(NEW YORK) MintPress — While there has been a growing debate over the efficacy of counter insurgency tactics employed by the U.S. military in the ongoing warfare in the Middle East, police are increasingly using similar strategies to quell conflict at home.
In some cases, it works. Take the Brightwood neighborhood of Springfield, Massachusetts, where two local officers’ deployment in Iraq made them believe they couldn’t achieve victory in war without winning the hearts and minds of those most affected by it.
In 2009, when the level of gang violence in Springfield spiked, state troopers Michael Cutone and Thomas Sarrouf suggested using their unique battlefield skills to suppress it.
“It was kind of an ‘aha’ moment,” said Cutone. “Gang members and drug dealers operate very similarly to insurgents. I don’t mean they’re looking to overthrow the state. But the way that they blend into the passive support of the community and use that to their advantage is very similar.”
That logic helped to persuade Lt. Col Timothy Alben, a division commander with the state police, although he said that the term “counterinsurgency” made him and other officers nervous because of its association with moves such as kicking down doors and conducting night raids.
And rightly so. The militarization of the police, especially in New York City, can also have grave consequences.
Lessons from Occupy Wall Street
Police brutality and abuses have been an ongoing aspect of the protests generated by the Occupy Wall Street movement. In the early days, in fact, when the number of people taking part was small, it was overly aggressive policing that put them on the map.
Online videos of women being pepper sprayed and the arrests of people on the Brooklyn Bridge went viral. Outrage then spread to Oakland, California when police critically wounded Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen while using tear gas, rubber bullets and flash grenades to clear Frank H. Ogawa Plaza without any evidence of provocation by the protesters.
Just this week, two legal suits against police violations of constitutional rights were filed, one against four New York City council members, JP Morgan, Brookfield Properties and Mayor Michael Bloomberg over the use of excessive force by police.
Occupy Wall Street filed a separate suit against NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly by five protesters seeking class action status over the detention of demonstrators when they were “never charged with any violation, misdemeanor or crime.”
Militarized May Day
Meanwhile, in Chicago, which is gearing up for the NATO summit on May 20-21, police in “battle” dress hit the streets on May Day to prepare.
As of Tuesday, Operation Red Zone, a security perimeter around McCormick Place, where the meetings will be held, and a vast area of the city where government offices are located, will be patrolled by law enforcement officials carrying supposedly non-lethal weapons.
The police force will be “highly visible,” according to Cleophas Bradley, deputy regional director with the Federal Protective Service, “but we will not be preventing anyone from entering the red zone.”
“This is the city showing us their cards,” said Crystal Vance-Guerra, an organizer with Occupy el Barrio, which operates in Chicago’s immigrant neighborhood of Pilsen. “This is how they are going to play it.”
May Day has a long history in Chicago. It was started in the city by immigrants agitating for the eight hour day amidst conditions in which workers worked much longer.
Then, in 2006, half a million immigrants flooded into the streets of Chicago as part of a work strike and economic boycott to protest anti-immigrant legislation that was being considered by Congress.
“The immigrant rights movement of 2006 actually brought back May Day in the United States as a day for workers to express their concerns and their needs within the larger society,” said Democracy Now! journalist Juan Gonzalez.
“The fact that this day is being met with the beginnings of a force that is going to be used in NATO,” said Vance-Guerra, shows an extension of the “extreme militarization of the border, and the huge fear that was created and enforced after the 2006 marches.”