When the cop showed up, he did the usual run-down, collecting my ID, contact information, where I lived, etc. In regards to filing a police report, he said the function of a police report is to 'get the guy who did this'. First, I don't want to send the person who broke my car window to jail or to face any sort of run-in with the 'justice' system/court. I want to dialogue with the person. I have no desire to fucking punish the person. The cop also told me I wouldn't get to meet the person or nothing - they were going to deal with the suspect directly. The cops didn't do shit about my window - they didn't offer to fix it or give me money - no, they were solely fixated on getting the suspect who did this. Clearly, their job wasn't to help me out with the window, but rather, to find some way to expand and serve the prison industrial complex.
There are no alternatives and police presence in community affairs is hyper-polarizing and operates on a strict dichotomy. It's their way or the highway. What's fucked up is that either I don't get any help, or I let them do it their way which often lands people in jail who didn't do anything wrong at all. Who are they going to target when they look for the suspect that broke these car windows? Poor people of color.
Relying on the justice system to distinguish between 'guilty' and 'innocent' is bullshit too. A study by Northwestern University estimated that around 25% of jury sentences wrongly convict innocent people and that 37% of rulings by judges wrongly convict innocent people. I wonder how many of these incorrect rulings were done to people of color? Why do we have to go to court to prove our innocence in the face of racial profiling and to be judged by predominantly white juries? They are not our peers. The community and our peers should be involved in conflict resolution, not some self-righteous motherfucker with a shiny JD degree who doesn't know shit about community problems but is more than fucking trigger happy to help in the expansion of the prison industrial complex at the expense of people of color. Not some motherfucking pig in a uniform and badge who doesn't know who I am, where I come from, or my fucking story but whose job is to serve and protect through forceful brutality of the people in order to protect the rich.
The problem is that we as a community no longer are self-empowered or have the means to solve our own problems. They eliminated programs that did that. Black Panther Party, Brown Berets, I Wor Kuen, etc. Now we have 'reform' based non-profits who don't relate to the community and the State. In fact, I don't see too much of a difference between the State and the non-profit industrial complex - only difference is that white yuppies are mad in love with the latter. Why was it that I couldn't fucking solve my own issue about who broke my window?
The deeper issue is also that we've been so fucking colonized into allowing ourselves to be reliant on the same State that brutalizes us to solve our problems. We need to rid ourselves of the knee-jerk reaction to call 9-1-1 when shit goes down. Fuck a police report. We need to band together as a community to lay the groundwork for community conflict resolution which has the welfare of every individual of the community in mind, not the welfare of the prison industrial complex. Only by doing this do we materially and mentally divest ourselves from the State and the prison industrial complex as well as challenge ourselves as a community to envision a society where justice doesn't involve prison time, but rather, constructive dialogue and growth.
No comments:
Post a Comment