Essays on Policing

Enforcing – Not the law – Enforcement gone criminal beyond imagination

/ stefanfeller / 1 Comment

Even after 45 years, I find it an ambitious and daunting task to write about policing. Because the issue at hand is not as easy and simple as it looks. It is not possible to do it out of context, meaning my own socialisation into a police organisation. My time inside policing and the larger unfolding of my work influenced my thinking, and my emotions.

Right now, my emotions go over board. I will say why, but before that I will say that I struggle with an enormous sadness, and I cope with anger and resentment. Anger and resentment are poison for me. I am what one could name a police officer who has seen more than a normal share of awfulness. In a situation in which I am operationally involved, I manage to stay calm. I describe this state of mind “going tactical”. But this is only a means to do what is expected from me, unbiased, professional, and allowing me to maintain safety and security for all involved. Especially victims.

But nothing in 45 years has led to that I get less upset, less sad, less tempted to give in into anger, than when I see blatant examples of violence and abuse by public officials, in their most atrocious forms.

So, what happened?

January 7, 2023, Tyre Nichols was stopped by police officers in Memphis, in the United States of America. Three days later, he died. He succumbed to wounds inflicted on him by police officers in a way which is even unimaginable when taking into account the circumstances of the deaths of Rodney King in Los Angeles, Michael Brown in Ferguson, and George Floyd in Minneapolis, and others, so many others.

It doesn’t matter that Tyre Nichols was a person of color. Neither it does that the police officers were all persons of color, too. It matters that they were police officers, public officials entrusted with the power to exert reasonable force, only if necessary, and only using appropriate levels of force. What makes this case standing out is that a combination of street cams and body cams worn by the officers themselves are documenting 26 minutes until medical assistance engaged, with Tyre Nichols brutally and for no reason at all being beaten to death, literally. Memphis police fired the officers involved, and others, including rescue services, were fired for gross negligence. The officers involved face murder charges.

You can see select reporting here, on NBC News, and here, on BBC News. You can see ONE FULL HOUR of bodycam and streetcam footage about these 26 minutes, for example, here, on NBC News.

I watched it. It broke my heart.

Today, January 31, 2023, the New York Times is releasing a story in the format of an “Opinion Video”. It is a video piece of the NYT, and it is titled “Authorities Used a Taser on Him 7 Times in 15 Minutes. Then He Died. Justice Never Came.“

The NYT video starts with: “It’s one thing to imagine what happened. It’s another thing to see what happened. And it’s another thing to hear what happened.”

So, I watched it, too. I forced myself to the very end. It broke my heart, again. A friend of mine, passionate about the fight against violence by enforcement officers like I, refused to watch it to the end. It sickened her too much. Yet, if you can stomach it, I encourage you to watch the opinion video. It is outstanding in it’s making, and I won’t go into an account of it here.

It is the story of the death of Jerod Draper. Jerod was arrested in 2018, in southern Indiana. It does not matter that Jerod was a white male. The traffic stop, including his attempts to flee, and the subsequent arrest by the police, from what I can see in the video, and what is circumstantial in the reporting, seems to have been conducted correctly. Jerod, as it turned out, was intoxicated with methamphetamines. Turned out, he had OD’d, meaning, he took an overdose. Later examination would confirm that the was dying a slow overdose death for hours, and it is reasonable to believe that proper medical treatment would have saved his life.

The video includes the full documentation by a surveillance camera in the jail cell into which he was incarcerated. For reasons of his not injuring himself, he was put into a specific long-coated straight jacket, and he was tied to a specific chair for the maximum time permitted. He was violent to himself in a jail cell with no moving or destroyable parts. The massive intoxication made him banging his head against the cell walls, and much more.

I was beyond disbelief when seeing a group of several correction officers, some of which obviously also held roles of paramedic tasks, acting. Including tasering Jerod seven times in fifteen minutes, whilst his foot was stomped upon, and he was forced down by other staff. One expert consulted in this video puts it correctly: Jerod was tortured. He did, it would appear, not die from torture, or as a direct consequence of this atrocious behavior. He died because his methamphetamine overdose killed him, and he died because of absent medical emergency treatment.

Instead, he was tortured by staff that simply had one objective: Making sure he could not move, and would not be able to harm himself. I am struggling to apprehend thought processes which, in order to make him stopping to hurt himself, lead to pushing Jerod down, and applying a 50.000 Volt taser not in self-defense, but literally like a surgical instrument, on his limbs and his body. Seven.Times.In.Fifteen.Minutes.

I know I am talking about extreme cases. But it does not invalidate the argument which I am going to unfold.

In the BBC article on Tyre Nichols’s murder, Alexis Hoag-Fordjour, a professor at Brooklyn Law School and co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice is interviewed. She is quoted with the following: “Policing in this country is focused on control, subordination and violence – regardless of the race of the officer,” she said. “Society views black people as inherently dangerous and criminal… even if you have black people in the position of law enforcement, that doesn’t mean that proposition goes away.”

Now, I know I will write, am writing, “essays on policing”. No surprise in that police violence and abuse of power will feature in these essays. By far not from a U.S. perspective, my view on this is global. But it includes the sheer endless U.S. debate. If one adds the second article, where corrections officers are involved, the underlying rationale goes beyond policing.

Meaning, coming back to the title which I chose: I do see societies and cultures in which public officials are driven by an understanding of “enforcement” which, taken to its extreme, will not allow anything else than cowering down and hoping that gestures of subduing myself will hopefully lessen the chance of receiving more than a very unpleasant attitude of officers allowing no dissent. Go through U.S. immigration on airports, get into contact with cops, or face a private security officer anywhere in the United States.

It is this attitude, being part of what I call the “DNA” of policing, which increases the likelihood of instances of getting roughed up, or worse. Taken to its extreme, this is the attitude leading to the above horrible murder of Tyre Nichols, and actions of torture (yes, I agree with the expert in the video), which obviously raise severe questions of accountability in the case of Jerod Draper.

As long as we name it “law enforcement”, as long as I see police cars with light signals like “Stop – It’s The Law” (because, it doesn’t matter whether it is the law, it matters that I am able to explain why I am applying the law, and that I act proportionally). as long as we have this attitude in policing by police officers and police organisations (I personally refuse to talk about a “Police Force”), as long as enforcement is squarely at the heart of an understanding of policing, I feel we will continue to see no progress on police reform.

Police Reform is not starting with reforming the Police. It is starting with reforming the understanding of policing.

essays on policing – status update – initiation of work

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In a few days I will celebrate my 65th birthday. I became a German police officer in the detective branch at the age of 18. Almost 44 years later, in January 2020, I was up for mandatory retirement. About half of these four decades I rose through the ranks of a national Police in Germany. The other half I spent abroad, in senior headquarter and field positions of the United Nations and the European Union. In these functions of UN peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and EU crisis management, policing always was a cornerstone of my work. In my current work as an adviser contracted by the German Federal Foreign Office, policing is an important element within a larger and holistic framework of support action, too.

So, 45 years of policing experience. Related to work in Germany, South-East and East Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Carribean. Living in many places in Germany, and in Belgrade, Brussels, New York, Pristina, Sarajevo.

In my article “Seeing Deeper” I reflected on my personal experience with the fundamental shifts, including within the international peace&security architecture, over those two decades of my contribution to it. Of course, the historical timelines which are preceding the colossal changes of these days, they go way back. Some of those I witnessed in a national capacity, some during my international time. Events like, for example, the fall of the Berlin wall, or 9/11, they are examples for moments that we associate with being triggers for fundamental shifts. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they are just the coordinates in space-time where the underlying energies pop up with explosive momentum. Much later, through an analysis of United Nations peacekeeping, I would revisit the bigger picture in which some of these key events played a role, where they had an impact on what I was involved in at that time, the role of policing in peace operations. I have written about some specific aspects related to what we call “international policing” here.

Over those more than 23 years within an international context of peace&security, I witnessed times when there was a lot of enthusiasm about what policing could contribute to supporting peace processes. Policing, done right, is a key component for supporting processes towards lasting peace, and reconciliation. Therefore, support to the establishment of capable policing, deeply anchored in values and international principles and standards, can be a key enabler for lasting peace, and so much more. Think, for example, gender equality, protection of the vulnerable, protection of minorities, ensuring democratic forms of governance, contributing to justice, and in its very core, promoting human rights.

Because of the many years of my own involvement, I witnessed success and failure. The reasons for it are highly complex. Some sit with grappling to understand and to properly implement policing assistance. Some reasons sit way beyond and made it challenging for all actors with military, police, or civilian tasks, to deliver on what they were expected to. On the policing side, where some of my core experience sits, it includes that we, the so-called international community, struggled with making these policing contributions relevant. Sometimes our collective proverbial mouth was not where our money was. Sometimes the political design of international assistance in or after a conflict or war struggled with applying coherence to expectations, objectives and their implementation, either narrowly speaking for what policing could bring to the table, or related to the respective peace operation at large. When we were successful, we had to see that good news stories rarely stick, they are unfortunately not as visible as their bad-news-siblings. At the same time we saw the political development leading to the erosion of the peace&security architecture into its current deplorable state of affairs. This made it more and more difficult for any form of collective international assistance to prove its positive impact.

We now live in a period where a discussion about policing may feel very counter-intuitive compared to the huge focus on military engagement. Just recently, I argued that in my personal opinion it is time to make a decision to provide the Ukraine with heavy battle tanks. That’s not policing. What I am concerned with is to contribute to a discussion in which we do not loose sight about which ingredients are vital for a peaceful society, and that we include lessons from the past into how we want to move forward in a world in which previous rules of engagement may increasingly become outdated.

“essays on policing” is offering a thematically focused window into my work. My writing about my experiences with policing is not motivated by “setting a record straight about a past long gone”. It is not about a sad look back into the “good old times”. It is not about giving advice with an attitude.

It is about incentivizing a quest in order to find contributions to contemporary challenges, and there is no other way than also to make reference to how we did, and failed, or succeeded, during previous challenges. We can learn only by looking into the past, without getting stuck in it.

I feel the best format for doing this is to choose the writing format of essays. This format allows me to find a balance between solid research and truthful facts, and the inevitable personal and subjective element which forms an essential for my contribution. To some extent it will be a walk on the memoir side of things, but thematically grouped. It won’t be a linear historical account of my work experiences. I will jump back and forth, weaving a narrative for how I came to look at specific things from a vantage point of own experiences, good and bad. It hopefully allows me to stay humble. As I said, it is less about advice and more about storytelling within an ongoing discourse in which we all struggle to find meaningful ways forward, keeping us all together.

“essays on policing” is part of a larger set of writing projects. I have ideas for “essays on peace&security”, for “essays on trauma&reconciliation”. In all of them, there is a deep professional and a deep personal element of experience. Looking at the statistics of this blog, some of the articles which create the most, and the most longstanding interest, are about policing. It feels natural, therefore, to start here.

My plan is that this set of essays is forming a book. As a book, I do not plan to publish it here. I do not even know whether I go for self-publishing, or whether I find a publisher. I am not motivated by profit, but I won’t do it for free either. This is going to be intense work, and a lot of time and effort will go into it.

I plan to regularly update you on the project, here on this blog. Once the structure and the outline of planned content is presented here, my thoughts about how I want to publish, and how you could purchase the book, in case you’re interested, will become clear.

I am inviting you to participate. Please do so by sending me a mail: stefanfeller@mac.com.

Proceeds will go into the future of my youngest children. It will be a tiny part of my efforts to make up for time lost, because of my work, and to make good on where I failed to be sufficiently available for them, for reasons which only include my work, but go far beyond. But that will deserve a closer look within “essays on trauma&reconciliation”.

I am working on a dedicated page on this site where you track progress, and where I will describe the content of essays. Meanwhile, my writing here will continue to go all over the place.