Do You See It Or Do You Wish To Close Your Eyes?

Some time ago, I post­ed an image of a cop on social media that I thought demon­strat­ed where American polic­ing real­ly was.
As a for­mer Jamaican police offi­cer who ful­ly under­stands the impor­tance of deport­ment and per­cep­tions, I thought it impor­tant to raise aware­ness of what I perceived.

Here is anoth­er who was fired in Michigan for being real­ly dis­re­spect­ful to a Black man he arrest­ed for col­lect­ing sig­na­tures for a Tenant’s Association in his hous­ing development.
It is impor­tant to under­stand that fir­ing a cop in the United States is real­ly not pun­ish­ment. They go to anoth­er depart­ment where they are usu­al­ly paid more mon­ey and pro­mot­ed. Unless they are decer­ti­fied and crim­i­nal­ly pros­e­cut­ed, no pun­ish­ment met­ed out real­ly matters.

This cop works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His name is Ian Lichterman.

In 2016 Buzzfeed news said this about the Lichterman tat­toos snapped after he was seen doing crowd control.
It has become clear if it wasn’t before, that white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy has per­me­at­ed the halls of American author­i­ty — from the White House, where anti-immi­grant nativists Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Sebastian Gorka were hired as advis­ers to Trump; to the prison sys­tem, where three Florida cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers, found to be Ku Klux Klan mem­bers, were con­vict­ed of plot­ting to kill a black inmate; to the church, where a Catholic priest and part-time his­to­ry teacher in Virginia was forced to resign after a parish­ioner dis­cov­ered that he‘d orches­trat­ed at least six cross burn­ings dur­ing his time in the KKK; to the mil­i­tary, where a for­mer Marine Corps recruiter and staff sergeant, who retired in January, became leader of the white suprema­cist group Vanguard America; to the fire sta­tion, where a fire­fight­er in Ohio wrote in a Facebook com­ment that he’d rather save a dog than a black per­son because “one dog is more impor­tant than a mil­lion niggers.”

How many of these peo­ple do you think are oper­at­ing in plain sight in police depart­ments across the coun­try, killing, maim­ing, and lying on reports?
In the image above, the white suprema­cists-cops in Jasper, Alabama, PD, cel­e­brat­ed with white pow­er signs after col­lar­ing an African-American fugi­tive. The cow­ard­ly punks then lied that the signs were a kid’s game. Their pun­ish­ment, two weeks with­out pay, they were allowed to con­tin­ue to be slave catch­ers. As you know, American polic­ing derived from slave-catch­ing and remains so today.
In August of 2020, the Brennan Center For Justice said in a Summary;The government’s response to known con­nec­tions of law enforce­ment offi­cers to vio­lent racist and mil­i­tant groups has been strik­ing­ly insuf­fi­cient.
This writer has made the very same point repeat­ed­ly over the years, albeit less artic­u­late, since the FBI 2006 inter­nal memo was made pub­lic that warned of white suprema­cists infil­trat­ing police depart­ments using what they refer to as ghost skins actors. At the time the memo was writ­ten, the FBI warned that the prac­tice of white suprema­cists infil­trat­ing police depart­ments was a threat to nation­al security.
Ghost skins refer to hate group mem­bers and sym­pa­thiz­ers who don’t overt­ly dis­play their beliefs to blend into soci­ety then advance their white suprema­cist causes.
Part of the rea­son they have cho­sen to enter law enforce­ment is to have mem­bers alert them to poten­tial inves­ti­ga­tions against them, the Brennan Center For Justice said.
It is safe to say that 15 years lat­er, no seri­ous steps have been tak­en to rein in, much less erad­i­cate that can­cer from law enforce­ment despite the increased inci­dences of police vio­lence lead­ing to the deaths of more peo­ple of col­or year over year.
The Supreme Court has basi­cal­ly been mum while Federal appeals courts have giv­en police more and more pow­er to abuse the rights of cit­i­zens under the dubi­ous cloak of qual­i­fied immunity.

In the 2020 Brennan Report Michael Graham stat­ed; While it is wide­ly acknowl­edged that racist offi­cers sub­sist with­in police depart­ments around the coun­try, fed­er­al, state, and local gov­ern­ments are doing far too lit­tle to proac­tive­ly iden­ti­fy them, report their behav­ior to pros­e­cu­tors who might unwit­ting­ly rely on their tes­ti­mo­ny in crim­i­nal cas­es, or pro­tect the diverse com­mu­ni­ties they are sworn to serve.
In con­clu­sion, Graham writes,The affin­i­ty some police offi­cers have shown for armed far-right mili­tia groups at protests is con­found­ing giv­en that many states, includ­ing California, Illinois, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington, have laws bar­ring unreg­u­lat­ed para­mil­i­tary activ­i­ties. And it is most trou­bling because far-right mil­i­tants have often killed police offi­cers. The over­lap between mili­tia mem­bers and the Boogaloo move­ment — whose adher­ents have been arrest­ed for man­u­fac­tur­ing Molotov cock­tails in prepa­ra­tion for an attack at a Black Lives Matter protest in Nevada, incit­ing a riot in South Carolina, and shoot­ing, bomb­ing, and killing police offi­cers in California — high­lights the threat that police engage­ment with these groups pos­es to their law enforce­ment part­ners. See the full report in the link below.
https://​www​.bren​nan​cen​ter​.org/​o​u​r​-​w​o​r​k​/​r​e​s​e​a​r​c​h​-​r​e​p​o​r​t​s​/​h​i​d​d​e​n​-​p​l​a​i​n​-​s​i​g​h​t​-​r​a​c​i​s​m​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​a​c​y​-​a​n​d​-​f​a​r​-​r​i​g​h​t​-​m​i​l​i​t​a​n​c​y​-​law

In 2019 the Antifascist group Seven Hills unearthed enough evi­dence on Rob Stamm, a 36-year-old sergeant in the Virginia Capitol police that had respon­si­bil­i­ty for pro­tect­ing the then gov­er­nor Ralph Northam.
Stamm was uncov­ered through his likes on far-right-wing post­ings on social media. Activists noticed a large ban­dage on Stamm’s neck at a protest against the Governor and decid­ed to dig into his back­ground upon which where they found mul­ti­ple links to the far-right. Stamm’s tat­toos also show an alleged affin­i­ty for the far-right, the most obvi­ous of which appears to be a large Iron Cross on his upper left arm, a German war medal. He also alleged­ly had a neo-Pagan Viking rune on his left bicep and what seemed to be a wolf­san­gel on his neck — an ancient Germanic sym­bol often used by far-right groups like the Aryan Nations — which he then attempt­ed to cov­er up with a more gener­ic design.

None of this was dis­cov­ered by the gov­ern­ment whose job it is to pro­tect all Americans, it was dis­cov­ered by Anti-Fascist American cit­i­zens that have been demo­nized as anti-American in right-wing media like Fox noise and others.
If unearthing dan­ger­ous and vio­lent poten­tial ter­ror­ists bur­rowed into law enforce­ment is anti-American, by def­i­n­i­tion they are say­ing being American means one must be a racist poten­tial terrorist.
This hard­ly scratch­es the sur­face, how­ev­er. In September 2018, a cop in Georgia was sus­pend­ed after it was dis­cov­ered he had liked Facebook posts pro­mot­ing the Ku Klux Klan. In July that year, a deputy at the Clark County Sherrif’s Office in Washington State was fired for mak­ing mer­chan­dise for the Proud Boys, a far-right gang.
Rob Stamm
Rob Stamm was even­tu­al­ly fired from his job after the expo­sure, how­ev­er, the fir­ing of a cop in the United States means very lit­tle. He can sim­ply move to anoth­er depart­ment where he will almost cer­tain­ly be hired and even pro­mot­ed, not despite what he alleged­ly did but because of what he did.
Unless they lose their accred­i­ta­tion to be a police offi­cer los­ing their job when uncov­ered may actu­al­ly mean a pro­mo­tion to anoth­er more tol­er­ant law enforce­ment agency.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.