southsamurai said:
okay. i gotta hit the whole stereotyping cops bit.
point a: cops are not a group based on involuntary characteristics, e.g. an ethnicity, disabled persons, a gender etc. it is a group based on a voluntary choice, so im not certain that stereotyping is unfair in this specific instance. when an officer takes the job be it on a local or federal level they also take on a set of responsibilities, oaths and a societal position, and in this single instance of abuse of power and abuse of a citizens civil rights they may all be judged by the actions of their compatriots within that instance.
point b: no, not all officers of the law are bad people, nor are all of them corrupt or power drunk. i personally know and admire several local LEOs. i also personally knew and despised several bad ones.
in cam's description of events, i assume two things. one is that he told the truth. i assume this because of the nature and content of his story, as well as the details which are consistent with actual procedure as i have been told it by officers. the second assumption is that he told it fairly completely.
if both of those assumptions remain true, then one thing was lacking in the actions of the officers (other than common sense, decency, and adherence to their own rules). that being that nowhere in his narrative did any other officer step in to either protect him from possible injury, or assist the officers in coming up with a logical and intelligent plan for what was occuring.
it is my belief (and that of american law, though with much narrower definitions) that if a person ignores a crime being committed then they are guilty themselves. the higher standard to which police are held includes that premise. if one officer sees another committing an illegal or unethical act they are supposed to intervene or report. neither occurred. even the correct actions of the police in general at his locale occurred after he was already subjected to the unethical actions.
point c: we as a society give up our rights in many ways and hand them to our government, with the assumption that they will enforce those rights for us. when, as is to be expected, fallible human beings fail in their job to do so then it taints the establishment. is it a matter of needing better screening and supervision? i dont know. is it a matter of needing better education by the general populace about police procedure and law? maybe, but certainly not the end answer.
what i do know is that as long as immoral, illegal or unethical acts go unchallenged and without consequences all officers WILL be judged by the worst of their ranks. that is not fair to the dedicated, honest, honorable persons who protect and serve. it is however justified when we on the outside can not know which one is which until we suffer at their hands.
point d:all humans are flawed. if the flaws of the individual cause harm to others, we can judge them only as individuals when individual behavior is in question. if those flaws are exhibited in a group setting then we can judge them as a group. there is a certain mental makeup that is required to last long as an officer. a certain amount of aggression is part of what is needed. unfortunately the job also draws people who have not the right make up of traits, but also those who wish to have power over others and an excuse to abuse it. it is inherent to the job. knowing this and being able to determine who is who among the applicants is not easy. the power hungry persons are also the kind that will lie and hide their baser nature easily, slipping by most testing. with this as a truism (albeit a shaky one) then i must assume that there is a significant percentage chance that any officer i encounter has the bad traits instead of the good ones. this is not a matter of prejudice. this is a matter of safety. cam was smart. he kept his mouth shut as much as he could and went with the abuse. had he not? how bad could it have gotten? they had already ignored his requests and suggestions to make it easier on them to get him out of the vehicle. there were at least two officers present. one can assume there were at least one or two more nearby. had he shouted, raised objection to his treatment,; is it more likely that he would have gotten assistance, or that he would have ended up with tazers on him? guess where my bet is.
lastly, so that no one gets the wrong idea here. i am not saying that the police in general are useless and dangerous. we as a society need something like them when a population group is over that of a very small village. i am saying that they are human beings. i am also saying that human beings are dangerous and untrustworthy as a group. as individuals, persons can be wonderful. in a group we are panicky, mob minded animals. and because of the nature and dangers of being a police officer, they can, will and do stick together as their own group against anyone who seems to be a threat to their own, regardless of the situation.
think about it for a moment before you deny what i say. look back over modern history to times when police have been caught doing illegal or otherwise bad things. if you were to map it out by numbers ( which is difficult to do) it seems that the majority of cases of beatings, criminal activity, and abuse of authority that more than one officer was involved. does a single officer occasionally act wrongly? sure, of course. but how much harm can a single officer do without the assistance of others? a bribe taken to ignore a ticket or a single instance of lawbreaking maybe. small things on the scale im talking about.
for even a single officer to get away with those small things it requires the inattention of their fellows. the tendency to look away and assume that the single action taken is an aberration or justified in that instance. THAT is why it is acceptable to color all police with the same brush.
the mentality of the "blue brotherhood" protects officers from being harmed by outsiders, and is a wonderful thing sometimes. but it leads to a circle of officers with batons beating a man half to death on the ground. yeah, rodney king had broken the law. then they took him down. once he was down they subdued him. how many blows did it take to be certain that he was no longer dangerous? two? three? maybe four? last time i saw the video of the event i lost count at 20. if that was a one time, isolated event i'd shrug my shoulders and let it go. it happens too damn often in my book
ill step off the soapbox now
My dear SouthSam, I must apologize to you, and everyone to some extent, for leaving this thread unattended. I frankly had regretted ever OPing it. Not because I had any doubt in my belief, or any misgivings of anything I had said. But because, of the realization I had, that even this very liberal community did not have the experience to believe what I have learned from experience, and that convincing them of any different would only serve to make me look like a hate monger, bent on bad mouthing all of law enforcement.
To understand what I have learned about the
vast majority of street cops in the U.S. one has to have been in their midst in secluded non public, or impoverished public places. Behind the scenes, and in places where transgressions can be gotten away with, because those who are being transgressed against have not the means, nor the creditability to stand against it.
There are several things I hope to address with this post, though I am not real sure now to string them together, and I do not want the truth of what I wish to say to become blurred behind a wall of muddled words. So it may not be very eloquent, but I will do my best to make it concise.
There were two things that I said in the OP that I will get out of the way straight off. One, that the incident that occurred on 2/14 was one that gave me 'a fresh story of abuse'. That there have been others, is a fact. That there have been two others, that rival this most recent, is a fact. And that there have been countless others of lesser magnitude is fact.
The second thing I said in the OP that I wish to address, is that I
do not dislike all cops. This too is a fact, and I have had some good experiences with cops, and even one or two wonderful experiences. One of which I will get back to.
Why have I had all these experiences with police? Because from the time I was 16 until I was well into my thirty's, I was, off and on a criminal. (for the sake of the esteem in which I hold this community and that in which it holds me, I wish to say, that I was never an angry or vicious person. I was a rebellious, spoiled, irresponsible, man child, who thought insurance companies were in place to cover the losses of the commercial enterprises from which I stole. It is all irrelevant, but as a friend said to me not long ago, we all, to some extent, give a shit what others think of us.)
So why have I had more abusive experiences in my dealings with police, than good ones? (the majority of my experiences have been as most of yours have probably been, nether good nor bad, and as so far as they were not bad, I always felt lucky.) Well, during the time I surrounded myself with the criminal element, and was in fact part of that criminal element, the argument could very easily be made that, I deserved no better, so lets put that too aside until later.
Why was I abused 5 days ago? Because it was determined that I had nether the means, nor the creditability to do anything about it! I was pulled over in a car that was 22 years old, faded red paint, with a primered front quarter. I'm currently sporting a out of control goatee and stash that would make Manson envious, and my cheeks and jowls are about two weeks unshaven. I was dressed well enough, but in general had the appearance of someone who didn't have a dime to his name. before he ever returned from his cruiser, he had been dispatched with the information that I was a felon, and that I have a health and safety, (drug) conviction. It does not mater that the felony conviction was 18 years ago, and the possession longer ago than that.
Had I, had no warrant, the abuse might not have been as great, but I can pretty much guarantee the only thing that would have saved me from 30-45 minutes of unwarranted harassment, to include search of the car interior, trunk, and my person, (if I would have submitted to it?), would have been a dispatch of some urgency nearby. And had I not submitted to a search of my person, and I probably would not have, (at some point you get fed up with being intimidated into sacrificing your rights, and dignity), the delay longer and the verbal abuse greater.
cam was smart. he kept his mouth shut as much as he could and went with the abuse. had he not? how bad could it have gotten? they had already ignored his requests and suggestions to make it easier on them to get him out of the vehicle. there were at least two officers present. one can assume there were at least one or two more nearby. had he shouted, raised objection to his treatment,; is it more likely that he would have gotten assistance, or that he would have ended up with tazers on him? guess where my bet is.
I truly thank those who felt I had applied some sort of restraint during this shit, but the kudos are unwarranted. To behave in any other way than I did would have been bath salt fucking crazy, unless of course pain and humiliation are the aim. I was not smart, just experienced. Had I started to scream and yell, anything other than "owe my wrist", had I kept my volume down, and in perfect legal terms articulated that my civil rights were being violated and that it should stop, or that I would sue if it didn't, anything other than what I did, would have been met with the same response. I would have been hoisted by my cuffed wrist far above my head and wrenched into one of the two rubber cells, at which point I would have been slammed to the deck. (as I remember it, a knee would have come down squarely across my ear forcing the side of my head into the mat, and out of the corner of my eye I can see the cop with his knee in my ear turn to look back at his partner and say, "you're doing the paper on this one") Then your feet would be shackled together and so tightly cuffed to the floor that your toes point out to the left and the right and it is impossible to do anything other than lay face down to a rubber floor that wreaks of many layers of stale urine, in fact has a layer yellow and cracked like built up wax. And all that - something you got to man up and deal with, but the part that was the worst, the part that was really hard, was after about an hour and a half a shrink comes in and for 15 minutes I try to convince him that I never tried to harm myself. But that is not what he was told and he keeps insisting the lump on one side of my head, and red abrasion on the other are from me beating my head against the cell wall. The more I try to explain the more he seems set to break me so I give in. Then spend the next 30 minutes doing my best to convince this guy that I no longer want to hurt myself. Why? Because that is what he had been told was the reason for me being in the rubber room, - that I had tried to hurt myself. What had actually happened was that I was cut off mid sentences when a deputy decided he no longer wanted to deal with me, by slamming the cell door in my face. In my frustration I made the mistake of slamming my fist into the top of the door twice above my head in an overhanded stabbing fashion not punching it.(bang,, bang/god,, dammit) When the cell door flew open 30 seconds later and three deputies rushed in to keep me from hurting myself, I was seated on the bench at the far side of the cell, bent over, my face in my hands, depressed, and motionless. (perhaps they thought I was trying to cry myself to death) These things happen all the time, but if you have any sense they only happen to you once. Don't give me any points for my restraint, lest you score me for not being a fool.
On this I want to say one more thing, and then on to the story of one of the most wonderful experiences I ever had with another random human, who happened to be a police officer. I do, want to get to that, as it is a very fond memory, and will take me away from the ugliness and the darkness of the path I have been traveling.
I don't think most will like this, and I don't think most will believe it, - this, that I'm about to say. I wont even pretend to know it with any sort of certainty. It is nothing I can prove or even offer any tangible proof for. But it is my belief that there are 2or3, 3or4 in that 12 man shift, that not only subject those who seem helpless to do anything against it, to abuse at their whim, but at some level, perhaps subconsciously, abuse in the hope that the abused will react thus stepping it up a notch.
The others who to differing degrees might be a little uncomfortable with the clearly abusive actions of their brothers in blue will talk amongst themselves, sometimes even sharing with a ex criminal this discomfort. Talking has a way of comforting a pained conscious, and levity as a closer, always seems to be the order of things. Though the jokes these discomforts are sent away with are always something a kin to, "Yea, but just think of how many Jews the natzis could have incinerated if their rail-yards weren't being bombed to shit" Or closer yet, "yea but they are only Jews after all." Because bottom line the absolution that washes away the sins or throws a cloak over them, is, "Yea, but they are only criminals after all"
I can not, or will not argue with those who say to me, you fucked up, and these are the prices you pay. I will not even argue with those who say, a person who has put themselves in a place where they have to be taken into jail, even if it was for a misdemeanor traffic FTA warrant has fucked up and it caught up to them, so the abuse they suffered could have been avoided. ( I think it is misguided, but I will not argue.)
But if we allow our protectors, to apply a little heavy handedness to keep order because after all they are dealing with some of the most rotten, nasty, viscous, pieces of shit pumping air, (and that too is fact), than how do we sort em out? which criminals are worthy of having their civil and human rights violated? Surly not all, - the prostitute who gets arrested on a Saturday and is mad and sad because she is going to be in jail on Sunday and she will miss her babies third birthday. Are her rights worthy of abuse when she perceives, right or wrong that a cop has tried to feel her up, and starts screaming and yelling that all cops are fuckin pigs and cocksuckers? Or the mentally ill who we have in great numbers criminalized rather than institutionalize in mental hospitals where there is some chance they might get some better. Are these people acceptable to abuse?
Where does it stop? And why is it that almost non of the 99% of affluent middle America wants to consider the possibility that there is something terribly wrong, or even something a little wrong, with law enforcement in America? Even my mostly liberal, opened minded, free thinker friends here. Well, I think there are a whole bunch of reasons. I think non greater than you, they, middle American, having not been exposed to it except rarely. It is well hidden and its victims have no creditable voice, because we judge certain elements of our society as being discreditable. With some reason those we call criminals, but also, greatly, any who have ever fit that jacket. And increasingly the poor. The worst abuses I have seen were not inside jails, but in urban hoods and slums where ppl often feel as much fear of the popo as they do the criminals living in their midst.
And finally imagine the hopelessness, and mostly the anger you might feel to be told by a police officer, that, “It doesn't matter what you tell anyone or say, not one of you, not all three of you, no one is going to believe you over me!” And know he is wright....
