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VIDEO SCRIPT
In early 2013, during the manhunt for Christopher Dorner, at least eight LAPD employees fired over 100 rounds into a vehicle that was a different make, model, and color than that said to be driven by Dorner. It’s occupants – two women, 47 and 71 years old, certainly didn’t match Dorner’s description, either. Still, those sitting on the LAPD oversight board ruled that the shooters involved would not be charged with any crimes.
These so-called police oversight boards — which are also called “civilian review boards” or “oversight commissions” — have been popping up where police brutality becomes really, really apparent. Today – that’s pretty much everywhere.
Oversight boards are staffed with local residents whose purported job is to reign in out-of-control police practices. The board members are — surprise, surprise — suggested and approved by a combination of the mayor, the city council, and the local police chief. In larger cities, individuals who sit on these oversight boards are even paid from taxpayer coffers, just like the police. And they tend to hold their meetings at police headquarters.
Without question, it is an incestuous relationship.
Bureaucrats get to look like they care about transparency while using police oversight boards to distract from the paradox inherent to the policing model – which is that a person who claims the right to initiate force could somehow also provide protection.
In New Orleans, after police employees shot and killed a couple of unarmed people from the Danziger Bridge and covered it up, an oversight board was created. In Oakland, after it was discovered that police employees there assaulted, planted drugs, and falsified reports as a matter of routine, another was created.
Yet, New Orleans and Oakland are still riddled with police brutality and chaos. The same is true in LA, Albuquerque, NYC, Cleveland, Detroit and elsewhere where oversight boards exist.
No matter how outspoken, how much impartiality is claimed, or how much authority is said to exist, oversight boards can never stop police brutality as their very existence gives credence to, rather than undermines, a system founded on coercion.
An oversight board, which merely hacks at the branches, cannot remedy the inherent toxicity, which is the root.
If the supply of “service” and “protection” from your local police outfit isn’t satisfactory, don’t give the prattle about the need for review boards a second thought. See through the slick salesmanship that only perpetuates an arrangement that places some as the rulers and others as the ruled.
Instead, focus on consumer-oriented solutions.
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The Truth About “Police Oversight Boards” is a post from Cop Block – Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights