Misuse Of Authority And Why Insulting Language Is Counter-Intuitive
This article was first published in 2015 by Spook Magazine, an online publication that no longer exists.
In 2013 a group of African-Australian men won a racial profiling case against Victoria Police after numerous occasions where they were stopped and questioned around the Flemington and North Melbourne areas. The men reported instances of such ‘questioning’ leading to violent altercations, and revealed they were beaten up by police on multiple occasions.
Apart from a conversation on Alec Baldwin’s podcast Here’s the Thing with retired NYPD captain John Eterno, transparent opinion to gain understanding of police behaviour is lacking in almost all media coverage of recent Black male deaths in U.S police custody. Eterno explained to Baldwin that once an officer has asserted his authority to detain someone, it becomes very hard to switch back to being the helpful community figure — ready to take Eric Garner to the hospital for example, because he says he can’t breathe. Common sense, Eterno says, is becoming a thing of the past for police officers who are forced to act robotically against the general public in order to meet quotas.
Lacking this kind of insight, negative opinion towards police goes back and forth case by case. It is important, then, to see the systematic problems enabling police to act in ways that are so harrowing.
Authority is often exercised with a strict mentality. As if you are innately criminal, lacking the basic understanding of what the right thing is. Except the police rarely communicate what right is: they are simply the authority on that and there is a general feeling that we are not expected to question this.
An Australian police officer may ask you what you are doing in the street. They might even cause physical harm in the process of gaining information, but because this person has a badge there is acceptance that reason was behind it. A blind faith, even.
Currently in the Northern Territory juvenile offenders can be ‘named and shamed’ in the media for crimes such as petty theft. ‘Name and shame’ clearly indicates darker issues in need of distraction. Perhaps those issues lie within the NT Corrections Commissioner’s praise of NT police who allowed a 40-year-old Aboriginal man to die in custody over a driving offence.
Perhaps they also lie within the belief that juvenile mischievousness is the natural enemy of law and order. It is apparently imperceivable that lack of life experience in your teenage years contributes to all manner of mistakes, making juveniles a perfect scapegoat for a society which enjoys picking on easy targets.
After spotting a lone police officer directing eight lanes of traffic at a busy intersection in Melbourne, I understood what I thought to be disappointment in authority was really just a sense of loss. I am a witness to minority experiences and therefore lack the ability to back up what can only come across as polite concern. Brutality simply has to be experienced to be believed. The longer it is spoken about in connection to the minority experience, the longer police brutality will appear like an ailment yet to be proven by medical science.
One time a police officer asked me: “Do you know the difference between red and green?” This did not stop me jaywalking. In the oppressive atmosphere the misuse of authority creates, even a peaceful protest is ‘selfish’ (going by the Herald Sun’s response to both of Melbourne’s recent protests against the threatened closure of Aboriginal communities).
Isn’t selfishness the naïve notion that the more ‘criminals’ booked, the more proof exists of a job done? Micro-managing should be the last resort of authorities convinced they cannot quell disorder otherwise. ‘End Targets’ and ‘Making Budget’ are words only understood by those unassociated with the criminal profile.
