Occupy Mayberry 1

Occupy Mayberry: The Racial History of Police Violence Toward Radical Movements

Shabaka Verna

Harold Washington College

Occupy Mayberry 2

Abstract

Scholarly discourse about solving police brutality has been centered on racial and ethnic

tensions, but one obvious realization is that police brutality also happens to citizens that aren’t

typically marginalized. Protests, such as those in the Occupy Movements, attracted nationwide

Police Brutality headlines. The way in which the police have treated these protesters behind the

Occupy Movements in the United States reflects their behaviors towards minorities throughout

the past century. In this paper, an evaluation and even an approach to solving the problem of

police brutality is explored by looking at various acts of violence towards oppressed people. This

goes as far back as the conviction of Nat Turner, the Rodney King beating, the Occupy Oakland

protest, and the UC Davis protest. Looking at these incidents and contextualizing them to the

United States’ present day condition of policing allows scholars, officers, and politicians to

understand the root of the problem: institutionalized racism and classism of America. This paper

also evaluates the evolution of the structural powers that police institutions hold.
Occupy Mayberry 3

The State of Policing

The Occupy Movement was a global outcry that called on governments around the world

to aid the 99 percent of the population that are not a part of the wealthy one percent. The

movement spanned globally, involving mothers, fathers, hard laborers, and even the youth. It

allowed people to tackle the income gap between the rich 1% and the remaining 99% (Occupy

The Game, 2011). The movement occurred in several US cities alone: Chicago, New York, Los

Angeles, Oakland, Atlanta, and others; however, one town, Mayberry, was too utopian for an

Occupy Movement. Mayberry is a real town; however, Mayberry, is rather an allusion to the

setting based on a TV show that aired in the 1960s.

Mayberry, a community on the Andy Griffith show, was protected by one sheriff named

Andy Taylor and his assistant. It was portrayed as a particularly peaceful town that only

experienced petty crimes by outside visitors. To many Americans the show was well-acclaimed

and held a universal appeal. (Grigg 2002) Even so, the show received criticism years after its

airing because it did not cast any African Americans. Griffith admitted that it would be a

complicated lesson that could not be solved within the 30 minutes that the show aired (Prince,

2012). The broader conclusion established was that Blacks were not seen as part of a peaceful

community-based society.

A Film piece by Director David Bright, hypothesized what would happen if a black man

came to such a town in “Why Come There Ain’t No Black People in Mayberry?” The piece

concluded that the visitor would automatically be chased out of the town and assumed a criminal

(Prince, 2012). Though the Andy Griffith Show aired during a racially-tense era, Blacks were still

citizens. Bright implies that there is a question that is ultimately puzzling: Who does the police

identify as a citizen to protect and a criminal to apprehend? If the police inevitably see the black
Occupy Mayberry 4

body as absent in society, has the black condition since 1865 changed at all? The question is

important to explore because it allows one to look deeper than what officers do at movements

that violently break out. The question explores how American Police officers, as an institution,

misconceive a person of color, and similarly, participants of radical movements as the enemy.

Other documents show that this misconception leads to unnecessary violence.

There have been instances of violence during the Occupy Movements in cities like Oakland,

Washington, and New York City. As one can assume from the lack of documentation, the

brutality in these cities’ protests did not take place to the point where lives were taken away nor

were people disrespected and taunted in the way in which many Blacks have been in the past

(Reynolds, 2012). Before one can look into the minor violations of the people participating in the

occupy movements, one must examine how officers have abused their power and mutilated

vulnerable people of color in the past.

The problems that American communities face, such as tension between minority

communities and the police are reflected at radical movements where protesters are seen as

disruptive rebels; in fact, a suitable amount of police officers show that they don't accept Blacks

as part of the American society, but rather criminals or rebels of the state. Another reason that it

is easier for Police institutions to disregard the importance of lessening tensions is because police

militarization doesn't allow for communication, which is already complex without military grade

weapons; police militarization, which is reflected by the policies created after September 11

2001, mirrors bad practices that were allowed when groups like the Black Panthers, and other

communities congregated for self-empowerment. Lastly, even those officers that do recognize

Blacks as legitimate citizens of society face scrutiny because Blacks display a well-warranted

distrust of the police due to, as aforementioned, their cruel actions in the past.
Occupy Mayberry 5

The movements

The Occupy movements were based off of revolutionizing the current economic system

in which each respective protester participated. In the United States, protesters demonstrated

their distaste of the continually growing corporate power in the state, and the diminished support

from said power. The growth of corporate power stems from neoliberal and capitalistic

constructions (Cha-Jua, 2001). These structures were set up centuries ago through the slave

trade, and mass manufacturing. Professor Cha-Jua of University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

explains how capitalism, the slave trade, and perpetual white oppression were intertwined:

State-sponsored and state-sanctioned violence has characterized the Black experience

since Africans' forced migration to these shores, The Atlantic Slave Trade represented the

first moment of capitalist globalism. The slave trade was the first international industry; it

was a business venture of European nation-states. Orderly commodity exchange cloaked

the coercion and disorder undergirding the Atlantic Slave Trade. Raids and kidnapping

were the lifeblood of the slave "trade." About two-thirds of the nearly 12 million Africans

enslaved in the Americas were captured through rapacious raids and kidnapping. During

the four centuries the slave trade operated, 100 million Africans may have died from the

predatory commercial wars launched by European royalty, the papacy, and emerging

European and American capitalists. British colonial and American governments

systematically suppressed Africans' human rights. Colonial governments enacted special

"slave codes" that legalized physical abuse— whipping—and authored practices that

condoned maiming, rape, and murder. After the revolution, individual states preserved

and refined antiblack laws, with the support of the federal government. For its part, the

new national government enshrined African American slavery into the U.S. Constitution
Occupy Mayberry 6

(Article I, sec. 2) and authorized law-enforcement agents to assist in the capture and

return of fugitive slaves (Article 4, sec. 2 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793). Racist

violence reached its apogee after Emancipation Lynching, the major form of violence

used against African Americans, from 1882—1910, resulted from the encouragement of

law enforcement agents or their abdicating their equal protection responsibilities.

Between 1882 and 1930 approximately 3,000 Blacks (mostly male) were lynched.

The history behind the slave trade is obviously treacherous, but there’s a bigger question,

often ignored by the public: what happened to African Americans after they were freed? As Cha-

Jua illustrates, the Civil war only revolutionized the constitutional laws of the federal

government, but individual State governments still had control over enforcing those laws; the

secular actions of white citizens of their respective states were not reprimanded for violent

actions against people of color (Cha-Jua, 2001). This allowed for white citizens to take

advantage of the system and project violence onto communities of color, without any

repercussions. The Post Civil war era AKA Jim Crow turned into an extremely violent and

History reflects more violence than humanly fathomable, but a certain violence that is still

unaddressed today is that of those who were forced into the slave trade in correspondence to the

birth of The United States and its economic system. There have been attempts at finding

solutions to the issue by advocates, such as William L. Patterson at a UN conference in 1951

(Patterson, 1951). Since then activists are still fighting for reparations while protesters in

Oakland were paid for their suffering. This fact does not take away from the violence that the

protesters of Oakland endured, but it does hint at a bias in society. Patterson’s UN petition

outlines the United States’ several acts of genocide towards “the negro people”. They defined

genocide as “causing serious bodily harm to members of the group,” (Patterson, 1951). The
Occupy Mayberry 7

previous genocidal actions of the United States were outlined as actions of economic genocide,

emasculation of democracy, and the denial of humanity (Patterson, 1951). The details that

Patterson outlines painted a clearer picture to the UN conference of the typical actions taken by

people in power in 1951, including law enforcement.

“Once the classic method of lynching was the rope. Now it is the policeman’s bullet. To

many an American the police are the government, certainly its most visible

representative. We submit that the evidence suggests that the killing of Negroes has

become police policy in the United States and that police policy is the most practical

expression of government policy.”

Critics may say that lynching, other byproducts and racism altogether doesn’t exist

anymore, but world leaders are just discovering the extent of racism that black Americans and

minorities experience. The UN has recently acknowledged some of Patterson’s concerns along

with 21 other Human Rights violations. The UN Human Rights Committee’s recent report, citing

25 total violations, focused on issues such as, “Guantanamo, NSA surveillance, accountability

for Bush-era human rights violations, drone strikes, racism in the prison system, racial profiling,

police violence and criminalization of the homeless.” The four issues on racism detailed

overrepresentation of certain minority groups in the prison system, racially profiling Muslims in

order to run surveillance operations, the death penalty, and a high number of deaths due to the

police force (Legal Monitor Worldwide, 2014).

A further divide

Since the Nixon Era, police militarization has increased police brutality towards

minorities. Nixon created a war on drugs campaign that allowed Police officers to target citizens

of minority groups even though drug use is commonly the same across all demographics (Legal
Occupy Mayberry 8

Monitor Worldwide, 2014).Today, Police forces are able to take advantage of policies that were

created after 9/11. Legal Monitor (2014) pointed out that “When 9/11 hit, police militarization

kicked into overdrive with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which has

given police still greater access to military equipment.” Victor Guerrieri, a Chicago Police

Department veteran indicated that communication is vital when the police interact with their

communities. Guerrieri (2015) highlighted his department’s success in communication with his

communities and during the Chicago Occupy Movement, emphasizing that sometimes he would

encounter people that took certain phrases in a different way than he would have growing up

(Guerrieri, 2015). As indicated, communication between officers and their communities makes a

difference between occupy Oakland and occupy Chicago, where the demonstrations went

smoothly. Joshua Tucker (2015), a journalist for the Washington Post, explained how he grew up

in a suburban neighborhood similar to Ferguson, yet he never experienced such a militaristic

reaction from police agencies. He described it as scary and alienating; in fact he compared it to

places like Ukraine, or Egypt. (Tucker, 2015). If Joshua felt this way towards the deployment,

then the Citizens of Ferguson must have had deeper feelings about the situation. Tucker

explained that the citizens of Ferguson generally displayed a racial disparity that was

exacerbated by the use of deadly force. Police departments around the country are embracing

weapons that make it easier to shoot-to-kill, which make an officer more likely to rely on a shoot

first ask later structure of policing. Donald (2003) indicates that such actions are bad for

communities and police departments because they break communication and turn areas into war

zones rather than a place for police to serve and protect. Donald pointed out that some officers

embrace weapons because it brings out their inner child “A lot of officers tend to like gadgets

and toys that make it cool to be an officer.” The divide between Police officers and minority
Occupy Mayberry 9

communities is already huge because of language barriers, and the increased militarization of law

enforcement agencies only exacerbates the tension.

In contrast to Tuckers experience of police militarization on the streets of Ferguson,

Donald cited an incident where police military tactics killed an elderly woman in her own New

York City apartment:

Spruill, a quiet, church-going woman, was a municipal worker, employed at the Division

of Citywide Administrative Services. She had been a city employee for 29 years, and

each weekday would take the bus to her job. To her, that Friday morning must have

seemed like the beginning of just another ordinary day. She mercifully did not know that

she would never again head for work, that she had in fact but two hours to live because

she was soon to be killed by the police even though she was an innocent citizen.

Ten minutes later a dozen heavily armed police - six officers from the Emergency Service

Unit and six regular patrol officers - burst unannounced into her residence. They had a

search warrant issued solely on the basis of erroneous information supplied by an

unreliable anonymous informer who falsely claimed that illegal guns and drugs were

stored at Spruill's residence.

Miss Spruill’s death would have been prevented if the police had taken a different approach. Her

situation shows us that police brutality is not just isolated to the streets where officers may be

frustrated or induced to make split second decisions.

Occupy Mayberry 10

As Reagan sparked the beginning of police militarization, he also passed laws to limit the

right to bear arms. Gregory (2013) highlighted that Reagan passed the Mumford act as Governor

of California in order to disarm a group called The Black Panther Party, which emerged in order

to protect Blacks from rampant racial violence. The party resolved that they had to defend

themselves against the crimes that Whites committed against them because no one else would

assume the duty (Jones, 2010).

Furthermore, if police brutality does end, trusting the police remains a complex dilemma

amongst minority communities. Shafer (2005) explains: “Some minority groups allege that they

are singled out by police. They argue that officers often make decisions— field interrogation

stops, traffic stops, arrest, and use of force—based on racial considerations. This belief is so

widespread among minority communities that the phenomenon has been labeled DWB or

‘driving while black.’” Driving while Black has been a reoccurring theme amongst African

Americans even in the upper class communities.

Scholars have explored possible solutions like community policing and complete

transparency, but the future seems cloudy. Hopefully, Police states do not worsen the situation.
 Occupy Mayberry 11

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