The Struggle to Stop Police Brutality

I attended the first vigil of my life last Friday. Organized by a nondenominational Christian church, the vigil began with a moment of silence in Solvang Park, followed by an eight-minute and forty-six-second kneeling in protest of George Floyd’s murder. As we knelt in silence, construction workers excavating the connecting road to the park continued to run heavy machinery into the asphalt. The constant drilling and cracking of the sun-bleached asphalt pierced the crowd’s silence and irked many of the attendees. As the minutes counted down, a local deli store owner walked over to the construction crew and asked them to stop their machinery until the vigil was over.

The entirely Latino crew began to speak to each other, questioning whether they were allowed to stop the demolition taking place. “Do you want us to clock out? We’re not done here,” was repeated over and over again in Spanish by a concerned worker. By the time the deli operator and the construction crew had agreed to stop, there was about a minute left on the clock. Those last sixty seconds gave me quite a pause for reflection. The Latino employees were protecting their incomes; in spite of knowing that the vigil for George Floyd was occurring in front of them, they wanted to make sure they didn’t stop working so they could protect their jobs, and thus their livelihoods.

The juxtaposition between the construction workers and the attendees was striking to me. I am half white and half Mexican. But I benefit greatly from my white-passing privilege. Albeit I have been surrounded by darker-skinned Mexican family members and friends, I have never felt their struggle against racism. Black and Brown people suffer great prejudice from police departments, businesses, and political institutions in our country. The current societal system inhibits them from banding together en masse to push for social change that would improve their communities. The story of disjointed communities suffering through injustice and racism is a tale that has been retold over and over again in America. While the Latino employees may have supported the vigil, they feared any repercussions from slowing down their work. Whether it was Watts in the 1960s, or South Central LA in the 1990s, or Minneapolis now, police departments have gotten away without reforming their systems because the main beneficiaries of reform — namely Black and Brown people — have been pitted against each other in a society where good paying jobs are few and far between.

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In 1965, Watts saw some of the largest protests against police violence and inequality the nation had ever seen following a skirmish between officers and bystanders watching Marquette Frye’s arrest. In 1992, South Central Los Angeles experienced even larger protests after the acquittal of four police officers who had brutally beaten Rodney King on camera. In 2020, the murder of George Floyd has created an outcry across the country for more oversight and the defunding of the police. All of these protests have followed a similar historical thread: income inequality limits the power and ability to gain wealth for minorities in America. Police officers increasingly become hostile to these populations, conflating poverty with criminality. After years of police abuse and mistreatment in these communities, one well-recorded example of police brutality lights the powder-keg of tensions that have built up in society. Protests ensue, and reforms are offered to improve the people’s confidence in their police departments. The officers who committed the violent acts are acquitted or removed from their positions before moving on and continuing their careers in another city. The promised policy reforms and social programs flaunt, and government contributions to implement reform are defunded. Change is promised, but seldom followed through.

In order to break this cycle, we must understand the different aspects that have come together to create an environment that explodes into protest in the first place. Why are Black and Brown people criminalized in this country? Why is there not enough funding allocated to provide services to help those who need it? How can our police departments, those designed to protect and serve their communities, come to brutalize and harm the people that call those communities home? Why are our underserved communities being neglected by officials at every level of government? By understanding the protests and the policy response after Watts and the Los Angeles Rebellion of 1992, we may learn how to break this cycle. George Floyd should have never died by the hands of the police. But in this tragedy, there may be an opportunity to make meaningful change in this country to make sure that a tragedy like this doesn’t happen again.

Watts in 1965 was teeming with tension. The community had a 41% poverty rate. In spite of the emerging Great Societies programs, the de-urbanization of industry and capital flight to white suburbs caused massive disinvestment in urban communities across the country. Unemployment was at 13% for adults, and 25% for young adults. Without a strong social safety net, employment, and supportive educational programs, Black youth in Watts were growing up in an area without many job opportunities. Unemployed youth were treated with contempt by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), criminalizing entire communities for their poverty. In his work on the militarization of LA, Fortress Los Angeles, Mike Davis reveals that the LAPD even “spread scare literature about the ‘impending gang invasion’ by black teenagers” to businesses, further driving employers out of urban centers. When Marquette Frye was arrested for alleged drunk driving, escalating tensions between onlookers and the police quickly escalated into six days of rebellion. According to David Widener in Black Arts West, “the numbers of police and military units sent to quell the violence exceeded those used in the American invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965.” Income inequality created a difficult environment for the citizens of Watts, particularly the youth Black residents, who made their frustrations known by participating in the civil unrest. Instead of working to fix the underlying problems that caused the protests, police officers responded to Watts’ grievances by escalating their presence and hostilities, cracking down on dissent and creating curfew zones that cutoff Black and Brown communities from their white neighbors.

“Why are Black and Brown people criminalized in this country?”

Rodney King’s brutal beating by the LAPD captured America. It was not the first time that police brutality was caught on camera, but it was a moment that was broadcasted in newsrooms and televisions across the country. Police officers had clearly overstepped their legal authority and brutalized King. In spite of this, all four officers charged with assaulting King were acquitted in court. The 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion that broke out following the acquittal had many parallels with the Watts protests. Disinvestment in Black communities and in urban centers had continued in the decades following the civil unrest in Watts. Government austerity measures enacted under Nixon, Reagan, and George HW Bush slashed federal spending and tax revenues. Social programs for urban communities were always the last to be implemented, and the first to be cut during budget reductions.

At the same time, the federal government created a new program: the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). The LEAA provided substantial funding to state and local governments to increase spending on police equipment and personnel, but the block grants capped personnel spending at 1/3rd of the total funding. Thus, the police invested heavily in military-grade equipment so as to not lose their grant funding. Anti-riot gear, helicopters, and weapons proliferated through police departments across the country. Poor Black and Brown communities suffered from fiscal austerity, while police departments militarized and strengthened their crackdown on crime.

“How can our police departments, those designed to protect and serve their communities, come to brutalize and harm the people that call those communities home.”

A hammer sees everything as a nail. An overly militarized police department placed at odds with poor citizens unhappy with the status quo and oppressed by unaccountable police officers inevitably led to violence. An unfair job market, an unfair economy, and a racist policing system that conflates poverty with crime ended in tragedy in Los Angeles in 1992. Michael Katz discusses the problem further in Why Don’t American Cities Burn More Often? In spite of promised reforms after the L.A. Rebellion, Katz writes that “the police remained problematic; chronic joblessness increased; and inner cities remained bleak.”

History is written by the victor. In the past, police officers and officials have controlled the narrative. They blame the problem on a few bad apples, and promised reforms are just that: promises. They never offer substantive solutions to address the underlying problems of inequality and racism in this country. Bandaids can’t heal the underlying illness. Focusing resources on more policing and not on economic support, jobs programs, and social community investment will always lead to this outcome.

But the narrative is no longer in the hands of those who conventionally controlled it. The beating of Rodney King on camera exposed the country to a corrupt and racist culture within LAPD. The protests and civil unrest following George Floyd’s murder are different. Cell phone cameras have recorded thousands of interactions between police officers and protestors. These mostly violent engagements have captured the widespread injustice in this country, and have documented firsthand the militarized power of the police. The narrative is now out of the police and the court’s hands. Social media and the internet have democratized the story making process.

“Why is there not enough funding allocated to provide services to help those who need it?”

The reason tragedies like these keep repeating is because we haven’t addressed the issues that cause outcries for change in the first place: income inequality and racism have not disappeared in this country since Watts and the L.A. Rebellion. The top 1% in this country own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population. Racism persists and is propagated by the current administration. If we don’t work to change the underlying conditions threatening the livelihoods of People of Color in this country, then this isn’t the last we’ve seen of civil unrest.

But this time may be different. If we learn the lessons of our past, there may still yet be hope for change. Calls for defunding the police, the changing political environment, and broad political reforms are on the horizon. We, as a society, must make sure that we take this opportunity to rebuild an inclusive country, helping those who have been marginalized throughout our history.

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Previously published on “Equality Includes You”, a Medium publication.

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