Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Die Hard or The Problem with Action Movies

The idea that sequels and reboots are endemic only to this period in time is laughable. Hollywood was founded on stealing ideas and remakes. In that period it was mostly stealing from plays and books. If you look at the film Nosferatu, now considered to be a classic, it was simply a way of making Dracula when the estate said no. They simply changed a few bits and went ahead anyway.  Actually there was plenty of stealing, literally.  They actually placed signs in the background of the film as proof one company filmed it and not others so another company couldn’t just steal the reels.  Not a surprise when you find out that film had Edison as an early proponent.

Every once and a while there is a benchmark film that defines, or rather redefines, a genre. Die Hard is one of those movies. Interestingly enough Die Hard started its gestation as a sequel to Commando. This is not entirely uncommon. Quite often a script, an idea, or another intellectual property will be transformed entirely and laid over onto existing characters. The laughable sequel Die Hard 2 was based on the book “58 minutes”. A better example of an extreme makeover is Beverly Hills Cop. It was originally a vehicle for Stallone. The movie was changed heavily once Eddie Murphy, then contractual allowed to still be funny, was attached and a good deal of the film, notably the supercop speech, was improvised.  Watch that scene and you’ll notice John Ashtone (Taggart) is squeezing his nose and looking down trying not to laugh.  Judge Reinhold (Billy Rosewood)  was apparently pinching his inner thigh.

But Die Hard was so good it ended up setting back action films for decades because it became a formula. What was fresh then is now a bit played out. But subsequent copycat films have failed to follow its subtlety and expert hand. Die Hard, even though it was an action film, was actually a good piece of cinema that still stands up.

The first two shots of the movie speak volumes.  They set up important elements of the story with nuance. The first shot is a of plane landing (going from the right of the screen to the left). This usually indicates coming from the east and entering the west. The second shot is a close up of wedding ring. This sets up the most important element of the film. This is the first struggle introduced in the movie. The terrorists/thieves are introduced after the marriage problems of the McClane’s.  Shortly after the films shows McClane’s gun, the suspicion of the passenger who has sitting next to him, and the enormous stuffed bear (although Iron Man 3 wins at the ridiculously sized stuffed bear contest).  McClane explains he is a cop and this soothes the passenger’s suspicion.  This is the guy who indirectly causes McClane to have bloody feet later in the movie.  He explains to deal with stress you makes fists with your feet on the carpet.

Most stories have two plots. Generally there is the external struggle and the internal struggle. The better stories untie these two often disparate struggles and have them strengthen each other. We watch our protagonist along his or her path as they attempt to get past their hurdles. In Die Hard we are first introduced to the complication of John McClane’s marriage. The proud New York City cop has to deal with the success of his wife.  He wants her to give up her high paying business job and move back to the East coast to only be a mother to his children and a wife to him. To him their success is his success. He is trapped in the older mentality of the husband being the solitary provider and the decision maker. But this is a movie emblematic of it’s time. Women are entering the work place (Holly), Japanese businesses (Nakatomi Corporation) are buying up America and coked out yuppies (Ellis) run rampant.

Part of what sets Die Hard apart from other films is the realism of its characters. They aren’t simply one note stand ins. They have realistic relationships and reactions. It isn’t just bad guy #4 and #5.  There is sympathy for the normally unlikable characters; like Hans, Ellis and Karl.  It also had innovative, at the time especially, camera work.  The uses of the frame helped subtly tell internal feelings.  This is what film can do and books can’t.  Books can tell the inner thoughts of the characters while film is not only limited to facial expression unless it is under the direction of hacks (more explosions to cover up my laziness and incompetence!).

When we first see Holly she is among the crowd far below President Takagi (a not so subtle spatial reference to his power over those below).  Shotly after in her office (Holly Genero) we see pictures of her with the kids.  Then the audience finally sees a picture of John linking the two characters.  She turns the chair to obscure that picture further hinting at the trouble between them.  Then she puts the picture down so John is obscured.  This is important much later as Hans doesn’t see the face and the link.

Meanwhile John is in the limo and sitting upfront with Argyle.  The film is desperately trying to show how likable but out of touch he is.  The shows he is unused to limos, that he is comfortable with the working man, resistant to trappings of class, and grouchy (but in an endearing way).  When John gets to the building and walks through the lax but ever present and sophisticated security he notices Holly is listed under Gennero, her maiden name, and not McClane.

The inevitable argument between the two ensues and Holly walks out.  John shows he is upset with himself and not just the situation by banging his head on the door frame.  At this time he is making the mistakes of walking around bare footed.

The terrorists are introduced to the sound of music as they are calmly and methodically entering the Nakatomi building.  Fun note the truck they arrive in has ‘Pacific Courier’ on it. This translates to ‘Bringer of Peace’.  The guards are quickly disposed of and they have started to take control. At this point we have no idea why they are there.  Previous to this it was simply a melodrama about a cop stuck in the past and his wife who is dangerously close to leaving as he is forcing a choice between a successful career she chose and the life he chose for her.  Now it becomes, almost reluctantly an action movie.  The terrorists show some really personality here which is useful so they aren’t in people’s minds simply dude with a shotgun, gun with funny hair, the one who talks.  We know that there are two brothers;  the nerdier one (Tony), made obvious by his glasses and the fact he is hacking into the phone lines; and the burlier one (Karl) who delights in pushing around Tony.  He pulls out chainsaw while he is brother is work forcing him to sweat and work rapidly.  He risks an alarm and jeopardizing the plan to tease his brother.

McClane escapes into the stairwell once the fireworks start sadly still in bare feet.  He tried to stop the whole thing by pulling the fire alarm by the switchboard now operated by the terrorists stops this attempt.  Nerdy brother Tony confronts McClane but dies in the confrontation.  McClane shows his sense of humor and dressed him in a santa outfit.  Ho Ho Ho indeed.  This gives Karl an immediate need to kill McClane beyond simply he is a bad guy and John is a good guy.  Yay layers!  Like an ogre, or onion.  Or a parfait.  Everyone loves a parfait.  But let’s ignore the scene by scene breakdown.

Die Hard can be enjoyed as a dude simply shooting other dudes.  But it is so much more than that.  We have smart inventive characters.  Plot twists.  Yeah, they aren’t terrorists they’re just thieves, really good thieves.  Plus it had some rather snappy dialogue.

Supervisor: [as McClane tries to call up police] Attention, whoever you are, this channel is reserved for emergency calls only.
John McClane: No fucking shit, lady. Does it sound like I'm ordering a pizza?

While John is battling the bad guys Holly is trying to remain hidden and not be a pawn in the game.  Her boss Takagi, whom she tried to protect, already died violently.  There was a nice touch with Karl and Theo (the hacker) betting over the ending of the negotiation.  She now gets to see the infuriating side of her husband as a good thing.  His never-ending stubbornness and sense of humor are good in this situation.  It reaffirms to her that he is out there trying to save everyone.

Ginny: [Karl smashes a table of glasses in fury] God. That man looks *really* pissed.
Holly Gennero McClane: He's still alive.
Ginny: What?
Holly Gennero McClane: Only John can drive somebody that crazy.

Now it seems ridiculous that a beat cop could eventually bring down a group of well-prepared bad guys replete with Hans Gruber at the helm.  But the film treads lightly here.  Treating it as every second that he could, and should by all rights, be dead.  The first person he killed (Tony) died accidently when his neck was broken).  He fails in jumping in the elevator shaft and barely makes it to the vent to crawl through.  His feet were bloody due to having to run through broken glass.  He struggles on valiantly each time only barely surviving.  Jumping off the building with the fire hose attached he doesn’t cleanly make it inside.  The glass repels him.  His bloody feet leave red imprints.  He has to shoot the glass to get inside and even then he almost dies when the metal part attached to the hose falls dragging him with it.  At the end he is outgunned but he still prevails by his snarky comments and catching Gruber off guard.  He tells a joke and the all laugh.  Giving him long enough to shoot one of the henchmen and wound Gruber.  But we’ll jump back to that.

In these types of movies there is always the guy on the inside who sympathizes with the hero who gives him encouragement and moral support while he is fighting alone.  In this case we have Al the Twinkie enthusiast.  Surprisingly twinkies have played an important role in two of my favorite movies.

Dr. Peter Venkman: How's the grid holding up?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Not good.
Winston Zeddemore: Tell him about the Twinkie.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What about the Twinkie?

But I digress.  Al and “Roy” (McClanes cowboy persona) are linked by camera framing.  Whenever we see someone in the film talk to another character over phone or walkie talkie we see them in their respective side of the frame; one on the left and the other on the right.  Although they aren’t in the same space they are joined by this framing.  It’s done the same with Hans and McClane but this sets them up as adversaries and opposites.  The moments of levity in the film allow dark moments like Al’s explanation of never firing a gun. He admits to having killed a kid.  This informs much about the character.

While John is street smart Hans is book smart.  While Hans is tactical John is quick witted.  They both test each other.  One of the best sequences is when McClane finds Hans and Hans pretend to be an employee.  Looking at the list of names on the wall by the elevator McClane quizzes him.  Hans responds Bill, Clay and we see on the wall W. Clay confirming his deceit.

Back to Hans last moments.  He grabs onto Holly securing in his graps her watch.  The watch introduced earlier by the smug, and now dead, Ellis, is a symbol of her choice of work over marriage.  John relases the watch from her simultaneously defeated the bad guys and resolving, metaphorically, their marriage issues.  Or at least for the time being.

A film this good left a lasting impression.  The following four entries into the series all looked up their predecessor and all failed spectacularly.  The fourth and fifth movies turned the down on his luck cop into a superhero.  In the fifth entry the heroes simply leap through windows unaware of how they might land to escape.  The second movie had boring plot twists, boring bad guys, and removed any and all subtlety.  Also it added crappy effects and bad camera work.  The third film was probably the closest to the first but had a rather unenlightened ending.

But Die Hard can be seen in countless other movies from karate films like The Raid: Redemption (die hard with kicking, also killing a dude with a door which was way more awesome than it sounds) or Jean Claudes rather boring Sudden Death (replace the Nakatomi building with a Hockey arena and add mullets, splits and bad acting, sorry Powers Boothe).  It can also be seen in the surprisingly not awful Dredd reboot which was creatively named Dredd.

The problem often times with imitation is missing the point.  You copy the swagger the style but not the substance.  Other films just put up a super hero, a nigh invulnerable demi god who cannot possibly lose.  The pleasure is not in the conflict or its resolution as there is no real conflict just a minor inconvenience.  The audience know the hero will win there is no suspense, no tension.  The hero waltzes through danger with nary a scratch.  But in Die Hard John McClane is all scratches, gun shots, bloody feet, narrow escapes and heaps of luck.  Other action movies focus on building up an icon who is so indomitably badass that the pantheon of bad guys thrown his way as fodder seem comical.

Is it fair to say that Die Hard has really ruined action movies?  Not really, but every hack no uses that as blueprint.  After Fight Club came out we had all these other movies starting near the end or featuring twist endings revealing the protagonist not to be who they think they are.  But Hollywood will simply continue to recycle ideas until they are used up and shallow husks.  Until then Die Hard will be my Christmas tradition.  YKYMF!


Ben

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

History is Interpreted

There are many times I dislike the current education system.  Usually because we as a country seem to be content ruining it.  My usual gripe is the whole test mentality.  We judge the students and the school by test scores.  Schools then predominantly try to get their kids study for the test instead of, say, teaching things like critical thinking, common sense and other useful skills but the shit some test maker thought was important.  Not to impugn the people who make tests but fuck them.  The thing you decide to use as a measurement of success not surprisingly becomes the measure of success.  The problem is that with education a real measurement of growth isn’t knowing you should write ‘regardless’ instead of ‘irregardless’ (it’s not a fucking word people).  Although that wouldn’t be a terrible place to start.

The thing that pisses me off is that history teachers and social studies teacher bored the living hell out of me.  They also taught garbage.  Not all of them mind you, but enough to upset me.  And this is a tragedy as history is shockingly interesting.  And not like the nerdy way of saying ‘hey, you should know this so won’t happen again’ (“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” ~ George Santayana )  and ‘history is cool’ (it is and fuck you for not thinking that) but just learning a few things about history can make you a well-rounded and better person (and chicks dig it).

Let me drop some knowledge on you.  You know that whole gentlemanly code thing.  Not chivalry to heck with that (although tipping your hat dates back to armed knights removing their visor). I mean being a man about town.  When you, present day you, walk with a lady (presuming you are a man, presuming you enjoy the company of ladies carnally and presuming that a lady doesn’t run away from you as long as we are presuming) you end up being on the street side of the sidewalk and lady is on the building side.  Odd that this is the way it’s done.  Some unknown Jungian thing where we peer into the collective unconscious?  Remember when you look into the collective unconscious, the abyss also looks into you or something like that (damn it Nietzsche stop confusing me).  No, it has to do with shit.  Well, with pails of it splashing into the street from the buildings above but shit nonetheless.  See cities and towns didn’t always have this nice thing called a sewer system.  Too bad we forgot most everything the Roman’s knew for a few centuries or so.  So people would fill their pots and fling the contents into the street.  We also didn’t know about this whole germ theory thing but more on that in a moment.  So the gents as they sauntered down the street with their intended they would stay nearer the every jostling pit of filth resembling a street.  Now imagine the whole laying down you coat so a lady can cross the way without sullying her boots or shoes.  Less appealing, right?  Oh good ,shit on the outside of my coat from the constant frothy buckets splashing from the filthy bastards above me into the foul street and laying it down every time the lady meets an intersection to get the inside all nice and juicy.  Old timey me would say, “Seriously we have to stop walking during bucket hour.  You’re totally buying me a new jacket once I’m done burning this one.”

People still believed in this thing called Miasma, or bad air, being the reason for ailments.  Yay, science, medicine and mysticism are best buddies forever.  What?  Mysticism is the thing that doesn’t belong.  Well, shoot.  Miasma was popular in Middle Ages, unsurprisingly, but also espoused in Roman times.  Usually considered to be more, you know, rational and learned.  The germ theory didn’t seem to gain ground until Louis Pasteur in 1860’s (that around the Civil War time for point of reference).  But he wasn’t the first guy to have ideas like this.  The ever crafty Italians had some people with wacky ideas, who hopefully the Papacy didn’t lock away in a tower for daring to advance society, like Girolamo Fracastoro.  Oh, he was born in the in 1470’s.  Yeah, and we can attribute the syphilis to him, or well, rather the name.  He subscribed to the theory of Atomism.  Not quite what we think of as atoms but getting there.

All those facts above, tenuously held together, to me are more interesting that the vast amount of information fed to me in history classes.  This is why history class as an adult pisses me off.  History is interesting.  And worse of all there is so much of it to look at.  And knowing history is like the best game of hey you’re an idiot and let me tell you why.  I highly recommend this game if you haven’t played it.  Caveat you actually have to know more than other people and not just sound like you do.  That’s the problem with this whole internet immediate gratification and delivery of possibly dubious knowledge.  So here are few items to help you play that game.  All basically say fuck you to ‘common knowledge’.  I put common knowledge in quotes because, well is even more dubious than internet sources unless it’s taken from the collective unconscious thing then it’s probably legit.

Look at this excerpt below from an article I found.  In your head, because aloud might be weird, say who first comes to mind.

“On March 2, 1955, [a young African American woman] was riding home on a city bus after school when a bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white passenger. She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right."

Okay.  You’re wrong.  I know it’s mean but the above is about Claudette Colvin who predated Rosa Parks as a civil rights activist and hero but was forgotten by history.  She was an expecting single mother and fifteen years old.  So she eloquently stood up to an aggressor as young woman and later won a major victory for the movement when she went to court over the trouble which ensued.  But civil rights movement chose to celebrate Rosa Parks instead, who most definitely should be celebrated, but isn’t there room for two defiant African American women who did remarkably similar things and both helped this nation move forward.  Claudette was swept under the rug however and this is likely because a young single mother might not be the poster child envisioned.

http://www.biography.com/people/claudette-colvin-11378?page=1

Try this one on for size.  What does the empire of cushy furniture (the Ottomans) and the Irish potato famine have in common?  My first guess would be nothing.   But as this ‘he you’re an idiot and let me tell you why’ that is not correct.   The Ottoman Empire actually helped Ireland during the Potato Famine and defied the English blockade against the aid.  I didn’t even know the English blockaded Ireland to stop aid.  That never entered into my mind.  The whole famine as it was presented to me made rather silly sense.  How does an island starve?  You could fish, right?  It’s a bit more complicated than that and has to do with the English trying to fuck everything that isn’t English or something like that.  I’ll let the article tell you:

“Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid sent five ships full of food supplies and funds as charity. However, the British administration did not give permission for these ships to enter the ports of Belfast or Dublin. […] these ships secretly discharged their load in Drogheda, a town approximately 70 miles north of Dublin.”

http://www.thepenmagazine.net/the-great-irish-famine-and-the-ottoman-humanitarian-aid-to-ireland/

Now here is tidbit you can throw at would be nutritionists and Atkins followers.  Who gives a shit what ancient man had to eat.  Marlene Zuk an evolutionary biologist, a title given to people who eschew activities like video games and professional wrestling for learning (those poor bastards), wrote a book telling people who think we should eat like primitive man to shut up as their stupidity voiced aloud might affect the gullible and foolish.  The book Paleofantasy (subtle as a hammer lady, er Dr., er, Dr. Lady?) basically says that there isn’t a need to live or eat as we once did it also dissolves some of the misinformation like the supposed paleodiet.  Apparently “researchers discovered evidence that people in Europe were grinding and cooking grain (a paleo-diet bugaboo) as far back as 30,000 years ago, even if they weren’t actually cultivating it.”  This information will surely piss of the anti-sugar fiends.

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/10/paleofantasy_stone_age_delusions/

I’ll throw another fact your way before we end the pseudo lecture.  This source, while I would not say it lacks merit or that it is spurious, is cited on Reddit.  This makes an immediate need for research.  As is often the case in society we fetishize something to the point where its truth is no longer called into question.  For some reason this became the case with swords.  Now don’t get me wrong swords are cool (heck, I studied the Chinese Broadsword, by study I mean learned to whack people with it in a dojo not read up on it) but they are romanticized so much we think all major battle were fought with them.  This is false.  Spears were the weapon of favor.  Samurai used spears, the Roman Legions used spears, and knights used spears.  Swords were not nearly as effective in large scale battles.  Also in the case of knights swords were rather useless against strong armor.  If they had a sword in combat they often used the pommel end to smash the attackers head.  Maybe in shield wall they might use small swords to cut under the shield and hack at ankles or groins but axes and hammers were preferred.  But this is swept away as swords are undeniably cooler.  Although Smash Brothers is a great argument for the effectiveness of the hammer as a weapon.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/157upf/what_was_sword_fighting_actually_like_did_it/c7k1cd7

Now I hate using Buzzfeed as a source so I grabbed more than one for this knowledge nugget.  But the article, or rather the grouping a pictures with some hastily crayoned “fact” below illustrates a rather interesting point.  Sharks don’t really kill that many people.  Sharks are scary things.  They rank up their with the nightmare fuel that is spiders.  But just saying that means rather little.  Let’s have something measurable.  Metrics are important.  Every years a lot of people die often from embarrassing or frightfully awful ways.  Hippos every year kill more humans than sharks.  Hippos while they seem jubilant and too corpulent to be a problem (Fantasia is full of lies when it comes to Hippos as source by the way) they are in reality heinous killing machine.  They kill around 2,900 people a year.  Ignoring the Indiana Jones movie that never really happened ants are one of nature’s badasses.  They are like the Borg; efficient, remorseless and adaptable.  They kill more than sharks at 30 people per year.  Then there is deer.  You know Bambi.  And no, they aren’t smart enough to take vengeance for redneck hunters who mount heads on walls (yet).  They kill 130 people per year.  Even coconuts kill more than sharks (150 people per year).  This makes me immediate sad.  I would hate giving that eulogy.  Sharks only kill 5 people a year.  But because of the film Jaws, a damn fine movie, people generally kill the sons of bitches.  Peter Benchley, the books author (yes it was a book first you illiterate hobgoblin), is now a shark conservationist.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/20-things-that-kill-more-people-than-sharks-every
http://www.bookyourdive.com/blog/2012/4/5/things-more-likely-to-kill-you-than-a-shark

So now that I’ve given you fodder to educate the masses, against their will if need be, you can do what I do - critically think about how we really interpret history.  We only know what has been written and recorded.  Things like book burnings, the raising of libraries, or just passing outright lies as fact (you think todays’ pundits have this cornered?) have given us the shreds of history to wade through.  History books do us a disservice by trying to sum up and group facts as if they are all encompassing.  I patiently tried not to throttle a teenager who insisted that nearly all people in Europe during the Middle Ages were illiterate.  I simply asked “how do you know?” and he stared at me with bovine intelligence.  He parroted what he saw in textbooks.  In my head only I continued the argument.   I knew further engaging him in argument further would not lead to any enlightenment for him or resolution for me.  George Carlin said, “Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” In my head I asked him if he thinks everything he reads is true.  In my head I asked him if only church officials knew how to read why would information counter to the church survive?  Obviously this is unfair as there are other cultures out there storing, adding and deleting information but don’t fuck with my argument.  I simply told him he was wrong, sting a few facts and turned away from him and started a conversation with someone who wouldn’t cause my mind to rot.  Stymied he continued arguing out loud to no one.  Fortunately ignorance is not always contagious. Truth isn’t always contagious either.  I can hope that truth (which as some urn once told me is beautiful) is sought out.  Seek on.

Ben

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Gently Cuddle the Police, or Maybe Some Spooning

Is it really a surprise that our espionage agencies spy more than we think and spy on those whom we don't expect?  You are allowed to say yes, just understand this marks you as an idiot.  How did this happen?  Well, slowly and covertly or at times things like the Patriot Act.  Named thusly so we don’t notice the fact that it really the invasion act.  Or those pesky places like Gitmo that have people taken away and never heard from again.  The crimes and trials are never released because it’s too sensitive to reveal.  This is fine in some aspects but it is also allows the government a way of disposing of unwanted opinions and dissenters.  This is a perilous slide.  And no it isn’t from just some shadow organization that operates under cloak and dagger.  It’s from business people like the Koch brothers who buy politicians, universities and whatever they want to negate what they don’t like.  It’s from a few really tyrannical and misguided politicians who think it’s a good idea to keep tabs on everyone, heavily prosecute people for minor infractions, develop and entrench cronyism and several other items that make froth at the mouth with anger.  They get away with it through things like apathy cultivated by gluts of information, misinformation and 24 hour news that is more editorial than factual.

But let’s back up.  I shouldn’t load all the scary things into one paragraph, let’s lay them out one by one so the fear can gestate.  Man, that’s a dark sentiment.  I guess I’ll focus on one scary thing, the police and possibly the fact that NWA was at times correct about their four letter statement towards them.  Moving on we can start with the evolution of the police.  To most of us these are the guys that force us to tap our brakes when driving on the highway and give us small heart attacks when they end up following you until the turn off or pass you.  They are minor but necessary inconveniences in the grand scheme of things.  But lately it seems the mentality of the police is a bit meaner, a bit more aggressive, more like a them versus us mentality.  This manifests itself when cops seem to go out and look for trouble and force a confrontation.  Cough** Andrew Zimmerman ** cough.  Obviously an officer has the right to defend him or herself if they are in an ugly situation.  And it’s hard for a person sitting comfortable behind a monitor to say what level of violence to use when meeting this danger.  But there are specific steps and guidelines for use of force.  It starts with a base level like your voice and conflict de-escalation.  After then of course it immediate goes to your sidearm and deadly force.  Or, well, maybe pepper spray, or a nightstick (still deadly but with a lower mortality rate that guns).  But maybe this could be fixed with some better training around preventative measures and not creating, encouraging, or fostering an environment where the violence happens or escalates.  Simply put, stop fucking making the situation worse until the only answer is shooting someone.  If some idiot runs away because you scare them over an ounce of weed creating a deadly scenario is not in anyone’s best interest.  Think of the paper work.  Or that, you know, you killed someone over a small crime that a lot of people indulge in.

Think that scenario is a really overdoing it?  No, killing a man by mistaking a colostomy bag for a conspicuous bulge in his pants, that is over the edge.  Oh, yeah, the man who was 22 years old and had down syndrome.  So someone who processes information at a slower rate was involved in a violent death with the cops where he, had done nothing wrong and had no weapon.

http://libertycrier.com/22-year-old-syndrome-beaten-police-bulge-pants-colostomy-bag/

So maybe that is a one off.  That’s a pretty extreme example.  But it happened.  Maybe that might call for some severe turn around in training and behavior for the police departments across the nation.  But we aren’t fighting just some policy it’s a mentality, a culture.  A culture of violence and suppression.  Cops violently attacking peaceful student activists?  That happened in the sixties to national outcry and it’s been happening again.  There is a meme of a police officer casually pepper spraying students who were sitting.  I don’t know about you but I am not terrible dangerous when sitting on the ground without a weapon.  I mean I could be singing some atrocious folk music or awful and pretentious poetry slam recitals whatever that is, but really that’s about the worst of it.  I’m rather sure I have mentioned this gentleman, I hesitate to use that word but walking piece of excrement seems a tad judgmental, but he is worth mentioning as an enemy of decency.
I mentioned Zimmerman and the Trayvon Martin debacle which brings me to the somewhat horrifying stand your ground law.  What this means is you can use lethal force with having to attempt to extricate yourself from a dangerous situation.  You don’t need to attempt to leave.  That seems kinda bad.  If walking away stops the problem maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to shoot someone.

Oh, also stand your ground doesn’t seem to work all the time.  Odd that a black woman using that same tactic went to jail.  And yes, I am saying that there is racial motivation here.  But that statement is made lightly as I think all things should be examined.  It could be this lady is interpreting the law incorrectly and she should not be allowed to use deadly force in here circumstance, it could also be that it is easier to shoot to a black man and get away with it if you happen to not be black.  But it doesn seem that Florida is its own little microcosm of fucked up.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/01/08/fla-mom-who-failed-in-bid-to-use-stand-your-ground-law-as-defense-faces-parole/

I am not in any way against the use of the proper amount of force.  I am just questioning, strongly, the choices made.  If someone stood in the way of me getting home to wife and I thought the only way out was violence that might kill the other person I would feel justified in doing so.  I might hesitate, which could be disastrous, but once I committed I would go through that person and I would show little mercy.  I think this an important distinction to make.  I also think it’s important to note that no job of mine has required me to be in situation where this might happen.

Back to the police.  My premise is that there is often a black and white mentality, an us (cops) versus them (criminals and suspects).  And sometimes this isn’t bad.  There are plenty of scum the cops have to deal with.  But they are still people who deserve to be treated something resembling decency.  Or then there is a time someone died in police custody over an allergy.  This case is a man who turned himself in over a misdemeanor charge for pot possession.  He died from a reaction to dairy, something that was brought up before he ate breakfast in jail.  Someone he complained about for quite some time.  Once being brought out for use of an inhaler.  But then ignored later because they thought he might be faking it.  Unsurprisingly after being ignored for some time he died.  Inattention caused a young man to die a totally preventable death.  But let us look at it from the side of the police.  This is some fresh faced whiny kid wasting their time. He is there on a misdemeanor and they have other pressing matters they need to deal with.  They already brought him out once and now he won’t quit wasting their time.  He is just some brat who is probably faking it.  Maybe so, but allergies are nothing to be ignored.  I know people who are so sensitive just taking a bite and spiting it out may still lead to a hospital trip.  And that indiscretion can’t be fixed.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/06/todays-drug-war-outrage-m_n_4225995.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Or what about the whole knockless warrant thing?  Those are warrants that allow for entry without notification.  So the police do not have to identify themselves and can, and do, burst in weapons drawn making commotion.  This proves to be problematic for several reasons.  It is acceptable to react within this country violently to those that enter our homes in said fashion unannounced.  If it was an armed burglary it would be acceptable to protect yourself in violent methods.  It is also acceptable for a police officer once fired upon to fire back.  You can see where this is going and has happened.  People have their houses broken into, they don’t know it’s the cops.  They fire back, then the cops who know have few options left after it has escalated to a firefight shoot and kill the homeowner.  The cops have the right to fire back, I am not denying this.  What would be nice is if the situation didn’t happen.  The need for knockless warrants is over stated as these types of situations arrive from it.  There is the occasional need for entry without stating you are cop and simply barging in but there are only so many places this is necessary.  A drug bust is often not one of them.  Drugs are not a good thing but it isn’t akin to violent crime.  It only devolves to that because of search and seizure and America’s war on drugs.  A war we are in no winning.  A war that our neighbors are suffering for (look at what is happening in Latin and South America because of it), a war that is promoting street violence and a war that provides easy money for people with an ambiguous moral code.  If you conjure up in your mind someone who is growing their own pot in their house that image most likely does not equate to an evil criminal mastermind.  This is not a violent sociopath who needs several police officers to barge in announced in fear that stating their intention will cause harm or the subject will evade arrest.  I posit that knockless warrants in many, if not most, cases create more harm than good.

There is also the extreme use of force in calling the swat teams for situation that do not necessitate that show of force.  Seeing several well-armed and rather intimidating officers with large weapons pointed at you can cause many things besides simply unwanted bowel movements.  Like, for instance, fatal heart attacks.  Again I’m not saying SWAT teams are bad or unnecessary.  That is a blatantly false assertion in my opinion.  My opinion is that again these highly specialized teams are being over used for offenses and situations well below what I think is the necessary threshold to have such a reaction.

Violence begets violence.  This is a rather simple truth.  These are just a few examples of problems with unjustified force by police.  So it’s a known problem which needs to be fixed.  But is it simply a matter of implementing some better training.  That would accomplish a lot I am sure but this entrenched culture can’t simply be shrugged off.  It goes past training.  It comes around to things like repercussions and making sure there can’t be easy cover up.  You can’t simply allow an environment that does little to stop things planted evidence to justify a shooting or lying on the stand or falsification of records (he came in with that black eye and broken rib).

There is a way to accomplish this.  And a town in California figured it out.  Rialto, California has a new policy and its genius in its simplicity.  Cameras.  That’s it.  A simple camera mounted to sunglasses.  It can help the police as they now have video evidence of what happens and help the suspects as they now have video evidence of what going on.  Having a camera switched on might make an officer think twice about excessive force.  By might I mean it does.

“In the first year after the cameras were introduced here in February 2012, the number of complaints filed against officers fell by 88 percent compared with the previous 12 months. Use of force by officers fell by almost 60 percent over the same period.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/us/in-california-a-champion-for-police-cameras.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


The article also makes mention of the racial profiling made legal in the form of New York City’s ill-fated stop and frisk program.  Something Bloomberg should be ashamed of but he is too busy trying to ruin fat and salt for people (not a terrible idea helping curb obesity just rather fascist in execution).  It’s an interesting comparison.  Our police departments are rather disparate in policy and behavior.  If New York is encouraging random search and seizure while Rialto is putting pressure on their officers for more transparency.  I hope we have more movement towards the Rialto way of thinking.  It would be nice to feel you can trust a cop.  It would be nice to think if them as bastions of public good.  And then we can stop fucking the police and just have a nice cuddle, with hot cocoa in front of the fire and everything.

Ben