POLICING ANARCHY

When in session Burning Man is the third or fourth biggest city in Nevada. It’s supposed to be anarchic (free) but civil (non-violent).

Through fate I got to know one of the founders of Burning Man. The store where I worked on Haight Street was owned by a Burning Man/Cacophony Society guy, and Michael Mikel’s girlfriend did seamstress work in the same back loft where my desk was located.

Michael Mikel (the second name is pronounced the same as the first) would come around to visit his “old lady” and to do odd repair jobs around the store.

[The above picture came from this excellent website.]

I always heard that Michael was one of the three founders of Burning Man. That was confirmed for me just recently by news about a lawsuit regarding the ownership of the name Burning Man. Yep, Michael Mikel is one of the three disputants. Laughing Squid has the story, and a really neat picture of the b-man.

Maybe it’s sad that lawsuits are happening, or maybe it’s great accomplishment that Burning Man lasted so long and grew so big to even be lawsuit-worthy.

Anyway, I’m writing about cops, again. Michael Mikel, at Black Rock, is Danger Ranger, the head of the security and public safety patrol. Michael is omni-competent and infinitely patient and understanding and I couldn’t think of anyone I’d prefer to head a security force.

The issue is, does Burning Man need a security force? Pud says, “Hell yes!”

Are Michael Mikel and his deputies a bunch of fucking pigs? “Hell no!”

Is everyone satisfied with the performance of Michael’s patrol? “Probably not.”

I bet the Danger Rangers pass the acid test—they’re ok to have around when you’re tripping on LSD—for most people.

So let’s see, where does that leave us? Dump Heather Fong. Appoint Michael Mikel chief of police.

The first mayoral candidate to make that commitment, gets my vote.

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DEAD STOP

There’s been criticism, including from this blog, of the San Francisco Police Department, mostly the management, regarding the still un-charged Yale choir beating case. Recent revelations show issues that involve careers.

According to local ABC7, some of the alleged assailants who were let go were new Marines. For them, an arrest that night might have seriously damaged their careers at inception. Probably others of the assailants were known to the police, and they were let go because they were rich kids.

So the police, maybe not knowing the extent of the injuries, decided to let the assailants go. It was a judgment call. I’m sure cops get dumped on by their superiors all the time when they arrest the wrong people. The cops made the wrong judgment regarding the Yale choirboys and now the officers’ careers are in jeopardy.

The cops were doing the job their superiors expect them to do. And their superiors were backing them up in their lies of convenience. So we have ascending layers of lies up through the mayor. The unfortunate cops on the beat didn’t create this culture.

We demand that our police officers, especially on the street and vehicle patrol exercise a lot of judgment in what laws they enforce. For instance, in this town, making an arrest for non-commercial amounts of marijuana would get the cop in trouble.

The criteria used by the lowest ranking officers are received from their superiors, both officially and unofficially. As in any human endeavor, particular human interactions don’t necessarily fit neatly into pre-established sets of criteria. So the cop on the beat has to do a lot of guessing, and hoping. And, in this town, they do their jobs under intense suspicion and scrutiny.

Then we see a story like this in the Chron: a man speeds away from police officers and crashes into a big rig and dies.

The story is brief, and it emphasizes the contention that the police were not chasing the car at the time of the crash.

They got a call about erratic driving and found the person stopped in his SUV. When the cops got out and went to the driver’s door he sped away. And before the police could start to give chase, the man crashed two blocks away, and later died.

I bet that liability situation is the main concern in reporting that the officers were not giving chase at the time of the crash.

The article briefly notes the time and location:

A police dispatcher said [the driver]Banks was contacted by officers about two blocks away from Division and Bryant streets after someone called the police to complain about his driving around 2:30 a.m.

Division and Bryant is some dark mean streets, especially, at 2:30 in the morning. The elevated Central Freeway overhead adds echoes and dust to the shadowed air. The area is warehouses, small workshops, and poor-people housing. In the photo below, under the freeway we see darkness at noon.

When the police pulled up behind the SUV they probably expected to find a passed out drunk. But in such a stop they could easily encounter an armed fugitive, or armed lunatic, or woman having a baby. The drunk might be a socialite or other VIP who’ll “have their badges” if not treated properly.

It’s not easy.

It’s why our police need professional management. And their compensation should be enough to create waiting lists of qualified applicants, not hiring shortfalls.

The current plan is to bump along from disaster to disaster, scandal to scandal, keep our fingers crossed, and not expect too much. This is not a happy situation for anyone.

Civilization, Freud tells us, creates discontent, in all of us. We deeply resent the limits to our freedom, and experience these limits as physical discomfort.

When someone can’t handle their discontent, we call the police, whose job is to enforce the border where civilization meets the jungle.

We have a hate/love relationship with civilization. We have a hate/love relationship with the police. We love them and need them as long as they’re not bothering us, or the people we identify with.

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A POLICEMAN'S LOT

This award winning video stars San Francisco’s finest. What a job they have to do!

In a previous post, No Stinking Badges, we discussed the change from anonymous riot gear to the inclusion of badge-patches and big numbers on helmets as we see here.

The San Francisco Police Department is one of the last vestiges, along with the Cable Cars and Coit Tower, of 19th century San Francisco. They will be modernizing eventually. I predict that some day we’ll feel slight twinges of nostalgia for their brazen Fuck You attitude.

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ASSAULT CITY

Pud arrived for work (actually for coffee and bagels) this morning in a foul mood.

After two solid days of rain he was downright rantious.

“Elie Wiesel gets attacked in a San Francisco Hotel,” Pud said. “It’s like anyone can get attacked around here.

“When word got out that it’s ok for San Franciscan’s to beat up visiting choirboys, some people got the notion that any soft-target tourists were fair game.

“So when Elie Wiesel, the world’s foremost holocaust asserter, came to…

“Wait a second,” I shouted, “ what did you call Elie Wiesel?”

“A holocaust asserter,” Pud said. “You got a problem with that? Look, you can’t have holocaust deniers unless you first have holocaust asserters. Right?”

“But the guy completely misunderstood. In San Francisco only certain people get to attack tourists with impunity. White kids with money or juice can get away with a lot.

“But this guy was some jerkoff neo-nazi going after a world famous victim/survivor who has lots of rich friends.

“That’s what cops are for, to separate the authorized beater-uppers from the unauthorized.”

“There’s another group that gets to beat up people with impunity,” I said, “the cops themselves.”

Here’s a truly disgusting account of what looks like a serious felony, assault under color of authority, in which policemen in uniform decided to do some gay bashing.

The city’s going to pay $83,000 to settle civilly, but, get this, for some puling reason or other, the perp-cops are receiving no disciplinary action at all.

“What about the Yale choir beatings?” Pud asked.

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NO STINKING BADGES

Mostly from being on-scene for riot police activity at SF State in 1968-69, I became aware of a particular issue regarding badges.

Preparing for action, the riot police (then called the Tactical Unit, more commonly the ‘Tac Squad, which became in some circles Attack Squad) would don helmets and gloves. They hadn’t gone the full coverall route yet. Also, they would remove their badges and put them in their pockets. The police claim they did this because the badges could be grabbed by protesters and used to pull the cop off balance.

At the time, the badge with it’s prominent number, was the only individual ID visible on a police uniform. Without badges it was impossible to tell one officer from another. Thus the cops, when skirmishing with demonstrators were acting under the protection of anonymity.

Naturally, protesters and the leftwing press complained loudly and often about this practice, which complaints went unheard.

Unheard until the Niners won the Super Bowl. Talk about hick!

San Franciscans celebrated the unexpected success of their heretofore droopy NFL franchise, by gathering in the streets around Columbus and Broadway. The sheer number of celebrants posed a crowd control challenge and SFPD had riot-outfitted officers there aplenty.

So, when portions of the crowd needed controlling, SFPD did their usual night-sticking, no biggie. Except, the crowd wasn’t all lowlifes. In fact, a couple of crowd members who were introduced to Mr Billy Club happened to be next door neighbors of Mayor-by-bullet Diane Feinstein.

This couple wanted to lodge a complaint, but guess what—no badge numbers, no way to identify which cops meted the excessive force. Boo-hoo for rich people.

It wasn’t but a couple of months before SFPD’s riot uniforms included prominent cop numbers on riot helmets and cop number patches sewn onto the overalls.

With some reforms you wait and wait and then they happenrealfast.

So, it took a Super Bowl victory to obtain this tiny reform. I guess we’ll never know who killed Lester Garnier.

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JUST A TINY FREE PASS

It must have been the St Rose senior prom, late 1965 or early 1966. It’s kind of a blur. There were two SI (Saint Ignatius) guys, me included, and one guy from Riordan. It was a triple date, and the Riordan guy was driving. Of course, all three girls were from St Rose.

St Rose Academy wasn’t the snootiest Catholic girls high school in San Francisco, it was the second snootiest. At least one of the girls was from a family with significant connections in local politics.

I don’t know where we had done our drinking, but we got pulled over on the way to the prom hotel. I was a little too drunk to be nervous, and I managed to keep my mouth shut. It just sort of happened.

As I recall, the officer got our story about who we were and about going to the prom, and that, yeah we’d been drinking and stuff.

Then, after determining that the driver was too drunk to continue, the officer asked if any of the rest of us were ok to drive. One of the girls, who I guess hadn’t drank that much, said she could do it.

The officer looked her over, she slid behind the wheel, and we were off.

Luckily for us, and for the officer, we didn’t get into a crash or run somebody down.

I don’t know if that would be considered special treatment, or not. Being from SI and St Rose definitely didn’t hurt.

Given the sea change in attitudes and info on homosexuality, if I were that age today I probably wouldn’t get involved in such dopey heterosexual activities. I think they have dopey homosexual activities for kids these days.

But I guess it was ok to go out with girls and kiss them and stuff. I mean, it’s not like a sin or anything.

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