On Wednesday, protest chants, car horns and red-and-yellow picket signs appeared in front of the UNM bookstore to draw attention to police brutality.
The event, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s fatal shooting by a Ferguson, Missouri officer, was held by the Answer Coalition and Red Nation in support of what has been dubbed the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The three movements are social justice campaigns founded on the initiative to end racism and promote peace and equality.
This particular event at UNM focused on police brutality and accountability, with each speaker at the event voicing their opinions and relating their experiences of police actions that were directed at their person. One speaker, Joel Gallegos, a coordinator for the Answer Coalition, recalled times in his life when he said he was hassled by law enforcement.
“One of my earliest memories was my parents being harassed by police,” Gallegos said. “Because we were homeless, living out of our car, we were constantly being pulled over and searched.”
Gallegos, 30, said his organization wants to change police accountability policy and introduce more civilian control over police behavior when it comes to civilian encounters.
“Unfortunately, there is not a single city in the U.S. that has a comprehensive citizen review board for any police department,” said Gallegos, “Many times police officers do whatever they want with impunity, and we want to [put] a stop to that.”
Another speaker, Father Frank Quintana, 63, of Albuquerque’s Blessed Oscar Romero Catholic Community, said he also wishes to see change in police behavior and procedure, explaining that he himself is a victim of excessive police force.
“One time I was standing in front of a bus stop waiting to go to the seminary where I was going to school,” Quintana said. “It was after dark, I was dressed in my clerics, and (a police unit) drove slowly by me. They screeched their brakes, slammed it into reverse, got out of their car, shined their flashlight in my eyes so I couldn’t see who they were, slammed me up against their car and asked me what the f--- I was doing there.”
Police should restore their consciences and see that the individuals they deal with have human dignity and should be dealt with by negotiating and use of non-lethal force, he said.
However, not everyone at the event felt that reform would help the problem of police brutality.
David Correia, an associate professor in American Studies at UNM, said that reform isn’t the way to correct future instances of police brutality.
“Reform is just a way to appease a certain segment of society that isn’t directly affected by that violence,” Correia said. “I could give you examples of reform that happen every 15 years that have done nothing to change this, because the system is designed to do this.”
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It may not be the officers that are to blame, Correia said, but the system itself that trains the officers to engage in practice and policies that will eventually lead to violent encounters.
“Is it an accident that poor, black men are disproportionately victims of violence in this country?” Correia said. “It’s reinforcing a social order that privileges certain people — usually race and class — over others, and the police enforce that. That’s what they’ve always done.”
Fin Martinez is a freelance reporter at The Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @FinMartinez.
