[The historical connections were on full display during
Wednesday’s violence at the Capitol. ] [[link removed]]
PARTNERS IN CRIME: THE SIEGE OF THE CAPITOL, POLICE AND WHITE
SUPREMACY
[[link removed]]
Jerry Iannelli
January 8, 2021
The Appeal
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]
_ The historical connections were on full display during
Wednesday’s violence at the Capitol. _
,
That a throng of right-wing thugs, neo-Nazis, and insurrectionists
were able to barge into the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday is, to
make a severe understatement, troubling. Once again, American cops
have expressed support for a right-wing insurrection and, in at least
three cases, have taken part in the riot themselves. The obvious
contrast between Wednesday’s display and the treatment that Black
Lives Matter protesters often face is so easy that it risks
obfuscating the long historical connection between law enforcement and
white supremacy.
The events on Wednesday didn’t occur without violence and
hostilities: U.S. Capitol Police announced on Thursday
[[link removed]] that
one officer, who was injured in a confrontation with protesters, later
died; four protesters were killed
[[link removed]] in
the chaos—one of whom was shot by Capitol police. But the links
between law enforcement officers and white supremacists groups are
appalling—and not surprising.
On Wednesday evening, former Oakland Police Officer Jurell Snyder
told Joe Vazquez
[[link removed]],
a reporter with the Bay Area’s KPIX television station, that he
believed it was worthwhile to break the law in order to take a stand
against Democrats who, in his mind, had sold out the country.
“What do you think is worse, Joe? Storming the Capitol with a flag,
or committing treason against your country?” Snyder asked
rhetorically.
Worse yet, on Wednesday, New York magazine reported that David Ellis
[[link removed]],
the current police chief in Troy, New Hampshire
[[link removed]],
attended the day’s events, though it’s unclear if he directly took
part in the siege on the Capitol. And, late Thursday night, the Bexar
County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees San Antonio, Texas,
announced that Lt. Roxanne Mathai is under investigation both
internally and criminally for posting photographs on Facebook from
the riot
[[link removed]].
Sheriff Javier Salazar told reporters Thursday that his office had
forwarded the images to the FBI. San Antonio news station KSAT
reported that Mathai has been on administrative leave since October
due to allegations that she’d had an inappropriate relationship
with an incarcerated person
[[link removed]].
Not to be outdone, other cops announced their support for the siege on
the internet. On Thursday, Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb
posted a video on Facebook in which he expressed support for the
rioters and said
[[link removed]] he
doesn’t “know how loud we have to get before they start to listen
to us.” He has since deleted the video.
Likewise, in an interview with Chicago NPR affiliate WBEZ, John
Catanzara, head of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police union
lodge, expressed support for the mob and spouted debunked conspiracy
theories
[[link removed]] about
the 2020 presidential election.
“They’re individuals,” Catanzara said. “They get to do what
they want. Again, they were voicing frustration. They’re entitled to
voice their frustration. They clearly have been ignored and they’re
still being ignored as if they’re lunatics and treasonous now, which
is beyond stupid.”
A review by The Appeal shows that police forums are awash in
misinformation and right-wing conspiracies about the Capitol riots.
On Thee Rant
[[link removed]], an
anonymous forum for New York Police Department members, one user named
“James-Bond007” claimed that “2016 was the last free and fair
election that this country has seen.” Another user made the
antisemitic remark that someone in the federal government had been
paid off with “shekels.” On LEOAffairs, a forum popular with
Florida police officers, one anonymous user in the Miami Police
Department’s forum
[[link removed]] wrote
that this election was “a push to start an agenda of future
communism and dictatorship.”
That an angry mob of armed right-wing insurrectionists was able to so
easily push itself into the U.S. Capitol is nightmarish on its face.
But it may be a much darker fact to realize that quite so many people
vested with the authority to kill others seem so willing to sympathize
with those who dream of a violent revolt against the government.
This is, of course, a trend as old as American policing itself.
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, police forces—which,
in many cases, began as patrols to catch runaway slaves—counted
scores of Ku Klux Klan members within their ranks. (In fact, Klansmen
across the country routinely bragged about the group’s ties to
law-enforcement during the terrorist group’s heyday.) In the 1920s,
both Los Angeles County Sheriff William Traeger and Los Angeles Police
Chief Louis D. Oaks admitted they’d been members of the so-called
Invisible Empire
[[link removed]] as
well. On America’s other coast, the Miami Police Department
throughout the 1920s worked openly alongside Klan members to harass
Black residents in the city’s segregated areas, Miami historian
Paul George wrote
[[link removed]] in
the 1979 journal article “Policing Miami’s Black Community,
1896-1930.”
In the years since the Klan fell from prominence, researchers and even
the federal government have warned that white supremacists have
continued to work closely with local cops. In 2017, The Intercept
obtained documents
[[link removed]] confirming
that the FBI had investigated “active links” between local
law-enforcement members, white supremacists, and members of armed
militia groups. Some of those “links” aren’t entirely secret:
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a worryingly large
number of American sheriffs have expressed sympathies with the a
group called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers
Association (CSPOA)
[[link removed]],
a militia-adjacent group that pushes cops not to enforce gun-control
laws that, in their opinion, violate the U.S. Constitution.
Indeed, CSPOA’s 2012 sheriff of the year—former Grant County,
Oregon Sheriff Glenn Palmer—was known for his close ties with local
militia groups. According to the SPLC
[[link removed]],
Palmer had repeatedly met with and expressed sympathies for the armed,
right-wing insurrectionists led by Ammon Bundy who, in 2016, occupied
the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon.
Another CSPOA sheriff of the year, Dar Leaf of Barry County,
Michigan, [[link removed]] made headlines in October,
after reporters exposed that he had shared a stage at an
anti-coronavirus-lockdown rally
[[link removed]] with
one of the men charged with attempting to kidnap Michigan Governor
Gretchen Whitmer last year. Speaking to West Michigan’s Fox
affiliate, Leaf defended the men. He said he knew two of the accused
plotters, but said he thought they were good people who might have
been, in his opinion, trying to perform a citizens’ arrest on the
governor.
“It’s just a charge, and they say a ‘plot to kidnap’ and you
got to remember that,” Leaf astoundingly said
[[link removed]].
“Are they trying to kidnap? Because a lot of people are angry with
the governor, and they want her arrested. So are they trying to arrest
or was it a kidnap attempt? Because you can still in Michigan if
it’s a felony, make a felony arrest.” In December, Leaf filed a
lawsuit alleging voter fraud
[[link removed]] in
2020’s presidential election.
That police officers—who count massive numbers of Trump supporters
in their ranks—treated a pro-Trump mob with kid gloves should
surprise no one. Deeper than a question of policing, the event
displayed American law enforcement’s centuries-long links to white
supremacy.
_Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that the
protesters were unarmed. Many of them were._
*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]
INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT
Submit via web [[link removed]]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions [[link removed]]
Manage subscription [[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org [[link removed]]
Twitter [[link removed]]
Facebook [[link removed]]
[link removed]
To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]
