Other items in today’s column include:
*City Council gives final approval to measure placing Commission on Police Practices on the November ballot
*United Airlines expands its flights to Tel Aviv
*Recommended reading
SAN DIEGO — Avodah, a national organization that trains Jewish professionals to become advocates for positive social change, recently announced that it was expanding to San Diego, where it would cooperate with Jewish Family Service of San Diego on a variety of issues, especially those involving abuses at the U.S-Mexican border and mistreatment of immigrants.
In one of its first San Diego presentations, Avodah held a webinar on Tuesday, July 7, on the issue of police accountability. Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein, director of the Justice Fellowship in Avodah’s Chicago offices, began by quoting Deuteronomy 16:18-20:
Judges and officers shall you appoint in all your cities — which Hashem, your God, gives you — for your tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert judgment, you shall not respect someone’s presence, and you shall not accept a bribe, for the bribe will blind the eyes of the wise and make just words crooked. Righteousness, righteousness [sometimes rendered ‘Justice, Justice] shall you pursue, so that you will live and possess the Land that Hashem, your God, gives you.”
In various midrashim, the ancient rabbis pondered the meaning of the phrase, “so that you will live and possess the Land…” and came up with the formulation that judges, and police officers, must be held accountable for their actions, lest they become the agents of the destruction of society.
Bernstein compared this concept with what happened a few years ago in Chicago, when Rahm Emanuel, the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, was serving as mayor of the Windy City.
The rabbi said while there had been a decrease in violence in the rest of the nation, violence had spike in 2016-2017 in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. Emanuel blamed the violence on the fact that police officers had been coming under increasing scrutiny by the public, so much so that many were willing to walk off their jobs and see how the public liked life without them.
“That is to say that in order for police officers to do their work properly, they needed to be free of excessive oversight because that oversight causes a pressuring impact that makes it unreasonable for them to do their jobs,” Rabbi Bernstein summarized. He said a midrash based on Deuteronomy says just the opposite, that “police officers are expected to do their job properly and judiciously even if [for failing to do so] they face the road and the whip. They are under such a thorough, cautious regime of accountability that they are aware at all moments that policing improperly would lead to their own punishment, their own facing the same violence that they wield.”
Bernstein went on to say, that according to Jewish tradition, “We expect those authorized by the state to use violence to use it appropriately and not overstep those bounds, to not be reckless, to not act in racist ways, or discriminatory ways, or even egotistical ways if they are constantly aware of the consequences of them doing it improperly.”
The rabbi said that in Chicago, and possibly in other cities around the nation, labor agreements between the municipality and the police union have shielded police officers from being held accountable. He told the story of Officer Jason Van Dyke, who was convicted of the 2014 murder of Laquan McDonald. According to the union contract, officers have 24 hours before they are required to respond to charges that they used excessive force. He, and eight of his fellow officers, used that time to “get their story straight,” corroborating Van Dyke’s contention that McDonald had charged at him, according to Bernstein. However, physical evidence showed that all the officers had perjured themselves, according to Bernstein. In questioning police, he said, investigating officers should separate witnesses so they give their statements just as civilians do, without the opportunity to agree with each other about what had happened.
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City Council gives final approval to measure placing Commission on Police Practices on the November ballot
The San Diego City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to submit to the voters a proposal to create a Commission on Police Practices, which would have its own attorneys and investigators, the power to subpoena, and to make public recommendations on disciplinary measures for police accused of using excessive force or violating laws. However, the actual discipline imposed on the offending officers would be up to the police chief.
“All of us at San Diegans for Justice are grateful for the leadership of Councilmember Monica Montgomery and Council President Georgette Gómez,” commented San Diegans for Justice co-chairs Andrea St. Julian and Maresa Martin Talbert. “We want to thank our partners at Women Occupy San Diego, Mid-City CAN Youth Council, and Earl B. Gilliam Bar Association for the decades of work they have put into this proposal collectively. Our deepest gratitude goes towards the community members who have stood by us and are fighting every day for a better and more equitable world.”
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United Airlines expands its flights to Tel Aviv
Already having scheduled flights to Tel Aviv from New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC., United Airlines will add three flights a week in September to Tel Aviv from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. They will depart at 6:30 p.m. on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays aboard a Boeing 787-9, the airline said.
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Recommended reading
*Ken Stone of Times of San Diego reports that a man driving in the Alpine area with a Nazi flag draped over his rear view mirror has complained to Sheriff’s deputies that his flag was vandalized.
*The AMCHA initiative issued a report indicating that anti-Semitism is on the increase on college campuses and in on-line platforms college students are utilizing during the coronavirus pandemic.
*David Brin of Encinitas alert us to a story in Tablet Magazine about the time in the 1930s when Jewish gangsters regularly delivered beatings to American Nazis. “This fascinating article even mentions my own dad [Herb Brin, the late publisher of the Jewish Heritage newspaper chain in California.]
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com