How to Get the Cops to Protect You

By Naomi Wolf, NaomiWolf's Blog

24 November 11

ow is the time to get cops on board with the OWS movement — especially now that Alternet has broken the story that municipal police are being pushed around by a shadowy private policing consultancy affiliated with DHS. If you study any closing society decent people get handed monstrous orders and are forced to comply, and right now municipal police are being forced to comply with brutal orders from this corporate police consultancy, by economic pressure.

When I was in Zuccotti Park last week I thanked the cops each personally for standing peacefully by while citizens exercised first amendment rights and thought they could not say anything many faces softened, smiled and seemed relieved not to be demonized…it is hard for cops to be put in positions that dehumanize them too and psychologically traumatizing to be forced to act against their morals. This is a war and they are forced into front lines they did not choose. So Occupy, and everyone, be kind to the cops whenever you can please, thank them when they are non-violent, reach out to them.

Most importantly: I would say it would be VERY powerful for an OWS representative (NOT A LEADER! JUST A ROLE!) to reach out to the policemens’ benevolent associations in each city and try to find common ground. Even if you can’t get decent ground rules it will have a softening effect. Also the OWS rep should ask: ” how can we help you…?” There are thing cops need too that Occupy could help deliver.

What most citizens don’t fully understand is that hardball politics behind the scenes is not about confrontation — it is about waging favors. Most effective it is veiled confrontation (what can that group conceivably do to me if I make them angry?) combined with overt offers of favors (what can they get for me?) Occupy is in a very powerful position if they only begin to understand this. If If you REALLY want to know how the game is played — a game that is being played right now AGAINST you — you would have the OWS reps in every city go to a meeting with police benevolent association with your LOCAL REGISTERED VOTER LISTS in hand and say, “we want to put better pay and retirement for cops and other first responders on the ballot and are willing to get out the vote for this.”

This will work miracles. THEN THEY ARE BEING COURTED BY TWO PAYMASTERS.. that gives them freedom they don’t now have to resist orders to be brutal — .then they have a way to NOT listen to Chase Bloomberg DHS etc because YOU have their back and they have an alternative to beating the sh– out of you — Chase is seeking them out, and offering them 3.6 million in ‘help’, you seek them out and offer a get out the vote drive that is worth millions more to them — YOU become their constituency and their allies AGAINST the banks, shadowy police consultancy, DHS etc — that is how the big boys play. This will literally save lives, not to mention make OWS or other citizen groups an unstoppable force.