Occupy protesters have invited cops to join the movement, but so far, the response has been with tear gas and batons.

Ari Paul
guardian.co.uk,

Tuesday 1 November 2011 12.45 GMT




NYPD officers carry away a man during an Occupy Wall Street protest in September. Photograph: Tina Fineberg/AP Photo



Despite the images
of a New York police commander pepper spraying non-violent female
protesters and police use of tear gas and other projectiles against
Occupy demonstrators in Oakland, there is a continuous plea to the
police: join us. After all, police officers' union benefits and pensions
are under attack around the country, putting them in the ranks of all
other public-sector workers, who make up the last remaining vestige of
the American blue-collar middle class."We are the 99%," protesters often cry during marches, with some gesturing to the police columns and adding, "and so are you."

Is
it so simple? The Occupy Wall Street movement will hit its two-month
birthday this month, and there are still reports of mass arrests and
videos depicting excessive police force around the country. No cop has
refused an order, though there is a rumor that in Denver, a cop publicly
cried while forced to evict an encampment and said, "I can't do this
anymore." Police unions have not joined the rest of the labor movement
in supporting OWS – though in a nice twist of irony, the encampments
have been a boon of overtime pay for the cops on OWS duty. Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, agreed
that the OWS talking points of class inequality, the need for good jobs
and call for investment in public services should resonate with police
officers. "The cops don't see themselves as labor," he said. "It's a
conservative culture – not politically, but conservative as slow-moving
to change." The police are still dogging the movement in other non-violent ways. The New York Daily News reported
that cops have been urging drunks and homeless people to go to the
encampment at Zuccotti Park, which overwhelms the food providers and
overcrowds the tent city (the department denies the story). One New York police union official said lawsuits will follow if protesters assault police officers.
It's a fatuous solution to a non-existent problem, and creates more
division between OWS and frontline cops. But O'Donnell, a former cop,
comments, "It's not your father's police department. It's more
multi-ethnic, it's more gender-balanced. Progressive arguments resonate
more if they are articulated well."OWS protesters around the
country are waiting for that moment of reckoning. The military also has
conservative culture that is the antithesis of the horizontalism and
counter-culture of OWS. But that didn't stop Marine Corps veteran Shamar Thomas from lambasting a group of dumbfounded cops in midtown Manhattan during an OWS march. Another Marine veteran, Scott Olsen, was seriously injured in the Oakland raid, and cops assaulted a group from Veterans for Peace during a demonstration in Boston. So
what is to account for this difference? For one thing, the benefits of
being a police officer are pacifying. In New York and other places where
public-sector unions are strong, police and firefighter benefits are
handsome when compared to other people toiling in the 99%. A New York
City cop or firefighter can conceivably retire by age 40, with a pension
bringing in $50,000 or more a year to supplement another full-time
career in private security, home repair services, bartending or
whatever. It's a coveted position even in civil service: who would
jeopardise that in this economy? This contrasts heavily to the
Iraq war veteran coming home to face high unemployment, or the hordes of
other workers who have to put with more hours, less pay, and no defined
retirement plan. These people have less to lose by joining the
occupation. In Zuccotti Park, individual protesters do start
conversations with cops. It's a nice sight, but without the somewhat
unlikely scenario of cops refusing orders or even an informal
organisation of cops endorsing the ideas of the 99% movement, the moment
for potential solidarity will pass as tensions escalate. And for many
protesters, that is the plan. The offensive in Oakland may have been
brutal, but it has only inspired protesters there to go further and call
for a general strike. Arguably, it has been more helpful to OWS when
the police have made headlines by overstepping and using excessive
force, than if cops had decided to affiliate with the 99%. And we look
set for more of the same.