“History will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say, ‘Never again.’”
These words were said Tuesday by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as she made public the committee’s report on the torture of terrorism detainees in the wake of 9/11.
But her words, related as they are to a shameful phase of America’s foreign policy and the CIA’s conduct, also has resonance for the behavior of local law enforcement agencies, particularly the alarming brutality and shooting deaths of young Black men that has aroused the nation. As many Americans have known for years, there is very little difference between our foreign and domestic policy. The torture of “enemy combatants” bears a horrible similarity to the perception of some police officers who view Black men as “demons” or “dangerous beasts.”
Reading the executive summary of the Senate’s 6,000 page review of 6 million documents, we are reminded of several encounters that Black men have had with the NYPD. The account of “rectal feeding” as a form of torture is reminiscent of the sodomizing of Abner Louima, though there is small solace when comparing torture with the mounting fatalities left by trigger-happy cops.
Feinstein’s notion of “facing an ugly truth” is something our criminal justice system has to come to grips with as well. This is especially warranted when examining the flawed grand jury process, where the district attorney or prosecutor is intimately, incontrovertibly linked to the police.
There are too many instances in which fairness and objectivity are “thrown under the bus,” and it’s folly to expect a friend of the police to prosecute one of their own. A recent report shows that it’s a minuscule number of officers who are indicted by a grand jury when faced with killing an unarmed Black man.
“Never again,” Feinstein’s charge to the CIA, is something the cops around the nation should heed as we continue to count the number of Black bodies that don’t seem to matter to them.
To hear the reaction of the CIA and Senate Republicans, who challenge the committee’s report, charging that it’s one-sided, full of mistakes and had no consideration for opposing views, is not at all unlike the leaders of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association and their carping about criticism of some police officers.
When you witness the militarization of local law enforcement agencies, the connection between foreign policy and domestic policy—the curtailing of enemies beyond our borders and the perception of those within—is never more apparent. In short, our plea, like Feinstein’s, is “never again,” and we mean that for the CIA and the NYPD. A broken agency is no better than “broken windows.”