Do Riot Police Serve Public Health?

Abstract

It has been just over a year since the US movement, Occupy Wall Street (OWS), followed in the steps of the Arab Spring, the Spanish Indignados, and the Greek antiausterity protests in calling (in general terms) for an egalitarian reform of the political-economic system, which entails steering away from favoring large banks and corporations and moving toward the 99%. Some understand the concerns of these protests and reform movements as relevant to fundamental determinants of public health.1 Initially, the OWS protests were characterized by occupation of public spaces—initially of Zuccotti Park near Wall Street in Manhattan—but were quickly joined by occupations in cities around the country. These occupations served (1) as forums for people to engage with, learn about, and organize around a variety of political and economic concerns (2) to enact, demonstrate, and transmit alternative forms of community-directed and consensus-based self-governance, and (3) to meet a variety of social needs including the provision of shelter, food, and medical assistance, as well as library and internet resources. In a nationally coordinated effort, the mayors of major cities responded by directing police actions to violently evict the OWS protestors. The mayors’ public justifications of these evictions (e.g., Mayors Bloomberg of New York City,2 Quan of Oakland, California,3 and Adams of Portland, Oregon4) invoked rhetoric of serving public health and safety. Ironically and tragically, the mayors’ uniform prescription for addressing public health and safety by deploying police in riot gear entailed violence, including property destruction, beatings, shootings, and assault with chemical weapons.5-7 Where was and is the condemnation on the part of public health professionals of this unethical, unconscionable, and flagrant usurpation of public health prerogatives? The increasingly militarized and publically unaccountable police systems in this country pose growing harm to the public, so much so that large police divisions are under the threat of federal receivership.8,9 Where is the epidemiological accounting of state violence (by the police, military, and penal systems) as a public health issue domestically and abroad? Where are the voices of Masters of Public Health instructors on these issues? Why is state violence not presented as a public health issue in basic public health textbooks? Lawyers have criticized Bloomberg’s rhetoric on public health and the OWS eviction.10 Why do we in public health permit the police and those who deploy them to adopt the mantle of public health without criticism?