Siccing dogs on Black people

THE EDITOR: The generation that came of age during the late 60s, 70s and 80s, an era defined by the struggle for civil rights, global decolonisation and independence movements, has certain images emblazoned into our minds. White policemen siccing dogs on Black people in Jim Crow North America and apartheid South Africa stand out.

The television clip on TV6 news on February 13, which showed the Commissioner of Police and the Minister of National Security looking on with excitement and fervour as police accompanied by K-9s were being trained to control crowds, brought back these haunting images.

The clip also brought to mind the US Department of Justice report on Ferguson, Missouri, undertaken in 2015 after the murder of an 18-year-old African American boy by white American policemen.

Among numerous citations of racial bias in police work, the report noted that when dogs were used in Ferguson, “for every canine bite incident for which racial information was available, the subject was African American.”

The local news clip showed an enactment of Carnival revellers being “subdued” by a police K-9 unit. The policing methodology that relies on the use of violent animals to attack citizens has now been dressed-up and introduced to TT as a “new” policing strategy for crowd management. This deeply problematic strategy is in fact cause for alarm.

What factors are our policymakers failing to consider when they allow such strategies to be introduced into an already violence-plagued, class-biased and racially sensitive society? In using a crowd portraying what appeared to be predominantly African Carnival revellers chipping in the street already evokes images of racial profiling. Can we see such a methodology being employed in communities of all ethnicities and class?

Subduing a Carnival crowd or even a community group protesting bad roads, or damaged schools, as is a common occurrence in TT, certainly should not be managed by dogs attacking human beings. The end result of such action would be the maiming and mutilation of members of our society by the State.

Is this an indication of how the reported $6.4 billion allocated in the 2020 budget for National Security is to be spent? What has become of community policing strategies and investment in community development?

When policymakers suggest that disputes and public protest are to be resolved by disproportionate and dehumanising state-sanctioned violence, then the lesson that we teach our youth is a dangerous one.

This is particularly true for at-risk young people who are already the product of a failed education system and communities in crisis. The State is offering them violence as an acceptable form of conflict resolution and even something to gloat about.

The reports of poor displaced populations fleeing violence including state violence throughout Central America point to the need for more careful analysis. They serve as a warning against initiating a potentially uncontrollable escalation dynamic that would ultimately harm our society well beyond any purported benefits.

We need to think deeply, lest we find our nation experiencing the social equivalent of the Australian wildfires, an illustration of the susceptibility of even a technologically sophisticated society to forces that once set in motion become uncontainable.

ASHA KAMBON

Carenage