The Abominable Cops of Portland & South Portland
The mistaken armed capture of a Black high school kid exposes systemic incompetence and insanity in local law enforcement
The mistaken capture, at gunpoint, of a Black Deering High School student last Tuesday morning in Portland has sparked public outrage. The 16-year-old student’s mother called the traumatic encounter an example of racial profiling, and she’s right about that. But the rot goes much deeper, down into the core assumptions that frame and guide our government’s response to crime.
It’s key to keep in mind the reason this heavily armed police raid was planned and undertaken: to arrest another Black kid, 19-year-old Miles Hibbard, and search his home, a modestly sized white house that had Black Lives Matter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg signs out front when the Google Maps surveillance vehicle drove by.
Hibbard is a suspect in a burglary; in other words, police had a suspicion the youth had stolen something of value in the recent past (details have not been provided), and a judge deemed their evidence of Hibbard’s guilt sufficiently strong to sign a search warrant. The post-incident press statement disseminated by the City of South Portland claims Hibbard “is known to associate with individuals who carry and use firearms in the commission of crimes,” and that “officers also had reason to believe that there may be ammunition in the home.”
Details to support those vague claims are also omitted from the statement, but the claims and the actions they prompted last Tuesday reveal the toxic, racist and vicious mentality of South Portland and Portland police. They believed Hibbard was not only a teen who may have taken something of significant value that didn’t belong to him, but a young Black man willing to murder police with a firearm in broad daylight outside his home if approached by authorities.
That’s why South Portland dispatched a four-man SWAT team, in addition to multiple detectives joined by multiple armed Portland police officers, to apprehend Hibbard. That’s why the sight of an unarmed kid who vaguely resembled Hibbard exiting a car and walking near Hibbard’s house prompted them to pounce on the student as if he were a rabid Rottweiler, order him at gunpoint to lie on the ground or be shot to death, handcuff him and drag the teen away while other armed officers confronted the driver still sitting in the car.
The city’s statement stresses that the terrorized student was released after less than five minutes — once officers realized they’d arrested and threatened to shoot the wrong Black kid — and goes on to say Hibbard was subsequently arrested “at his workplace in Cape Elizabeth.” They appended his babyfaced mug shots.
“I believe our officers acted reasonably and appropriately given the circumstances and information they had at the time,” South Portland Police Chief Dan Ahern said, according to the statement. The chief said his department will be “reviewing this incident to ensure that all protocols and procedures were followed.”
The department’s internal “review” will undoubtedly find their fellow officers acted “reasonably and appropriately,” as the boss already believes and wants everyone else to believe. The public will continue to believe otherwise.
To wit, let’s say the cops were correct to expect Hibbard was likely to open fire upon seeing uniformed officers approach him on the sidewalk outside his home. If so, why the fuck did they attempt to execute their arrest and search warrants within 100 yards of the entrance to a high school during lunchtime, when students are all over the surrounding streets and sidewalks? They apparently knew where Hibbard worked — in one of Maine’s wealthiest and most peaceful towns — but eschewed the idea of approaching him at his place of employment in favor of a SWAT raid conducted during lunch break right outside a school in a dense residential neighborhood.
The only thing officers had at the scene to identify Hibbard was a “description” of him “developed from a driver’s license photograph,” the statement reads. If I understand English correctly, that means the cops didn’t even have an image of their suspect — only someone’s written description of what Hibbard’s face looks like in the tiny photo on his license. The top cop in South Portland would have us believe it’s “reasonable and appropriate” to conduct a daytime neighborhood SWAT raid based on that level of intel.
The staggering incompetence of these cops is par for the course. What I wish to point out here is the obvious insanity of the “criminal justice” system of which they are the most lethal arm.
Again, the key thing to recall is that something of value was allegedly stolen in South Portland, prompting this whole mess. Police aren’t saying what it was, which leads me to believe it wasn’t especially important to anyone — like an irreplaceable family heirloom or the original draft of the Declaration of Independence; something that might raise this pilfering to a higher level of moral or community concern.
Regardless, our common understanding of justice demands the person or persons who took it should either return the object or, if that’s not possible, compensate its owner for its value. A sincere apology, a promise not to do it again, and perhaps some extra measure of recompense for the hurt feelings and inconvenience of the aggrieved party, as well as the cost the community incurred in pursuit of justice, would also be reasonable and appropriate, right? Furthermore, all this should take place in a public forum, like a courthouse, so the community knows who the transgressor is, what they did, and that they’ve taken actions to fully atone for their misdeed.
Is this not your understanding, dear reader? Or do you agree with local law enforcement that the reasonable response to a burglary is to send a posse of highly trained officers armed to the teeth into a residential neighborhood at lunchtime to capture anyone in the vicinity who resembles the suspected burglar — based on notes gleaned from somebody’s description of an image of his face as it appears in an inch-by-inch-and-a-half driver’s license photo?
Do you agree it’s reasonable and appropriate to assume a teen who lives in a nice suburban neighborhood and has never been arrested for anything will attempt to shoot and kill police officers on sight? Is alleged association with armed criminals and suspicion of bullets in a drawer at home sufficient insight into the suspect’s character to conclude he’d face death and murder police officers rather than answer questions about a break-in? Would it be somehow unreasonable or inappropriate to attempt to question or arrest this kid by methods short of a multi-agency SWAT operation? Had he, for example, been ignoring officers’ phone calls and messages requesting he come down to the station for a chat?
The Portland and South Portland police departments have a lot more explaining to do. Racial profiling is just the ugly tip of the iceberg exposed by this incident. An approach to public safety that’s practically indistinguishable from the Old West’s racist and genocidal “frontier justice” must be confronted, exposed and discredited for what it is: an abomination.