Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

way of understanding the lives led by the people they swagger aboutin twos and threes controlling. Their very presence is an insult, and itwould be, even if they spent their entire day feeding gumdrops to children.They represent the force of the white world, and that world's realintentions are, simply, for that world's criminal profit and ease, to keepthe black man corralled up here, in his place .. .. One day, to everyone'sastonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everythingblows up. Before the dust has settled or the blood congeals, editorials,speeches, and civil-rights commissions are loud in the land, demandingto know what happened. What happened is that Negroes want to betreated like men. 29Baldwin wrote his essay in 1960. Between its publication and that of theKerner report, the U.S. witnessed civil disturbances of increasing frequency andintensity. Notable among these was the Watts riot of 1965. The Watts rebellionhas been said to divide the sixties into its two parts-the classic period of the civilrights movement before, and the more militant Black Power movement after.30like the riots of 1992, the Watts disturbance began with a traffic stop. MarquetteFrye was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol near Watts, a Blackneighborhood in Los Angeles. A crowd gathered, and the police called forbackup. As the number of police and bystanders grew, the tension increasedaccordingly. The police assaulted a couple of bystanders and arrested Frye'sfamily. As the cops left, the crowd stoned their cars. They then began attackingother vehicles in the area, turning them over, and setting them on fire. The nextevening, the disorder arose anew, with looting and arson in the nearby commercialareas. The riot lasted six days and caused an estimated $35 million indamage. Almost 1,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. One thousandpeople were treated for injuries, and thirty -four were killed.3!Fourteen years after Watts, and thirteen years before the Rodney Kingverdict, a similar drama played out on the other side of the country, in Miami.On December 17, 1979, the police chased, caught, beat, and killed a Blackinsurance salesman named Arthur McDuffie. McDuffie, who was riding hiscousin's motorcycle, allegedly popped a wheelie and made an obscene gestureat Police Sergeant Ira Diggs, before leading police on an eight-minute highspeedchase. Twelve other cars joined in the pursuit, and when they caughtMcDuffie, between six and eight officers beat him with heavy flashlights ashe lay handcuffed, face down on the pavement. Four days later, he died.32Three officers were charged with second-degree murder, and three othersagreed to testify in exchange for immunity. Judge Lenore Nesbitt called thecase "a time bomb" and moved it to nearby Tampa, where an all-White jury hadrecently acquitted another officer accused of beating a Black motorist.33 Thedefense then used its peremptory challenges to remove all Black candidatesfrom the jury. The outcome was predictable: the cops were acquitted;34 crowdsthen looted stores, burned buildings, and attacked White passers-by. Crowdsalso laid siege to the police station, breaking its windows and setting fire tothe lobby.35 When calm returned, seventeen people were dead, 1,100 had beenarrested, and $80 million in property had been damaged.36 Four hundred seventeenpeople were treated in area hospitals, the majority of them White.rHere was a key difference: in Miami, the typical looting and burning of White-7