 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we are going to be talking about the protests in the United States, especially the response and the role of the police. Now, the police is very, very heavily militarized in the US and we have seen a lot of images of these militarized police beating up people, arresting people, perpetrating all kinds of atrocities and often people wonder how the police which is supposed to be a civil force is actually so militarized. So to talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Pulkai sir. Thank you Prabir so much for joining us and could you first start by talking about maybe a bit of the history of how the police in the United States came to be so militarized? Well, you know, this is a long history, but before we get into that history, I think it's also important to see what the origins of the police have been in the United States and particularly the southern of the southern United States, which was as you remember, was this basically where we had slavery and other things. So what it started was really the what I call the slave patrols, which went into, you know, different areas at night looking for runaway slaves. And this is really the origin of the southern police. Northern police might have probably started the volunteer force for local areas. So they were really a different origin, which we don't today understand. And of course, it was directed against the essentially the black community, first as slaves and even when they were freed, even after that, to deny them vote, imposing segregation, other things. So part of what you see is the militarization of police, which you didn't have really of this order before the sixties is also the role of the police. One part of the role of the police, the United States has always been to impose segregationist policies, if you will, different kinds of rules and laws for different population sections. And finally, when the civil rights movement takes on a lot of this, and you do get desegregation, then it transforms itself in a different way with war on the drugs, war on crimes. All of these were coded in the United States as essentially war against a certain community. So police has always been a force which keeps down the black population and protects the white population is also what is in fact one of the major roles of the police. And if you see that, then you see the militarization of police, which takes place. And as you said, the pictures are so striking that if you see the any conflict between the protesters and the police and you wonder, I mean, why are the police in combat gear? Why are they really looking like as if they have come from outer space in all kinds of, you know, body armor and quite often, including armored vehicles. In fact, if you can go down the list, you will see that a huge number of armored vehicles the police in the United States have got. And some of them are heavy vehicles, not meant really for the roads of the cities. So all of this is a curious issue. Why would the police be so militarized in a place where you don't really require at least mine resistant armored vehicles? Now, why would you have that even that? And apparently, there's 600 of them with the US different police units. Now, coming back to the question you asked, why does it happen? It's interesting, it starts with what is called the SWAT teams. And these of course have been popularized by Hollywood, by television. SWAT teams really are supposed to respond to hostage situations, when there is a hostage, there are barricades. That's when you are supposed to be SWAT teams. But they have been widely used for searches, search warrants in situations which certainly are not hostage or there is no possibility of an armed conflict. And the number of SWAT teams as well as SWAT actions have gone up from 1960s, have gone up astronomically. So what is the 60s issue? 60s issue was really civil rights. That once the civil rights are beaten back, then you'll get this kind of action and stuff, which is to beat back again, the same population, which dares to protest. And of course, it was against different sections of the Black Community, also against Black Panthers, which that's what the SWAT teams were used for initially. But a lot of this militarization that you see gets accelerated in the 90s. And it's again interesting. It starts from Defense Department, giving them cheap equipment or donating equipment, which are supposedly surplus. And about 5 billion of worth of such equipment has been given to the United States. And after 9-11, you also had a huge amount of money coming in from Homeland Security. And of course, buying militarized equipment to the extent then that if we look at any of the pictures, whether it's Baghdad, it's Kabul, or it is a city or a town in the United States, the police or the military all look the same. There doesn't really seem to be any difference. And what it has done is it's the underlying issue of how to keep one section of population quote under control and protect the other section is the way the police also has actually configured itself with respect to whatever promises have been made at different points of time. So if the Black Community or the African American community has made gains, say the slavery being abolished in the US South, then you got segregation and lynch laws. That's what happens. If you got the defeat of segregation, which is what happened in the civil rights movement, then of course, you get what is called the war on drugs, the war on crime and whole set of policing ideology, which essentially says the police is there to protect the white community, essentially keep the law. It is not a peacekeeping force. It is to see that the law is enforced and you get what is called warrior training, that you go out there every day. You have to be a hair trigger alert because they're going to come and kill you. So you need to be prepared and you have to be a hair trigger alert. But you know, one of the issues that have come up by the police of using violence against protesters now, but also against various actions in which they have been caught on camera. There have been so many other instances which have been there has always been, but you know, we are policing under difficult times. And therefore, you know, we are a hair trigger alert because you can be killed anytime. Therefore, we sometimes can overreact. We have to be excused for some of these things. But here was a very sharp picture in front of us that for nine minutes, you had been the guy who was handcuffed on the ground. You have other police officers really sitting on him. And you are putting your knee on his neck to so called restrain him. And the man is not struggling. And if you see the picture of the police officer concerned, he has his hand in his pocket. So he's certainly not, you know, under any pressure to leading this kind of action. So what you get is a continuous set of attitudes built into the police. And that is a part of the larger militarization that we see, which is really an extension of the race war that has always been there in the United States. So I don't think you can understand either the anger of the African American community today. If you don't understand the history of the race was in the US and also the militarization that has been always there, but the role of force in this race was and the fact that the latest militarization of police is really the defeat of segregation in the 60s due to movements and then beating that back successively over the decades through one one side militarization, others and incarceration, that the third on slot of the American state has been the first was slavery, second was segregation and lynching. And the third has been incarceration that you have for 2.2 million people in jail, the highest population in the United States of proportionate to any other country in terms of the number of people in jail. And this is something which is now what you see that the the largest section in jail, particularly when you look at the population of the country, the proportion of the people in jail, African Americans are by far the largest component in that proportionate to their population, their jail numbers are much higher. And there are enough records now to show that the jail for offenses for which others are not jailed, a white person would not be jailed. They are prosecuted when they would not be prosecuted. They're stopped on the road far more than a similar stopping of the road doesn't happen for the white population. And finally, the prison sentences are longer and they are directed at various in various ways that even small crimes can put you behind bars on the three strike law that you can be behind bars for a lifetime. So all of these have really are a part of the structural racism in the in the United States, which is what has caused this explosion that you now see on the road. This has been the biggest upheaval in in the United States in the cities of the in the US after the civil rights movement. And this has been even more than what we saw after the Los Angeles protest that took place after Los Angeles violence against Rodney King, where the policeman had beaten him up on camera. And finally, they were also let go. They were they were not convicted in the court cases. Of course, that's the other part of it, that even if violence is caught on camera, even in the witnesses, finally, the police never get to me. And it's interesting because I think reports have also shown that the officer Derek Chauvin had a number of complaints against him. One of the accompanying officers who was also involved in the killing also had complaints against him. But the state and local authorities did not move against either in terms of dismissing them or prosecuting them. So that's another very key aspect that police officers are almost rarely prosecuted. Yes, the issue that has come up also is that there's also the police unions, which have been very active. The police officer union in Minneapolis was in fact, added supported of Trump. And in fact, he's the one who argued now we can actually fight the criminals earlier we were we were the ones who were in handcuffs. So this is of course, the consequence. But it's a combination of the law as it exists, that really protects the policeman, the way the court interprets them, the way the prosecution handled these cases. All of this is the consequence the consequence of all of this is that ultimately, the police officers get off virtually scot-free. Even the basic instruments which are there, supposedly to discipline them doesn't really work. And a lot of it is also the false protection they get that there is a personal protection of the information under freedom of information, you can't get access to certain information if it is a police officers. So we don't really know what happens to the complaints and why they have not been acted upon. So full details are not available in this kind of cases. This has been something that the various authorities, various people have been arguing on that you know this is the way police have been protected. Now, the point that comes up is that in the United States as we know, there have been a number of this kind of cases, a number of more steps supposedly have been taken. Ferguson, you saw a huge up search which caused a lot of soul searching and a lot of the issues that we are talking about did come up in Ferguson. And one of the issues that came up, a lot of the police revenue comes from stopping people and penalizing them. This is basically ticketing them. And therefore, it's a source of revenue. Now, if we look at the amount of when you talk about budget, if you talk about the amount of equipment that the US police has got as a result of the what's called the 1033 defense budget, which give us the act which allows them to give surplus material to the police, or you talk of the Homeland Security, they have got I think something like 50 billion worth of equipment put together, both this put together, I think the defense equipment is only five million out of that, the Homeland Security is a much bigger amount. So if you put all of it together, it's actually equal to the defense budget of many countries in the world, probably more than most countries in the world. So that is the amount of equipment the police have got. Now, these are structural issues. And of course, if you look at the courts and you look at the whole structure of law enforcement, you see, you do not really as a prosecutor want to alienate the police, because that's what you need for your prosecuting career. So therefore, there is also that part of it that this does not lead to convictions. So the movement that the US now seems to be coming up is because the police is at the end of it funded by the made basically by the city, the towns and so on. So just defund them, cut away their budget, take away their money. Now, how much of that will work or not work? We don't know. But it is interesting that that that move has come out. Now, it's also interesting, you know, the the recently the Trump talked about using the military for the for basically this kind of disturbances, civil struggles, protests, which are going on. And the, of course, the metaphor that you use was dominated the space, and also which was Esper, the defense secretary also says the battle space. So this militarization of now right now is not just invisible in terms of the gear that they're using, but also the vocabulary that is being used need to dominate over them. Now, all of this works out to finally, that what do the protesters do? After all, there has been the civil rights movement, one back some rights Ferguson, there has been earlier Los Angeles. So all of this has led to an understanding of the problem. But the problem doesn't seem to go away. It comes back again and again. And you can see they have been recently, I have a robbery case where he was shot down by again vigilantes. And earlier we had a number of such cases. We had shooting of a woman in her apartment by the police without a parent any cause. So you have a whole number of such cases. But at the same time, all the movements, all the protests we have seen the Travon Martin case, all of them do not at the end of it seem to lead to results. So what do the movements do in the US? This is the question that has been raised again again. And one of the as I said, one of the arguments seems to be just take away their money. That might if they're going to be defunded in some way or the other, if it succeeds, then of course, the police will have to be have to think, well, it's our job as well. It's not just that, you know, we can do what we want and get away with it. There are consequences. And whether this one succeed or not, we really don't know. But it is also interesting to watch this is the same United States, which was calling itself the land of the free, asking people direction of the earth to come to the United States in the so called free land. And we discover it has been free for some people, but it has not been free for all. But if we look at what has what has happened, it is clear that the United States always has a completely different structure for its two sections. And what we're seeing is not a breakdown of police, and so on. What we're seeing is really a breakdown of the state, which is underlying state, which is racist. And the racist nature of the state is visible in the police violence we are seeing, and also the move against protesters. And earlier, you had what is called dog whistle politics that you made different things indicate that you were talking about race. But you didn't really directly talk about it. Now you have a Trump. So he directly talks about dogs being let loose on protesters. You have basically shooting starts when the looting starts. All of this again hug back to 60s. So you have really not even the cover that the Americans political leadership used in order to couch its racial character. But now you have opened what somebody said, it's not dog whistle politics anymore anymore. It's bullhorn politics. That's what you are seeing. And that's what Trump really represents the ugly face of racist America. And that's where we are at the moment. So it does doesn't bring up very, very disturbing questions about the way United States is going and what the protests there can do. But this has been huge protests that we have seen. I don't think it's going to die down that easily. And even if it's the overt protests die down, you are going to see political action, different groups coming together. So I think this is going to have a long term effect on the least large section of the American population thinking of what to do that what the current structure of politics is not enough. The two parties are not enough that if there has something has to happen, then we really need a left alternative which will raise questions of racism and capitalism far more seriously. And I hope that that is what this particular set of pictures that we have in front of us. And as I said, if we're seeing it from India, you really wondering, I mean, why are the police dressed in that kind of gear? And that must be questions which all over the world, people must be asking. I mean, are they really facing an insurrection that they should be dressed like that? Is that the kind of military that should be there? In fact, Trump repeatedly is calling for military. And that's only can be justified under what's called insurrection act. So are they really facing a situation of insurrection? Because people have come out to the streets. I mean, this really, this really brings out fundamental contradictions within the US society. And it's protestations it has been making and what the reality is. Thank you so much for being for talking to us. That's all we are time for today. Keep watching news.