Can "Know Your Rights" Liberate Oppressed Communities?

Posted on Jan 12, 2010 Posted by Eric Ribellarsi

The following originally appeared on Ernesto Aguilar's blog.

The Real Problem with Copwatch

by Ernesto Aguilar

Gathering Forces recently posted a fascinating piece on the nature of Copwatch, a grassroots organizing model for police accountability. As the lead trainer/organizer and co-founder of the now defunct Houston Copwatch (not to be confused with the newer Houston Copwatch), I read the piece with much interest. The defunct Houston Copwatch managed to gain a great deal of media in English and Spanish TV and newspapers, though the work didn’t last. I left the group before it folded, but have to say the Gathering Forces analysis offers some poignant critiques.

First, the good stuff. Copwatch can do valuable community work. The educational “Know Your Rights” outreach Copwatch does, tempered by the understanding that some officers may violate policies regardless, is vital information for youth and others. Addressing the epidemic of police misconduct, as well as the need for accountability for a plethora of community needs is empowering to many people. However, the organizing model offers a lot of opportunities for critique and improvement.

Copwatch as a concept emerged, by many accounts, around 1990 with the launch of Berkeley Copwatch. Since then, Copwatch organizations have popped up around the country. There is really no unifying vision to speak of. Some Copwatch-named groups are positioned around ferreting out bad cops, some around accountability, others on challenging power dynamics. In a historical sense, the challenge to police power was most prominent during the rise of the Black Liberation movement. However, Copwatch, in my estimation, doesn’t have an actual claim to that history, beyond anecdotal reference.

I’m familiar with the dual-power theory articulated by Phoenix Copwatch, referenced by Gathering Forces. The former Houston group was largely supported and inspired by its work and particularly the efforts of Joel Olson, a brilliant writer and political organizer who, in my possibly wrong estimation, shaped the political framework of Phoenix Copwatch from being simply a monitoring group to one that was expressly political in nature. Olson is also one of the main theoreticians of Bring the Ruckus*, whose members were a key part of Phoenix Copwatch and which forwarded the Copwatch dual power theory that “monitoring the police undermines state power by disrupting the cops’ ability to enforce class and color lines and also foreshadows a new society in which ordinary people take responsibility for ensuring the safety of their communities” in its founding statement.

Gathering Forces hints at the vagueness of Copwatch as a dual power organization, while longtime activist Wayne Price of the Open City Anarchist Collective dissects it artfully:

What is “dual power” anyways? The term itself arose during the 1917 Russian Revolution. The Russian word “dvoevlastie” is usually translated as “dual power”, but could be given as “double sovereignty”, or “two-power regime”. It was used in Russia after the old Czarist state had been overthrown and a new, pro-capitalist regime, the Provisional Government, was set up. It claimed to be for capitalist democracy although it did little to carry out a bourgeois democratic program (it did not call elections or give land to the peasants or self determination to the oppressed nations of the Russian empire). But at the very same time, another power existed – the popular soviets (councils)… While Copwatch is a very good program, it does not really threaten the state under current conditions. Union organizing (very difficult in Phoenix) would be a greater threat to business at this point.

There is a posted continuance of these debates, which illuminates differences.

In my experience, one of the most dispiriting parts of Copwatch organizing is the inherent dependence one has on winning concessions on some level with authorities. For Copwatch, everything hinges on groups reacting to what police do, with only seldom potentially setting the terms of the debate (perhaps a police officer being nicer when being filmed) rather than creating conditions in which Copwatch sets a forward agenda. Try as one might to do lots of positive community work, the fact all roads eventually came back to pushing law enforcement to be more just — rather than a different model like restorative justice or criminal justice alternatives — and then the willingness of authorities to change being the issue, made the work difficult.

Unlike the Black Panther Party, which is referenced in the Gathering Forces piece, the primary weapon of the Copwatch model is propaganda; one can record, document and distribute to media and oversight bodies and politicians footage of mistreatment, but there is no capacity within the model to actually affect community consciousness and end abuse proactively. Of course, when the Panthers were organizing was a completely different era, long before the War on Terror, but Party members’ organizing was done during a time of intense repression against the Black community. With these actions, the Panthers staked a vision for the community to which the powerful had to respond. However, no matter how Copwatch organizing is structured, in my experience, it always came down to holding power holders accountable. They still set the terms, and always would under such an arrangement.

Rather than systematically disrupting policing of color and class lines, most Copwatch organizing only seemed to prove a source of annoyance to and amusement for law enforcement. Pockets of activity could have a positive effect, but just as easily could be cast in a light to which organizers were playing defense. Outreach seminars and other projects (such as a study Houston Copwatch conducted on departments’ responsiveness to complaints) had a minor impact at the time (i.e. some news coverage and community awareness), but producing something that communities became actively involved in was a major challenge. I do not know of any Copwatch group doing such work, though I admittedly may be uninformed about such things today.

I also experienced firsthand the real challenges Copwatch has in organizing as a multiracial group. The aforementioned analysis that Copwatch groups were mostly white, while criminal justice issues disproportionately impact people of color, is a fair one. It also bears looking deeper at intent and belief in the ways society functions.

Some people articulated to me during my organizing time that the Copwatch model taps into a preconception of accountability central to white communities — notions of police being held accountable for their actions, etc. — that communities of color don’t believe is as assured to them. This may explain why a group aimed at exposing police business as usual with cameras and media (e.g. community attention that is implicitly intended to put the police on a correct track) draws whites, while people of color are wary of the approach employed.

Criminologists, sociologists and many others have studied race and opinions of police and the criminal justice system for decades. One study points out whites, African Americans and Latinos had starkly different opinions and experiences with verbal abuse by police, excessive force, unwarranted stops and corruption. I don’t believe it’s a matter of people of color being too busy or disempowered; I sensed there’s an underlying issue with what people believe to ultimately be Copwatch’s faith in improving law enforcement for an incident or two or three, but without a real strategy for making better police. Both of those notions may be totally wrong, but perhaps that is a problem of messaging as much as what people believe.

Gathering Forces provides a great point to begin discussing the Copwatch organizing model and its implications for broader politics. The work of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, and generally of the African People’s Socialist Party (which gave birth to the Uhuru Movement, of which InPDUM is allied), offers something unique. I do think the Copwatch model is a positive one, in spite of hurdles it faces, though investigating the aspirations of the movement longterm is in order.

* – Full disclosure: I’ve worked with and critiqued Bring the Ruckus a few years ago, but still see lots of value in its work.