{"id":734,"date":"2022-05-18T14:49:26","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T14:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.justtalk.blog\/?p=734"},"modified":"2022-05-18T14:56:18","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T14:56:18","slug":"hear-no-evil-see-no-white-supremacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/2022\/05\/18\/hear-no-evil-see-no-white-supremacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Hear no evil, See no white supremacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In an interview with USA Today<\/a>, Broome County District Attorney Michael Korchak defended his inaction over white supremacist threats. It was up to the Susquehanna Valley school and the State Police, and not his office he said, to act on the mass shooting threats made by student Payton Gendron:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe school did what they were supposed to do and called state police\u201d Korchak said. \u201cAnd state police did what they were supposed to do and referred him for a mental health evaluation\u201d\u2026 \u201cWhat more could have been done?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed. What more?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is more than a bit of white-washing going on here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps Korchak has forgotten that he funds<\/a> retired police officers\u2019 jobs in schools all around Broome County\u2014including in the Susquehanna School District<\/em> where a former Vestal Police officer and SWAT team leader has worked for 12 years as a school resource officer<\/a>.  What does all this policing and surveillance directed by his office produce?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Korchak is not alone for policing Broome\u2019s schools is big business<\/a>. Last December Broome County Sheriff Harder, who runs his own school officers, responded to reports of social media threats by reassuring the public and press that there was \u201cno evidence\u201d behind the rumors<\/a>. Local school officials did the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People and the press need to ask questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do these police officers patrolling schools do, day in and day out?  Perhaps they don\u2019t hear or report violent threats from within the school? Do they not know when the State Police are investigating their students? Or perhaps they are incapable of hearing, much less acting on, violent racist threats?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Might their training and experience in all-white police forces be a factor? <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Or are they simply representing and enforcing the county\u2019s racialized record of arrests, prosecution, and incarceration?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Color of Justice
Broome County Black Incarceration Rate: 2,076
Broome County white incarceration rate: 292
NYS white incarceration rate:  158
NYS Black Incarceration Rate: 1,123

2018 Rate\/100,000. Source: Vera<\/a><\/td>		<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Or might racist behavior be the norm and legitimized? Reports from inside the county jail are especially grim, as in one man\u2019s statement to a local activist organization<\/a> that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been called Nxxxx, monkey, and other degrading names\u2026 when we speak up we get punished by being put in the Box\u2026 animals get treated better than Broome County inmates.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its a common report by incarcerated Black persons. A licensed clinical psychologist with over 25 years of experience in juvenile correctional settings testified in a recent lawsuit that \u201cyouth spoke of the Correctional Officers carrying batons they used to beat the kids; they reported that the COs refer to the baton as their \u2018nxxx beaters\u2019.<\/a>\u201d The Sheriff and County lost that lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another ongoing lawsuit <\/a>recounts how a local teenager was stripped and beaten while being told \u201cdo what you\u2019re told, N-word\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Might it be that constant protests and lawsuits against overtly racist behavior by city, county, and university police and schools need to be recognized and pursued? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And these are only a sample of the cases that have been publicly reported in the press and to county legislators, the NYS Attorney General\u2019s office, and elected officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a lesson here that local and state officials are working mightily to cover up:  the problem of racism cannot be isolated to \u201cexceptional\u201d or \u201cevil\u201d  individuals, it is systemic,  reproduced daily by the forces and administrations of the city, county, and state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an interview with USA Today, Broome County District Attorney Michael Korchak defended his inaction over white supremacist threats. It was up to the Susquehanna Valley school and the State Police, and not his office he said, to act on the mass shooting threats made by student Payton Gendron: \u201cThe school did what they were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,76,77,79,14,78,75],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-broome-county","tag-da-korchak","tag-payton-gendron-broome","tag-racism-broome-county","tag-sheriff-harder","tag-susequehanna-school-district","tag-white-supremacy","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":759,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions\/759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}