Bad Apples Spoil the Bunch

the Matrix of Domination in Policing

Photograph: Now This News

In response to claims of police brutality and discrimination posed against marginalized communities in America, often the metaphor, a few bad apples, is used to describe the police force as only having a small number of bigoted and problematic officers. Though, as other writers have pointed-out in the wake of more recent murders of Black men, women, and children by the same entity (like George Floyd), that saying isn't being completed when it's used. The entire phrase is 'a few bad apples spoil the bunch'. This is meant to explain the issue of how an entire bunch of apples must be thrown-out if even a few within it are spoiled as those few visibly expired (bad) apples have already had the opportunity to most likely successfully spoil the entirety of the container which was housing them. This is meant to point-out how a culture of violence being actively and visibly participated in by certain officers doesn't just implicate those officers and nefarious behaviours in their capacity, rather it highlights that very status quo has been a norm within the force that has negatively impacted other officers simply by being present in their environment. This can be seen in the fact that many officers fail to report their colleagues for offenses. "These instances are often attributed to the police’s ‘insider culture’ which maintains an impenetrable ‘curtain’ of silence" (Westmarland, 2020).

Just as far back as Black people have been tormented by the police, individuals of the L.G.B.T.Q.I. community have faced abuse as well. Many know of the Stonewall riots of the 1960s that consisted of a battle between the N.Y.P.D. and the local non-conforming community that was yet again attacked by officers and decided it'd had enough of the abuse. Now one would think when a Black individual joins the force, they do so to promote better policing within their communities and similar items that could help their people in this country. But often times, because of the culture of policing in America, that's just not the case because they are inducted into an entity that expects them to prove themselves like everyone else, participating in the same hazing and brutality that has plagued the force throughout American history. Therefore, often times, Black officers are most loathed by their own communities because they have a much stronger and more inappropriate response than most officers seeing as they feel a sense of having to prove themselves, as indicated by much research. According to the Washington Post, "[the Baltimore police force] is 40 percent Black, yet a Justice Department investigation still found pervasive racism in city law enforcement" (Balko, 2022). And this is due to the fact that policing arose from a need for enslavers and sympathizers to patrol and manage enslaved individuals. This coupled with the fact that the majority of policing's history, having been plagued with a system operating in this country that legitimized and legalized racism on the micro and macro levels, makes the reality for a marginalized communities in America a struggle. In the words of Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative & author of the book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, "slavery gave America a fear of Black people and a taste for violent punishment. Both still define our criminal-justice system" (Stevenson, 2019).

When thinking about this story of an allegedly drunk police officer crashing into the front of a gay bar (and residence for the gay male owners) and a Black cop arresting and assaulting the owners, I'm not surprised because if Black officers by far and large can enforce a racist system that opposes the existence and freedoms of their own people, who's to say they aren't able to be anti-gay?

According to Javad Khazaeli, the attorney acquired by the victims in this case, Dec. 12th, '23, a Saint Louis police SUV slammed into a gay bar in South City on Broadway in St. Louis and things didn't end there. According to an online post by the attorney, officers handcuffed the owners, beating and charging one. Video circulating has very clearly proven the civil rights of the owners were violated and that the Black officer who escalated these situations (Ramelle Wallace) did so without warrant and after threatening to not do his job and investigate after one of the owners refused to give identification as if it was his car that crashed in the middle of his own bar and not a police officers'. The outrageous and indignant way this officer acted is atrocious yet par for the course with St. Louis cops. I know personally after facing several offices in the city who have sexually, otherwise physically, and verbally assaulted me. As a Black transgender woman living in Saint Louis, MO, I have faced extensive discrimination and denigration that has conjured an image of darkness and despair within my mind in regard to St. Louis.

The kind of blatant disregard for the rights and dignity of American citizens due to personal biases shown by Officer Wallace is absolutely unacceptable and a part of the reason I am currently studying law and order in university. As a Saint Louis University student majoring in criminology and criminal justice, I learn about the history, disposition, and inclination of the police force in America on a daily basis, and what I witnessed here is in-step with it all.

In her book, the Black Feminist, Patricia Hill Collins speaks of a matrix of domination that enforces a binary dichotomy in society of right and wrong, good and evil predicated upon certain demographics, i.e., Black v. white; homosexual v. heterosexual. She writes, "Privilege becomes defined in relation to its other" (Collins, 1990). She goes on to encourage society's replacement of, "additive models of oppression with interlocking ones", (Collins, 1990) in order to force realization of the intersectionality of oppression in general—how it affects and translates to every community and demographic.

According to a report about the incident by Vice News, that same Black officer, who was the superior on the scene, refused to perform a breathalyzer on the officer who ran into the establishment (Krishnan, 2023).

Sources

Balko, R. (2022, April 13). What Black Cops Know About Racism in Policing. the Washington Post. January 27, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/13/black- police-know-racism-law-enforcement/

Collins, P. H. (2015). Black Feminist thought (Vol. 2). Routledge.

Khazaeli, J. (2024, January 18). Javad Khazaeli | @javadesq. X. January 27, 2024, https://twitter.com/javadesq

Stevenson, B. (2019, August 14). Why American Prisons Owe Their Cruelty to Slavery. New York Times. January 27, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/prison-industrial- complex-slavery-racism.html 1/5 https://nyti.ms/2H5xmtD

Westmarland, L., & Conway, S. (2020). Police ethics and integrity: Keeping the ‘blue code’ of silence. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 22(4), 378-392. https://doi.org/10.1177/14613557209477