Police Brutality—But No
Outrage*
by
William B. Allen
Chairman, U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights
Selma, Alabama, 1965: Blacks
trying to register to vote are stopped at the courthouse steps by police using
billy clubs and cattle prods to beat the non-violent demonstrators into
submission and retreat. The brutality of the confrontation reaches its climax
with the first attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery, a march that is
aborted when state troopers charge the marchers, swinging billy clubs and
firing canisters of tear gas into the fleeing crowd. Soon mounted police armed
with bullwhips, ropes and barbed wire wrapped in rubber join in the unprovoked
attack. Hosea Williams is among the first knocked down by excessive police
force.
Martin Luther King Jr. begins
sending telegrams from his office in Atlanta before the day is through. He
calls the event a “vicious maltreatment of defenseless citizens of Selma, where
old women and young children were gassed and clubbed at random.”
The news media quickly
convey the images to a horrified American people. The Department of Justice is
pressed to investigate, and to send federal marshals to Alabama to protect the
marchers. Within two weeks, President Lyndon Johnson introduces legislation
later known as the Voting Rights Act. Within a month, a full-scale march to Montgomery,
under the protection of federal officers and a nationalized Alabama national
guard, is conducted peacefully, and the tactic of peaceful demonstration is
firmly secured in the American conscience.
* * *
Washington, D.C., 1984:
Scores of people—including several high-ranking government officials—protesting
the apartheid policies of the South African government block the doors of the
South African Embassy. The protestors are gingerly arrested, released on their
own recognizance. The national media cover the protests extensively, and for
more than two years similar demonstrations occur throughout the country, with
hardly a single act of excessive force on the part of the police.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
1989: 121 members of the group Operation Rescue are arrested while peacefully
protesting outside an abortion clinic. The group is trained in the same type of
passive resistance techniques employed by the civil rights protests a generation
ago. Police, who had removed their badges and name plates, respond with “pain
compliance” techniques—twisting the protesters’ ears, bending the hands
backwards to the wrist, and carrying the protesters off by inserting billy
clubs between their handcuffed hands and the small of the back—are employed to
force the protesters into submission.
Women—from college age to
grandmothers—are dragged by the bottoms of their blouses, their breasts exposed
to hooting male prisoners. One affidavit reads: “He grabbed me between my
breasts and dragged me up the stairs by my wire-rimmed bra. My breasts were
fully exposed as I was being dragged up the stairs.” Complaints are filed with
an assistant district attorney, who does not process them, allegedly on orders
from her superiors. Several of the protestors report that other attempts to
file complaints with city, county and federal officials are similarly
unsuccessful.
* * *
West Hartford, Connecticut,
1989: Nonviolent Operation Rescue protestors and several reporters are arrested
outside an abortion clinic. The film and notes of reporters are confiscated by
police. “Pain compliance” techniques are once again used, and again by police
who do not wear identifying name plates or badges.
* * *
Los Angles, California,
1989: This time, the police use “nunchakus,” as well as “pain compliance”
techniques, upon the nonviolent Operation Rescue protestors. The nunchakus, a
weapon consisting of two night sticks connected by a chain, is wrapped around
the protestor’s wrist and arms. The great pain that follows when pressure is applied
forces the protestor to walk. One man’s arm is grotesquely snapped in two by a
police hold.
* * *
These are but a few, and not
the most ghastly, of the stories from the nearly 50 cities throughout the
country where allegations of police brutality have been made by members of
Operation Rescue. Hosea Williams, one of the civil rights leaders who witnessed
firsthand the brutalities in Selma, participated in a news conference in
Pittsburgh to decry the brutality of the police there. To date, no national
news organization has deemed the allegations worthy of coverage.
The U.S. Department of
Justice found that the Pittsburgh allegations I transmitted to them “lack the
indicia of prosecutive merit necessary to warrant further investigation,”
though it did agree to investigate some of the charges and did acknowledge that
the use of excessive force by police would violate federal civil rights laws.
The head of the section in charge of the investigations stated that the group
was violating a court injunction, as if such a violation made perfectly
reasonable the kind of treatment to which the anti-abortion protesters have
been subject.
In July, I placed on the
agenda of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights a resolution to recommend to the
president that he direct the Department of Justice to undertake an
investigation of these allegations at the earliest possible moment. My
resolution did not condone the illegality of Operation Rescue’s actions. Nor
did I associate myself with their cause. Rather, I sought to affirm the
continued support of the government and the people of the U.S. for the rights
of all protesters. After lengthy and sometimes hostile scrutiny, my resolution
was dropped from the agenda.
My colleagues argued that
the resolution was a “back door” way to discuss abortion, as if the subject
matter of the protest determined the legitimate police response. Rep. Don
Edwards (D., CA), chairman of the commission’s oversight committee in the House
of Representatives, joined in—not coincidentally during the middle of the
debate over reauthorization of the commission—with a direct threat: “Consideration
of this issue,” which “appears to violate the Commission’s authorizing statute”
prohibiting “the Commission from studying issues relating to abortion,” would “seriously
erode Congressional confidence in the Commission.”
Neither has any committee in
Congress decided to take up the matter. No hearings have been held, or
scheduled, and the likelihood of any hearings being scheduled in the future is
slim. The same zealous advocates for civil rights who criticized the officers
stationed outside the Naval Weapons Station for their treatment of anti-nuke
protesters, or who themselves participated in the South African Embassy
protests without so much as an unkind word from police, have not uttered a
syllable about these allegations.
Meanwhile, the courageous
few congressmen—Bob Walker (R.; PA), Clyde Holloway (R., LA), Chris Smith (R.,
NJ), Guy Molinari (R., NY), Bob Dornan (R., CA) and Bob Traxler (D., MI)—who
have spoken out have gone largely unnoticed by the press.
In the aftermath of the
Supreme Court’s Webster decision—which substantially returns the
abortion debate to the states—we can expect more anti-abortion demonstrations.
We ought to guarantee that we will not also see more police violence in the handling
of them. It is imperative that we as a nation assert our commitment to equal
treatment before the law. Nonviolent protestors should all be accorded the same
treatment no matter what the subject of protest. To do less is to destroy the
most prized achievement of the civil rights movement—the recognition of the
rights of everyone. And we will have destroyed that achievement, not just for
Operation Rescue, but for all.
* Published in AFA Journal (American Family Association) (October 1989): 14-15, and in the Wall Street Journal (August 18, 1989)