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In Memoriam:
Eric Garner & Michael Brown
Preface
To the un-attuned, the last few weeks have seen a “spike” in incidents of police brutality. To those with a little more discrimination, however, the spike is merely in the popular reportage, not in the incidents, themselves. Sure, Eric Garner’s death (which kicked things off in July) was all the more dramatic because it was captured on video, wherein 4 or 5 incompetent cops decide they cannot cuff a single nonviolent ‘resister’ without the use of an illegal maneuver, while 6+ witnesses (as of 8/27) in Ferguson, MO, all contradicting a lone cop’s account of self-defense, certainly feels sensational.
Yet such things occur on and off camera all the time, to blacks AND whites, with arbitrary degrees of public scrutiny. Often, there’s simply no criticism at all, and following the countless lawsuits and/or complaints filed by victims of police brutality, it is clear that cops rarely get punished for their misdeeds. I mean, just consider how the cop in this story — who allegedly broke a 10 year old’s leg for legally recording him, then sexually assaulted the kid’s mother — was not only NOT charged (as per the lack of any news stories, 6 months after the fact), but also never even named, despite the fact that civilians accused of the same would be hunted, harangued, and lambasted all over the media for days, until they’ve been caught and properly chastised.
Of course, there’s a very simple reason for this. It’s not that America is still quite dishonest vis a vis race, to the point of international embarrassment. It’s not simply because cops have bullets, and we are empty vessels waiting for their fill. And it’s certainly NOT because cops used ta’ be so respectful, in some Golden Age of such, and have merely become brats in the interim. In fact, it’s really because the police force, like the military, is an autocratic body, with little to no accountability, except in the most extreme cases. There are no elections to force some sort of compromise; there is no police conduct review board of any real power. Sure, people can file lawsuits, but they’ll often languish. Cops can speak out against abuses, but will be ostracized. And, to top things off, cops are seemingly bound by a very different set of laws, just like the autocrats of yore, with every violation explained away as a ‘necessity’, and every gray area (hell, even what’s black and white) deferred to the cop’s judgment, again out of a perceived necessity.
I mean, think of it. If a black guy shoots someone around ten times, without provocation, as recounted by ALL SIX (as of 8/26) official witnesses to the death of Michael Brown, with NO witnesses in support of the killer’s account, he’d be named and arrested immediately, as per the rules of crime and punishment. … Continue reading →