There is a common joke about the nature of police. That we fear and hate them. Feel maligned by them but, at the slightest
hint of danger, we call them and wait, incredulous they did not arrive
sooner. The reasoning is pretty
simple. If you get into an altercation
with someone in power there is a distinct and natural fear that even by winning
you will ultimately lose. I’m not talking about beating a Lieutenant in
bowling and he ships a horse’s head to my mother mind you. There is also the thought of which side of
the baton are you on. Are you pointing
at some invisible boogey man encouraging the police to get rid of the bad man
or are you pulled over on the side of the road screaming in your own head ‘oh
crap, oh crap, oh crap, what do I do?”
There is a justifiable fear in our country over the intention of our
boys in blue.
Now cops are just a mass of people like any other job with
wide range in personality and beliefs.
What is true about one police officer is utterly false about
another. But there tend to be overt
similarities between this group due to the very specific nature of the job and
they often tend to be not so good. Like
the whole idea of the grown up boys club.
Or the idea of abuse of power.
With the internet being such a strong medium for expression
it’s difficult to keep stories of unexpected and extreme breeches of justice
from leaking. If you don’t think there
is an issue with police brutality let me remind you of what is being done to
peaceful protestors. Whole parks were
swept and removed of peaceful protestors during the 99%/occupy movement. People were pepper sprayed by uncaring,
remorseless, supposedly faceless cops.
Not so much anymore. Sadly the
internet instead of rage turned the pepper spray cop in all his in glory into a
meme.
“On November 18th, 2011, a group of students at the
University of California Davis campus gathered on campus for an Occupy
protest, during which they formed a human chain by linking their
arms together. When they refused to comply with the police request to leave, UC
Davis Police officer Lieutenant John Pike and another officer walked across
[the] group, administering orange pepper spray straight down the line of
unmoving students”
While there was outrage against the incident there was also
the usual subterfuge, obfuscation and defensive maneuvering to avoid scrutiny
or wrongdoing. Unsurprisingly Fox News,
which is starting the slowly lean back to center after years of listing to the
right, took the side of the police in this incident. The police issued a statement that was proved
false by video evidence. To my knowledge
no formal apology was made and no hard repercussions have hit Lieutenant Pike. But hopefully the constant internet memes,
some of which are actually quite good, have brought some shame to his abhorrent
actions.
The problem with protest is it can be easy to get agitated
and violent in which case cops not only have the right to remove people but a
necessity to do so. A police officer’s
job isn’t easy but that is never an excuse to pepper spray, to beat up someone,
to plant evidence, or to pervert justice because of your position in the system. The problem with crowd control is people
don’t like being forcibly removed and they resist. The issue is they scream they writhe they catch
attention. They think they aren’t being
dangerous but to some guy whose job it is to secure safety this idiot needs to
get tazed. So events spiral into violence and bad times. Many times however cops simply are asked to
show up and they remove protestors without good cause. Or city councils declare reason to eject
groups for superfluous and false reasons such as waste management. Interestingly many of the occupy movement had
a very smart structure set up in order to deal with waste, keeping clean,
keeping fed and other necessities that didn’t come to mind in the first few
days of gathering awareness.
By violence in protests is nothing new. Economic inequality, which is seemingly tied
to generational inequality, is just the latest global reason for protests (see
Spain, Greece and Occupy movements).
There can be ties to other such important protests of equal rights from
the sixties. Economic oppression is
still oppression just without the extra veneer of hatred that is racism.
There are many times officers hesitate and that results in injury
or death on their part. We as citizens
cannot ignore the inherent danger in being an officer. But we cannot let that danger cloud over the
fact that often times that same hesitation means a kid doesn’t get shot. Yes, maybe that kid was being an idiot and he
had a paintball gun painted black, was wearing fatigues and prowling around (I’ve
heard two different stories about idiots friends or acquaintances of friends
with similar scenarios) but we can only hope the officer is trained and ready
to resist the urge to shoot. But the
other options, the no lethal ones, they are being abused and they leave must
nastier results that we’d like the think.
Like blindness.
Imagine being pepper sprayed so bad you can’t see. Imagine pepper spray, which is meant to be
fired from at least a minimum of six feet away was sprayed from blank
range. Spray that uses a charge to fire
at 400 miles an hour. Ignore the pepper
just think of the force and the ocular trauma.
This time the officer was arraigned and found guilty on several
charges. But this won’t bring back sight
to a newly blinded woman. The term the
used here was street justice due to contempt of cop.
I remember living in Philly if the cops were after you just
don’t run. Because if they catch you no
matter whether you committed crime you
were going to get hurt. It was not a
city known for forgiveness with its law enforcement.
But back to the protests.
And protest are important. We
have a right, an innate right to peaceful protest. We are not sheep. It’s beyond disgusting that officials simply
think it can be washed away and ignored.
Our cultural memory might be as long as etch a sketch in that news is
consumed reacted and immediately discarded but at one point it begins to seep
in. One point there may will be more
protests on the street. There always has
been and there always will be. Whether
these individuals are right isn’t relavent.
Their safety and right to free speech trumps that. And it’s being trounced and ignored under
dubious circumstances.
Chicago, a city found on violence and handling things its
own way outside of normal legal boundaries, is now investing in using LRAD
technology on protestors. The same
technology we’ve used in wars is being used on our own men and women. Just how bad is this stuff. People ran away from it into clouds of tear
gas. So not so good.
Maybe eventually we’ll move away and not towards a police
state but right now it’s scary being an American and that is horrifying. I’m not pleased with the amount of power our
government has to detains, to hurt to censure and to monitor. What protection do I have from those ‘protecting’
me?
Ben
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Thanks for posting. You are awesome!