Squash ... have you ...?
How many suspects have you killed who turned out to be unarmed?
How many people have you arrested for smoking weed?
How many times have you used ethnicity as your sole grounds for search and seizure?
I ask because it's a tough thing. We hear all sorts of nasty rhetoric about the police in this country whenever they screw up. But American cops privately confess to all manner of violations. Planting evidence, civil rights violations ... two quotes from a former sheriff's deputy of my acquaintance:
- "Sometimes you have the guy and you know he's guilty and you're not just going to let him go, so you invent a reason to arrest him."
- "After all the frustration you go through on the job, it's natural to occasionally take it out on a suspect. A good punch, a good kick. Just be careful not to leave any marks."
This deputy also speaks of falsifying testimony, of hiding violations by fellow officers ....
And yet, when a scandal arises and the police commit yet another violation, we should not, by conventional sympathies, discuss the ongoing problem with law enforcement and its boundaries. We should not, by conventional sympathies, condemn police officers since we're not them. We should not, by conventional sympathies, hold the police accountable for their crimes.
And, in the end, the police have "extra rights". (This, actually, is disturbing, given some of the educational qualifications.)
Extra rights? In court, a police officer has the presumption of honesty that a defendant does not have. If it comes down to the cop's word versus the suspect's, the cop wins. The travesty in Tulia, Texas, shows what's wrong with that.
If a police officer kills somebody, and only the police say the dead man had a gun, judicial reviews generally accept that the dead man posed some sort of threat that warranted killing.
We had a case in Seattle not long ago where a white officer took some flak for shooting a black motorist after the motorist had fled a routine stop. The argument was compelling: "He was dragging my partner along with the car."
Nobody ever answered the question of why the partner didn't just let go of the car. So he shot past his partner and struck the driver in the head.
And you know, if you kill a cop, even an off-duty one, it's over. Whether the cop assaulted you or not is immaterial. It was a cop. Whether you knew the man assaulting you was a cop is immaterial. It was a cop. And when you're convicted, as you most definitely will be, you'll be sentenced to death because it was a cop.
You know ... cops
choose to wear the badge and carry the gun. I would hope authority and legal force are not the only reasons they do so.
Every cop who shoots the wrong person ought to be held accountable. Every cop who violates his or her duty ought to be held accountable tenfold the common citizen. After all, the cop is more valuable than the next person, why should the cop not bear the responsibilities of that value?
Police are supposed to serve the people, not the other way around.
I like cops who can do their jobs. But I so rarely meet any who can.
I think back to the Oregon officer who stopped me on Highway 22 heading into West Salem a few years ago for possible DUI. He didn't like the way I violated the line. We had a conversation about the legality of the stop in terms of recent court decisions, whereupon he said, "That's fine. We can take you downtown and wait for the lawyer and then seize a blood sample."
I responded to him that I was perfectly willing to do that because even if I had bothered to go drinking that night, all would be square by the time the attorney arrived. Furthermore, I pointed out to him, that the other alternative was to simply run into the van stalled on the highway at about sixty miles per hour. "Let's go downtown and talk about that, why don't we?" I asked. "And you can explain to me why you're hauling me in for not getting myself killed while a dangerous vehicle sits on the highway painted black, with broken taillights (I saw a glint of chrome on the bumper in my headlights and swerved around it) and no visible plates (which would have reflected my headlights)." The cop decided to let it go. But I essentially had to threaten his livelihood. Most people don't know you can get away with that when the cops are utterly without grounds.
(There was a conclusion that went here, but it's been erased by a literal wave of shite. I mean, like, elbow deep. After the mess was cleaned away, I was well-encouraged to find that my daughter's ass had
not exploded, though the disaster has claimed casualties. One minor example of which is that I have no idea how I was going to wrap this up.)
:m:,
Tiassa