Notes from a dying breed
(1) A bag laced with cyanide is a bad idea. Pot doesn't kill, and the anti-drug crowd is itching for another reason to nail marijuana. The last time they got the chance, we heard about pot dealers who shot a sheriff during a drug bust. Killed a cop for a few ounces of weed. What the news failed to mention during their sensationalist shock-at-violent-marijuana story was the
pounds of methamphetamine and the equipment to make more. You tell me what the bust was about.
(2) Police are human too. This is why I would move to revoke the special status they receive in the courtroom. A living officer's testimony is unassailable by the presumption of the law, it
seems, and if you kill a cop you face the death penalty no matter what the circumstances. I reject this elevation of police officers to a status above the rest of society. If those who offend police officers directly (e.g. attacking, killing) are to receive special punishment, then corrupt cops deserve special punishment. You took a $100 bribe to let a man off? Fine. Life in prison. Period.
(3) Police officers don't respect their badges. Why should I?
When you become a police officer or other official with such authority you make a compromise. Just as a celebrity can expect all manner of unnecessary inquiry into the morbid details of their life, so can a police officer expect to not violate the law intentionally. What? We want
athletes to be corruption-free role models, but not the agents of law and order?
And that's not to say our cops don't try. King County, Washington is almost morbidly funny. I'm told that the impetus for a problem that still affects us is an occasion when the cops stormed a house and shot someone to death, but it was the wrong house. Shortly after I moved back to the Seattle area from Oregon, we had a case in which the cops took
eleven hours to bring down a crazy man with a sword. Fire hoses, pepper spray, the works. Eleven hours, a very cold, wet, drowned-rat-looking angry man surrendered. The public outcry was violent:
Eleven hours? You should have shot him. You made me late to my son's soccer practice! (That example, in fact, is a compressed paraphrase of a letter to the editor of the Seattle Times that I will never forget.) And over the years the police in the area have returned to more direct and violent means, including shooting the mentally ill while they hold a kitchen knife and twitch while well out of range of harming anyone. But things got ridiculous during WTO '99 in Seattle. Police and sheriff's deputies were already taking heat from the public for diverse minor offenses: racial profiling, stealing from corpses ... some officers even tried to sue the estate of a bank robber who killed himself before they could arrest him alleging that his suicide caused them mental anguish at not being able to arrest him .... And then, among other things, the mayor lied and gave SPD a bad name, SPD lied and said they could not have done any more unless they were allowed to investigate citizens at random and survey them inside their homes, and a King County Sheriff's deputy was videotaped in two separate incidents randomly assaulting people. In the first, and most infamous, he beat and sprayed someone kneeling in the street while they attended to an injured protester. In the second, he stopped a car
outside the declared security zone, and when the driver rolled down her window, he sprayed both the occupants. The Sheriff fired him. The man protested, and union arbitration ensued. The final ruling was that the Sheriff could not fire him
on the grounds that the police, operating in riot gear bearing no distinguishing marks, were considered "a unit", and no one person could be held responsible for the actions of "the unit", even when their face is caught on camera. The Sheriff was forced to reinstate the offending deputy with an apology and back pay.
It would be shortly after the Seattle fracas, incidentally, that the Philadelphia chief of police, standing with his bicycle corps during an international conference (IMF/WB?) was assaulted by the mob and
beaten with his own bicycle. People are getting very, very annoyed. They're taking their chances when they think they have an opportunity.
P.J. O'Rourke wrote of his fall from the left, when he watched a housemate, during a riot, smash a police officer in the back of the head with a two-by-four. Mr. O'Rourke, of course, is not sickened by the abuses poured upon citizens by police officers. Of course, his friend had no real justification, but neither do the cops.
The cops around a concert venue, The Gorge Amphitheatre, in the middle of nowhere, Washington state, run roadblocks (but only on one side of the venue; you can still bypass the roadblocks easily). As the "profiling" debates have carried on, for some reason the cops have insisted on profiling. We've been stopped before for having a black man in the car; as you looked down the line of cars, every car stopped contained at least one black male with a mustache. But when race profiling became "illegal", the cops switched; the next time the rule was, "any balding man with a woman in the passenger seat". And then, "anybody wearing one of those Stone-Roses hats". Whatever happened to counting cars? One-two-three-four-five ... okay, you stop. One-two-three-four-five ... okay,
you stop .... Apparently that's too complicated when compared to devising appearance-based profiles.
A friend of mine's dad was a cop for many years, and my friend speaks once of a prison riot, and knowing that both his parents were in the line of fire. I feel for him. But he also gets that scornful look in his eyes when he recalls his father talking about framing people he knew were guilty but couldn't get evidence on. It's a fact of life. If the police did their jobs according to the law, we would have to spend even more money on law enforcement than we do, and so I suppose it's worth looking to the voters and asking why they keep electing stupid politicians that send cops after pot smokers instead of rapists or, in the case of the FBI (though they're irrelevant to this topic) terrorists.°
Any cop standing before me gets the benefit of doubt I award
any human being. But, being a police officer, any single misstep
will be noted. I'm aware that the law does not protect me from hateful criminals hiding behind a badge; I'm aware that the law does everything it can to empower the police racket in this country. But I'll be happy to go down in a blaze of glory, reminding the public record that this police officer should have his children removed from his custody for their protection.
I smoke pot. The cop wears a badge that licenses him to hurt people and lie about it. Who do
you think is more dangerous?
When the cops finally get off their butts and do their jobs with some notable results, I'll be happy to retract the lot of this. But for now I can only oblige the police, who have asked, begged, pleaded, and eventually demanded that we the people view them as murderous, thieving, lying thugs. The police are among America's biggest tragedies. Don't ever elect me President if you're a fan of corrupt cops. I'll sic my AG on every tarnished badge. I'll round 'em up and throw 'em in concentration camps. They can be there for years, you know. I'll just invoke the Bush/Guantanamo arguments and modify them to suit. I'm eligible in five years, but it would be more like twenty or thirty before you would hear from me at such a level. And I'm sure the Guantanamo mush will be so well accepted that the people won't be able to deny their prior endorsements.
If police wish to behave as if they're not human, I will be perfectly happy to use any political authority I might attain in my life to treat them as such.
:m:,
Tiassa
