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Police violence getting worse says Berkeley Copwatch founder

by KPFA Weekend News/Ann Garrison
Is the violence of police, security guards, and vigilantes getting worse, or is it just that more of it is being captured by civilians with cell phone cameras? Berkeley Copwatch founder Andrea Prichett says it's getting worse, but we may also be getting used to it
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KPFA Weekend News Anchor Anthony Fest: Killings by police, guards, or vigilantes are nothing new to America. The names of some of the victims in recent years have become household names: Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott. Is the problem getting worse or is it simply that more executions are being exposed by civilians with cell phone cameras? KPFA's Ann Garrison spoke to Andrea Prichett, co-founder of Berkeley Copwatch.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Andrea, this week a newspaper cartoon pictured Charleston police officer Michael Slager shooting both Walter Scott and all hope of improvement in the back. Are you more optimistic?

Andrea Prichett: Well, I never would counsel people to give up hope, but I think it certainly is time to re-think our strategies about how to deal with the current situation. Probably the impetus for that cartoon is the notion that we've been here before. And in this situation, they're pre-empting protests and riots, I guess, because they've actually jailed the officer, for now. And I have every expectation that the police union in that area, in South Carolina, will gather themselves and, like they did with Officer Mehserle in the Oscar Grant murder, they will most likely bail him out and provide support for him throughout. And it's anything but obvious that this man's gonna go to jail. He's in jail right now, but justice is a hurtin' thing right now in America.

And what's really kinda scary is that this violence is becoming normalized. It's so frequent, and we don't even get to finish mourning and dealing with and pondering one outrageous atrocity when two others have popped up in other parts of the country. And I would hope that citizens in America would be asking some very fundamental questions about why this is happening, what accounts for the huge increase in the number of murders by police.

KPFA: So you founded Berkeley Copwatch in 1990. It became an international model, but it sounds like you think things have gotten worse.

AP: Yeah, absolutely, I do think things have gotten worse. I know that the FBI has done a terrible job of gathering and maintaining statistics and data on officer involved murders. We have to be clear also that we shouldn't just go for officer involved shooting, because so many of these people, like Eric Garner's case where he was choked to death. You know sometimes people are getting beaten to death or tasered to death.

KPFA: This is hard to measure but, do you think cell phone cameras are acting as a deterrent at all?

AP: I think probably to some degree. Officers I've spoken with, they do have a concern that they will end up in some compromised situation on Youtube and that they won't be able to take it down. So yeah, for some officers it is a deterrent.

Overall I think we really need to be careful with how we use cell phone video because I fear that the American public is becoming kind of desensitized, and that we're just figuring, "Oh well, it's part of the landscape. I just hope it doesn't happen to me."

KPFA: And that was Andrea Prichett, co-founder of Berkeley Copwatch. In Berkeley, for Pacifica, KPFA Radio, I'm Ann Garrison.
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