.

What he finds incredible is that because of

the politically whipped-up anti-immigrant

hysteria, "some people feel that it's good that

the police beat them -- that they deserved it."

That attitude, says Poussaint, is due to

ignorance, hatred and a basic misunderstanding

of our laws. Whether a crime has been

committed or not, "Their [police] role is not to

beat and punish people. That's up to the

courts."

He also notes that many people of color

do not complain about police abuse because,

historically, they know nothing will come of

it. However, Poussaint says,

"That is not a healthy response.

You have to fight back and complain."

Poussaint says that sensitivity training of

police officers is a good first step but doesn't

solve the problem. Part of the solution is

integrating departments. "If you have Blacks or

Mexicans on, police forces, it tends to tone down

the abuse, but not completely. Real changes

only occur when they come from top."

Target of Scorn Dehumanized

Aida Hurtado, a psychology professor

at the University of California-Santa

Cruz, agrees that brutality against

and immigrants is attributable

constant racist and anti-immigrant

hysteria fomented by opportunistic

politicians.

Psychologists agree that such brutality

occurs because of a systematic dehumanization

of the tar et population. If an

authority figure -- such as California

Gov. and failed presidential political

candidate Pete Wilson (R) -- wages WON,

against immigrants, the majority population,

including law enforcement officers,

begin to view the beatings as legitimate,

says Hurtado.

The deputies viewed the Mexican as

"invaders," says Hurtado, and, acted as if they

were following rules of not rules of law.

"They're taught to believe that the `enemy' are not

human beings.

"In war, any level of aggression,

justified," says Hurtado

In this case, the brutality occurred in broad

daylight, with the full knowledge that they were

being filmed. But because undocumented

immigrants are not viewed as human beings, the

officers didn't care -- and felt justified, she adds.

"We're a country of human rights and human

rights are universal. Yet, we we [society] are

equating being human with being a U.S. citizen."

One point of interest about the videotaped

violence is that the officers made no gender

distinction: "That's because the officers did

not see them as human beings," says Hurtado.

Violent Early Years

Antonio Rios-Bustamante, professor of

history and Mexican American studies at the

University of Arizona, says that violence

against Mexicans is not unusual and, in fact,

can be traced to before the Mexican-American

War of 1846-48.

The period after the war is perhaps: the most

violent period involving Mexican cans in the United

States, says, Rios-Bustamante. While the Treaty

of Guadalupe, which ended the war, protected

the lands of the native Mexican

population in the U.S.-acquired territories, it

did not end violence and land theft. Texas

Rangers were virtually an anti-Mexican law

enforcement agency and white vigilantes were

generally "told to capture and kill any Mexican on sight."

It is that culture of violence that law

enforcement has inherited, says Rios-Bustamente.

Much of that violence is predicated on the notion that

Mexicans are violent. But that is false, he says.

"Mexicans generally commit less crimes than other

Populations."

Despite this, Rios-Bustamente feels the

criminalization of Black and brown youth

causes the public to fear them, thus, enabling

law enforcement officers to brutalize them and

send them to prison.

Buchanan's Footprints

Ed Escobar, director of Chicana and

Chicano studies at Arizona State University,

says that, coming on the heels of Pat

Buchanan's blatantly racist campaign in which

fie referred to Mexicans as "Jose," the

beatings were not surprising.

Unknown to most people is that the vast

majority of undocumented immigrants come

into the country legally and public's

overstay their visas. Yet the pub image is

that they are all Mexican and they, all come

in through the Southern border, says Escobar.

Also unknown to most people is that the

Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has

historically been very anti-Mexican. When

African Americans moved into Los Angeles in

large numbers after World War II, the officers

transferred their anti-Mexican attitudes onto

the Black population, he says.

Escobar, author of the forthcoming "Race

and Criminal Justice: Relationship Between

the Mexican-American Community and the

LAPD, 1900-1945."

"At the turn of the century, the LAPD

viewed Mexicans as a criminally inclined racial

group that was bound to commit crimes.

Because of this, they engaged in `curbside

justice.' It was a war on crime mentality,"

he says.

Edward Roybal, who ran for the Los

Angeles City Council in the 1940s -- the first

Chicano in this century to run for that office -- ran

on the issue of police brutality, notes Escobar.

Escobar acknowledges that, "Brutality in

the 19th century was worse and only became

less violent as Mexicans lost power ... and as

long as they stayed in their barrios or in the

fields ... as long as they didn't demand their

rights and as long as they behaved

themselves."

John Matlock, assistant vice provost and

director of the Office of Academic

Multicultural Initiatives at the University of

Michigan, says that he identifies

with the situation in Southern California.

Matlock says that while on his way to

judge a slam-dunk contest at the university, he

was thrown to the ground by campus officers

who thought lie was sneaking into the

building. When they learned lie was an

administrator, they asked him why he didn't

identify himself. The incident is now under

investigation.

Implicit in their question was the

assumption that if he hadn't been an

administrator, the alleged brutality would have

been justified. Says Matlock: "No law

enforcement officer has the right to attack and

assault anyone at any time."

Chicano/Latino students around the

country have been appalled by the beating in

Riverside and have taken part in large protests

and demonstrations nationwide. Students from

Southern California, led by Angel Cervantes

and the Four Winds student movement,

recently held a 140-mile march from

Temecula, CA, to the Mexican border, to

protest the beatings.

At Wellesley College (MA), Matilde

Sanchez, a student from Los Angeles, says

that the beatings show that people need "to

eradicate racist policies and punish those

criminals who hide Linder suits or uniforms

which are supposed to make us believe that

they are here to serve and protect us."

RELATED ARTICLE: We should treat Brutal Officers

As Criminals and Appoint Special Counsels to Prosecute

Watching the video of the

Riverside, CA, sheriff's

officers beating on defenseless

individuals, it's difficult to

contain the anger.

Those beaten were not illegal aliens,

but human beings. in fact, their legal

status is irrelevant.

The beatings clearly show what

many of us have been saying for many

years; that as far as law enforcement is

concerned, Black and brown people are

considered less than subhuman.

If not for the video, the police

reports would have read that a bunch of

illegal alien criminals had assaulted some

law-abiding officers. And despite the

video, we still treat the victims as

criminals and the criminals as victims.

Most people ask how this is

possible.

If the situation had been reversed -- if

Black or brown people had assaulted the

officers -- they would have been arrested

on the spot and held without bail. They,

of course, would most likely have been

beaten by other officers, if not killed.

In this case, for viciously beating

human beings, the officers are, in effect,

on a paid vacation in their current

"suspended with pay" status.

What does this tell us? Simply put:

The life of a brown or Black person is

not worth the same as white police

officers. We've always known this. And

the world witnessed it with the showing

of the Rodney King-beating video.

Yet, nothing changes

Politicians, Media Culpable

I maintain that this dehumanization

of Latinos and African Americans

is not restricted to law enforcement

officers.

For the past few years, politicians

such as Gov. Pete Wilson (R-CA), (Pat)

Buchanan, House Speaker Newt

Gingrich (R-GA) and Sen. Bob Dole (RKS)

have been busy blaming all of the

country's problems on immigrants.

And even though only one-quarter of

undocumented immigrants enter through

the southern border, the term "illegal

aliens" has become synonymous with

Mexicans and Central Americans.

When speaking of the complex issue

of international immigration, the

politicians don't factor human beings into

the equation -- only "illegal aliens." And in

this context, all Latinos are suspect and

all Latinos have become, in the collective

mind of a programmed population,

"subhuman."

In this incident, before we indict the

officers, let's indict the politicians who

have made this behavior acceptable, and

the media for perpetuating the false belief

that violating the law somehow grants

officers permission to conduct "curbside

justice."

Finally, let's consider appointing

special or independent counsels to

investigate and prosecute police brutality

cases as hate crimes; law enforcement

agencies and district attorneys have

already proven their inability to do so -- and

statistics clearly show that it is Black

and brown people who suffer the brunt

of this abuse.

Roberto Rodriguez, a senior writer

for Black Issues, also writes a

nationally syndicated column. In 19 79,

he was assaulted and badly beaten by

Los Angeles County

sheriff's officers. In 1986, he won a

lawsuit against the sheriff's department.

He has written two books on

police brutality, "Assault With a

Deadly Weapon" and "On the

Wrong Side of the Law," to be

published in 1997 by Bilingual

Review Press.

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